{"id":149377,"date":"2023-04-11T07:00:28","date_gmt":"2023-04-11T05:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/man-vil-ikke-fremstaa-som-nogen-der-sludrer-med-sproget\/"},"modified":"2023-04-11T10:49:06","modified_gmt":"2023-04-11T08:49:06","slug":"academics-lose-status-when-they-teach-with-an-accent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/en\/academics-lose-status-when-they-teach-with-an-accent\/","title":{"rendered":"Academics lose status when they teach Danish with an accent"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00bbD<\/span>enmark is one of the world’s most intolerant language communities,\u00ab the linguist Jens Normann J\u00f8rgensen once said. The late Prince Henrik, husband of the present Danish Queen Margrethe, knew it, as he was ridiculed throughout his life for his French accent, even though he spoke excellent Danish as a second language.<\/p>\n

\u00bbDanes have a first language ideal associated with the communication,\u00ab says Alberte Ritchie Green. Danish should preferably sound exactly as it normally does, if there is to be a seamless exchange.<\/p>\n

27-year-old Alberte Ritchie Green got her MA In Danish at the end of 2022 and now teaches highly-educated non-Danes in Danish at a language school. Her students say that when they go about their lives and speak to Danes using the phrases they have just learned, Danes automatically switch into English.<\/p>\n

Native speakers of one of the larger world languages, like say English, are accustomed to hearing their language spoken in a multitude of different levels and ways, often with strong accents. In Denmark, however, people are not accustomed to hearing their language as a second, third or fifth language.<\/p>\n

When the baker responds in English when a customer orders coffee and cinnamon buns in Danish with a strong accent, it is an attempt to ease the interaction and avoid having one of the sides losing face in the language interaction. Even though the pastry normally ends up with the customer, it is demotivating for them when they want to practice their language.
\n
\nEveryday phrases are one thing. Teaching at an academic level is completely different. The University of Copenhagen expects international researchers to be able to contribute actively to teaching in Danish after three to six years.<\/p>\n

This was what Alberte Ritchie Green’s master\u2019s thesis was about on the Danish degree programme. It turned out that the language requirement is seen as a major burden for a number of international teaching staff who move from a status as academic expert to a language novice.<\/p>\n

New language policy, new requirements<\/h3>\n

The University of Copenhagen has had a language policy since 2008. At first, a parallel language policy was introduced between Danish and English, and the primary objective of the policy was that all employees should be able to teach in academic English.<\/p>\n

At that time, there were no requirements for international employees to have Danish skills, but this changed in the next decade:<\/p>\n

\u00bbThe political focus shifted, and there was a feeling that Danish should not lose status in universities,\u00ab says Alberte Ritchie Green when the University Post met her in the old university library.<\/p>\n

The proportion of international staff at the University of Copenhagen has risen dramatically in recent decades, and 40 per cent of all researchers had a non-Danish background in 2020. This trend put Danish researchers under more pressure to teach, because the teaching on most bachelor’s degree programmes is in Danish.<\/p>\n

\n

Parallel language use<\/p>\n

Internationalization and globalization<\/strong> have meant that both staff and students increasingly have to function in both English and Danish and sometimes also in other languages in their daily work at the university. In order to support its employees and students in meeting these challenges, the University of Copenhagen has had parallel language use as a theme in its strategic objectives since 2008, when it set up the Centre for Internationalisation and Parallel Language Use (CIP).<\/p>\n

www.cip.ku.dk<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

In January 2021, the Board tried to solve this problem with a new language policy that contains this sentence:<\/p>\n

\u00bbIn general, it is expected that [international] tenure track assistant professors, associate professors, and professors can contribute to teaching in Danish after 3-6 years, including grading and supervising students.\u00ab<\/p>\n

When the language requirement was introduced, Alberte Ritchie Green was working as a student assistant at CIP, the University of Copenhagen’s Centre for internationalisation and Parallel Language Use on South Campus, where international staff take on the challenge of learning Danish.<\/p>\n

When the news of the Danish requirement broke on the university’s intranet KUnet, it set off a torrent of critical comments<\/a> from staff with international backgrounds. They feared that it would slow down their career in the competition with their colleagues who have Danish as their first language.<\/p>\n

The critics also feared that it would place the University of Copenhagen at a disadvantage in the competition for the most talented researchers. Why go to a tiny country which requires that you learn a difficult language, when you can choose a university where you can teach in English or another language that you already master?<\/p>\n

When the University Post interviewed John Renner Hansen, who led the committee that formulated the new language policy in 2020, he said:<\/p>\n

\u00bbThere won\u2019t be a big threatening head of department at the end of this time period saying \u2018you will be fired if you don\u2019t live up to this policy\u2019. It should be seen as guidance, so that heads of department together with associate professors and professors can work out individual plans and possibly a reduction of international researchers\u2019 workload in the period where they are to take Danish-language courses.\u00ab<\/p>\n

More Danish than the Danes<\/h3>\n

The use of Danish as a second language among the highly educated is something that has not been researched extensively, says Alberte Ritchie Green.<\/p>\n

As a CIP employee, she had access to lists of participants from previous courses, but it was no easy task to find people allowing her to observe their teaching.<\/p>\n

\u00bbMost people found it intimidating to have me inside with my recording equipment, even though I emphasised that I would observe the interaction, but not assess their Danish skills.\u00ab
\n
\nAlberte Ritchie Green was in contact with 50 international employees before she managed to get ten people to agree to be interviewed. She was also allowed to observe four of them at work as teachers and supervisors. The employees had been in Denmark between three and 22 years, had all received Danish instruction, and most of them had begun to teach in Danish.<\/p>\n

Both in the teaching situations and in the in-depth interviews, Green noticed that there is a prevalent language norm that assesses Danish as a second language considerably worse than Danish as a first language. This is both among the Danish students and among the international staff themselves.<\/p>\n

\u00bbTheir position as academic experts is challenged by their status as a language novice when they start to teach in Danish.\u00ab<\/p>\n

\n

HEr thesis:<\/p>\n

Alberte Ritchie Green\u2019s master’s thesis title is \u00bbYou become more Danish than the Danish teachers\u00ab \u2013 an investigation into Danish as a second language among international academic staff at UCPH.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Alberte Ritchie Green has both seen and heard staff lose face and authority when they teach in Danish.<\/p>\n

