Gender, teaching and academic promotions in higher education

ABSTRACT

Teaching is increasingly being considered for inclusion in academic promotions in a number of universities. This raises questions about how teaching is appraised in relation to research; and which teaching criteria contribute to promotions outcomes. This article investigates these questions from a gender perspective by statistically analysing the actual promotions outcomes by rank levels at a South African university where teaching and research have been equally evaluated in academic promotions. The findings show that, overall, there was no statistically significant difference in promotions success rates between males and females and that more females achieved excellence in teaching with higher scores than males. Two of the 10 teaching criteria analysed – ‘ongoing study of tertiary education’ and ‘special recognition of teaching’ showed statistically significantly higher scores for females with high effect sizes, pointing to the importance of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in academic promotions for women. This study has implications for closing the gender gap in the senior ranks of universities.

KEYWORDS:

• Academic promotion
• women academics
• higher education
• teaching evaluations
• Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL)
• professoriate
• university leadership

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to Lungelo Hadebe and Nolwazi Nzama for their assistance in conducting the desktop search of SA university websites for information on executive management in 2015; and much appreciation to Jacques Appelgryn at DHET for extracting the national dataset on SA academic staff from 2009-2013.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Reshma Subbaye http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6903-0927

Renuka Vithal http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3395-7912