I guess this comes up quite often in educational context. There is a student who attended a seminar where they were supposed to study an assigned research paper and deliver a presentation to the class. The presentation delivered by the student was very low quality as was also reflected by the low grade given by a group/committee of seminar tutors (from post-doc to associate professor level). The evaluation turned out to be a big blow to the student's ego and even after several weeks, the person can't digest the failure, despite very careful explanation on the spot, as well as several interactions and (failed) attempts to "better the grade by performing some extra work". The student is all the time coming back with requests for additional explanation of particularities of the failure.
What is/are the right pedagogical technique(s) to handle such a situation?
- clearly, the student has a high self-esteem and opinion about him/herself
- probably did not face a situation of a miserable failure before in the past
- the student does not seem to see/accept the relative difference in his/her performance and the rest of the peer group
- the committee of tutors was very careful in assigning the grade and went through a thorough discussion. This is not a question of the grade fairness, but a question of student's self-perceived feeling of receiving an unfair treatment