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Shelly Cloke
Grade 7 Teacher
Classroom Assessment Consulting and Contract Presenting
Contact
cloke.shelly@gmail.com (personal)
shelly.cloke@wrsd.ca (work)
Engaging Students through
Instruction and Assessment:
Research, Instruction
and Assessment Models
by Shelly Cloke
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The Problem with Grades
Impede feedback uptake
Limit students to surface learning
Grades
Not detailed enough to guide improvement
Elicit external and competitive motivation
RESEARCH
Grades Lack Detail
Grades and points are efficient but are not able to guide students to improve learning (Black & Wiliam, 1998; McTighe & Ferrara, 1998).
Evaluative grading does not improve future performance. There is not enough detail in a summative grade to indicate where performance needs to improve (Schinske & Tanner, 2014).
What do averages tell us?
Todd Rose (2015) explores the the idea that averages tell us nothing about individuals, because, like grades, they lack detail and specificity. When using a number (or other summative indicator) to represent multiple aspects of a complex whole, we are applying "one-dimensional thinking to undestand something that is complex or jagged" (Rose, 2015, p. 82).
Jagged principles have multiple dimensions that are related to each other but can only be compared individually using an average. For example, we can easily compare one human trait such as height using averages but if we take all of the dimensions that make up a human physique like height, weight, arm length, waist circumference, etc., we cannot effectively compare them using an average.
Grades are similar in that they are multidimensional so a summative, overall mark tells us very little about a student's strengths and struggles. Rose posits that "averagarianism," which is using averages to understand individuals, actually does the opposite; in effect, averagarianism standardizes, ranks and sorts individuals rather than helping us understand them, and in the end, "erases the individuality of the person" (Rose, 2015, p. 39).
Using averages to assess something as complex as learning cannot be a benefit to students if it erases their individuality. In keeping with this idea that we should only use averages to compare one dimension of a complex whole, Cognitive-Based Assessment (an approach I have developed and is explored on later pages on this website), seeks to compare individual cogntive aspects of learning rather than the traditional secondary approach that compares student performance on assessment types (quizzes, assignments, exams, etc.). See 'Cognitive-Based Assessment' on the site menu for more details.
Lipnevich and Smith's (2009) small focus-group study of 49 undergrad students:
The study found grades impacted both strong and struggling students in that "low grades elicit negative effect and damage the students' sense of self-efficacy, and high grades decrease motivation and lessen students' perceived need to improve" (Lipnevich & Smith, 2009, p. 347)
The study also found the lack of detail in grades reduced motivation to engage with feedback and deemed grades "unneccesary if the goal was learning" (p. 347).
One participant in the focus-group study lamented, "I've always hated grades because they don't tell you anything" (Lipnevich & Smith, 2009, p. 365).
Surface Learning Dominates
Points-based grading often focuses on surface as opposed to deep learning (Rust, 2002), where students figure out the easiest and quickest way to achieve the necessary points, irrespective if this is helpful to the learning process; in other words, “replacing cognitive goals with the acquisition of points” (Iamarino, 2014, p. 5).
The traditional system of collecting data and averaging points obscures the feedback need to engage with if they are to improve performance; the traditional system also detracts from students’ learning needs, resulting in learning being ignored in favor of what can easily be measured (Black & Wiliam, 1998; Neigel, 2017; Shappell, 2018).
Elicits External and Competitive Motivation
The complex interplay between motivation, learning and assessment is disrupted by the influence of evaluative grades (Brookhart, 1993 & 1994; Tittle, 1994; Shepard, 2019; McMillan, 2005).
Grades activate external rather than internal incentives and elicit competition between students, both of which impact creative and divergent thinking (Butler & Nisan, 1986; Shepard, 2019).
Butler and Nisan (1986) conducted a study of 261 grade 6 children investigating whether task-related evaluation impacts intrinsic motivation. They found that individual feedback on a task was preferred to normative grades, and this feedback leads to higher interest in tasks. The authors maintain that normative grades depress creativity, foster a fear of failure, and undermine task interest.
Kyaruzi et al.’s (2019) study of over 2700 students from private and government-run schools in Tanzania examined how students perceive feedback and how it affects performance. The study found that “perceived monitoring is negative to feedback use” (p. 291) because, if students feel their competence is being monitored, which is what grades do, their motivation becomes extrinsic, resulting in growth and learning being impeded.
Butler’s (1988) study compared motivational impact to the format used to present the feedback (comments only, grades only and grades with comments), finding the comments-only intervention increased task-involvement which is “beneficial, not only at low but also high levels of achievement” (p. 13).
Strong emotions related to evaluation can also interfere with learning (Harrison et al., 2015). Third year medical students experienced high levels of fear of failure and punishment, followed by a rush of relief from passing a medical performance assessment. The authors attributed the reduction in desire to engage with feedback provided after the exam to these intense emotional states, even though the feedback would help them with future performance (Harrison et al., 2015).
Rust (2002) maintains that grades do not actually mean a lot, and that"numbers and grades can be invested with meaning they do not have" (p. 155). Students will focus on getting better marks than their classmates instead of examining their strengths and weaknesses in order to improve.
Interferes with Feedback Engagement and Uptake
Further to Butler's (1988) study on feedback and grades referred to earlier, their research also found that while individual comments increased engagement on the task, once normative grades were present (as in the comments and grades and grades only intervention groups), the presence of the grade cancelled out the positive affect of the comments. Butler (1988) found that “combining task and ego-involving evaluation will induce an ego-involving orientation, just as does the provision of ego-involving situation alone” (p. 13).
The Harrison et al. (2015) study on 17 third year medical students mentioned above aimed to explore why students, after they received their summative assessment, failed to make use of formative feedback to improve future performance. The authors found evidence that the “dominance of summative assessment culture influences behavior, emotions and cognitions regarding feedback” (p. 238), which led to students ignoring feedback.
Rust (2002) echoes that students "ignore accompanying feedback" (p. 155) when they are focused on their grades.
SUMMARY
The Problem with Grades
As grades become the dominant focus of assessment, learning is ignored, reliance on external motivators increases, competition among students increases, while at the same time, interference with engagement and use of feedback to improve learning decreases. A grading practice heavily influenced by summative measures can negatively impact students because of lack of detailed information, reduced task engagement and motivation to engage with feedback, along with a focus on surface as opposed to deep learning.
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