John Glascock, Communication
In this session, I will share the results of a study that examined the extent to which sex and ethnicity affect students’ perceptions of teacher credibility. While we did find that Caucasian instructors were rated higher than Hispanic instructors on student perceptions of teacher competence and caring, the effect sizes were relatively minimal. On the other hand, we found nonverbal immediacy (gesturing, smiling, moving around) accounted for much more of the variance in student perceptions and was strongly correlated with all three dimensions of teacher credibility (competence, trustworthiness, caring). In terms of perceived student learning, the two most important predictors were teacher expertise and nonverbal immediacy, both of which are acquired skills that can be demonstrated comparably by faculty regardless of sex or ethnicity. While increasing diversity may have many positive outcomes, if the desired outcome is increased learning, the results of this study suggest increasing diversity is unlikely to lead to that outcome. However, taking steps toward increasing teacher credibility and immediacy may be expected to lead to that outcome.
