Chongqing Outlook｜Whether to be serious or to let it go, university teachers have it so hard
2024-08-19
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When failing an exam, it’s not just the students who are “hurt”, but the teachers as well?
Recently, Cai Yuandi, a teacher at the School of Humanities of Zhejiang University City College, was asked to explain and provide a rectification plan because the failure rate of the three courses he taught was over 30%. In response, Cai Yuandi responded firmly, "My level is limited, please find someone else", which attracted widespread attention.
In fact, this is not an isolated case, and the controversy caused by such incidents has always existed. For teachers, should they be serious about evaluating students' grades or should they let them off easy? Is the pass rate of the exam just a "face-saving effort" or a true reflection of students' mastery of knowledge? Is a high pass rate that everyone is happy with the correct pursuit of teaching? Deepening the reform of education evaluation cannot be a slogan, but must be found in solving these problems.
▲Teacher Cai Yuandi introduced. / Screenshot from Chongqing Outlook
Nowadays, many college students believe in the "truth" that "60 points are great, one point more is a waste", and there are many deep-seated reasons behind it. So, what is the problem when students fail the exam?
From an internal perspective, the derailment between learning attitude and learning methods is the main reason why students fail their courses.Some college students choose to skip classes and cram before exams for boring courses, thinking that it is more cost-effective to use the class time to make their own arrangements. Some students think that spending the most time to achieve the desired results is a "shortcut". However, a weak knowledge base cannot support every attempt to prepare for the exam through extreme review. At the same time, some students fail the exam, which may be related to poor performance on the spot.
Looking outward, teaching level is related to students' learning outcomes and is a factor affecting the pass rate.As the saying goes, a teacher can only lead you to the door, but practice depends on yourself. However, if the teacher does not guide students step by step to "enter the door", but instead "I talk about my own things, and it's up to you whether you listen or not", lacking the necessary interaction, the teaching level will often affect the learning effect of students.
Some students said that some teachers teach outdated courses and the courseware has not been updated for many years, resulting in the knowledge learned being out of touch with the times; some teachers rely too much on traditional teaching methods, which makes it difficult to motivate students to attend lectures, and the learning effect is greatly reduced.
Overall, the pass rate involves the interests of all parties and is a "barometer" of the teaching situation.First of all, as the first audience of the pass rate, if students fail the exam, it will directly affect their awards and honors, and even whether they can graduate normally; at the same time, students have to retake the exam or retake the course, which will undoubtedly increase the extra time cost.
Secondly, the pass rate reflects the teacher's teaching level to a certain extent. The pass rate more fully reflects the degree of students' mastery of knowledge and reflects the teaching effect. For example, before, there were parents of college students who "made trouble" at the school because their children failed the exam, questioning the teacher's teaching and question-setting ability.
Finally, the pass rate is also closely related to the school's image and influence. The pass rate is not only a way for the school to show its educational achievements to the outside world, but also an important means to attract students and pass the index assessment. In the eyes of the outside world, the pass rate is a mirror to distinguish whether the school is excellent or not. A "high failure rate" often labels the school as "poor teaching quality".
Due to various factors, once the pass rate is unilaterally reduced to a single form of "proving grades", students will be too concerned about "scores" and deviate from the original intention of learning. Teachers will also consider more factors when grading, and schools will easily fall into a vicious cycle of "problem-rectification-problem".
▲18 students from a university in Chongqing completed the "island survival" challenge in Sanya. /New Chongqing - Chongqing Daily Client
Should we be serious or give in? This is indeed a very thorny question for university teachers.
On the one hand, the teaching indicators are "very realistic". Under this "baton", teachers often need to comprehensively consider factors such as the level of students and the nature of teaching when evaluating students' performance. They often follow the principle of "not making things difficult for everyone" and try to give students a relatively fair and acceptable score.
On the other hand, students' grades are "very specific." Some teachers reported that some students answered questions irrelevantly and lacked basic common sense. Their test scores were indeed not high enough, and failing grades were the result of "having tried hard to get by," so it was difficult to let them off the hook. So, what exactly is the difficulty in "grading" that many teachers have reported?
The class schedule and difficulty are misaligned, making it difficult to maintain a balance between question difficulty and teaching quality.The difficulty of the courses and the insufficient class hours are common problems in some university courses. The lack of class hours means that the content cannot be fully covered. Non-professional students are just getting started, and professional students are not in-depth enough. It is difficult to achieve teaching results by "just trying it out". Students tend to have only a superficial understanding of the course content.
