1) Grades are what the game is all about. Post them early, post them often.
There are variations on this theme, some say to keep it between you and the student, some say to put them on the wall, some even say put them on the wall from highest mark to lowest mark so the students know where they sit in the class.
2) The grades are not why the students are here, the students are here to learn. The grading is the least important issue of the whole process
I will admit my bias right now, and say that on the spectrum between 1 and 2, I am firmly on the 2 side. Not even close to 1.5
What really bothered me was the range of teacher opinion. How could all of these people, (every single one of them a fantastic educator) have such different opinions on a subject as integral as grading?
What I think it boils down to is not "why grades" but "why school". I think an educators opinion on grading is closely related to their justification for education in general. Do we have schools to keep kids busy, is it to train the next generation, is it to produce finely tuned adults, why do we send kids to school? The opinions on grading are so varied, because few teachers agree on just why exactly we send kids to school in the first place.
I can't speak for other teachers, but the following is my opinion on the matter.
Education supplies what society demands from it. Pre-industrialized nations simply needed enough education to allow farmers to count their pigs and chickens. As industry picked up and became more complicated, there was a need to have people that were trained enough to build railroads and operate machines in factories. Adjusting from an agrarian education model to an industrial education model is not terribly difficult. Math goes past 1+1=2 and into a squared plus b squared equals c squared. Easy as pie, people just go to school for longer.
What society demands from education now, is far more complex. Twenty years ago, there were jobs where you would follow formulas and punch in numbers. Those jobs still exist, but by and in large they have been outsourced. They are the focus of another society and another education system.
So what does THIS society require?
In a word, "innovation". Education 2.0 if you are into that kind of language. We need to train the youth of today to innovate and adapt. As educators, we can't see what is around the next bend anymore. The world is changing far too quickly. We need to teach our learners how to learn. Now does that mean we don't teach them the Pythagorean theorem? Of course not, but it should not be the focus of what they are learning. The learning with that should be how it works, how to use it, then practice problem solving with it. In other words, we need to move up blooms taxonomy a little bit
It seems like we spend a lot of time at the base, with knowledge. In fact, thinking back on my education, I would say that it was almost exclusively knowledge based. (It may have been even worse in university) .
I suppose I am trying to say two things here 1) I don't want to focus on general knowledge 2) I don't want to give students tests to show me what they know, I want to give students tests so they can show themselves what they know.
This is getting pretty long, so stay tuned:
Check out my future post on
"My Ideal Test"
"Why not grades"- on motivation
"It's not what you know, it's when you know"- on late marks, final exams and scaling
- Mr. H
https://deltalearns.ca/terryainge/2013/10/28/understanding-assessment-how-i-fell-out-of-love-with-the-grading-program/
http://tomschimmer.com/2011/02/21/enough-with-the-late-penalties/
http://chriswejr.com/2013/11/10/1-videos-for-starting-dialogue-on-rethinking-awards-and-rewards/
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