The effect of lecturer's gender on student's interest in learning: Malaysian students' perception towards Indian teachers

There are studies proposing that lecturers play an important role in stimulating students to learn. Therefore, current research study was undertaken to study the effect of lecturer's gender on student's interest in learning. This study was conducted to find out whether students would prefer lecturers of the same gender or not. Besides, this study was also conducted to determine other factors that would influence student's interest in learning. A cross sectional survey was done by distributing questionnaires to 368 MBBS undergraduate students studying in first and second Year of their medicine course at Melaka-Manipal Medical College. Their response were collected and tabulated before being analyzed. More than 75% of the students disagree that lecturer's gender do have an effect on their interest in their learning while for those small percentage who agreed are mostly from first year. The student's disagree with our hypothesis giving reason that other factors like lecturer's knowledge, attitude, the subject taught itself as a more important factor compared to lecturer's gender. We conclude from the study that lecturer's gender has no significant effect on student's interest in learning while other factors such as subject taught, lecturer's teaching method, knowledge, skills are more significant factors affecting their interest in learning.