Abstract
The Chinese Ministry of Education recently called for improvements in undergraduate teaching. One way to meet this mandate is to codify what Chinese undergraduate students consider to be poor teaching behaviors. Across three phases, this study investigated poor teacher behaviors and compared them to existing data from American students. The categories of poor teaching generated by both sets of students overlapped considerably. However, some characteristics of poor teaching—such as teachers being unfair to students—may be unique to China. The specific behaviors that are representative of poor teaching qualities differed across the two cultures, suggesting the need for a nuanced approach to examining what students perceive to be poor teaching.
Undergraduate teaching is the essence of all higher education institutions, and as such, it is particularly important to monitor and evaluate teaching quality continually to improve undergraduate instruction. To promote revitalization of undergraduate education, build a high-level talent cultivating system, and comprehensively improve instructional skills training in colleges and universities, in China the Ministry of Education (MoE, 2016) proposed basic requirements of teacher evaluation reform that focus on adherence to ethical behavior and devotion to best teaching practices.
In August 2018, the MoE (2018a, 2018b) issued two major policy documents, which require all colleges and universities in China to focus on and accelerate the formation of a high-level personnel training system. To operationalize these policies, the MoE (2018c) issued 10 criteria for teachers’ professional behaviors in colleges and universities. Of these, three criteria are especially critical to improving teachers’ approaches to teaching. The first proposed that faculties should devote themselves to teaching and implementing adaptive teaching practices and refrain from perfunctory teaching. The second proposed that teachers adopt student-centered approaches to teaching. The third proposed that teachers engage in ethical behavior toward students.
Although there have been numerous studies investigating the habits and practices of excellent teachers internationally (e.g., Buskist & Keeley, 2018b) as well as in China (e.g., Xu, 2018), there have been considerably fewer investigations into what constitutes poor teaching (e.g., Busler, Kirk, Keeley, & Buskist, 2017; Li, 2013). Poor teaching not only has a negative impact on student development but also affects a school’s reputation. It may also increase conflicts between parents and schools and thus bring trouble to school management (Zhang, 2017). Recently, many countries have prioritized improving teacher management systems including mechanisms for teacher hiring, induction, evaluation and professional development (Zhang, 2014). As a result, research on the assessment of poor teachers has become more and more important. In the limited studies of the characteristics of poor teachers, both Chinese and American scholars found the following common characteristics to be indicative of poor teaching: classroom atmosphere (e.g., boring classroom atmosphere, poor teacher–student interaction, poor classroom control), teaching content (e.g., outdated content, lack of systematic knowledge), and teaching ability (e.g., lack of professional knowledge, inability to diagnose learning problems, poor inspiration; Foote, Vermelle, Wisniewski, Agnello, & Pegaro, 2000; Jackson & Michael, 2006; Niu & Li, 2006). Chinese and American students appear to have different views on the characteristics of poor teachers. For example, students in China pay more attention to the teacher’s moral problems, which are manifested in unethical behaviors and poor attitude toward teaching (Zhang & Hai, 2014), whereas their U.S. peers are more concerned about teachers’ implementation of teaching objectives (Foote et al., 2000). To fully understand teaching and thus to improve the quality of college instruction, it is logical to inquire into both excellent and poor instructional practices. The present study aimed to investigate Chinese college students’ perceptions of poor teachers, patterned after the approach of Busler, Kirk, Keeley, and Buskist (2017). Because there have been relatively few investigations into poor teaching, we opted to adapt the methodology of Busler et al. (2017) to facilitate an initial cross-cultural comparison.
Method
Participants and Procedures
This study involved three phases. In Phase 1, we recruited 155 undergraduate students from a university in Eastern China to participate in this study. Of these students, 114 (74%) were women, and 41 (26%) were men. We administered the survey instrument to participants before class. The first author explained the purpose of the study and the basic requirements for the survey, including answering honestly and that the information they provided would be kept confidential. The survey included three parts. The first part secured participants’ demographic information including gender, age, and major. The second part of the survey included a question regarding participants’ estimation of the percentage of teachers they have had thus far in their college careers who were (a) excellent, (b) above average but not excellent, (c) average, (d) below average but not totally ineffective, and (e) totally ineffective. The last part of the survey asked participants to think of a “bad or ineffective teacher” they have had and to generate a list of at least three descriptors of the qualities that described these teachers. We gave students this definition of a bad or ineffective teacher: “A bad/ineffective teacher is an instructor from whom students do not learn much from their class experiences or do not enjoy the learning experience or both” (adapted from Busler et al., 2017, p. 331).
