Favoritism Shown In Classroom Vs. Online Classes



Table of Contents

Introduction1

Literature Review1

Discussion4

Conclusion5

References6

Favoritism Shown In Classroom Vs. Online Classes

Introduction

Growing popularity of the online classes has been visible for quite some time. Many of the advantages are clearly visible to everyone. Like, online classes give the participants geographical freedom. It is considered less costly than a class room setting, since it involves less commitment of resources, as compared to a physical setup. One of the more subtle advantage that student seek is the ability of online classes to lower the tendency of favoritism by the teacher towards some individual students or group of students.

Online courses inherit features that tend to reduce the ability of teachers to involve in such acts capable of being labeled as favoritism. It is worthwhile knowing what favoritism is and how the class room setting inherits features that lead to this outcome. Furthermore, how the online courses block those tendencies that result in favorable behavior of teachers to some students. This paper discusses the favoritism shown in classroom and to what extent it can be curbed in online classes.



Literature Review

It will be helpful to understand the literature revealing the factors that lead to favoritism. In this way, one can analyze the features of online classes and evaluate how it avoids such behavior of teachers.

Tauber (1997) states that, expectations of teachers from their students vary gender wise. Also, the behaviors of teachers have been found to be influenced by the physical attributes of their students, like physical attractiveness (Ritts et.al. 1992). This means that physically attractive students will get good grades, despite the fact that beauty has nothing to do with score in studies. Ozturk et. al. (2002) draws our attention to a different characteristics, he says that teachers behave differently when they come to know the socio-economic background of a student, reacting favorably to a student coming from higher socio-economic class.

The ethical responsibility of a teacher is to include professionalism in his or her conduct, be responsible in service, treat student with equality and fairness, maintain safe and healthy environment, behave objectively with honesty and integrity, and show respect for human compassion and freedom (Keith et. al., 1993). However, the fact is that despite of the ethical code of conduct and laws against such discrimination, allegation of favoritism still continues to surface in education (Milliyet, 2006).

Favoritism brings destruction of equality and brings advantages to those who have not earned it; in addition it hurts the good intentions of others (Nadler and Schulman, 2006). Favoritism goes against fairness since; it gives advantages to those who do not come on merit of receiving it. It is not liked by others that some special students receiving favorable behavior, it has been found that those receiving this treatment often do not come out to be top achievers (Mechtenberg, 2006). Most probably because they put less effort, knowing that they are special to their teacher.

Favoritism can be considered as one of the most influential factors in the success of ...