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University Teaching:

by John McBride.

The non organisation of teaching at VUW leads to a subsequent need for students to publically evaluate staff teaching abilities.

University staff members are organised into "departments", 'schools', etc. These appear to be united bodies, really solid objects. They have offices concentrated in one building or on one floor, they have meetings, secretaries, they have names, eg. 'School of Political Science and Public Administration'. One would imagine them as teaching organisations with a coherent purpose, in which everyone is aware of, and in agreement with, what others are doing.

This is the impression students get, and it is quite wrong. The sacred concept of 'academic freedom' requires that one teacher cannot interfere with the teaching of another. Since the only way to evaluate a staff member as a teacher is to observe him/her in the classroom with the students, it follows that no teacher is in a position to evaluate his fellow staff member as a teacher. They can be (and are) evaluated by how many articles/books they have published because these can be seen (and even occasionally read!). But teaching performance can only be seen by students and hence teachers by and large know little or nothing about how well or badly their colleagues can teach. A University Department then, is not a united organised entity in relation to and devoted to the activity of teaching.

The main point here is that the department cannot be relied upon to evaluate its members teaching abilities. It may (i.e. possibly might) be relied upon to evaluate their writing ability, because it can see and consider. But it cannot observe how well/badly they each because they simply do not have the information to make an honest judgement. It is obvious that only students can evaluate lecturers ability as teachers, as only they have the experience of the lecturer as teacher.

Students clearly do this — for example, the gripes: 'he never listens to questions', 'he just reads the notes he's been reading for years', and so on. Some departments are starting to tap this feeling through course questionnaires. But that apart students tend to keep their views to themselves. And that may be okay if they are generally satisfied with the course.

However, students who are dissatisfied with their course, and wish to change it, run into problems. The first action might be to talk with the teacher. He may be receptive, but if he fails to make changes, the students Must Remove the Dispute from We Privacy of the Classroom. Within the classroom, the dispute is something concerning only students and the particular lecturer: as said above it is no business of the Department. But once it is taken outside the privacy of the classroom, the Department, the registry and any other interested persons have license to intervene. In fact, they are obliged to intervene, to take sides and to make a decision on the course and the teacher.

Naturally a teacher who feels that a class is very dissatisfied with the course will do everything possible to keep the dispute within the classroom, where 'academic freedom' protects him from outside criticisms. Students will not usually be aware that he is doing this. They will think the other members of the Department know what is going on, and support the teacher. In fact they probably don't know what is going on because the lecturer is keeping very quiet outside the classroom; and if they did they might well support the students more than the teacher. Given the nature of University politics some of them might even be longing for an opportunity to intervene, but are prevented from doing so because they can't ethically intervene in anothers course. Once the students come in a group to complain to the Head of Department, or the Registrar they give these outsiders the ethical justification to intervene, to them-selves evaluate the teacher on the basis of the students evaluations.

Teachers evaluate students, and their evaluations are made public in the form of grades. We can evaluate them too, and make our opinions known, because some teachers are damned awful and this is the only way their colleagues can find out about it. And if, given this information, the Department and University fail to act upon it, there are very good grounds for questioning why.