Appraisal of Students—Evaluations by Academics Visiting the United States of America

Abstract

This study sought answers to the following questions: 1. How do foreign academics visiting the U.S.A. evaluate U.S. students in comparison with students in their home countries? and, 2. Do these value judgments reflect a par ticular conception of university education or more specifically, a particular role-conception of university students? Utilizing three questionnaires especially constructed for the study, thirty-nine senior academics from seventeen different countries expressed views which provided some answers albeit tentative to the questions posed. The findings showed that there was significant agreement about certain attributes of students in the U.S.A. and considerable concensus about the role-conception of university students. Further the comparison of students at home and in the U.S.A. appeared to reflect these role-conceptions; the more an attribute was valued, the more likely it appeared to be recognized as a characteristic of the student at home. IN EVALUATING or appraising an educa tional system, its policies, practices, and even the characteristics of its students, the evaluator, more often than not, bases his evaluations on his own educational experiences. Nowhere is this more likely to be evident than in the case of the success ful academic who is prone to view the system which has produced him as full of virtues?as a system which, because of the requirements made on students and because of the excellence of learn ing, if not of teaching, excels all others. The evaluation of the educational programs by a visitor in an alien country is likely to reflect this predilection to view the system, through which he himself became a scholar, as full of virtues. At the same time, the very familiarity with his home campus, and its educational system gen erally, will necessarily play a part in any com parative evaluation of education at home and in the alien country. Counterbalancing the effect of individual differ ences in educational background, the evaluations of a foreign educational system may be influenced by the tendency of teachers generally to have similar expectations of their students. Thus, it is often claimed that university teachers throughout the world are alike in their role-definitions1 both for themselves and for their students. In addition, concensus in evaluating some educational prac tices of a foreign country is also likely, since the actual characteristics of the system being evalu ated will be reflected in the appraisals made. Thus, in appraising some aspects of the educa tional system of the United States of America, we might expect some homogeneity in attitudes of foreign scholars, even though their educational experiences might make them prone to value dif ferent aims or outcomes, as well as different learning and teaching procedures. A recently held conference2 attended by senior scholars visiting the United States of America on Fulbright-Hays travel grants provided an oppor tunity to investigate how visiting academics view certain aspects of the educational system in the United States of America, and how these evalua tions relate to some of their educational preconceptions. More specifically, it provided an opportunity to ascertain how these visitors to universities in the United States viewed American students, and what their impressions were of some specific aspects of the learning and teaching situation in these universities. At the same time, we sought to assess the individual's frame of reference from which these evaluations derived; i.e. the implicit values which affected the visitor's appraisal of some aspects of American education. To this end, consideration was given to the importance the visiting scholar attached to various modes of be havior and to different characteristics of students in the learning situation. These value judgments were viewed as providing, in an albeit tentative form, some indication of the scholar's role definition of a university student and of his atti tudes to education generally.