\u00bbMy examples show that the academic staff get into a difficult and uncomfortable situation when they have to ask the students for help.\u00ab<\/p>\n

The power relationship is shifted when the teaching staff fall short and have to appeal to the students to find the right word, concept, or pronunciation. And suddenly the students have the role of experts.<\/p>\n

This leads to an asymmetry, says Alberte Ritchie Green, and it is something that international staff are acutely aware of, and handle in different ways.<\/p>\n

The master\u2019s thesis has borrowed its title \u00bbYou become more Danish than the Danish teachers\u00ab from a Dutch academic who is proud of teaching in Danish. He also gauges his own success with reference to the first language ideal, says Alberte Ritchie Green:<\/p>\n

\u00bbHe translates all concepts into Danish, for example, when he prepares the teaching. A native speaker would not do this, and many of the concepts that he uses are all English loanwords, but he cannot know this. An English loanword that works and is used in Danish like \u2018feedback\u2019, for example, he translated into \u2018tilbagekoblinger\u2019 \u2013 and from a communicative perspective this won\u2019t work well, even though the intentions were good.\u00ab<\/p>\n

Cat or tails<\/h3>\n

All the staff that Alberte Ritchie Green have spoken to, are striving to get up to par with their Danish colleagues. But this can be an arduous process for some of them. In her master’s thesis, she also discusses how this path can also be unnecessarily lonely.<\/p>\n

\u00bbThey all speak English, and even though it is a language they share with the students, they still prefer not to use it as a staging point \u2013 they want to speak Danish and only Danish. This actually contradicts the original language policy’s goal of parallel language use,\u00ab Alberte Ritchie Green notes.
\n
\nIn the thesis, there is an example from teaching in an advanced statistics programme. A student uses the term \u2018plat eller krone\u2019 or \u2018heads or tails\u2019 in a statistical, flipping a coin, context. The instructor is not familiar with the idiom. And even though another student offers the English \u2018heads or tails\u2019 translation, the instructor continues with the Danish expression. It gets a minor, but crucial, semantic twist along the way however, as in the instructor’s rendering it turns into \u2018kat eller krone\u2019 or \u2018cat or tails\u2019.<\/p>\n

READ ALSO:<\/strong> Bad accent is considered bad teaching<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

All of the instructors have had poor evaluations the first time they teach in Danish.<\/p>\n

\u00bbThis is really problematic,\u00ab says Alberte Ritchie Green. \u00bbOne thing is that the employees have to live with the way they lose face in the classroom. But they are also criticised for their accents in the student evaluations. They are simply being rated as poor teachers, and this is not exactly something that increases their motivation.\u00ab<\/p>\n

One of the contributors has said that the international teaching staff find that it is, in particular, the weakest students who find it difficult to abstract themselves from the language complications that arise in the course of the teaching.<\/p>\n

Thirty-something vowel sounds<\/h3>\n

All the people Alberte Ritchie Green interviewed express negative opinions about the UCPH language requirements.<\/p>\n

\u00bbNone of them resist it. But they find it incredibly tough. Several of them say that they did not know in advance that this was an obligatory requirement. They only realized it after arrival. Suddenly, after six months, there is a manager that asks you whether you are not taking any Danish lessons, and makes it sound like this is something that you just do.\u00ab<\/p>\n

For international employees with a Danish personal identification CPR number, getting teaching in Danish at publicly-funded language schools is free for the first five years after arrival in Denmark.<\/p>\n

Does Alberte Ritchie Green reckon it is at all possible to learn the Danish language, with its thirty-something vowel sounds, within the time frame set by the university?<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00bbThere are, of course, differences between Scandinavians, Germans and, say, people from Asia who are accustomed to completely different linguistic structures. Most people will be able to pass the study exam within three years, but they would not be able to do research and all the other things in parallel. And the university can’t employ people and then keep them from doing their academic assignments, even though this would be best if you were only looking at it from a language perspective.\u00ab<\/p>\n

The time spent on learning Danish to a level that satisfies both them and their students is putting foreign staff at a disadvantage in the academic career race if you are to believe the master\u2019s thesis.<\/p>\n

While the language requirement was partly motivated by the need for the Danish academic staff to be relieved from extra obligations, Green\u2019s interviewees say that it is now the careers of the international researchers that are impaired by the language requirement and the taken-for-granted first language ideal.<\/p>\n

\u00bbThe time they spend perfecting their Danish, after all, is taken from doing other things. And still the positions go to the Danes if they apply for them in direct competition with a person who has Danish as their first language, they say. My interviewees also find it difficult to find their way into leading positions, boards of studies and collegial bodies because of the language barrier,\u00ab says Green.<\/p>\n

High expectations<\/h3>\n

From her own CIP experience, Alberte Ritchie Green knows that several language teachers note that their participants not only need to learn Danish on their courses, but also need a space where they can talk openly about how they perceive expectations, as many people feel pressured by the language requirements.<\/p>\n

\u00bbThey have made a life for themselves here and brought their family with them. And they are afraid that they can be fired or thrown out of the country if they do not live up to the requirements.\u00ab<\/p>\n

None of the academic staff in Green\u2019s thesis have been threatened with dismissal, something that the head of the original language policy committee John Renner Hansen also denied would happen.<\/p>\n

\u00bbOnly one of them has faced an explicit language requirement. The others have faced vague recommendations, but most of them have already sought out language instruction at an early stage themselves.\u00ab<\/p>\n

In her thesis, Alberte Ritchie Green concludes that both international staff and Danish students could benefit from what she calls \u00bba more active language policy\u00ab with a clear alignment of expectations based on the UCPH language policy.<\/p>\n

\u00bbIt is a lot to demand of teaching staff that they themselves have to defend their speaking Danish as a second language to the students. I think it would be better if, say, an academic manager stood forward and said, \u2018you have this instructor who speaks Danish as a second language. She has been hired on the basis of her academic skills, and she has not chosen the language of instruction herself. If the language is causing you problems, please come to me, and we will find a solution\u2019<\/em>.\u00ab
\n
\nAccording to Alberte Ritchie Green, language policy work should start already during the hiring process. It needs to be transparent what the university expects and what kind of help it can offer.<\/p>\n

\u00bbIn my investigation, it varies from department to department and faculty to faculty, how the language policy is administered. There are international employees who do not even know that UCPH has a language centre that offers courses that fit their requirements.<\/p>\n

