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November 1999

Evaluation at a Glance

By Lauren Lam and Elaine Tai

According to Prof. Lam Yee Lay, chairman of the Department of Educational Administration and Policy at the Chinese University, the University is not obliged to give reasons for terminating the contract of a part-time lecturer.

However, it has to give a full explanation to staff when ending a contract of someone under substantiation.

Basically, the current system of recruiting professors in Hong Kong is based on contracts.

Concerning the degree of transparency of the existing system, Prof. Lam said that basically every department follows a clear policy of evaluation.

But the people who implement the policy can affect the degree of transparency.

He suggested a broadening of the definition of "academic activities" to include the recognition of scholarship.

For example, publications for secondary students should be regarded as an academic activity as they may have certain impact on secondary education.

As regards the recruitment system, he said that the policy of recruiting scholars outside Hong Kong was good as this attracts scholars of high calibre.

Dr. Li Pang Kwong of the Department of Politics and Sociology at Lingnan University said that fewer part-time lecturers should be employed to teach core subjects.

As the consultation time available for students is relatively little, the effectiveness of learning among students may be adversely affected by large numbers of part-timers.

Regarding the criteria for assessing professors, according to Prof. Lam, research, teaching, contributions to the university and services to the professional communities are taken into consideration.

Of the various criteria, greater emphasis is placed on research output.

Said Dr. Li: "Since the amount of research done is directly related to the funding for universities, professors tend to concentrate on the amount of research done."

Having taught in Canada for 25 years, Prof. Lam said that the system in the West is in some senses different.

He said, "One's teaching performance and research are given equal stress when assessing his overall performance.

"If one's research output is low but his teaching ability is high, the teaching load will be increased, and vice versa," said he.

Besides, the universities in the West also have a broader definition of "academic activities".

Instead of only focusing on publications at the international level, there is recognition of scholarship which includes book reviews, publications for secondary schools and edited books.

Moreover, Prof. Lam said that in Hong Kong, students' evaluations are the main component of judging a teacher's teaching performance, but this kind of evaluation tends to be subjective.

For example, students may assess their teachers' performance according to criteria like the language of instruction, the workload of the courses and the easiness of examinations.

These may not reflect their actual teaching performance.

In the West, teaching performance is evaluated by the faculty dean and the department head rather than solely depending on students' evaluations.

As research plays an important role in the evaluation system, there is some doubt about whether doing research affects teaching.

Said Dr. Li: "From the aspect of knowledge acquisition, research is supplementary to teaching as information acquired in research can be applied in the class.

"However, if one aims at producing high quality research, it may affect teaching effectiveness," he said.

A "Mr. Chan", who asked that his true identity be concealed, was a junior professor on the Faculty of Social Science of the Chinese University. He was recruited in 1996.

After 3 years' teaching, his teaching performance was evaluated.

Then, instead of being offered a 2-year contract, he just got a 1-year contract.

"I feel that I have been betrayed," said he.

He originally was told that teaching, research and administrative work were the prime requirements that he had to fulfil when he came to the University.

After working hard to improve his teaching evaluations, he subsequently was told that teaching evaluations were not so important. Indeed, he was informed that teaching performance would not be a factor at all unless it was extremely poor.

The main thing was research, he was told.

Mr. Chan said that the present evaluation system was unreasonable due to the over-emphasis on research.

"Doing research is time-consuming and distracts me from expending effort on my teaching," said he.

He did not rule out the importance of doing research, but he did not think that it should be given utmost importance.

"Much research is repetitious and it benefits neither students nor society," said he.

"If we expect breakthroughs in research, we may have to wait for 10 years or even longer," he continued.

Meanwhile, in the past few years, Mr. Chan's mean course evaluation scores have improved, he said.

Regarding evaluations of teaching performance, Mr. Chan, even though he has improved his scores over the years, had some criticisms of the system.

He said, for example, that the present evaluation system strengthens the bargaining power of students.

"Teachers are under pressure to give students what they want," he said.

Additionally, the evaluations may not be that accurate or objective.

To make the results more reliable and accurate, he suggested that colleagues and other teachers in the same academic field evaluate each other.

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