IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ecoedu/v85y2021ics0272775721000972.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The role of the teaching assistant: Female role models in the classroom

Author

Listed:
  • Griffith, Amanda L.
  • Main, Joyce B.

Abstract

We use a dataset of first-year engineering students from a selective research-intensive public university to examine the impact of same-gender teaching assistants on course grades and major field choice. Our sample consists of students who were randomly assigned to a section of an introductory engineering course and a graduate teaching assistant. Results suggest there may be small positive effects on course grades and the probability of majoring in a high-earning field for female students assigned to a female teaching assistant. Although the difference is marginally significant, the impact of a teaching assistant gender match for female students’ choice of a high-earning field is more pronounced in classrooms with a female instructor and above-median representation of female peers. Our results show limited evidence that female teaching assistants can provide the same benefits of a female instructor in STEM fields.

Suggested Citation

  • Griffith, Amanda L. & Main, Joyce B., 2021. "The role of the teaching assistant: Female role models in the classroom," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 85(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ecoedu:v:85:y:2021:i:c:s0272775721000972
    DOI: 10.1016/j.econedurev.2021.102179
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272775721000972
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.econedurev.2021.102179?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jan Feld & Nicolás Salamanca & Ulf Zölitz, 2020. "Are Professors Worth It? The Value-Added and Costs of Tutorial Instructors," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 55(3), pages 836-863.
    2. Scott E. Carrell & Marianne E. Page & James E. West, 2010. "Sex and Science: How Professor Gender Perpetuates the Gender Gap," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 125(3), pages 1101-1144.
    3. Feld, Jan & Salamanca, Nicolás & Zölitz, Ulf, 2019. "Students are almost as effective as professors in university teaching," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 73(C).
    4. Sansone, Dario, 2017. "Why does teacher gender matter?," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 9-18.
    5. Thomas S. Dee, 2007. "Teachers and the Gender Gaps in Student Achievement," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 42(3).
    6. Robert W. Fairlie & Florian Hoffmann & Philip Oreopoulos, 2014. "A Community College Instructor Like Me: Race and Ethnicity Interactions in the Classroom," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(8), pages 2567-2591, August.
    7. Chris Birdsall & Seth Gershenson & Raymond Zuniga, 2020. "The Effects of Demographic Mismatch in an Elite Professional School Setting," Education Finance and Policy, MIT Press, vol. 15(3), pages 457-486, Summer.
    8. repec:wly:soecon:v:81:1:y:2014:p:211-231 is not listed on IDEAS
    9. Lusher, Lester & Campbell, Doug & Carrell, Scott, 2018. "TAs like me: Racial interactions between graduate teaching assistants and undergraduates," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 159(C), pages 203-224.
    10. Ronald G. Ehrenberg & Daniel D. Goldhaber & Dominic J. Brewer, 1995. "Do Teachers' Race, Gender, and Ethnicity Matter? Evidence from the National Educational Longitudinal Study of 1988," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 48(3), pages 547-561, April.
    11. Muriel Niederle & Lise Vesterlund, 2011. "Gender and Competition," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 3(1), pages 601-630, September.
    12. Ronald G. Ehrenberg, 2012. "American Higher Education in Transition," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 26(1), pages 193-216, Winter.
    13. Eric P. Bettinger & Bridget Terry Long, 2005. "Do Faculty Serve as Role Models? The Impact of Instructor Gender on Female Students," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(2), pages 152-157, May.
    14. Webber, Douglas A., 2016. "Are college costs worth it? How ability, major, and debt affect the returns to schooling," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 296-310.
    15. Kevin N. Rask & Elizabeth M. Bailey, 2002. "Are Faculty Role Models? Evidence from Major Choice in an Undergraduate Institution," The Journal of Economic Education, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 33(2), pages 99-124, June.
    16. Catherine Porter & Danila Serra, 2020. "Gender Differences in the Choice of Major: The Importance of Female Role Models," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 12(3), pages 226-254, July.
    17. Feld, Jan & Salamanca, Nicolás & Zölitz, Ulf, 2019. "Students are almost as effective as professors in university teaching," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 73(C).
    18. Price, Joshua, 2010. "The effect of instructor race and gender on student persistence in STEM fields," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 29(6), pages 901-910, December.
    19. Shelly Lundberg & Jenna Stearns, 2019. "Women in Economics: Stalled Progress," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 33(1), pages 3-22, Winter.
