Student evaluation of teaching, social influence dynamics, and teachers’ choices: An evolutionary model

The issue of Student Evaluation of Teaching has been explored by a large literature across many decades. However, the role of social influence factors in determining teachers’ responses to a given incentive and evaluation framework has been left basically unexplored. This paper makes a first attempt in this vein by considering an evolutionary game-theoretic context where teachers face a two-stage process in which their rating depends on both students’ evaluation of their course and on retrospective students’ evaluation of their teaching output in view of students’ performance in a related follow-up course. We find that both high effort (difficult course offered) and low effort (easy course offered) outcomes may emerge, leading either to a socially optimal outcome for teachers or not, according to cases. Moreover, there may be a potential conflict between the optimal outcome for students and for teachers. We also consider possible ways to generalize our model in future research.