They get a huge benefit giving each other feedback \u2013 also across faculties and academic interests \u2013 instead of each of them having to wrestle with the language requirement on their own.\u00ab<\/p>\n

READ ALSO:<\/strong> Lecturer provoked by poor English evaluation<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

It hurts to get bad evaluations on your teaching when it is actually the accent that the students are grading. One of the academic staff interviewed for Alberte Ritchie Green\u2019s thesis formulates the first language ideal in the following way:<\/p>\n

\u00bbYou want to avoid your own expectations being below the expectations of the students, so you deliberately demand a lot of yourself.\u00ab<\/p>\n

\u00bbYou don’t want to look like someone talking gibberish.\u00ab
\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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Alberte Ritchie Green has investigated what it feels like to go from being an academic expert to being a language novice.","og_url":"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/en\/academics-lose-status-when-they-teach-with-an-accent\/","og_site_name":"University Post","article_publisher":"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/uniavis","article_published_time":"2023-04-11T05:00:28+00:00","article_modified_time":"2023-04-11T08:49:06+00:00","og_image":[{"width":1200,"height":1691,"url":"http:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/alberte.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"Gry Bartroff Gaihede","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_image":"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/alberte.jpg","twitter_creator":"@Uniavisen","twitter_site":"@Uniavisen","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Gry Bartroff Gaihede","Est. reading time":"11 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/en\/academics-lose-status-when-they-teach-with-an-accent\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/en\/academics-lose-status-when-they-teach-with-an-accent\/"},"author":{"name":"Gry Bartroff Gaihede","@id":"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/#\/schema\/person\/d2b932cb3c26d685292a221680e386fe"},"headline":"Academics lose status when they teach Danish with an accent","datePublished":"2023-04-11T05:00:28+00:00","dateModified":"2023-04-11T08:49:06+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/en\/academics-lose-status-when-they-teach-with-an-accent\/"},"wordCount":2469,"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/en\/academics-lose-status-when-they-teach-with-an-accent\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/albertefeatured.jpg","keywords":["accent","parallel language"],"articleSection":["Working environment"],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/en\/academics-lose-status-when-they-teach-with-an-accent\/","url":"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/en\/academics-lose-status-when-they-teach-with-an-accent\/","name":"Academics lose status when they teach Danish with an accent \u2014 University Post","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/en\/academics-lose-status-when-they-teach-with-an-accent\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/en\/academics-lose-status-when-they-teach-with-an-accent\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/albertefeatured.jpg","datePublished":"2023-04-11T05:00:28+00:00","dateModified":"2023-04-11T08:49:06+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/#\/schema\/person\/d2b932cb3c26d685292a221680e386fe"},"description":"International researchers have to teach in Danish after three to six years at the University of Copenhagen (UCPH). 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you have landed a job at the University of Copenhagen and have moved your whole family to Denmark. You may speak two or three of the world's major languages. Slowly, you realize, you have to teach Danish students in Danish after only a few years. Alberte Ritchie Green has spoken to international academics about a language requirement which, to many of them, came as a surprise."},{"acf_fc_layout":"Standfirst","subject":"Danish as a second language","text":"En stor belastning. S\u00e5dan oplever udenlandske forskere et krav om at skulle undervise p\u00e5 dansk efter tre-seks \u00e5r p\u00e5 K\u00f8benhavns Universitet. Alberte Ritchie Green har unders\u00f8gt, hvordan det f\u00f8les at g\u00e5 fra faglig ekspert til sproglig novice.","use_post_excerpt":true},{"acf_fc_layout":"Byline","is_author":true,"contributors":false},{"acf_fc_layout":"Content","content":"<p><span class=\"dropcap\">\u00bbD<\/span>enmark is one of the world’s most intolerant language communities,\u00ab the linguist Jens Normann J\u00f8rgensen once said. The late Prince Henrik, husband of the present Danish Queen Margrethe, knew it, as he was ridiculed throughout his life for his French accent, even though he spoke excellent Danish as a second language.<\/p>\n<p>\u00bbDanes have a first language ideal associated with the communication,\u00ab says Alberte Ritchie Green. Danish should preferably sound exactly as it normally does, if there is to be a seamless exchange.<\/p>\n<p>27-year-old Alberte Ritchie Green got her MA In Danish at the end of 2022 and now teaches highly-educated non-Danes in Danish at a language school. Her students say that when they go about their lives and speak to Danes using the phrases they have just learned, Danes automatically switch into English.<\/p>\n<p>Native speakers of one of the larger world languages, like say English, are accustomed to hearing their language spoken in a multitude of different levels and ways, often with strong accents. In Denmark, however, people are not accustomed to hearing their language as a second, third or fifth language.<\/p>\n<p>When the baker responds in English when a customer orders coffee and cinnamon buns in Danish with a strong accent, it is an attempt to ease the interaction and avoid having one of the sides losing face in the language interaction. Even though the pastry normally ends up with the customer, it is demotivating for them when they want to practice their language.<\/p>\n"},{"acf_fc_layout":"Quote","quote":"Denmark is one of the world's most intolerant language communities.","quotee":"Linguist Jens Normann J\u00f8rgensen (1951-2013)","style":"extended"},{"acf_fc_layout":"Content","content":"<p>Everyday phrases are one thing. Teaching at an academic level is completely different. The University of Copenhagen expects international researchers to be able to contribute actively to teaching in Danish after three to six years.<\/p>\n<p>This was what Alberte Ritchie Green’s master\u2019s thesis was about on the Danish degree programme. It turned out that the language requirement is seen as a major burden for a number of international teaching staff who move from a status as academic expert to a language novice.<\/p>\n<h3>New language policy, new requirements<\/h3>\n<p>The University of Copenhagen has had a language policy since 2008. At first, a parallel language policy was introduced between Danish and English, and the primary objective of the policy was that all employees should be able to teach in academic English.<\/p>\n<p>At that time, there were no requirements for international employees to have Danish skills, but this changed in the next decade:<\/p>\n<p>\u00bbThe political focus shifted, and there was a feeling that Danish should not lose status in universities,\u00ab says Alberte Ritchie Green when the University Post met her in the old university library.