    20. Michael S. Kofoed & Elizabeth mcGovney, 2019. "The Effect of Same-Gender or Same-Race Role Models on Occupation Choice: Evidence from Randomly Assigned Mentors at West Point," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 54(2), pages 430-467.
    21. Thomas S. Dee, 2005. "A Teacher Like Me: Does Race, Ethnicity, or Gender Matter?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(2), pages 158-165, May.
    22. Holt, Stephen B. & Papageorge, Nicholas W., 2016. "Who believes in me? The effect of student–teacher demographic match on teacher expectationsAuthor-Name: Gershenson, Seth," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 209-224.
    23. Florian Hoffmann & Philip Oreopoulos, 2009. "A Professor Like Me: The Influence of Instructor Gender on College Achievement," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 44(2).
    24. John Ashworth & J. Lynne Evans, 2001. "Modeling Student Subject Choice at Secondary and Tertiary Level: A Cross-Section Study," The Journal of Economic Education, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 32(4), pages 311-320, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Griffith, Amanda L. & Main, Joyce B., 2019. "First impressions in the classroom: How do class characteristics affect student grades and majors?," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 125-137.
    2. Oliver, Daniel & Fairlie, Robert & Millhauser, Glenn & Roland, Randa, 2021. "Minority student and teaching assistant interactions in STEM," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 83(C).
    3. Hani Mansour & Daniel I. Rees & Bryson M. Rintala & Nathan N. Wozny, 2022. "The Effects of Professor Gender on the Postgraduation Outcomes of Female Students," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 75(3), pages 693-715, May.
    4. My Nguyen & Kien Le, 2023. "Racial/ethnic match and student–teacher relationships," Bulletin of Economic Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 75(2), pages 393-412, April.
    5. Takao Kato & Yang Song, 2022. "Advising, gender, and performance: Evidence from a university with exogenous adviser–student gender match," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 60(1), pages 121-141, January.
    6. Shulamit Kahn & Donna Ginther, 2017. "Women and STEM," NBER Working Papers 23525, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Eble, Alex & Hu, Feng, 2020. "Child beliefs, societal beliefs, and teacher-student identity match," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 77(C).
    8. Kato, Takao & Song, Yang, 2018. "An Advisor like Me: Does Gender Matter?," IZA Discussion Papers 11575, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    9. Chris Birdsall & Seth Gershenson & Raymond Zuniga, 2020. "The Effects of Demographic Mismatch in an Elite Professional School Setting," Education Finance and Policy, MIT Press, vol. 15(3), pages 457-486, Summer.
    10. Amanda L. Griffith, 2014. "Faculty Gender in the College Classroom: Does It Matter for Achievement and Major Choice?," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 81(1), pages 211-231, July.
    11. Ellis, Jimmy R. & Gershenson, Seth, 2016. "LATE for the Meeting: Gender, Peer Advising, and College Success," IZA Discussion Papers 9956, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    12. Delhommer, Scott, 2022. "High school role models and minority college achievement," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 87(C).
    13. My Nguyen, 2018. "The Relationship between Race-Congruent Students and Teachers: Does Racial Discrimination Exist?," Departmental Working Papers 2018-06, Department of Economics, Louisiana State University.
    14. Angus Holford & Sonkurt Sen, 2023. "Racial Representation Among Academics and Students’ Academic and Labor Market Outcomes," CRC TR 224 Discussion Paper Series crctr224_2023_471, University of Bonn and University of Mannheim, Germany.
    15. James V. Koch & Ziniya Zahedi, 2019. "The effects of role models on college graduation rates," Journal of Economics and Finance, Springer;Academy of Economics and Finance, vol. 43(3), pages 607-617, July.
    16. Ellis, Jimmy R. & Gershenson, Seth, 2020. "Gender, peer advising, and college success," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 62(C).
    17. Stephan Maurer & Guido Schwerdt & Simon Wiederhold, 2023. "Do Role Models Matter in Large Classes? New Evidence on Gender Match Effects in Higher Education," CESifo Working Paper Series 10208, CESifo.
    18. Lusher, Lester & Campbell, Doug & Carrell, Scott, 2018. "TAs like me: Racial interactions between graduate teaching assistants and undergraduates," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 159(C), pages 203-224.
    19. Arpita Patnaik & Matthew J. Wiswall & Basit Zafar, 2020. "College Majors," NBER Working Papers 27645, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    20. Brandts, Jordi & Rott, Christina, 2021. "Advice from women and men and selection into competition," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 82(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    role models; STEM Persistence; engineering;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I21 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Analysis of Education

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:ecoedu:v:85:y:2021:i:c:s0272775721000972. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/econedurev .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.