Differences in Grading Practices of Part-time and Full-Time Faculty: A Departmental Study at Addis Ababa University

Abstract

 Worldwide, the complete roster o/teaching positions in higher
education includes, among others. full-time and parf.lime pOSitions.
Higher education stalf in these categories have differing levels of
institutional and professional commitments. The/acl that they work under
different conditions and with different status types may suggest thaI testing
irregularities and abuse of grading standards may occur. Th is study,
which used the Wilcoxon Rank-sum Test to analyse the grades awarded 10
9.320 (nine thousand alld three hundred nventy) AA U students of 258 first
year sections" found b!flationary tendencies in part-rimer taught sections.
It found that on both science and social science campuses and in both
regular and extension divisions rhe numbers of As and Bs were
significantly higher in parI-timer taught sections than in full-timer taught
sections. The implications for testing and standardization are discllssed.