Evaluations of teaching effectiveness rely heavily on student evaluations of teaching. However, an accumulating body of evidence shows that these evaluations are subject to gender bias. Theories of leadership and role incongruity suggest that this bias should be especially prominent in large courses. This article examines publicly available data from two large political science departments and finds that female instructors receive substantively and significantly lower ratings than male instructors in large courses. The author discusses the implications of apparent gender bias in teaching evaluations for the professional success of female faculty. Findings of gender bias in evaluations in other fields also hold in political science and are particularly problematic in the evaluation of large courses.

Political science is one of the most popular majors for law school applicants, and studies show that political science majors have high rates of law school admission. In addition, many political science departments have a pre-law advisor. However, little is known about the status of pre-law advising on college campuses or the views of pre-law advisors on political science. This article presents the results of a February 2015 survey of 313 college pre-law advisors from across the United States. The authors discovered that the majority of pre-law advisors hold faculty appointments and serve as pre-law advisors without additional compensation or course releases. Pre-law advisors also rate political science as the second-best major, among 14 popular majors, for preparing students for both admission to and academic success in law school. These findings should be of interest to political scientists as well as other faculty and administrators who are concerned with pre-law advising.

Large numbers permeate political life, and students of political science can expect to encounter a wide range of numbers in newspaper articles, course readings, and statistics. Recent research in cognitive psychology demonstrates that American adults make systematic errors when comparing numbers in the millions, billions, and trillions. Political decisions made by voters often require weighing large quantities that range across many orders of magnitude, which is difficult without at least a basic understanding of relative magnitudes. If students also lack an understanding of large numbers, professors cannot meaningfully teach them about political phenomena involving such magnitudes. The authors designed and tested an exercise to improve students’ accuracy in dealing with large magnitudes, which had immediate and sustained effects on their political judgments about information involving large numbers.

This article analyzes the effectiveness of an international, interdisciplinary simulation of an ongoing trade negotiation. It thoroughly describes the simulation, provides links to background information for public use, and offers suggestions on ways to further strengthen the learning outcomes achieved.