Research on the Countermeasures of Marginal People’s Phenomenon in the Ordinary Constitutional Jurisprudence’s Classroom of Colleges and Universities ()
1. Introduction
It is not long before students’ various unreasonable phenomena such as sleep in class, spam, whisper, absent- mind are just too numerous to mention in the ordinary constitutional jurisprudence’s classroom of college, which not only affect their access to knowledge, but also have the adverse effect on other students’ learning. In addition, the teacher’s teaching enthusiasm and effect in the classroom can be affected. Theoretically speaking, the course is a specialized elective one or even a specialized compulsory one for students who major in the Law and Public Administration. Their learning enthusiasm should be very high; the situation should not appear that students show little interest in it similar to the general compulsory courses, such as the emergence of public political courses and not strong professional curriculum class. According to the survey, the marginal people’s formation is influenced by many factors and the main factors are the internal causes such as student’s cognizance, learning ability, learning interest, effort, etc. and the external causes of teachers, the lesson’s content and so on. It would try to carry out the qualitative analysis for the formation causes of marginal people in the classroom based on the full-time teachers’ experiences to teach the constitutional jurisprudence for long time, combing with the analysis methods and tools of the internal and external causes. The situation’s causes are not difficult to be found by analyzing the experiences, which can be divided into the internal causes and the external causes. The internal aspect refers to students’ cognitive and learning ability, while the external causes will be the constitutional jurisprudence’s characteristics itself, the teachers’ conservative view, the inactive class atmosphere and so on. Also, the countermeasures can be explored to deal with this phenomenon through research on the formation of Marginal People’s Phenomenon in the Ordinary Constitutional Jurisprudence’s Classroom.
2. The Marginal Man’s Formation in the Classroom
According to their behavior, the marginal people in the ordinary constitutional jurisprudence’ classroom can be divided into the explicit ones and the implicit ones, which is a help to understand the research objects. Their features are as follows. The explicit marginal people refers to individual students or groups who do not participate in the classroom learning under the teachers’ guidance and are free from the learning activities as a variety of reasons. It embodies the separation relation of their own and classroom as follows, their identity and interests for this course before the classroom learning, their habits to choose the seating position in the classroom learning process, the frequency to raise their hands to answer the questions and to actively ask the question for teachers in the class. The implicit marginal people refers to students that there is not big difference for them and other students who actively involved in the classroom learning on the surface, but in fact, there is no really plunging into study, and who become the marginal people in the classroom for the learning effect. Their performance mainly embodied that they was become the marginal people by its subjective initiative and its passivity and lag in the practice [1] .
The first is the formation of explicit marginal people. Generally these students show little interest and passion for the constitutional jurisprudence course, knowing little about the course heretofore and consider it less practical than other department laws. Their preconception that they are learning the constitutional jurisprudence is useless is one of the factors that make them marginal in class. In practical teaching of constitutional jurisprudence course, under the negative effect of external factors like textbooks, teachers, behavior of the companions, learning atmosphere and internal factors such as seat choosing, asking questions positively and interacting actively, students gradually get away from the center of the classroom, becoming outsiders of the constitutional jurisprudence course. Because of ineffective learning, students get unsatisfying performance feedback on their study from the teacher, making them less motivated to learn the constitutional jurisprudence. Also, the psychology of considering themselves to be unable to learn well, listen carefully and concentrate on books accelerates the progress of them becoming the marginal people in class. Moreover, there is a lack of linkage between students and the teacher, which makes it hard for students to immediately reflect their self-condition to the teacher and teachers to pay enough attention to them. Ultimately, students become the explicit marginal people in the ordinary constitutional jurisprudence’ classroom.
