An Exploration into the Students’ Perceptions of Teachers’ Objectivity During Exams Grading: A Case of University of Swat

Abstract

Examinations are students’ chance for show casing their learning to the examiners and to their teachers for the efforts that were put into their (Teachers) teaching for maximum benefits of the students. However, students, expectations about the gradings are not always fulfilled and students feel that they were either not awarded according to their abilities or they were discriminated against. Reasons of discrimination that students cite and have also been endorsed by different research in different parts of the world include; gender discrimination, discrimination on the basis of students, caste, creed and colour. Some research also links students’ agreeable personality and submissive attitude in presence of the teachers as reasons for favoritism towards some students and discriminating against others beside teachers’ mood swings during students grading, Dee and Gershenson (2017), by Fan et al (2019), Megalokonomou (2021), Terrier (2015) and Bygren (2020). The current research is focused on finding students perceptions about teachers, objectivity and biases students, exams grading through a qualitative case study. Ten (10) participants with equal gender distribution agreed for taking part in the study and for sharing their perceptions about teachers, teachers grading bias or objectivity. This, however, must be noted that the current research study is purely based on only students’ perceptions. Research results show that majority of the participants are of the view that teachers grading has the element of bias on the basis of students’ gender, behaviour, personality and their attachment or friendship with teachers.