<\/p>\n<p>The proportion of international staff at the University of Copenhagen has risen dramatically in recent decades, and 40 per cent of all researchers had a non-Danish background in 2020. This trend put Danish researchers under more pressure to teach, because the teaching on most bachelor’s degree programmes is in Danish.<\/p>\n<div class=\"factbox\">\n<p class=\"factbox-header feature-color\">Parallel language use<\/p>\n<p><strong>Internationalization and globalization<\/strong> have meant that both staff and students increasingly have to function in both English and Danish and sometimes also in other languages in their daily work at the university. In order to support its employees and students in meeting these challenges, the University of Copenhagen has had parallel language use as a theme in its strategic objectives since 2008, when it set up the Centre for Internationalisation and Parallel Language Use (CIP).<\/p>\n<p><em>www.cip.ku.dk<\/em><\/p>\n<p> <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>In January 2021, the Board tried to solve this problem with a new language policy that contains this sentence:<\/p>\n<p>\u00bbIn general, it is expected that [international] tenure track assistant professors, associate professors, and professors can contribute to teaching in Danish after 3-6 years, including grading and supervising students.\u00ab<\/p>\n<p>When the language requirement was introduced, Alberte Ritchie Green was working as a student assistant at CIP, the University of Copenhagen’s Centre for internationalisation and Parallel Language Use on South Campus, where international staff take on the challenge of learning Danish.<\/p>\n<p>When the news of the Danish requirement broke on the university’s intranet KUnet, it set off<a href=\"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/en\/researchers-not-happy-with-tough-new-danish-language-policy-draft\/\"> a torrent of critical comments<\/a> from staff with international backgrounds. They feared that it would slow down their career in the competition with their colleagues who have Danish as their first language.<\/p>\n<p>The critics also feared that it would place the University of Copenhagen at a disadvantage in the competition for the most talented researchers. Why go to a tiny country which requires that you learn a difficult language, when you can choose a university where you can teach in English or another language that you already master?<\/p>\n<p>When the University Post interviewed John Renner Hansen, who led the committee that formulated the new language policy in 2020, he said:<\/p>\n<p>\u00bbThere won\u2019t be a big threatening head of department at the end of this time period saying \u2018you will be fired if you don\u2019t live up to this policy\u2019. It should be seen as guidance, so that heads of department together with associate professors and professors can work out individual plans and possibly a reduction of international researchers\u2019 workload in the period where they are to take Danish-language courses.\u00ab<\/p>\n<h3>More Danish than the Danes<\/h3>\n<p>The use of Danish as a second language among the highly educated is something that has not been researched extensively, says Alberte Ritchie Green.<\/p>\n<p>As a CIP employee, she had access to lists of participants from previous courses, but it was no easy task to find people allowing her to observe their teaching.<\/p>\n<p>\u00bbMost people found it intimidating to have me inside with my recording equipment, even though I emphasised that I would observe the interaction, but not assess their Danish skills.\u00ab<\/p>\n"},{"acf_fc_layout":"Quote","quote":"Their position as academic experts is challenged by their status as a language novice when they start to teach in Danish.","quotee":"Alberte Ritchie Green","style":"extended"},{"acf_fc_layout":"Content","content":"<p>Alberte Ritchie Green was in contact with 50 international employees before she managed to get ten people to agree to be interviewed. She was also allowed to observe four of them at work as teachers and supervisors. The employees had been in Denmark between three and 22 years, had all received Danish instruction, and most of them had begun to teach in Danish.<\/p>\n<p>Both in the teaching situations and in the in-depth interviews, Green noticed that there is a prevalent language norm that assesses Danish as a second language considerably worse than Danish as a first language. This is both among the Danish students and among the international staff themselves.<\/p>\n<p>\u00bbTheir position as academic experts is challenged by their status as a language novice when they start to teach in Danish.\u00ab<\/p>\n<div class=\"factbox\">\n<p class=\"factbox-header feature-color\">HEr thesis:<\/p>\n<p>Alberte Ritchie Green\u2019s master’s thesis title is <em>\u00bbYou become more Danish than the Danish teachers\u00ab \u2013 an investigation into Danish as a second language among international academic staff at UCPH.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Alberte Ritchie Green has both seen and heard staff lose face and authority when they teach in Danish.<\/p>\n<p>\u00bbMy examples show that the academic staff get into a difficult and uncomfortable situation when they have to ask the students for help.\u00ab<\/p>\n<p>The power relationship is shifted when the teaching staff fall short and have to appeal to the students to find the right word, concept, or pronunciation. And suddenly the students have the role of experts.<\/p>\n<p>This leads to an asymmetry, says Alberte Ritchie Green, and it is something that international staff are acutely aware of, and handle in different ways.<\/p>\n<p>The master\u2019s thesis has borrowed its title \u00bbYou become more Danish than the Danish teachers\u00ab from a Dutch academic who is proud of teaching in Danish. He also gauges his own success with reference to the first language ideal, says Alberte Ritchie Green:<\/p>\n<p>\u00bbHe translates all concepts into Danish, for example, when he prepares the teaching. A native speaker would not do this, and many of the concepts that he uses are all English loanwords, but he cannot know this. An English loanword that works and is used in Danish like \u2018feedback\u2019, for example, he translated into \u2018tilbagekoblinger\u2019 \u2013 and from a communicative perspective this won\u2019t work well, even though the intentions were good.\u00ab<\/p>\n<h3>Cat or tails<\/h3>\n<p>All the staff that Alberte Ritchie Green have spoken to, are striving to get up to par with their Danish colleagues. But this can be an arduous process for some of them. In her master’s thesis, she also discusses how this path can also be unnecessarily lonely.<\/p>\n<p>\u00bbThey all speak English, and even though it is a language they share with the students, they still prefer not to use it as a staging point \u2013 they want to speak Danish and only Danish. This actually contradicts the original language policy’s goal of parallel language use,\u00ab Alberte Ritchie Green notes.<\/p>\n"},{"acf_fc_layout":"Quote","quote":"They are criticised for their accent in the student evaluations. They are simply being rated as poor teachers.\r\n","quotee":"Alberte Ritchie Green","style":"extended"},{"acf_fc_layout":"Content","content":"<p>In the thesis, there is an example from teaching in an advanced statistics programme. A student uses the term \u2018plat eller krone\u2019 or \u2018heads or tails\u2019 in a statistical, flipping a coin, context. The instructor is not familiar with the idiom. And even though another student offers the English \u2018heads or tails\u2019 translation, the instructor continues with the Danish expression. It gets a minor, but crucial, semantic twist along the way however, as in the instructor’s rendering it turns into \u2018kat eller krone\u2019 or \u2018cat or tails\u2019.