In Phase 2, we recruited a different group of 85 students from the same university. Eighty students completed the demographic survey. Of these students, 76 (95%) were women, and 4 (5%) were men. We gave students a printed list of the 21 qualities of poor or ineffective teachers generated by students in Phase 1 and asked them to list up to three specific behaviors representative of each of these characteristics.
In Phase 3, we recruited 94 different students from the same University. Of these students, 62 (66%) were women, and 32 (34%) were men. We gave participants the typology of the qualities and corresponding behaviors of poor teachers. We instructed participants to indicate the “top 5 qualities/behaviors of their most ineffective or poor teachers” by placing a check mark in the corresponding check box next to each of the 17 items. By aggregating the number of “votes” for each quality across participants, we assessed which qualities were overall most problematic for students without the difficulties of combining ranked data.
Two graduate students assisted with data analyses. We adopted several strategies to promote the reliability of qualitative analyses. For example, triangulation was facilitated through the use of multiple coders in the analysis process to reduce ideographic categorizing. The coders strived to come to a forced consensus on all categories. In the event, they could not, a third graduate student, who had experience with qualitative research and was not involved in the coding of the data, serve as a tie breaker.
Results
Phase 1 Results
In total, students generated 450 responses for an average of 2.9 descriptors per student. Two graduate student coders categorized these descriptors in terms of similarities, which generated 21 “poor teacher” quality categories: irrelevant content, inability to engage students, trouble with communication (language barriers, clarity, pace, and only lectured), not helpful, not caring, unprepared, expectations too high, disrespectful of students, negative attitude toward class/students, not knowledgeable, not accessible, failure to establish rapport with students, unorganized, providing no or little feedback to students, poor time management, inflexible, lack of confidence, unfair to students, unethical, poor teaching attitude, and poor classroom environment.
We compared the results between the Busler et al. (2017) findings and the current study and found that U.S. and Chinese college students shared 17 categories of their perceptions of the characteristics of instructors. As shown in Table 1, there were three U.S. qualities (i.e., exams not representative of material covered, uninterested in the class, and inability to accept feedback) that Chinese students did not mention, while four qualities (i.e., unfair to students, unethical, poor teaching attitude, and poor classroom environment) that Chinese students reported as separate characteristics.
Comparisons of Results Between United States and China From Phase 1.
Phase 2 Results
The same two graduate student coders from Phase 1 tallied participants’ responses for each of the 21 categories. In cases in which the coders disagreed over placement of responses into categories, they resolved the matter through discussion. Participants’ behavioral descriptors sometimes overlapped two or more categories. Accordingly, we reduced the total number of categories from 21 to 17 (see Table 2).
Seventeen Qualities of the Ineffective or Poor Teacher and Corresponding Behaviors From the Chinese Sample.
Phase 3 Results
Table 3 shows the number of students who placed an item in their top 5 characteristics/behaviors of poor teachers. Across all students, being disrespectful of students, inflexible, unengaging, not knowledgeable, not confident, and unfair to students were ranked as the five chief qualities of poor teachers. We also compared these students’ top 5 characteristics/behaviors of poor teachers to those ranked by American students (Buskist et al., 2017). For the 13 categories that overlapped, Chinese students did not rate their importance the same as U.S. students, χ2(12) = 64.96, p < .001. As Table 3 shows, being disrespectful of students and not being knowledgeable were ranked as top 5 qualities of poor teachers by both Chinese and American students, suggesting that college students across countries care whether if their instructors respect them and if the instructors are knowledgeable about course enough to teach them.
Participants’ Top Five Ratings of the Seventeen Qualities.
In completing the demographic survey, Chinese participants in all phases of the study identified the percentage of college teachers they had who were (a) excellent, (b) above average but not excellent, (c) average, (d) below average but not totally ineffective, and (e) totally ineffective. Table 4 shows the remarkable consistency of these data across the three phases and provides a composite average across all three phases. Consistent with American students (Busler et al., 2017), Chinese students’ responses also reflected that a large percentage of their teachers have been excellent or above average. However, these data also indicate that for other teachers, there is ample room for improvement. The majority of Chinese students noted that only a small percentage of their teachers have been totally ineffective (composite data = 6.94%). This number is marginally lower than that of American students (composite data = 9.2%).