Teaching cannot be deepened, and teachers often face a dilemma when setting questions. If the questions are strictly in accordance with professional standards, it is inevitable that some students will not get satisfactory results, or even fail to reach the passing line; if in order to meet the school's requirements for the passing rate, the professional difficulty of the exam can only be reduced, but this deviates from the principles of education.
The school’s “hard requirements” have deprived teachers of their autonomy in grading.For a long time, some schools have incorporated a lot of hard teaching requirements into the teacher assessment system for the sake of image maintenance and enrollment competition, especially strict control of the failure rate. This move was well-intentioned, but it also brought constraints and challenges to teachers.
In the process of balancing students' actual learning situation and the school's rigid indicators, it is difficult for conscientious teachers to judge students completely according to their own teaching philosophy and standards. This dilemma of "trade-off" will not only erode teachers' enthusiasm for teaching, but also affect the authenticity of teaching evaluations. Being too serious about grading will inevitably affect students' enthusiasm for elective courses, and even lead students to make unfair or even negative evaluations of teachers' teaching.
Falsifying the pass rate goes against the original intention of education.Is controlling the pass rate a responsibility to students? This is not the case. The knowledge truly acquired and the thinking ability exercised in the learning process cannot be measured by a single grade. The embellished pass rate is just an empty number and cannot truly reflect the teaching level and learning ability.
Imagine if a medical student passed the exam today and he became a doctor tomorrow, would you feel comfortable with him? If a student majoring in intelligence passed the exam today and he became an engineer tomorrow, would you dare to use the product he developed?
▲Students practice and experience the MR virtual welding training system. Photo by reporter Guo Xulei/Xinhua News Agency
As the saying goes, strictness is love, leniency is harm, and neglect will lead to bad behavior. When faced with the problem of high failure rate, it is obviously one-sided to only look for the cause from one side. Schools, teachers, and students need to participate together to find the root cause of the problem and form a joint force for improvement.
Correct your learning attitude and don't expect the teacher to go easy on you.The importance of test scores for postgraduate study, studying abroad, employment, etc. is self-evident, and it is difficult for students to be free of selfish thoughts. If you put your hopes on reducing the difficulty of the test without putting in the due effort, learning will lose its meaning.
It is reasonable for students to pay attention to grades, but it is obviously too much to think that teachers are being "kind" by slacking off in class and grading leniently, or even to question the teacher's motives for strictly grading. Only when students have a correct attitude towards learning can they be responsible for themselves.
Highlight diversified assessment and do not use test scores as the only criterion.Cao Dongbo, a professor at Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, said that one big difference between today's college students and those 20 years ago is that their anxiety period begins from the moment they enter college or even receive their admission letter. Therefore, further deepening the comprehensive reform of education requires more diverse ways to break the ice of "involution".
The pass rate of the exam is not an absolute criterion for evaluation. At present, some universities use the method of "regular grades + final grades" to settle course grades, giving students multiple opportunities to "turn the tide"; some universities use essays, reports, etc. to score according to the nature of the subject, and comprehensively evaluate students' learning outcomes in multiple dimensions.
In addition, in order to grasp the "degree" of the pass rate, you can try to use data analysis to control the proportion of each level and keep the score distribution as "normal" as possible to achieve a more reasonable distribution state.
Improve the evaluation system to promote mutual development between teaching and learning.The teaching evaluation system in colleges and universities is an important way to promote mutual learning and teaching. More and more schools use student evaluation as an important mechanism for teacher assessment and teaching guarantee. In particular, anonymous evaluation allows students to express their true feelings and supervise teachers' teaching behavior. However, there must also be corresponding technical means to avoid malicious evaluation.
Teaching and learning benefit each other, it depends on students' willingness to learn and hard work, and teachers' undivided attention to imparting knowledge and solving problems, so that the two can promote each other and improve together. If the responsibility for the low pass rate is attributed to any one party, and the focus is first on "who to blame", the road to achieving teaching and learning will be longer, and the school's goal of providing education that satisfies the people will become more distant.
Finding a balance between norms and autonomy is the key to solving the grading dilemma. Passing is not the end of education, but it takes a long time to achieve passing education.