The second is the formation of implicit marginal people. These students have a vague understanding of the constitutional jurisprudence course before learning and have an expectation for it, yet they lack of knowledge base, life experiences, cognizance and learning ability, most of them tend to sit in the middle of the classroom during the class, hardly ever skipping the class. However due to the deficiency of their own learning ability, teacher’s conservative teaching way and methods, these students have trouble in digesting the knowledge taught in class and as a result, their enthusiasm to learn is dampened continually. Some difficult problems result ultimately in seeming learners who can’t actually focus on class learning. The conflict between class learning and students’ ability makes them choose to escape or lie to themselves when they are facing with the difficult problems, lacking initiative, unable to participate in learning of the constitutional jurisprudence course and interaction, and thus they would be become the implicit marginal people in the ordinary constitutional jurisprudence’ classroom [2] .
3. The Systematic Countermeasures to This Phenomenon
3.1. The Need for Students to Increase Understanding of the Course and Improve Attitude to the Course
We cannot simply blame the constitutional jurisprudence course’s lack of attraction to students on the external reasons such as the course itself characteristics, the teachers and the class atmosphere, in fact, it is incontestable that the internal reasons also play a decisive role. For instance, it has a negative influence on increasing their learning interest and making them work hard for students’ lack of comprehensive and scientific understanding of the constitutional jurisprudence course. First of all, students should be open to the constitutional jurisprudence course. Proceeding from the fact that constitutional books can’t be practiced directly in daily life without the support of other department laws to actually achieve restriction on the power of the government so as to guarantee and help realize civil rights, students tend to have a limited and subjective impression on the constitutional jurisprudence course, furthermore, given the fact that the legal provisions are dull and require constant repetition, the constitutional jurisprudence is often labeled as dull, bored, didactic, useless and theoretical by students that didn’t actually know what the constitutional jurisprudence course really is heretofore, and they cut off any chance to learn about it. This closed and conservative psychology makes students fail to open the door to the constitutional jurisprudence course learning or to grasp the true meaning of the constitutional jurisprudence that it is substantially the fundamental law, parent law and political contract. Therefore, students should be open- minded to the constitutional jurisprudence course, eradicating prejudice against it, understanding the course in a proper way and summing up by continuous exploration the way in which they can learn effectively and master the essence of it; and through relaxed and cheerful learning, students can feel the charm of the constitutional jurisprudence, apply it in practice, and finally love class learning. Secondly, students ought to make greater efforts so as to increase their class learning efficiency. No cross, no crown. After understanding the constitutional jurisprudence properly, students should make their efforts to learn this course, such as preparing lessons before the class, being good at discovering, raising and solving the new constitutional problems with question consciousness, the closely integrating theory with actual constitutional events, changing the knowledge-oriented learning in traditional class and positively thinking, answering and discussing the realistic constitutional questions. Thirdly, students should set reasonable learning goals and evaluating methods. It is also vital for their class learning to set a learning goal before the class, do self-evaluation and reflection after the class and adjust the learning plan in time. On the basis of getting a sense of achievement from class learning, students are more confident in learning the ordinary constitutional jurisprudence’ classroom and get better result with setting short- term and long-term learning goals and adjusting learning plans according to the levels of difficulty and their own learning ability.
3.2. The Need for Course Designers to Adjust the Design and Textbooks of the Course
First of all, the design of constitutional jurisprudence course in colleges and universities should achieve the effective combination with the moral education in primary and middle schools. The communique announced in the fourth plenary session of the 18th Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee stresses that the CPC should promote the public awareness of rule of law, carry out in-depth legal education, incorporate legal education into national education system and the establishment of spiritual civilization. The legal consciousness should be developed when people are young, and the core of legal education is the constitutional education. On the one hand, the moral educating class in primary and middle schools should be an edutainment where constitutional education too is edified. On the other hand, before offering the constitutional jurisprudence course, the colleges and universities should do a systematic and deep research in what is taught in moral education of primary and middle schools to avoid a simple repetition of the course. Meanwhile, the division of liberal arts and science in high school should also be taken into consideration to achieve effective educating aiming at different thinking patterns, associating with students’ reality and combining with their demand of overall development, helping to realize the students’ overall and sustainable development in the legal era [3] . Secondly, the choosing of constitutional textbooks should be adjusted with students’ characteristics. A number of students point out that they will be more willing to participate in class learning if the textbooks are more interesting. The level of difficulty and interest of the textbooks is an important criterion for students’ choosing them and whether they can make good use of it or not.
