By Stephen Lippmann, Ronald E. Bulanda, and Theodore C. Wagenaar
Strategies for Dealing with Entitled Students
Students who exhibit an unrealistic sense of entitlement often demand a significant amount of instructors’ time and energy. The powerful social and cultural changes that underlie the emergence of entitlement make it difficult for individual faculty members to respond effectively. Therefore, in this section we offer several strategies that may be helpful in dealing with entitled students or, more usefully, curbing the behaviors associated with entitlement before they occur.
Resocialize Students and Faculty
Individual instructors can modify the social context and the social contract that exists in the classroom. Titus (2008) found empirical evidence for a shift in the institutional logic of higher education in his study of student evaluations of teaching, whereby students now conceive of education much as they would any other consumer transaction. In such an environment, “student expectations are based on actions involving substantial risk, parties in certain structural positions, including weak or subordinate ones, are less likely to negotiate aggressively (Bottom 1998). We make it clear that as teachers who are capable of introducing error into their original grading assessments; this error may be more positive or negative the second time. For this reason, we invite students to raise their concerns with us. However, empirical evidence suggests that giving students something to lose could give students pause in contemplating a relatively blind request for a grade increase.
Post Anonymous Examples of “Excellent” Work
Some students may be genuinely surprised by the grade they receive and may feel that their work was of higher quality than it is in reality. A simple discussion with these students about their weak areas is generally sufficient for explaining the mechanics of grading and justifying their grade to them. However, many of these discussions may be avoided if students can see other examples of excellent work with which to compare their own. This gives students a reference point for understanding the shortcomings of their work, and allows them to see how other students are interpreting and executing assignments.
In addition, posting examples of excellent work can provide instructors with tangible points of comparison in discussions with students who want explanations for the grade they have received. All exemplary work should be completely anonymous, and we find that this is facilitated by bringing in examples from previous semesters or other sections of the same course. In any event, student permission must be obtained and names and other defining characteristics must be removed. Although posting excellent examples can result in students attempting to copy the format of the successful paper without sufficiently developing their own frameworks, posting them after the assignments have been graded and handed back will largely eliminate this problem.
Have Students Prepare and Present Their Case in Writing, in Advance
Much of the discomfort associated with interactions between instructors and entitled students may arise out of explicit goals and objectives and the rubrics to assess them contribute substantially to course and program assessment as well as student learning. Using a rubric may help to assuage student concerns in several ways. First, rubrics provide detailed expectations for the content and structure of assignments and give students direction as they complete their tasks (Brookhart 2004). Clarifying expectations and directions may eliminate much of the surprise associated with sweeping summative grades, as students are more likely to understand the criteria upon which they will be evaluated. Second, rubrics help to focus student-instructor discussions about grades and can help instructors to explain their decisions to students in a focused manner. Instead of asking for more points in a general manner, students must now target specific aspects of their performance and instructors can limit the discussion to those aspects. Similarly, students often feel entitled to attend class late or submit work late without penalty because their reasons are exceptions. We have found that placing explicit deadline expectations on syllabi and then adhering to them helps address this problem.
Give Students Something to Lose by Negotiating
Students may feel that they have nothing to lose by asking for a grade change or a reevaluation of their work except for a simple answer of “no” from their professor. We suspect that not only is this typically the case, but that in many cases, those students who do argue for more points or higher grades actually succeed.
These outcomes may be more pronounced with graduate teaching assistants or new faculty members (Cordell et al. 2004, 79–5). To combat this attitude, we suggest making explicit, either on the syllabus or in class as assignments are being handed back, that requests for grade reviews are welcome but can result in either the adding or subtracting of points, or the raising or lowering of grades. We explicate the assumption of instructor oversight underlying students’ requests for a reevaluation.
If this assumption is true, students must be willing to accept a reevaluation that could add to or detract from their grade, and thus accept greater risk in negotiation. In other contexts, research has shown that in situation choices between demanding high quality work from students and appeasing them to keep them happy and to keep the instructors’ jobs. Similar pressures exist for probationary and other untenured faculty. These pressures are exacerbated by a heightened emphasis on student evaluations (Cave et al. 1997; Haskell 1997; Titus 2008). Benton (2006) argues that these developments have fueled the student-as-customer mantra, which in turn accentuates the faculty role as employee rather than professional.
Faced with the increasing emphasis on student evaluations for promotion, tenure, and retention, non-tenured faculty may themselves feel as though they must keep the customers happy, and they often do so by giving high grades to students–customers–who expect them. Such behaviors are far more likely to be found in schools governed by the business model than in schools governed by the intellectual challenge model. Tenured colleagues and academic leaders need to reinforce such an intellectual climate, provide support services for faculty in providing appropriately challenging pedagogical experiences, and lead by example by rewarding those teachers who challenge rather than cede.
Source: adapted from
http://www.users.muohio.edu/lippmas/pubs/CT.pdf