Practices of grading: an ethnographic study of educational assessment

The school as an institution assumes that students' grades are constituted by their assessments. This paper examines the background of this presupposition and provides a micro-analytical perspective of the grading practice of teachers in German High Schools (Gymnasium). This paper conceptualises the theoretical framework of the research in educational measurement in discussion. It is shown that the measured assessment of students and the teacher's observations are linked. When grading, teachers construct their own assessments. This process is depicted in this paper by two forms of observations: self-observation within the context of written examinations and third-party observation within the context of final oral exams.     

Teachers' Assessment Practices: Preparation,Isolation, and the Kitchen Sink

A sample of 143 midwestern elementary and secondary school teachers from a variety of practice settings responded to a survey and provided comments regarding their assessment practices The purpose of the survey was to collect background (demographic) information on the teachers and information on several assessment-related practices, including frequency with which teachers assign routine class assignments, types of marks used to report student performance, frequency and grading of major assignments and tests, source of classroom tests, kinds of marks used, methods used to combine marks, meaning of grades, teachers' knowledge and perceptions regarding district grading policies, and teachers' awareness of the grading policies of their peers. Interviews with the teachers provided additional insights into their practices. Results indicated that teachers' assessment practices were highly variable and unpredictable from characteristics such as practice setting, gender, years of experience, grade level, or familiarity with assessment policies in their school district. Teachers generally claim to consider and incorporate a variety of objective and subjective factors when assigning grades on assignments, assessments, and report cards, synthesizing diverse kinds of information about achievement in ways that tend to maximize the likelihood that students will achieve high grades. Only about one half of the teachers surveyed indicated that they were aware of their districts' policies on grading; most were not aware of the assessment practices of their colleagues. Many teachers seemed to have individual assessment policies that reflected their own individualistic values and beliefs about teaching. Recommendations for making grades more meaningful ways of communicating about student performance are suggested.     

Indeterminacy in the use of preset criteria for assessment and grading

When assessment tasks are set for students in universities and colleges, a common practice is to advise them of the criteria that will be used for grading their responses. Various schemes for using multiple criteria have been widely advocated in the literature. Each scheme is designed to offer clear benefits for students. Breaking down holistic judgments into more manageable parts is seen as a way to increase openness for students and achieve more objectivity in grading. However, such approaches do not adequately represent the full complexity of multi‐criterion qualitative judgments, and can lead to distorted grading decisions. Six anomalies in the ways assessors approach the grading task are identified, together with several likely contributing factors. Overall, the conclusion is that explicit grading models do not have as strong a theoretical foundation as is commonly supposed, and that holistic appraisal merits further investigation.     

An Experiment Attempting to Determine the Effectiveness of Frequent Testing as an Aid to Learning in Beginning College Courses in American Government

Abstract

While for many years a part of the student body of American university summer sessions, the “special” or credit-non-degree student has rarely been studied in terms of background, courses taken, and academic achievement while in summer school. A random sample of 289 such students enrolled in University of Wisconsin-Madison summer sessions in 1965, 1966, and 1967 was studied. Data were drawn from the admission applications submitted by the “specials” and from their end-of-summer grade reports.

The majority of students were found to be regular year students at other colleges and universities. A smaller number were teachers or school administrators during the rest of the year. Enrollment was concentrated almost exclusively in the College of Letters and Science and School of Education. Academic performance during the summer term was generally good.     

Lessons from Alternative Grading: Essential Qualities of Teacher Feedback

One critically important step in the instructional process is providing feedback to students, and yet, providing timely and thorough feedback is often lacking due attention. Reasons for this oversight could range from several factors including increased class sizes, vast content coverage requirements, extracurricular responsibilities, and the generally hectic daily schedules of teachers. This article synthesizes the findings from a year-long qualitative study investigating the alternative grading practices of five high school teachers and gives particular attention to the nature of the feedback these teachers provided to their students. Teachers' feedback is pared down to its essential qualities in order to offer manageable and practical strategies to current classroom teachers for providing effective feedback to their students.     

招收自费生:我国高校招生制度改革的突破口

高等教育是高投入的教育,教育产业化既然不被认可,教育部分产业化是否能在高校试行?!那么,在生源向国外流失即国际性生源争夺战中,我们是不是应大胆实行自费招生制呢?在社会经济不断发展和社会高素养劳动力大量需求的情况下,招收自费生,应是我国高校招生制度改革的突破口。     

Elementary Teachers' Classroom Assessment and Grading Practices

Abstract

The authors investigated the assessment and grading practices of over 900 Grades 3-5 teachers representing urban, suburban, and rural schools. Teachers indicated the extent to which they used various factors to grade students, the types of assessments used, the cognitive level of assessments, and the grades awarded. Teachers appeared to conceptualize 6 major factors when they graded students; they placed the greatest weight on academic performance and academic-enabling behaviors, such as effort and improvement, and much less emphasis on homework, comparisons with other students, grade distributions of other teachers, and borderline cases. The teachers used 3 types of assessments—constructed-response, objective, and teacher-made major examinations; they differentiated between recall and higher level cognitive skills. However, there were few relationships between assessment and grade level, subject matter assessed, and grades awarded. Results are discussed in light of other research, indicating that teachers use a “hodgepodge” of factors when assessing and grading students.     

