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In the previous article entitled: ‘’Addis Ababa University: Department of Foreign Languages and Literature, a Battle Field of Academic Revenge’’, I have got a number of comments from readers for which I am thankful. Now, I am having another experience in the process of publishing an article in the Ethiopian Journal of Education.
Institute of Educational Research was established to disseminate findings of scientific investigations that relate to the educational conditions and problems of Ethiopia. To this end, the Institute has a number of publications of which the Ethiopia Journal of Education (EJE) is the only reputable publication of the Institute. For this journal, I submitted an article entitled ‘’Verbal Behaviors of Teachers and Student Anxiety in Language Classes: A Qualitative Analysis’’
The focus of this study is on the features of teacher-student interaction in general and teachers’ verbal behavior in particular. In light of the above, this study tries to look into the verbal accounts of teachers in the classroom and the psychological reactions of students. It is the premise of the present researcher that verbal behaviors of teachers could affect the emotion of students.
From a decade-long experience I have as a lecturer in higher learning institutions in Ethiopia, the authoritarian role of the teacher in our schools now, and his/her expectations of submissive behavior of the students are no different from that of the traditional schools. The traditional education, known to discourage an open teacher-student relationship, may still have an impact on the present teacher-student interaction. As a result, some instructors become inconsiderate in their treatment of students. They go to the extent of insulting students, which, in effect, lets students feel socially inept. In some instances, students’ human dignity is attacked. Such harsh scolding and criticism in front of their peers could potentially have negative impacts on students’ performance. The intense fear of being scrutinized by others could force students to predict negative events. This frustration engendered by some teachers could limit students from making skill practice. Humiliating remarks could compel students to see the relationships they have with teachers through dark glasses. Any small friction with teachers could sour their thinking about teacher interaction since people could not be immune to the negative thinking. Such treatment could turn the poor academic background of the student from bad to worse.
The finding of the study is all about such issues and finally it suggests that instructors should guard themselves against unprofessional and unethical behavior. I wanted to share this finding through a publication to my fellow instructors so that we would be aware of the verbal remarks we forward in the classroom. To this end, I sent this article to the Ethiopian Journal of Education. Since it is peer-reviewed, the managing editor, after the preliminary assessment, gave the article to two anonymous assessors. The assessors asserted that the article was to the standard and it could be published in the Ethiopian Journal of Education. After reviewing the comments of the anonymous assessors, the Editorial Board of the Ethiopian Journal of Education endorsed the decision to publish and I was written a letter to that effect.
For language edition, the article was sent to a language editor who is a staff member in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literature. The language editor lost interest in the findings because the findings were all about the Department and he thought that I had a desire to belittle members of the Department due to the undesirable truck record the Department had with students including myself. The language editor influenced the editor- in- chief and they brought the case to the Board for further investigation.
The combined effort of the language editor and the editor-in-chief (both are members of the Board) clouded the professional insights of the board members and they deterred the article from publication and I received another letter. When I communicated the case to a former editor and an editor-in-chief of the journal, they told me that it is unusual to see such practices in the Ethiopian Journal of Education.
On the other hand, the managing editor of the Journal informed me that the manuscript was rejected due to the unethical wordings in the findings. If that was the case, the unethical wordings of the findings (if they really were unethical words) refer to the disparaging verbal behaviors of some teachers. For the judgment of my readers on the matter, let me cite one excerpt as a representative sample from the findings. This bizarre incidence reveals the situation even more clearly.
Sharing her terrible experience, Selam [pseudo name], in her diary, wrote about her teacher as follows:
The teacher asked the students to present an issue and he gave us a day to be ready on the topic. One of the students was trying to present in front of the class. The girl who was presenting was anxious and she shook and the teacher responded in such a way: ‘’are you incapable of presenting such things, had it been ‘sex’, you could have made it in every corner of the road. Don’t you think that I do not know you?’’ There is no word to express his improper deeds. The teacher is not creating anxiety but he himself is anxiety. He is the most undisciplined, non-mannered teacher (Diary, 4).
One could not give a better example than this excerpt to demonstrate a teacher’s fallibility. This teacher’s behavior was far below the standard. In such an instance where a student became anxious, the teacher was supposed to take pity on the student and give help in her time of need. But to worsen the matter, he added an undesirable comment on her fear. That was a shameful act. Such thoughtless words cause pain and increase students’ irritation. Such spoken words from the teacher were a profound influencer of the student’s thought and again the chemistry of the student’s thought determines the student’s act in the classroom.