<\/p>\n<p><strong>READ ALSO:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/en\/bad-accent-is-considered-bad-teaching\/\"><em> Bad accent is considered bad teaching<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<p>All of the instructors have had poor evaluations the first time they teach in Danish.<\/p>\n<p>\u00bbThis is really problematic,\u00ab says Alberte Ritchie Green. \u00bbOne thing is that the employees have to live with the way they lose face in the classroom. But they are also criticised for their accents in the student evaluations. They are simply being rated as poor teachers, and this is not exactly something that increases their motivation.\u00ab<\/p>\n<p>One of the contributors has said that the international teaching staff find that it is, in particular, the weakest students who find it difficult to abstract themselves from the language complications that arise in the course of the teaching.<\/p>\n<h3>Thirty-something vowel sounds<\/h3>\n<p>All the people Alberte Ritchie Green interviewed express negative opinions about the UCPH language requirements.<\/p>\n<p>\u00bbNone of them resist it. But they find it incredibly tough. Several of them say that they did not know in advance that this was an obligatory requirement. They only realized it after arrival. Suddenly, after six months, there is a manager that asks you whether you are not taking any Danish lessons, and makes it sound like this is something that you just do.\u00ab<\/p>\n<p>For international employees with a Danish personal identification CPR number, getting teaching in Danish at publicly-funded language schools is free for the first five years after arrival in Denmark.<\/p>\n<p><em>Does Alberte Ritchie Green reckon it is at all possible to learn the Danish language, with its thirty-something vowel sounds, within the time frame set by the university?<\/em><\/p>\n<p>\u00bbThere are, of course, differences between Scandinavians, Germans and, say, people from Asia who are accustomed to completely different linguistic structures. Most people will be able to pass the study exam within three years, but they would not be able to do research and all the other things in parallel. And the university can’t employ people and then keep them from doing their academic assignments, even though this would be best if you were only looking at it from a language perspective.\u00ab<\/p>\n<p>The time spent on learning Danish to a level that satisfies both them and their students is putting foreign staff at a disadvantage in the academic career race if you are to believe the master\u2019s thesis.<\/p>\n<p>While the language requirement was partly motivated by the need for the Danish academic staff to be relieved from extra obligations, Green\u2019s interviewees say that it is now the careers of the international researchers that are impaired by the language requirement and the taken-for-granted first language ideal.<\/p>\n<p>\u00bbThe time they spend perfecting their Danish, after all, is taken from doing other things. And still the positions go to the Danes if they apply for them in direct competition with a person who has Danish as their first language, they say. My interviewees also find it difficult to find their way into leading positions, boards of studies and collegial bodies because of the language barrier,\u00ab says Green.<\/p>\n<h3>High expectations<\/h3>\n<p>From her own CIP experience, Alberte Ritchie Green knows that several language teachers note that their participants not only need to learn Danish on their courses, but also need a space where they can talk openly about how they perceive expectations, as many people feel pressured by the language requirements.<\/p>\n<p>\u00bbThey have made a life for themselves here and brought their family with them. And they are afraid that they can be fired or thrown out of the country if they do not live up to the requirements.\u00ab<\/p>\n<p>None of the academic staff in Green\u2019s thesis have been threatened with dismissal, something that the head of the original language policy committee John Renner Hansen also denied would happen.<\/p>\n<p>\u00bbOnly one of them has faced an explicit language requirement. The others have faced vague recommendations, but most of them have already sought out language instruction at an early stage themselves.\u00ab<\/p>\n<p>In her thesis, Alberte Ritchie Green concludes that both international staff and Danish students could benefit from what she calls \u00bba more active language policy\u00ab with a clear alignment of expectations based on the UCPH language policy.<\/p>\n<p>\u00bbIt is a lot to demand of teaching staff that they themselves have to defend their speaking Danish as a second language to the students. I think it would be better if, say, an academic manager stood forward and said, <em>\u2018you have this instructor who speaks Danish as a second language. She has been hired on the basis of her academic skills, and she has not chosen the language of instruction herself. If the language is causing you problems, please come to me, and we will find a solution\u2019<\/em>.\u00ab<\/p>\n"},{"acf_fc_layout":"Image","image":{"ID":146480,"id":146480,"title":"Alberte Ritchie Green","filename":"alberteweb.jpg","filesize":561619,"url":"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/alberteweb.jpg","link":"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/en\/academics-lose-status-when-they-teach-with-an-accent\/alberte-ritchie-green-2\/","alt":"","author":"5","description":"","caption":"Alberte Ritchie Green\n\nPhoto: Jonas Pryner Andersen","name":"alberte-ritchie-green-2","status":"inherit","uploaded_to":149377,"date":"2023-02-03 11:44:19","modified":"2023-04-05 07:12:04","menu_order":0,"mime_type":"image\/jpeg","type":"image","subtype":"jpeg","icon":"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/wp-includes\/images\/media\/default.png","width":1000,"height":669,"sizes":{"thumbnail":"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/alberteweb-150x150.jpg","thumbnail-width":150,"thumbnail-height":150,"medium":"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/alberteweb-480x321.jpg","medium-width":480,"medium-height":321,"medium_large":"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/alberteweb-768x514.jpg","medium_large-width":768,"medium_large-height":514,"large":"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/alberteweb.jpg","large-width":1000,"large-height":669,"1536x1536":"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/alberteweb.jpg","1536x1536-width":1000,"1536x1536-height":669,"2048x2048":"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/alberteweb.jpg","2048x2048-width":1000,"2048x2048-height":669,"featured-soft":"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/alberteweb-290x194.jpg","featured-soft-width":290,"featured-soft-height":194,"featured-hard":"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/alberteweb-290x180.jpg","featured-hard-width":290,"featured-hard-height":180,"narrow":"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/alberteweb-700x468.jpg","narrow-width":700,"narrow-height":468,"extended":"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/alberteweb-990x662.jpg","extended-width":990,"extended-height":662}},"style":"narrow","text_placement":"metadata-below","image_link_url":"","image_link_title":"","caption_prefix":"","enable_alternative_caption":false,"alternative_caption":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"Content","content":"<p>According to Alberte Ritchie Green, language policy work should start already during the hiring process. It needs to be transparent what the university expects and what kind of help it can offer.