Medical students’ satisfaction with their teachers’ educational performance: gender and teaching situations

Abstract

Introduction: The preferred strategy to evaluate teaching activities at Mexican universities has been the application of ex profeso questionnaires in which students give their opinion of their teachers’ educational skills. The purpose of this study is to analyze the potential impact of teachers’ and students’ gender on teaching evaluation and to characterize some teaching situations (different courses) that could be associated with certain types of teaching behavior.

Methods: Observational study, 505 groups/teachers were evaluated in seven courses of the basic sciences during the 2007 to 2008 academic year, as part of the Unified Plan of Studies at UNAM Faculty of Medicine in Mexico. The Opinion Questionnaire for Evaluation of Teaching (COED) was used to assess teaching performance, an instrument for which there is evidence of validity and reliability. The relationship among teaching performance evaluations by medical students and teachers’ gender were analyzed. Based on the proportion of teachers of a specific sex that are responsible for the teaching of a particular course, a four-type taxonomy of the courses or educational situations was designed, which by a correspondence factorial analysis were associated with differential types of teaching performance behavior.

Results: The results show that teachers’ and students’ gender, as well as the type of course or teaching situation, are important factors that intervene in teachers’ performance evaluations by the students via opinion instruments.

Conclusions: The evaluations of teachers are influenced by factors different to educational competence itself. These factors should be considered when, based on anonymous questionnaires filled by students, decisions are taken to improve quality of teaching.