Five Paradoxes Of Teacher Evaluation In Research University Of China

As the deepening of China's economic reform, the development of society, and the expanding of international communication scope, facing the increasingly intense competition of competitive national strength in worldwide, people are convinced of the incomparable importance of developing Research University for advancing the national science and technology as well as the developing higher education. To advancing research universities is becoming one of the important tasks for China's higher education system in future. There are many problems, which need to be solved urgently, in present practice of research universities building, in which how to evaluate teachers scientifically and effectively is an import problem, which will concerns the development of the faculties, even the development of universities.This paper studied and analyzed the characteristics of teacher evaluation system in research universities of China through investigation and found that though there are some reasonalities of the evaluation criterias, they also brought a series of negative effects on China's academic development as well as the college development. Conflict mainly reflected in five paradoxes.The paper includes five parts except the introduction and epilogue:Part I: The diversity of university's function versus unilateral teacher evaluation index. The index of teacher evaluation is provided with characteristic of singularity because the teacher evaluation focuses on the number of scientific results. Such uniformity has some seasonality for research-oriented universities'special attributes, but it has strong conflict with the diversification of research universities. Research university should be such a place where the talent be cultivated, great masters be gathered, and the brilliant thought be produced. It should take cultivate talent with both ability and moral integrity as its central task. However, the emphasis on the number of the accomplishment in scientific research weakens university's function such as education and cultural spreading, even makes entire negative influence, which makes the research university's function unilateral. So the evaluation led to the weakening of university functions like education and cultural succeeding and spreading, except the research function.Part II: Discrepancies in different subjects versus the uniformity of the evaluation standard. Teacher evaluation in research universities adopts uniform standards, which rarely distinguish the differences among teachers in different subjects. Such evaluation method is convenient and operationable, and can ensure the fairness of the evaluation to a certain extent. But owning to the distinct discrepancies of subjects, especially between arts and science, teachers'character and the demands of the subject also has distinct differences. For instance, the mode of thinking, the nature and the course of scientific study, are widely divergent. However, lacking of considering the differences of different subject teachers arouses some complicated problems, which will be difficult to solve.Part III: The difficulty of scientific research versus the limitation of the evaluation on scientific research accomplishments. The evaluation of academic achievements of teachers in research universities is provided the characteristic of time-limited, not only for minimum scientific research time but also inspect the scientific achievements regularly. The time-limited evaluation can regulate teachers'research plans effectively and avoid teachers escaping form academic research in a variety of excuses, which has a strong role of supervising and urging. However, on the other hand, such limitations neglect the difficulty of scientific research. Any scientific research costs a long difficult course, in which uncertain problems will emerge in an endless stream. Such conflict between the difficulty of scientific research and the limitation of the evaluation on scientific research accomplishments are easily force teachers neglect the quality of scientific research in order to deal with the regular back-check then led to the stagnation, or even corruption in academic researches.Part IV: The transitional society versus static evaluation. Static evaluation method, which evaluate on the exist fact and achieved level, is adopted in research universities. It can provide steady data and is easy to make horizontal comparison, and can guarantee the fairness of the evaluation results, but compared with develop-oriented evaluation, there are still many deficiencies, which mainly reflect in that its index confine to one static point of one teacher's development, while cannot emphasis a teacher's develop potentialities and develop tendency. It is easily to lead to academic corruption and fail to do justice to talent. Such evaluation method is no longer able to meet the overall development requirements of the social transformation, which is easy to cause corruption or failing to do justice to talents.Part V: The specialization academic research versus the administrative teacher evaluation. Teacher evaluation is operated by administrators in university or government, who are not familiar with academic. The tendency of academic administrativelized is very serious. Owning to the appraisers are lacking of specialized academic quality, they may lay stress on the exterior and cannot value a teacher's quality and the value of scientific research accomplishment. It is easy to cause unfairness of evaluation results, which will do harm for the healthy and reasonable development. Though it is difficult to escape from the characteristic of administrativeness, the conflict between academic administrativization and academic professionalization still should be paid extensive attention.To sum up, although there are some reasonable factors and good start in teacher evaluation in research universities of China, and insure the evaluation fair and just to some extent, there are sharp conflicts between the current teacher evaluation system in China's research universities and the reality of teacher improvements as well as academic research. It is not conductive for universities and colleges'development, talent cultivation, and culture inheriting and development, even the nation's development. Thus, to advance current teacher evaluation system and introduce a scientific and fair evaluation index, which will drive the developments and construction of research universities to a healthy way, is one of problems need to be solved urgently in current teacher evaluation system of research universities.