<\/p>\n<p>\u00bbIn my investigation, it varies from department to department and faculty to faculty, how the language policy is administered. There are international employees who do not even know that UCPH has a language centre that offers courses that fit their requirements.<\/p>\n<p>They get a huge benefit giving each other feedback \u2013 also across faculties and academic interests \u2013 instead of each of them having to wrestle with the language requirement on their own.\u00ab<\/p>\n<p><strong>READ ALSO:<\/strong> <em><a href=\"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/en\/lecturer-provoked-by-poor-english-evaluation\/\">Lecturer provoked by poor English evaluation<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<p>It hurts to get bad evaluations on your teaching when it is actually the accent that the students are grading. One of the academic staff interviewed for Alberte Ritchie Green\u2019s thesis formulates the first language ideal in the following way:<\/p>\n<p>\u00bbYou want to avoid your own expectations being below the expectations of the students, so you deliberately demand a lot of yourself.\u00ab<\/p>\n<p>\u00bbYou don’t want to look like someone talking gibberish.\u00ab<\/p>\n"},{"acf_fc_layout":"ArticleEnd"},{"acf_fc_layout":"Newsletter","lang_select":"en","identifier":"Newslettet","headline":"Get an email with our top stories","button_text":"Sign up here","class":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"OtherStories","headline":"","hand_picked_posts":true,"references":[{"reference":{"ID":22921,"post_author":"12","post_date":"2010-05-01 03:55:00","post_date_gmt":"0000-00-00 00:00:00","post_content":"A poor student evaluation of a teacher\u2019s English-language skills may lead to a poor student evaluation of the teacher\u2019s competence and the course in general.\r\n\r\nThis is certainly the hypothesis of researchers in the project Students\u2019 Perceptions of the English of Academics. \r\n\r\nCurrent research will shed light on whether lecturers that are evaluated badly in terms of English-language, also are evaluated badly in terms of professional skills.\r\n\r\n<a href=\"node\/5362\">Read the University Post article <em>Lecturer provoked by poor English evaluation<\/em> here. <\/a>\r\n\r\n\u00bbWe suspect that there is a connection between bad English evaluations and bad scores on professional competence,\u00ab says Christian Jensen, assistant professor at the Centre for Internationalisation and Parallel Language CIP who is participating in the project.\r\n\r\n\u00bbIf students hear poor language skills, then they may take this as a signal that the teacher is generally not very skilled,\u00ab he says.\r\n\r\n<a href=\"node\/5366\">Read the University Post article <em>A new look at teaching in English <\/em> here. <\/a>\r\n<h2>Good at English, more tolerant<\/h2>\r\n\r\nThe hypothesis is based on sociolinguistic research which has shown that people\u2019s accents \u2013 whether native or non-native - affects how we perceive them in terms of skills, intelligence, friendliness etc., he explains.\r\n\r\nOther, previous, research shows other trends in student evaluations.\r\n\r\nThe better the English-language skills of the student, the more tolerant they are of bad English.\r\n\r\n\u00bbStudents who are good at English, are milder in their evaluations of the lecturer\u2019s English-language,\u00ab Christian Jensen says.\r\n\r\n<h2>Basic English is best, says student<\/h2>\r\nIn the meantime, some academics\u2019 basic English skills may actually give them a better rapport with internationals who are struggling themselves. \r\n\r\nAs one international student who prefers to remain anonymous expresses it:\r\n\r\n\u00bbI like the class because of the simple English he uses. I know that it may not be the best for a lecturer to have just basic English skills, but I somehow feel better when seeing him talking this way. I see that when he can use this level of English as a professor, I don't need to be ashamed of my own English skills\u00ab.\r\n\r\nmiy@adm.ku.dk\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n","post_title":"Bad accent is considered bad teaching","post_excerpt":"Students interpret the teacher\u2019s dialect and bad grammar as lack of competence","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"bad-accent-is-considered-bad-teaching","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2017-01-21 05:19:18","post_modified_gmt":"2017-01-21 05:19:18","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/?p=22921\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}},{"reference":{"ID":22919,"post_author":"12","post_date":"2010-05-01 04:00:00","post_date_gmt":"0000-00-00 00:00:00","post_content":"Leopold Galicki has a Polish accent. This, he would be the first to admit.\r\n\r\nBut a poor student assessment of his English-language skills in teaching Marginalization in Sociology at the University of Copenhagen spilled over into an evaluation of the content, and this provoked him: provoked him so much, he decided to respond, using the evaluation to prove a point to students about marginalization itself.\r\n\r\nIn the evaluation, one student said that his \u00bbEnglish is difficult to follow\/understand, which makes it hard to concentrate. I feel that with the bad English points are not made at all or made well in class\u00ab.\r\n\r\nStudent evaluations are anonymous, but lecturers can cross-check and can see whether one particular student, who evaluates the English negatively, also evaluates negatively under other rubrics.\r\n\r\n<a href=\"node\/5364\"> See article <em> Bad accent is considered bad teaching<\/em> here. <\/a>\r\n\r\n<h2>Critique was out of proportion<\/h2>\r\nAnd this is precisely the problem, according to Leopold Galicki. He can see that a low evaluation of the English in a few students has affected the evaluation of his teaching and the course content in the same students.\r\n\r\nThis means that the assessment of his language skills skews the objectivity of the student evaluation as a whole. \r\n\r\nIn a bizarre example, a student who self-reported that she or he had read 20 per cent of the course readings, found the difficulty of the teaching insufficient, the academic standard not good, and that the points are not made well in class.\r\n\r\n\u00bbI have received critical remarks before, but this time the critique from specifically two students was unacceptable, as it was completely out of proportion\u00ab he says to the University Post. \r\n\r\n<a href=\"node\/5366\">Read the article <em>A new look at teaching in English<\/em> here.<\/a>\r\n\r\n<h2>Tolerance is important too<\/h2>\r\nHe responded to the evaluation by sending to his students a <a href=\"node\/5391\">four-page 1500-word analysis<\/a>.\r\n\r\n\u00bbIt is a fluid border between accepting objective criticism and taking it personally. But this time it was an impossible critique, and judging from my feedback since then, the students have been positively surprised by my reaction,\u00ab he says.\r\n\r\nFor Leopold Galicki, his evaluation raises another controversial issue. Should academics be fluent in the language they teach? Some students clearly expect fluent English in an English-language course, he says.