CRITERIOS DE OPERACIÓN

The previous two sections provide evidence of the students’ perspectives on what and how they were taught in vocational programmes. This section will uncover how they think they are evaluated and their perceptions of teacher expectations. All levels of pre-secondary schooling in China are exam-driven, from primary school to the notorious final CEE. But once students have entered vocational colleges, apparently exams seem to be largely irrelevant.

5.4.1 ‘Pass with no problem at all’

At Seaside, the students expressed their dissatisfaction and confusion regarding the assessment and exams of their courses. It seems that the teachers failed to make clear the specifics of their grading system and what they expect from the students.

There is not much difference in the grades between you and me, even though I put in much more effort than you did. You cannot tell the difference. In the end, everyone passes. I think our teachers just set the bar too low. (Jiren, Seaside)

They never tell you why you got this grade, what is good and what needs to improve. There is only a grade saying that you passed. (Bo, Seaside)

At Riverside, Xiaoxin and Guanglu described how they prepared for their exams and how their courses were evaluated:

I never worry about the finals. [The teacher] will always give you some questions beforehand, which are basically the exam questions. If you listen and take a photo of those questions, perhaps memorise them before the exam, and also manage to attend half of the classes, then you will pass with no problem at all. The assessment is always easy. Even if you didn’t manage to pass at the first try, you can always take them a second time with the same exam questions. And the teacher will turn a blind eye the second time. As long as you fill in all the blanks on the exam paper, you will pass. (Xiaoxin, Riverside)

Sometimes I would bring my cheat sheets to the exams if I didn’t memorise the questions they gave. Some of my classmates don’t even bother to cheat. They don’t take this seriously and they even never show up on exam days because they know they would pass eventually anyway. (Guanglu, Riverside)

As can be seen from the above statements, the lack of a proper assessment system in vocational colleges might be one of the reasons the students are unconcerned about their performance or ‘never worry’; they are less motivated to invest effort in their studies. They can always ‘pass with no problem at all’ because their teachers would give them the exam questions beforehand or ‘turn a blind eye’ at the re-sit exam. In their words, their teachers seem to have made things easy for the students. I was interested, therefore, to learn how the students perceived the teachers’ expectations of them.

5.4.2 Teachers’ expectations

I asked the students what, in their opinion, their teachers expected from them. At Riverside, a group of first-year business English students shared their views:

Shizhen: In some other colleges, passing CET-4 and 6 [College English Test Level 4 and 6] are very common among the students. But for our college, it seems like a huge requirement for us. Our teachers said, ‘Well, for you, you can work hard and try, but you won’t pass CET-6 unless you are very lucky.’

Int: What do you think your teachers’ expectations are for you?

Yifan: Not so high I guess. They would be very thrilled if just one of us passed CET- 6. I just don’t feel like studying for it when I hear them talk like that. (Riverside)

It seems that their teachers’ attitudes have, to a certain extent, discouraged the students from pursuing the higher-level certificate. Other students, however, sensed an even lower expectation from their teachers when considering how they react to misbehaviour in the classroom:

Guanglu: They [the teachers] indulge us too much. If no one pays attention and just played all the time in class, they would just let us be to do whatever we want. They just carry on teaching like nothing happened. I think this is too much. I guess they just

don’t have such high hopes for us. As long as we are kept in school safe and sound, it is fine. (Riverside)

It seems that the reason for Guanglu referring to them being ‘indulged’ is that contrary to the popular stereotype of vocational youth, i.e. that they are naturally poorly behaved underachievers, in fact, they wished to perform well in class, to be disciplined by their teachers, and expected by them to achieve better. However, the exam system apparently influenced the teachers’ perceptions and interactions with the students. Consequently, the teachers ‘just carry on teaching like nothing happened’ and never ‘have high hopes’ for their students. The perspectives of the teachers will be further investigated in Chapter 7.

5.5 ‘Passing time’

When facing an academicised curricula, a disengaging form of pedagogy, assessment that they do not need to ‘worry’ about, and teachers who ‘never have high hopes’ for them, these students had to adopt various ways to ‘pass time’:

Int: What do you do when you cannot understand the teachers?

Guanglu: I will be giving up and sleeping it off maybe, playing with phones or laptops, just passing time really. I play with my phones too much, during class, breaks, and back in the dorm.

Xiaoxin: Sometimes you just want to skip classes and go to an internet café to play online games with friends.

Guanglu: It [class time] can be used to chat with my girlfriend, to develop our relationship. (Riverside)

In his class, Wei admitted that he was one of the minority who ‘forced’ themselves to listen to the teacher:

We have 60 students in our programme. Only 40 attended the class that day. Those attending the class were just sleeping it off, playing with phones, or watching movies. (Wei, Riverside)

Phones appeared to be the major source of entertainment for the students in class time. Yuehan disclosed what happened when their phones were taken away:

Yuehan: There was a time when the college managers were inspecting the classes. They had to ban all phones in class. It was funny to sit in a class during that time. [Laugh] Everyone was like staring at the teacher in a daze or playing with their fingers because there was no phone to play with. (Seaside)

Yuehan described an interesting picture of her class. Her classmates were ‘staring at the teacher in a daze’ and ‘playing with their fingers’ when they could not find anything else to play with. As mentioned in Section 4.7, a considerable percentage of the students entered their programmes with a low level of interest or preparation. They might have been further disaffected by the above-mentioned problems within the college. Perhaps, having an attitude of trying to ‘get by’ or sleeping in class seems to be a fairly reasonable and understandable response to the ways the curriculum and pedagogy are structured. The vocational students’ ‘passing time’ could be a result of their unproductive learning experiences.