By Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D. A few Nigerian university teachers wrote to tell me that many Nigerian universities have now instituted p...
By Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.
A few Nigerian university teachers wrote to tell me
that many Nigerian universities have now instituted periodic student
evaluations of instructors as part of the academic culture. But they quickly
admitted that not all universities have adopted it, and that even in
universities that have adopted it, it’s really of no consequence.
In other
words, even in universities that give students the opportunity to evaluate the
instructional effectiveness, or lack thereof, of their teachers, no teacher has
lost his job, suffered a pay cut, or received an official reprimand, etc. as a
consequence of consistently negative student evaluations. So, it’s basically
pointless.
That’s why Nigerian universities have some of the
worst instructional practices in the world. Nigerian university students
habitually complain that a majority of their teachers aren’t actually teachers;
they are infuriatingly mindless dictation machines. They do no more than
dictate boring, lifeless notes to hapless students, semester after semester.
They brook no questions or quest for clarification, stifle or punish dissent,
allow little or no interaction, and generally treat their students with overweening
hauteur. In other words, they are pedagogical dictators—in both senses of the
term. That is, they dictate notes to students (making them literal dictators)
and are overbearingly arrogant and condescending to their students.
A lot of Nigerian university teachers also don’t
come to class consistently. I had an undergraduate teacher who came to class
only three times in the entire semester! I’ve heard of worse cases. And several
teachers who teach large survey classes don’t even bother to grade students’
papers; they just arbitrarily award grades, yet they think they deserve “excess
workload allowance” for their heavy instructional load.
Now, let me be clear: not every teacher is guilty of
this indefensibly abject instructional fraud. There are indeed many excellent
teachers in Nigerian universities. One of the best teachers I’ve had in all my
life, for instance, is a Nigerian university teacher by the name of Professor
Saleh Abdu who taught me European poetry in my second year at Bayero
University, Kano. He was passionate, enthusiastic, cerebral, creative, patient,
and made learning fun and worthwhile for students. He made us look forward to
every class with dewy-eyed eagerness. He never missed a class, never dictated
notes, encouraged us to challenge him, and graded us fairly. (My friend and former
classmate at Bayero University, Dr. Moses Ochonu, who now teaches at Vanderbilt
University here in the US, has suggested that we write a joint article in honor
of Professor Saleh Abdu, whose pedagogical excellence both of us benefited from
and still cherish. I’ll take him up on the suggestion someday soon).
There are many Nigerian university teachers like
Professor Abdu. But that’s not the point. The point is that the instructional
unaccountability of Nigerian university teachers is a huge structural problem
that transcends pockets of instructional excellence here and there. Instituting
mandatory, anonymous evaluation of teachers by students every semester—and
taking those evaluations seriously—will fish out, and hopefully flush out,
teachers who show up in class only at their pleasure, teachers who merely
dictate ill-digested lecture notes to students, teachers who have no respect
for their students, and teachers who sexually and financially prey on their
students. As it is now, anybody can be a university teacher in Nigeria since
all it takes to be a “teacher” is the capacity to dictate notes.
Teaching in the United States requires more
pedagogical resourcefulness and accountability. Unlike in Nigeria, teachers
have to plan their syllabi and course schedule weeks in advance of the start of
every semester and make these available to students on or before the first day
of class. Teachers also have to have grading rubrics for all assignments and
tests so students know exactly what they need to do get an A or a B or a C.
In the United
States, too, student evaluations of instructors are a crucially important part
of the university tradition. University teachers here get fired for having
consistently bad student evaluations. Toward the end of every semester—before
final grades are released—students fill out an anonymous, usually online,
survey to assess the instructional effectiveness of every teacher that taught
them. The surveys capture both quantitative and qualitative data.
After the surveys are submitted, heads of
departments have one-on-one meetings with teachers to discuss the results of
the survey. Even in many research-intensive universities, teachers will never
get tenure (life-time employment) if their student evaluations are consistently
poor. Of course, teaching-heavy universities rely almost entirely on student
evaluations to determine the worth of teachers.
But as many American university teachers will tell
you, teaching evaluations aren’t always foolproof. For instance, lazy students
who do poorly in a class sometimes use the evaluations to “get at” their
teachers. And, some teachers, desirous of positive student evaluations to keep
their jobs, teach “to the evaluation,” that is, they dumb down their courses in
order to win the approval of their students. In spite of their deficiencies,
however, student evaluations have served and continue to serve the American
academe really well. They ensure instructional accountability. They compel
university teachers to take their jobs seriously and to be respectful of
students and their learning needs—at least in more ways than is the case in
Nigeria.
Now that Nigerian university teachers will be paid
gargantuan “excess workload allowances”—including allowances for work that
should normally be a part of their teaching, research and service
responsibilities—students and parents should start a concerted movement to
demand instructional accountability from university teachers.
Like it is in
the US, students’ anonymous evaluation of teachers every semester should be
available not just to university teachers and their heads of department; they
should also be available to deans, academic secretaries, registrars, vice
chancellors and their deputies, and officials of the National Universities
Commission. Results of these evaluations should form at least 50 percent of the
criteria for the promotion or continued employment of all university teachers.
To
be continued
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