Assessing research and teaching performance in israel’s higher education system

This study focuses on the quality of academic faculty performance, from a gender perspective. The aim of the current study is to examine research and teaching product assessments in the higher education sector, from a gender perspective, and specifically the associations between personal attributes (gender, age, country of birth, and tenure) and academic attributes (rank and faculty) and faculty achievements in research and teaching (assessed by bonuses based on research excellence and student feedback surveys). The data was collected from Ariel University, where, over the years 2003-2012 a special system of evaluation of faculty performance was used. The main findings of this study points to statistically significant correlations between gender and excellence in research. In contrast, no significant associations were found between gender and excellence in teaching scores, based on students’ evaluations of teachers. On teaching evaluations, female faculty members achieved slightly higher teaching scores than male faculty members. Male faculty members, on the other hand, showed superiority in research excellence scores. We also found more male faculty members in high-ranks than female faculty members. The findings of this study suggest that female faculty members may have additional factors that explain their lower research achievements, such as factors related to work-family balance at fertility age in view of the fact that a higher percentage of female senior faculty members belong to this age group than do their male counterparts. The researcher’s starting point was that women’s representation in academic faculty, including their research and teaching products, has significance for the higher education in general, both in Israel and world wide.