The discourse on taking back question papers

The answer to the question whether a teacher should take back question papers or not is contextual. It does not have any universal appeal. The culture of taking back question papers can produce different outcomes, depending on the social and cultural backgrounds. Moreover, this also does not depend on whether or not a teacher is burdened with teaching and research loads and has less time to make a new question set every time. Defending an argument in favour of taking back question papers in this context is quite misleading.
Teachers of some countries, for example, those of the USA, are quite burdened with teaching and research, and hence may not give question papers to students. But this practice is suitable for them. For, they create question banks and use those questions either modifying or by extending the questions through incorporating new information. For example, a student in the advanced macroeconomics class might have studied Thomas Sargent's 'Macroeconomic Theory'.
This is a book that is used as a reference text in the USA both in the Ph.D or advanced master's programmes in economics. Sargent's text contains questions at the end of each chapter. Now if a teacher picks one question from Sargent's text and spends some time to modify the question to incorporate new information in it, then the teacher may think that he can use this question as a good question for some time to test the advanced knowledge of students of macroeconomics.
In fact, making questions is an art that has more private appeal than the public appeal. For a university teacher this art is like a patent; they use questions to save time by making innovative questions and keeping innovative questions private.
This practice of keeping private can depend on the contexts. In some culture, taking back questions away means the lack of sincerity in rendering education. If one teacher thinks that he/she will not give question papers to students, because he/she wants to use those questions over time without any alteration, then we cannot defend his/her argument for taking back question papers from students. Rather, this teacher uses questions as an instrument that shields his/her reluctance and lack of commitment to better education or even as an instrument to hide his/her inefficiency in rendering education. What will a person say, if he sees the pages of his/her teacher's notebook that is used to teach in the class have turned red from white? This gives him one signal - and that is inefficiency.
We have studied under some teachers at the University of Dhaka. They used the same notebooks and same words over time to teach students. These teachers are more likely to repeat the same questions in examinations over the years. The scribe saw how students scored even 'A' without even buying the textbook at the University of Dhaka. The students got 'A' because of the teachers' quality, not because the students deserved 'A' on the subject. In this culture, taking back question papers means cheating with education and sustaining a week education system. From this point of view we cannot support taking question papers back from students.
Our university education system would have been much better if we had created an independent examination authority to screen the effectiveness of question making - whether a teacher is using the same questions over time without any alteration at all or not. In this regard, every department at all universities - both private and public - should foster one authority to look into the process of question making. This body will help create a better education system in two ways. First, the teacher who is very much negligent in teaching students will be forced to keep themselves updated and incorporate new information in questions prepared through rigorous study.
Second, whether a teacher is sincere in delivering education or not can easily be assessed by just having a look at the questions that he/she produces. If the teacher uses the same questions over time without any significant modification, we can easily understand that the teacher does not put sincere efforts that he or she is supposed to make. The reason is that making good and effective questions means sound and in-depth knowledge about a particular subject. Making innovative questions is no less daring a task than conducting innovative research. In other words, making innovative questions is a kind of high-quality research.
This contextual argument based on the motivation of using the same questions over time reminds us of the fact that any question-centric argument does not have any universal appeal. It also depends on the motivation of students to study. To analyse this argument, we have to take into account the distinction between probability and higher probability or certainty equivalence. The questions given in the textbooks represent a probability. It does not guarantee that these questions will be there on the question papers during the examinations. Students are often ambivalent. But when students observe a trend that if they study five years' question papers, they need not read textbooks or other materials to pass examination or even get 'A', then giving question papers to students is quite deleterious in the sense that the students will become question-centric.
A SUGGESTION: The problem cannot be addressed only reflecting on whether the questions should be given to students or not. The nature of the outcome of taking back question papers depends on social and cultural backgrounds. That means giving question papers to students is not a satisfactory solution to the problem. In fact, we can make question-making an art, a powerful instrument that can improve our educational system. Strength of selecting questions reflects the strength of learning of the teacher concerned. The weaker the questions are, the weaker the learning of the teacher and vice-versa.
Our proposed solution is that we must give questions to students, but have to supplement this measure with another measure. The measure is formation of an independent body in every department so that it can be assigned to check the strength of questions. If the same questions are repeated over time without any alteration, those questions must be cancelled and banned. This practice, if initiated, will not only encourage students to undertake sincere study but also force teachers to do high-quality research, since making innovative questions means conducting research as well. This method will definitely improve the quality of education in our country.

[Note: The Financial Express on November 15, 2014 published an article, entitled, 'The folly of taking back question papers', by Dr. Dhiman Chowdhury, Professor of Accounting, University of Dhaka.]
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