以实施“国培计划”为契机,推动师范生实践教学改革

师范生实践教学是高师院校师范生培养的重要环节,对师范生培养质量起着十分关键的作用。高师院校应以实施"国培计划"为契机,找准"国培计划"与师范生实践教学改革的契合点,推动师范生实践教学改革,加强高师院校与中小学校的联系与合作,形成共同培养师范生的良性机制。     

Grading as a Reform Effort: Do Standards‐Based Grades Converge With Test Scores?

Standards‐based progress reports (SBPRs) require teachers to grade students using the performance levels reported by state tests and are an increasingly popular report card format. They may help to increase teacher familiarity with state standards, encourage teachers to exclude nonacademic factors from grades, and/or improve communication with parents. The current study examines the SBPR grade–state test score correspondence observed across 2 years in 125 third and fifth grade classrooms located in one school district to examine the degree of consistency between grades and state test results. It also examines the grading practices of a subset of 37 teachers to determine whether there is an association between teacher appraisal style and convergence rates. A moderate degree of grade–test score convergence was observed using three agreement estimates (coefficient kappa, tau‐b correlations, and classroom‐level mean differences between grades and test scores). In addition, only small amounts of grade–test score convergence were observed between teachers; a much greater proportion of variance lay within classrooms and subjects. Appraisal style correlated weakly with convergence rates, but was most strongly related to assigning students to the same performance level as the test. Therefore using recommended grading practices may improve the quality of SBPR grades to some extent.     

Making the grade: a history of the A–F marking scheme

This article provides a historical interpretation of one of the defining features of modern schooling: grades. As a central element of schools, grades—their origins, uses and evolution—provide a window into the tensions at the heart of building a national public school system in the United States. We argue that grades began as an intimate communication tool among teachers, parents, and students used largely to inform and instruct. But as reformers worked to develop a national school system in the late nineteenth century, they saw grades as useful tools in an organizational rather than pedagogical enterprise—tools that would facilitate movement, communication and coordination. Reformers placed a premium on readily interpretable and necessarily abstract grading systems. This shift in the importance of grades as an external rather than internal communication device required a concurrent shift in the meaning of grades—the meaning and nuance of the local context was traded for the uniformity and fungibility of more portable forms.     

On the Declining Interest in Physics among Students—From the perspective of teachers

This study examines physics teachers’ views on factors that contribute to the declining interest in physics among school students. A total of 190 physics teachers from 91 secondary schools and nine junior colleges in Singapore participated in this study, which used a survey instrument to seek their views. Rasch analysis was used to analyze the data. The findings showed that teachers are uncertain about the career prospects of physics graduates and are not very optimistic about the market demand for physics graduates. They feel that physics seems to be difficult and abstract to students. The perception that physics is for boys seems to be rooted in society. The teachers emphasized the importance of co‐curricular activities and laboratory work to enhance interest of students in learning physics. We provide several recommendations to arrest the declining interest in physics at the school level.     

Unintended Consequences: Understanding the Relationship Between Dual Enrollment Participation,College Undermatch,and Bachelor’s Degree Attainment

Research in Higher Education - Recent research suggests that dual enrollment programs are a useful recruiting tool for colleges and universities as many high school students remain at their dual...     

略论职业院校教师的成长

如何促进职业院校的教师成长是当前职业教育研究的重要课题,可以从职前教育与在职后发展两个方面来进行探讨。职前教育阶段要求严格师范生的选拔制度,推行双证书制度;在职教育阶段要求采取有效措施来促进教师成长,如建立学术型组织以营造教师成长的良好氛围、在课程与教学改革实践中形成教学风格、制定合理的教师评价标准以提高教师的工作效能。     

Discrimination in grading: A scoping review of studies on teachers’ discrimination in school

Studies on teachers’ grading suggest that school grades depend not only on students’ performance but also on teachers’ bias toward specific social categories. Numerous studies tested the existence of discrimination in grading using different strategies and focusing on multiple students’ characteristics. This study aims to summarise those studies by identifying (1) the methodologies used, (2) the characteristics on which discrimination is based and (3) the empirical results. We conducted a scoping review where studies were selected blindly by the two authors. The initial search was conducted on ERIC, Education Database and PsycInfo and 37 studies were finally identified. A comparison among the included studies suggests that the main strategies used are experiments and regression analysis on the difference between blind and non-blind scores, while gender, race/ethnicity and migration background are the most frequently tested characteristics. Finally, on average studies confirmed the presence of discrimination in grading still with some exceptions and, sometimes, under specific conditions. To conclude, it is challenging to test teachers’ discrimination through grading and to date the methodologies used have some limitations. However, on average, empirical evidence suggests that school grades are affected by teachers’ bias.     