The editor and the editor-in-chief should have understood the effects of such disparaging remarks upon our female students. But both tried to cover up the unprofessional remarks of teachers by painting the manuscript a fictitious story. Who is unethical? Is it the teacher who uttered such irritating remarks or the researcher who disclosed the practices so that other teachers would take a lesson from it? I simply disclosed practices prevailing in the four walls of the classroom. I vividly showed the acts of some teachers causing psychological pain upon our students. I presented the upsetting experiences of vulnerable students. This is the essence of educational research, to bring to light what is hidden in the classroom.
The editor, resenting the fact that the Department was being accused, tried to give a rescue service to the Department and the editor-in-chief, as a face saving strategy, was influenced by the editor who has been a member of the Department. Had the editor and the editor-in-chief been honest, they themselves and their colleagues could have learnt a lot from the findings, but they are stubborn as the saying goes: ‘You cannot teach a new trick to an old dog’. Both the language editor and the editor-in-chief lean on their stained understanding since they are closed to gain further insights. They tended to confine themselves to certain circumscribed problems and findings, known to them before. This is a tenacious attempt of people having inadequate mastery of the profession.
What, after all, is a research finding? Research is a way of finding things out and developing new ideas. Research is not conforming to the needs of the language editor or the editor-in-chief; it can also show conflicting viewpoints. At this juncture, I just want to mention a research done by Elizabeth at AAU. Elizabeth Ayalew (2011) stated that such traditional mechanisms are prone to penalize non-conformity and novelty, which restrain intellectual freedom and retard the research environment as well as the teaching-learning process.
The Institute has the obligation of opening up a professional debate through publication and of raising provocative issues that would uplift the quality of education which is in a state of decline.
The former scholars laid the foundation of IER but the present academia has failed to build on it. For all this, the ruling party is the sole agent in dissolving the quality of education; this is because positions stem from political support; they are not attained by merit and competence. This claim was corroborated by a number of scholars; to mention but few, Elizabeth Ayalew again (2011) found out that it is only by the approval of the President of the University that the Research Director’s Office appoints the editor-in- chief among candidates who have been nominated by the Editorial Board. Moreover, citing the World Bank report, the distinguished scholar, Professor Alemayehu G.Mariam, stated that the appointment of local education officials is not “competitive” but “politically assigned”; nepotism and favoritism in recruitment were broad and frequent; even the recruitment of teachers is based on political affiliation. As a result, the country has robotic education leaders missing academic caliber. In this regard, in her insightful paper, Elizabeth Ayalew (2011) further underlined that directors of research institutes, editors and associate editors are appointed to such positions for reasons that are less academic. Further, Elizabeth added that such individuals are expected to shoulder responsibilities that could be beyond their reach of experience, as they themselves may not know the pain and anxiety of generating research outcomes; as a result, it may not be any wonder if their evaluation of research products tends to be less academic and more geared towards other, less relevant criteria. These people have peddled their academic positions for social ties; they exchanged sincerity and truth with social bonds. These people are mere infants in the academic world; their acts are a fitting testament to their failure, to the failure of the Institute and to the country at large. Once, a friend of mine told me that, like in every other government offices, corruption prevails in the education sector and publication is made possible through favoritism; he added that there are highly qualified articles which are rejected and there are those that are not to standard.
I do not develop subjective meanings of my experience; rather, the finding, came out of a rigorously researched and intelligently analyzed paper which is negotiated socially and culturally. Moreover, the anonymous assessors can give a more objective evaluation than the language editor, but the story sadly turns down. I feel that the research findings could have helped teachers had it been published in Ethiopia but due to our pseudo educators, it was deterred. Thus, it is better to search for international journals than to give an article to IER. That is why half of the authors from whom Elizabeth Ayalew(2011) collected the data expressed their reservation and lack of trust in the existing system and showed their preference for international reviewers.
In view of the above, I am left with the option of looking for other international publishers. But it should be noted that IER in particular and our education system in general needs to be‘re-configured’ so that our education could be saved.
References
Alemayehu G.Mariam, (May 13, 2013) ‘Edu-corruption and Mis-education in Ethiopia’
Bekalu Atnafu (2011). Psychosocial Determinants of Anxiety, their Relationships and Effects in
Foreign Language Classes: PhD Dissertation
Elizabeth Ayalew (2011) Peer Review Mechanisms: The Bottleneck of Academic Freedom.
Proceedings of the 9th National Conference on Private Higher Education Institutions
(PHEIs) in Ethiopia. Organized & Sponsored by St. Mary’s University.
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