Pedagogical self-efficacy improves student evaluations: defining new sub-categories across faculty gender in management education

Pedagogical self-efficacy is the self-confidence that faculty members hold for their own ability to teach. This project used mixed method data from 20 interviews with faculty members, 85 self-assessments from professors, and 20,000 course evaluations from students to conclude that male professors show higher scores in three aspects of self-efficacy – designing a course, managing a classroom full of students, and providing feedback to students – than female professors. The data also show higher scores for male professors in student evaluations. Despite the gender differences, faculty self-efficacy for these three activities each predicted student evaluations for both male and female faculty members, with one exception. Male professors who reported higher confidence in their ability to design a course received lower evaluations from students. The distinctions have clear implications for both male and female professors, as well as for academic institutions seeking to develop their faculty and for researchers exploring pedagogical psychology.