Entrance slip ( Oct. 14 ): Marks, grades and their effects in schooling

Before students are able to self-assess their learning outcomes, most of them will rely on grades to understand their process and results of learning. Percentage or letter grades give students direct information for their self-evaluation. Sometimes, grades could provide students incentives to learn. 

However, percentage or letter grades alone are not enough to be a strong feedback. Students should know what activities need to undertake to improve or maintain their learning status. Grades should serve to learn and teach, but not to discourage students or be used by students to compete against each other.

I agree with author's statement that teachers should focus on learning instead of trying to push and control students with rewards or threats of grades.(p. 9)  Teachers have the responsibility to "move towards an environment in which learning is seen as an end in itself and feelings of competence are found through personal improvement."(p. 8) Many students struggle with test anxiety, perhaps because they or their parents value good grads so highly. If students don't have the freedom to decide what the grades can bring to them,  how can they improve and grow. Teachers should comfort those students who get bad grades, and teach them how to "transform the use of tests and grades from judgmental and unfair to informational and helpful to the learning process."(p.8) Teachers should also help students develop self-assessment skills, then students could rely less on the grades for self-evaluation.

If mathematics is taught without giving grades, I think teacher should consider how to use multiple methods to provide feedbacks to the students. One-to-one conversations between teacher and students is always my first choice. In the one-to-one conversation, teacher could provide student targeted feedback. Without giving grades, students would feel less pressure from the tests or quizzes. But for some students, they may lose motivation to learn. As a conclusion, since it is very important to use multiple assessment methods to meet the needs of diverse learners, grading as a traditional method of evaluation should not be abandoned. 

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Sep 5, 2021

Articles:

Refocusing our efforts: A shift from grading to an emphasis on learning

If students' motivation to learn relies on achieving certain grades, I think we may use grading in the wrong way or we mislead the purpose of the grading to the students. We do hope to cultivate students' intrinsic motivation of learning, then what can grading help here? Or, I could change the question to how can we use extrinsic motivators to cultivate intrinsic motivation? Once students have the intrinsic motivation to learn, they will not be distracted by the value of grades or any other external incentives. In this article, 34 students are invited to participate in their study. I deeply feel that students' demands vary tremendously from one to another.  However, we still can see that the majority of students enjoyed choosing a topic that was of interest to them and working together. As teachers, it would be helpful to add informative comments beside the grades in order to let students focus on learning rather than comparing grades.

After reading this article, I am going to find the answers to below three questions:

1. How to give our students choice about learning topics during their learning journey?

2. How to use extrinsic motivators to cultivate intrinsic motivation?

3. Which and why certain learning activities should be graded? (before we are thinking about how to take off giving grades, we need to truly understand the use of grading first.)

In the article, suggestions are given:

- Ryan and Deci (2000) argue that if those external rewards are used to control students and diminish autonomy, then they decrease intrinsic motivation.

-First, in order for a student to internalize and accept the value of uninteresting tasks, she needs to experience relatedness and connectedness. The tasks should be modeled or valued by others, such as peers, teachers, or parents, to whom the student has an

attachment. Second, the student must experience perceived competence. The tasks must be within the student's current level of ability and skill. Third, the student must feel "freedom from excessive external pressure toward behaving or thinking a certain way" (Ryan & Deci, 2000, p. 74). In other words, the student must possess a feeling of autonomy or a sense of choice.