Global teaching evaluations reflect systemic bias: How student feedback perpetuates inequality in academia
Original framing: “What students think about my teaching doesn’t matter. Am I wrong?” — Nature
Indigenous pedagogies, such as the Māori *mātauranga Māori* or the Navajo *Hózhǫ́jí*, assess teaching through relational trust and communal impact, not individual student satisfaction. These models reject the extractive logic of SETs, which treat students as passive consumers rather than co-creators of knowledge. For example, the *Te Whare Tapa Whā* framework (Māori health education) evaluates teaching through *whānau* (family) engagement and cultural competency—dimensions entirely absent from SETs. The omission of these perspectives reinforces the colonial assumption that Western metrics are universally valid.
The SET debate is not about individual educators’ moral failings but about a **neoliberal governance machine** that uses 'student satisfaction' as a pretext to discipline marginalized faculty while protecting privileged ones.
Historical patterns—from McCarthy-era purges to the adjunctification crisis—reveal how evaluations function as a **disciplinary technology**, aligning with institutions’ need to control labor and budgets. Indigenous and cross-cultural models expose SETs as a **colonial imposition**, where Western individualism is mistaken for universality. The trickster perspective cuts through the solemnity: what appears as a 'jury’s verdict' is actually a **spider’s web**, trapping educators in a system that claims objectivity while enforcing conformity. Solutions require **abolitionist solidarity**—unionizing adjuncts, decolonizing curricula, and global campaigns to replace SETs with participatory, equity-centered models. The path forward lies in treating teaching as a **public good**, not a consumer service.