A regular concern of adjunct instructors is that one or two student complaints -- even totally unjustified grievances -- can lead department chairs not to renew their teaching contracts.On Thursday, a Florida appeals court gave a victory to one such adjunct, reversing a lower court's ruling and finding that the college instructor is entitled to know the name of the student who accused him of being a poor teacher. The adjunct's contract was subsequently not renewed, and he argued that the name might help him defend against false accusations that he maintains led to the nonrenewal.
The appeals court found that the student's name in such a case isn't protected by state or federal law -- and that the adjunct was entitled to the name.
Matt Williams, vice president of the New Faculty Majority, a group that represents those off the tenure track, said he was pleased to hear that the adjunct had won the case. "If your employment is on the line, you have to be able to defend yourself," he said. Williams added that he has heard from many non-tenure-track faculty members that their contracts weren't renewed after a student or two sent in an anonymous complaint.
Darnell Rhea, the adjunct in this case, sued Santa Fe College, in Florida, where adjuncts work on semester-by-semester contracts.
There was no dispute over Rhea being able to see -- without the student's name -- the e-mail complaint sent to the chair. The e-mail accused Rhea of making "humiliating remarks" to students and of using "unorthodox" teaching methods. Rhea denied these charges but said that to truly rebut them, he needed to know his accuser. He said he suspected he could then show why the charges were untrue.
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Perhaps this could lead to a world in which teaching evaluations are performed by one's peers; one in which substantive, constructive critiques are used to help a teacher improve their performance; one in which one anonymous character assassination cannot be used as the deciding point on whether you keep your job.
ReplyDeleteNaaah.
Also, unicorns!
DeleteTeaching evaluations performed by one's peers can be just as biased... including outright character assassination.
ReplyDeleteRight. But I'd take any day character assassination from someone who 1) is qualified to evaluate teaching and 2) has to stand by what she writes because she is not protected by anonymity.
DeleteBut the department Chair will know who did it, and can take corrective action, if on the ball. With anonymous student evaluations, often no recourse at all is possible.
DeleteThe wisdom of youth often doesn't know doodley-squat. An instructor coming to class unprepared is a too-frequent example: while students sometimes sense that something isn't right, they don't know that the instructor isn't using notes, something an experienced observer can spot instantly.
I once listened to two faculty discuss how one of them had been assigned an adjunct that was a past student of his. He hated the adjunct. He sat in his 2 hour class for 15 minutes and filled out the 12 page evaluation form as if he had been there for the whole period. He bragged about this. He thought it was hilarious.
DeleteHe was not challenged on it by anyone, as he was one of the dept admins at the time, and the adjunct was fired.
@ProffieinaHearse: Then your department Chair was a jagoff. Granted, it is possible to abuse peer evaluations, much like it's possible to abuse much of anything, but I'm coming to think that student evaluations have abuse built into them.
Delete@ProffieinaHearse: I cannot think any possible situation in which you didn't have an absolute moral duty of reporting that conversation to the chair. Bastards need to be nailed.
ReplyDelete