To grade, or not to grade?
This week's posting is a byproduct of last week's end-of-marking period grading crunch. It is my least favorite part of teaching. Not the "paper grading" itself - I learned long ago not to assign students writing tasks that I would not be interested in reading. And I take seriously my role in assessing for the purposes of giving feedback that I hope will benefit students' learning. But grading - assigning a number to what students have mastered over the course of 10 weeks - that remains a philosophical conundrum for me, and it becomes more of one as I continue to grow as a teacher.
In the ideal, students would not receive grades on any assignment other than a summative assessment. For no task given along the way would students receive an actual grade - just a lot of feedback that would help learners grow toward mastery. In that case, a quarterly/final grade would be a pretty accurate reflection of student mastery. Unfortunately, that's not the system we have grown up in, as teachers and students. The expedient of grading as a symbolic representation the level of student progress toward mastery has turned into a focus on grades - independent of learning in many cases.
The conundrum is: How, as a teacher in a system using grades, can I balance what I know to be the undermining impact grades can often have on learning with the expectations students have for receiving grades and the roles those grades play in their academic experiences?
In the ideal, students would not receive grades on any assignment other than a summative assessment. For no task given along the way would students receive an actual grade - just a lot of feedback that would help learners grow toward mastery. In that case, a quarterly/final grade would be a pretty accurate reflection of student mastery. Unfortunately, that's not the system we have grown up in, as teachers and students. The expedient of grading as a symbolic representation the level of student progress toward mastery has turned into a focus on grades - independent of learning in many cases.
The conundrum is: How, as a teacher in a system using grades, can I balance what I know to be the undermining impact grades can often have on learning with the expectations students have for receiving grades and the roles those grades play in their academic experiences?
I decided to take the discussion out of my head and into my classroom. It is no surprise that students have diverging ideas about grades and their role academic growth. Their responses make for interesting reading, and give me even more to think about.
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