\r\n\r\n\u00bbBut I think that the level of English is only relevant in so far as it allows the teacher to teach a certain conceptual apparatus. A teacher may have some accent problems, and we teachers have different English capabilities, but students should be tolerant of this. \r\n\r\n\u00bbA class where the students and the teacher have different English capabilities is itself a challenge. It is important to exercise this in the global village, and it is more challenging than sitting in a class where all talk Cambridge- or Princeton-English,\u00ab he says.\r\n\r\nHe goes on to argue that \u00bbstudents should only graduate from university if they are open to what we at first sight may regard as strange, unfamiliar, and not easy to understand\u00ab.\r\n\r\nmiy@adm.ku.dk\r\n\r\n\r\n","post_title":"Lecturer provoked by poor English evaluation","post_excerpt":"Students said he was hard to understand. He countered with a four-page written response: Their evaluation was flawed","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"lecturer-provoked-by-poor-english-evaluation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2017-01-21 05:19:11","post_modified_gmt":"2017-01-21 05:19:11","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/?p=22919\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}},{"reference":{"ID":22923,"post_author":"12","post_date":"2010-05-01 04:00:00","post_date_gmt":"0000-00-00 00:00:00","post_content":"In English-language classes, most teachers and students rely on a language that is not there own. This opens up a whole range of potential misunderstandings.\r\n\r\nHowever, Joyce Myra Kling Soren, who is at the start of a PhD project on English-language teaching at the Faculty of Life Sciences, is not rushing to any conclusions. \r\n\r\nWhat appears to be a language issue, may actually be something else entirely; cultural confusion. \r\n\r\n<a href=\"node\/5362\">Read the University Post article <em>Lecturer provoked by poor English evaluation<\/em> here. <\/a>\r\n\r\n<h2>Academic cultures vary<\/h2>\r\n\u00bbWhen you have people coming from different cultures, they may still not share an academic culture. It\u2019s not just the language, because the words you might have are all the same, but if you don\u2019t have an academic culture in common, you might still miss each other entirely,\u00ab Joyce points out. \r\n\r\nAs yet, her own research is in the embryonic stages. \r\n\r\n\u00bbA great deal of the research on the subject is from the student\u2019s point of view, but I am looking at it from the viewpoint of the teacher,\u00ab she explains. \r\n\r\n<h2>Non-natives teaching non-natives<\/h2>\r\nHer project also concentrates on the relatively new situation in many internationalised universities of non-native English speakers teaching other non-native speakers. \r\n\r\nA situation where the possibilities for misunderstanding are, it would seem, doubled. \r\n\r\n<a href=\"node\/5364\"> See the University Post article <em> Bad accent is considered bad teaching<\/em> here. <\/a>\r\n\r\n\u00bbMost of the research on the subject deals with native speakers teaching internationals. For the first ten or 15 years of international education, universities brought in English-speaking professors to hold lectures in English.\u00ab\r\n \r\n\u00bbBut that has now been replaced by local teachers or sometimes teachers from other countries coming in and using English as a medium,\u00ab she continues. \r\n\r\n<h2>Life Sciences to be certified<\/h2>\r\nHer focus on the Faculty of Life Sciences is due to the faculty\u2019s pro-active stance in relation to internationalisation, she says. From September, 13 of the faculty\u2019s 16 master\u2019s degrees will be in English.\r\n\r\nThe Faculty of Life Sciences has provided the first 19 volunteers for the English-language certification process at the University of Copenhagen, which Joyce has helped to develop. The faculty has also signed a contract to ensure that all of its teachers will go through the certification process. \r\n\r\nCertification is a tool which both assesses lecturers\u2019 language skills, and helps them to improve, Joyce explains. \r\n\u00bbIt is not just a test,\u00ab she says. \r\n\r\n\u00bbThere is a formative element and extensive feedback. We give teachers an assessment of areas they are good at, areas that they could improve. They also get a video of their performance and access to us for a follow-up meeting.\u00ab\r\n\r\nAnd when teachers do not make the grade, it is not up to the Centre for Internationalisation and Parallel Language Use (CIP) to tell them what to do. They simply offer guidance. \r\n\r\n\u00bbWe can assess, but we do not make any demands. It is like going to the doctor,\u00ab explains Joyce.\r\n\r\nluci@adm.ku.dk\r\n","post_title":"A new look at teaching in English","post_excerpt":"Claimed language issues arising in classes held in English may actually be cultural misunderstandings, says PhD student","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"a-new-look-at-teaching-in-english","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2017-01-21 05:19:26","post_modified_gmt":"2017-01-21 05:19:26","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/?p=22923\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}},{"reference":{"ID":20376,"post_author":"12","post_date":"2011-05-25 04:34:46","post_date_gmt":"0000-00-00 00:00:00","post_content":"\nIn the last 20 years, evaluation culture has become part of many institutional areas of life, especially in the education sector. Evaluation committees were well-known long before the 1990s. In the private sector, consumer surveys on products and services have existed for decades.\r\n\r\nWhat is new is that, within the institutional world, there has been a greater involvement of consumers of welfare state services as evaluators. Of course, universities have also been influenced by this evaluation trend.\r\n\r\nIt would be interesting to look at this evaluation trend in the welfare state based on a larger study of many institutions. But in this context I confine myself to share my experience from one limited area: The student course evaluation.\r\n\r\n<h2>Course evaluation not enough<\/h2>\r\nThe student course evaluation is a formalized element in a course at the Department of Sociology at the University of Copenhagen, where I teach.\r\n\r\nIn general, I find it beneficial to students that they, in the final stage of the course, get distributed questionnaires and have 15-20 minutes to reflect on, and address, a number of concerns regarding the quality of education.\r\n\r\nThe teacher gets an opportunity to confirm, or rule out, the eligibility of the course, as seen from the students' perspective. As a teacher, you get feedback on a number of specific indicators on the quality of the course, like for example the use of learning tools such as whiteboard and power point, guest lectures, and on student involvement.\r\n\r\nAt the same time, students can relate to the academic level, and the teaching and learning. The evaluation questionnaire contains open questions on learning methods and on other negative and positive aspects of the course. As far as English-spoken courses, the teacher's and students ' English proficiency may be evaluated too.\r\n\r\nThe questionnaire's anonymity ensures that students can expand their criticism without fear that it will negatively influence their grades, or give them an image as a student who complains.\r\n\r\nHowever, it is precisely this anonymity, that I am concerned with.\r\n\r\n<h2>Anonymity leads to wild variation<\/h2>\r\nApart from positive aspects of anonymity, there is a disturbing part of it.