Research

“Good Teaching and Good Grades. Can you Buy Pedagogy?”, an Article by Ronan Le Saout

Ronan Le Saout, researcher at CREST and Dean of ENSAI, published an article co-written with Manon Garrouste, Professor of Economics and researcher at CNRS, in the Annals of Economics and Statistics: “Good Teaching and Good Grades. Can you Buy Pedagogy?”

The Annals of Economics and Statistics are published by GENES on behalf of ADRES, Association for the Development of Research in Economics and Statistitics. Its general role is to support the circulation of the ideas and the communication within the French community of the theoretical and quantitative economists and the statisticians.

“Good Teaching and Good Grades. Can you Buy Pedagogy?”: Abstract

“This paper analyzes the relationship between students grades and their evaluations of teaching. We exploit an original data set from almost 100 courses during 7 academic years in a French higher education institution. We use teacher fixed effects to rule out any simultaneity or endogeneity bias. We find that students take their exam grade into account when they evaluate teaching. A better grade is associated with a better evaluation of a teacher’s pedagogy, although the size of the effect is relatively small. A one-point increase in by-course mean grade corresponds to a less than one percentage point decrease in the proportion of students giving bad evaluations. These results suggest that it is possible to manipulate evaluations through grade or exam leniency”.

Keywords: Student Evaluation of Teaching, Post-Secondary Education, Grades.

 

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Find out more about Ronan Le Saout and research at ENSAI