"Tough, But Good" : A Qualitative Study of Positive and Negative Deviant Labeling of Sociology Professors on RateMyProfessor.com

Abstract

Ratemyprofessors.com (RMP) is a website where students can rate their professors on a variety of criteria. While many studies look at quality and ease, no studies currently exist analyzing certain professor actions as deviant and how student reactions to these “deviant” professors differ. Heckert & Heckert (2004) proposed a way to classify different forms of deviance in terms or overperforming and underperforming norms, combined with the reaction to those norm violations being positive or negative. The current research uses Heckert and Heckerts’ work to classify sociology professors as deviant based on them under or overperforming norms established by students' comments on ratemyprofessors.com