\r\n\r\nThere is always a small segment of course participants, maybe around 5-10 per cent, or one or two out of every 20 students, whose evaluation is what I would call 'totally negative'. In the questionnaire this can be seen when course participants respond with a 'no' to the question whether the aim of the course has been fulfilled.\r\n\r\nThere can be several reasons for a strong critique: Psychological and socio-psychological factors can influence the evaluation - I am thinking here of the mental state of the individual at the time of the evaluation and the student's welfare within the social group, including the teacher, which are all constitutive factors of the course.\r\n\r\nThe anonymity of the questionnaire can serve as an inviting platform to unfold the student's frustration.\r\n\r\nStudents always have more or less different backgrounds to evaluate a particular course, This can lead to wildly varying evaluations. A folk saying has it, that no matter what, there is always someone who is dissatisfied. So what is the point of writing about it?\r\n\r\n<h2>Inconsistent evaluation<\/h2>\r\nThe reason I write this article, is because the one or two strongly dissatisfied students in a group of 20, will usually reveal an inconsistency in their evaluation.\r\n\r\nNot so much due to the respondents' mental state or their unfortunate welfare in the group. The persons demonstrate their inability to relate to, and logically evaluate the study\/work situation in which they participate.\r\n\r\nFrom the answers, it is as if there are black holes in the student's ability to observe, consider, and absorb course content, and the teaching methods used. The result is that the student's answers are directly contrary to the facts.\r\n\r\nLet us take an example from one of my own courses: On the question of the involvement of the text readings in the teaching situation. The question was: Has it been too much, appropriate or too little?\r\n\r\nThe respondent responds: Too little. But in the specific course this response is impossible. The whole lecture series was based on PowerPoints containing representations and interpretations of passages from the texts this lecture is referring to.\r\n\r\nThere are other examples of a student who only read 20-30 percent of the syllabus, but evaluated most indicators on course quality negatively.\r\n\r\nIf a strong negative evaluation is only expressed by ticking off a closed question, it is difficult to see the lack of consistency. But the complete lack of sense in the evaluation is revealed when a student responds to open questions.\r\n\r\nOften, the answers to the open questions directly contradict the answers given as ticks in the boxes in the closed questions.\r\n\r\n<h2> Integrity - in the educational context and in general<\/h2> \r\nBut if it is all about one or two participants among 20, is it not just much ado about nothing?\r\n\r\nIt may be about 5-10 percent of the participants, but it is a pattern. It is worthwhile to articulate these marginal groups.\r\n\r\nThis is not just to avoid possible irrational elements, which might influence the evaluation of a given situation or a process. It is also about recognising that irrationality and emotion can be found in a university context.\r\n\r\nWith this realisation, we may be able to prevent this irrationality from affecting learning and teaching processes. Remember: These 5 to 10 percent, who exhibit the lack of skills to consistently evaluate and who unfold emotionally irrational behaviour, are aspiring to be the academic power in our society.\r\n\r\nThe pattern they demonstrate in their assessments should therefore not be made light of.\r\n\r\nAnonymity is, for better or for worse, an important prerequisite in many evaluation contexts, and also when it comes to the assessment of the quality of a university course. But to relate constructively to the learning process means to practice criticism, which is not only important in scientific contexts, but in a democratic society in general. The autonomy of future academics depends precisely on the ability to demonstrate a critical approach in public contexts.\r\n\r\nEvaluation culture provides an opportunity where students can demonstrate independent critical thinking about specific, but fundamental, things.\r\n\r\nMy experience is, that there is a small, but always existing group using the shield of anonymity to exercise an inconsistent criticism which falls apart after a more detailed analysis.\r\n\r\nThe relatively few, but resistant cases of criticism lacking rationality should, I believe, be highlighted and discussed after the evaluation situation.\r\n\r\nAnonymity should not be violated. But the vast majority of constructive evaluators and the small minority of inconsistent evaluators can benefit from the exposure to irrational assessments and get something of thought-provoking substance. They can get to see the importance of consistency and integrity in a critical approach to all the various institutional contexts.\r\n\r\nUni-avis@adm.ku.dk\r\n\r\n<em>Stay in the know about news and events happening in Copenhagen by <a href=\"http:\/\/universitypost.dk\/newsletter\" target=\"_blank\">signing up for the University Post\u2019s weekly newsletter here<\/a>.<\/em>\n","post_title":"Anonymous student evaluations and their discontents","post_excerpt":"ANALYSIS - Lecturer in sociology at the Universtity of Copenhagen Leopold Galicki unpacks what anonymous student evaluations say, and don't say, about the quality of a course at university","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"anonymous-student-evaluations-and-their-discontents","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2017-01-21 03:03:00","post_modified_gmt":"2017-01-21 03:03:00","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/?p=20376\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}}],"category":false,"theme":false,"number_of_posts":"4","style":"default"}]},"taxonomyData":{"category":[{"term_id":4539,"name":"Working environment","slug":"arbejdsmiljoe-en","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":4539,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":95,"filter":"raw"}],"post_tag":[{"term_id":6048,"name":"accent","slug":"accent-en","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":6048,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":1,"filter":"raw"},{"term_id":645,"name":"parallel language","slug":"parallel-language","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":645,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":6,"filter":"raw"}],"post_format":[],"expression":[{"term_id":14,"name":"Portrait Article","slug":"portrait_article","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":14,"taxonomy":"expression","description":"","parent":0,"count":802,"filter":"raw"}],"translation_priority":[{"term_id":5468,"name":"Optional","slug":"optional-en","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":5468,"taxonomy":"translation_priority","description":"","parent":0,"count":674,"filter":"raw"}]},"featured_media_url":"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/albertefeatured.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=149377"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149377\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":149426,"href":"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149377\/revisions\/149426"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/149364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=149377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=149377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=149377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}