To grade or not to grade: balancing formative and summative assessment in post-16 teacher trainee observations

The issue of whether trainee teachers in the post-16 sector should have their classroom practice graded has been debated for a number of years. The case for training courses retaining an emphasis on written and verbal ‘developmental’ feedback at the expense of ‘judgements’ appears to be lost. This article is set within the context of an ever-growing culture of performativity in English further education colleges, where grading is regarded as an essential requirement to ensure high quality teaching. Tensions are explored between stakeholders who call for graded observations of trainees’ classroom performance (e.g. Ofsted and FEC quality assurance managers), and classroom-based trainers and researchers who argue that grading is too judgemental and compromises the formative and developmental progress of trainees. The rationale for trainee teachers to have their classroom practice graded is contrasted with evidence that highlights the negative results of grading. This article reports findings from the evaluation of an innovative, alternative strategy that addresses Ofsted’s central requirement for trainees to know ‘where they are’ in their development by offering a middle way between grading and not grading trainees’ classroom performance.     

高职院校教师队伍类型结构分析及优化建议--基于X省高职院校人才培养状态数据的分析

将高职院校教师类型划分为校内专任、校内兼课、校外兼职、校外兼课四类,这一分类提升了对于高职院校教师队伍现状认识的深度。基于这一分类视角,通过对X省高职院校人才培养状态数据的分析,发现该省高职院校教师队伍在这一分类结构上存在一些问题:兼职教师质量和数量未达到要求,不利于双师素质教学团队建设;校外兼课教师教学量占比相对偏高,不利于学生实践能力提升;校内兼课教师人数占据较大比例,不利于学生培养质量提高。针对上述问题,高职院校在内涵建设中应着力于企业高质量兼职教师队伍建设,加强校内专任教师队伍能力提升,促进校内兼课教师队伍规范化建设。     

高师成教学员特点及教育对策研究

本在探讨高等师范院校成教学员特点的基础上有针对性地提出了教育建议。高师成教学员的特点有成熟性、在职性、角色的多重性和角色转换的不适应性、易于失衡的心态及时代性。章提出在成教学员思想教育工作中，应确立以德育为首，以中小学教师素质为中心的指导思想，强化自我教育意识和参与意识，纪律约束和学员自治相结合，以提高为主，塑造、改造和提高相结合，扮好角色、讲究人际关系、注重整体效应，做好双重示范，争取教学相长。     

衔接高中高职 教好高等数学

高职院校高等数学教学的普遍困境是:教师难教、学生厌学、效果不佳.产生这种现象有多种原因,一个重要原因是高职教学与高中教学脱节.这种脱节有教师、学生和教材等三个方面.作为教师,做好高职与高中的衔接工作,是走出困境的基本途径.     

Does Student Effort Respond to Incentives? Evidence from a Guaranteed College Admissions Program

This paper studies the effects of guaranteed college admission on student effort and achievement. In 1997, Texas enacted the “Top Ten Percent” law, which guarantees admission to any public college for students in the top ten percent of their high school class. In practice, eligible students become aware of their admission status at the end of their junior year in high school—more than 1 year prior to attending college. We use data from a large, urban school district and regression discontinuity methods to test for effects on effort. Our preferred estimates show that students who barely qualify for the admissions guarantee earn marginally lower grades and take fewer advanced courses in their senior year compared to students who do not qualify for guaranteed admission and learn their status in the final senior year term. We find qualitatively similar results when limiting our sample to finer bandwidths, although the estimates are imprecise.     

How teachers’ attitudes affect their approaches to teaching international students

There is empirical evidence that teachers’ intentions concerning what students should learn, teachers’ beliefs about teaching and teachers’ conceptions of, and approaches to, teaching within a specific context are closely related to the resulting quality of teaching. Following this line of reasoning, I argue in this paper that despite extensive research about good practice teaching international students, it is still unclear what constitutes good practice within this specific context. This research uses empirical data to determine how teachers may improve their understanding of, and adapt their teaching to, diverse groups of international students to meet emergent demands. A sample of 20 academics teaching international students in a medium‐sized regional Australian university participated in the study by responding to the widely used Approaches to Teaching Inventory. Results show that in this sample teachers tend to adapt their teaching approaches to match the context and, to some extent, slightly tend towards a knowledge transmission, teacher‐focused approach to teaching. An understanding of this may be used to implement staff development programmes for teaching practices that promote a student‐focused approach to teaching to encourage knowledge creation and conceptual change when teaching international students.