What We Have Here Is a Failure to Teach

摘要

I was looking for a research paper that I could use for an evaluation exercise in Amy Scholarly Inquiry and Research Methods course. In the process, I came across an essay online. While it had a fairly strong bibliography, it might have been a student project or something posted by a group of scholars prior to peer review. I wasn't sure. After a quick look, I found that it was, indeed, a student project. I then did some digging and came up with a related document that turned out to be the professor's comments. An initial sentence laid the prof's assessment on the line, citing "mediocre research," a mere "overview of the issue," and "little in the way of insight." The rest of the comments were more of the same, pointing out that there were only a few "analytical conclusions," which the professor saw as a good thing, because the conclusions that had been made "commonly fail." The professor remained "perplexed" about the goal of the paper. He saw the paper's conclusion as "marred" by expression of "irrelevant" opinions. Citations, when supplied, were "improper." The professor's assessment of the paper ended with: "Weak. Grade: C+."