When teachers are considering and deciding the textbooks, they can choose the ones that are of moderate difficulty, well arranged, close to life and reality with abundant constitutional cases and interesting language so that students’ efficiency in the use of textbooks is improved through the textbooks’ accessibility. Combine with the scientific evaluation system to this course, open up the channel of teacher’s feedback to students’ learning effect and students’ evaluation towards the teacher, and accelerate both the teacher and students while teaching and learning.
3.3. The Need for Teachers to Improve Their Professional Qualification in the Course
The first is to fulfill the teachers’ expertise and broaden their academic horizon. The accumulation of teachers’ expertise and their dabbling in related disciplines has a great influence on the class teaching effect. An excellent and respected teacher in the ordinary constitutional jurisprudence’ classroom should possess a profound expertise and a broad academic horizon, and he should have the ability to integrate theory with practice, for the law does not exist in a theoretic vacuum, instead it requires practice to enrich itself. Therefore, teachers should easily deal with the various questions raised by students during the class teaching, making them feel this course’s charm, interact actively with the teacher and be the masters of the class. The second is to modernize the teaching views and methods of the constitutional jurisprudence course teachers. The teachers should change their conventional teaching views and methods, avoiding simply preaching at students, under the background of new student groups and era developing, fully respect students’ dominant role in learning with students’ real life as an entry point. For the teaching methods, teachers should take students’ psychology, knowledge structure and life experience into full consideration and let students participate actively in the class learning with the individualized, all-dimensional, different levels and focused teaching. The third is that the teachers for this course should scientifically balance the teaching against the scientific research. In key universities specially, the teachers’ pressure in scientific research can be huge. How to balance the teaching investment with the scientific research investment will too affect the teacher’s investment in practical class teaching. Constitution is the most essential part of modern national governance system and teachers are the hard core to impart the parent law. To obtain the good teaching effect, teachers for this course should be clear about their mission of the history and times, have a precise orientation of development priority, and ensure that teaching process is not affected by scientific research, communicate more with other course teachers and make timely adjustment in teaching methods.
3.4. The Need for Teachers and Students to Create a Harmonious Class Atmosphere in the Course
First of all, a harmonious atmosphere is beneficial to not only accelerating both the teacher and students while teaching and learning but also forming during the teaching process a co-equal, mutually trustworthy and mutually improving teacher-student relationship which benefits class teaching, increases value demand of both sides and thereby increases their investment in this course teaching and learning. Some students believe that an active class atmosphere makes them integrate more positively into class learning and much more easily and willingly accept constitutional knowledge. Secondly, teachers for this course should be skilled in capturing the students’ psychology. During the constitutional jurisprudence course’s teaching, teachers should be equipped with the teaching tact to do well in raising the questions, meanwhile be capable of grasping students’ interest, combining it with knowledge during teaching process and add more fun and flexibility into the learning content [4] . Furthermore, it’s suggested that teachers keep themselves focused on the changes of students’ psychology and behavior and provide them with psychological counseling and guidance, obtaining teaching resources from them. Thirdly, students should communicate positively with the teacher for this course. In the class learning, students themselves should take their initiative to create an open and active class learning atmosphere, learn independently, not passively, interact with the teacher positively, seeking the teacher’s help with both the questions they have during class learning and the psychological problems they encounter in life and study, create a favorable class and after-class atmosphere for the teacher.
4. Conclusion
It has become a social fact and an epitome of problems occurring in other theoretical curricula for the marginal people’s phenomenon in the ordinary constitutional jurisprudence’s classroom of colleges and universities. Rule by law is premised by rule by the constitution. To realize the governance of law, the country should be governance in line with the ordinary constitutional jurisprudence. The formulation and development of national governance system in socialism with Chinese characteristics are deeply influenced by the youth’s acceptability of constitution. Generally speaking, there is some room to improve the ordinary constitutional jurisprudence’s teaching of colleges and universities. And the problems should not be paid more attention. The ordinary constitutional jurisprudence course should work toward the modern constitutional jurisprudence course.