Students’ Perceived Overall Quality of Teachers Across Phases 1–3.
Discussion
This study provides an initial investigation into poor teaching qualities in higher education in China. Given the new mandates to focus on teacher evaluation (MoE, 2018a, 2018b), it is important to understand how Chinese students view poor teaching as a first step toward identifying those behaviors and correcting them. These results could help inform the development of teaching evaluation instruments that evaluate the unethical and unproductive behaviors of teachers with the goal of counseling those teachers on how to improve their performance.
One way to frame the results is to compare them to similar findings from the United States. Overall, Chinese and American students’ typologies of poor teaching show a fair amount of agreement, with the lists showing 68% overlap (13 of the 19 items from the combined lists are the same).
Both sets of students rated being disrespectful at the top of their respective lists, a finding that clearly reflects these college students’ general overall expectations of their teachers. According to Buskist, Sikorski, Buckley, and Saville (2002), “respectful” means treating students in ways that do not call negative attention toward them, such as not embarrassing students and being polite toward them. Of course, having respect for students is a highly valued characteristic of excellent teachers across both faculty and students throughout the world (Buskist & Keeley, 2018b). Thus, it is logical that a top quality of poor teachers is disrespect for students.
Although students in both countries ranked being disrespectful as the top characteristic of poor teachers, there are subtle differences between these two groups of students in terms of specific behaviors that represent disrespect. For example, Chinese students highlighted ignoring students’ self-esteem, and naming and shaming students, whereas American students stressed not answering student questions and discouraging students on the first day of class.
Buskist et al. (2002) defined “knowledgeable” as being able to answer student queries with ease, not having to rely extensively on notes or other aids for presenting class information, and providing ”clear and understandable examples” to help students comprehend course content (p. 34). That both Chinese and American students placed not being knowledgeable among their top 5 qualities of poor teachers make sense in light of the fact that among faculty and students worldwide, being knowledgeable is the most highly valued quality of excellent teachers (Buskist & Keeley, 2018a).
Table 3 shows that both groups of students did not agree perfectly in their rankings of qualities. Whereas Chinese students ranked being inflexible second, being unengaging third, and not being confident and unfair as tied for fifth, American students ranked these items as twelfth, eighth, fifteenth, and not mentioned, respectively. Many of these differences might be attributable to cultural differences between the two groups of students. People in individualist societies (e.g., United States) value free will, independence, and confidence, whereas people in collectivist societies (e.g., China) care about group feelings, especially how others think of them (Hofstede, 2011). As a result, American college instructors who have been nurtured by the individualist culture might present much more confidence in front of their students than their Chinese peers do (Tian, 2017). Meanwhile, a Chinese teacher is traditionally regarded as a role model and usually looked up to by his/her students. Thus, Chinese students expect their teachers to have more confidence when evaluating their professional qualities. As for unengaging, Chinese educational context could explain the results. College students’ final grades are very important for the rankings among students in the same major because they are used for competing for scholarships and for recommendations to enter graduate school with no need to take all the required exams. College students expect to “listen” more from the instructor to get a good score. If the instructor is boring, students might think it will affect their learning of the course content and lower their test scores. As a result, they may think the teacher is ineffective.
Being unfair to students as a defining quality of poor teaching may be unique to China, at least relative to the United States. Almost 30% of the Chinese students mentioned this term in the survey and described specific behaviors such as teachers giving higher grades to students they like despite poor performance in class, teachers being snobbish or sexist toward students, and teachers accepting bribes from students in exchange for higher grades.
This study demonstrates two findings. First, there is considerable overlap among what Chinese and American students consider to be characteristics of poor teaching. Teachers and administrators alike can target these behaviors for improvement. Second, there are likely some cultural differences between Chinese and American higher education that warrant further exploration; factors unique to each culture may be taken into account when evaluating and improving teaching in each context.
University students expect their teachers not only to be to teach knowledge and skills to them but also to provide them with positive emotional support, motivation, and recognition (Belhaj & Abderrahman, 2015). Thus, college and university administrators should consider designing and implementing policies and programs to promote teaching methods that encourage students to be involved in their learning. Likewise, colleges and universities should establish vigorous training and evaluation systems to assist teachers, especially ineffective teachers, to enhance the quality of their teaching.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.