'It's Pretty Difficult to Fail': The reluctance of lecturers to award a failing grade

Graduates from initial teacher education institutions in New Zealand are assumed to be fit to take up positions as beginning teachers. To this end lecturers make judgements at various stages during the teacher education programme about the quality of student performance with regard to coursework and teaching practice. Findings from a field-based project at a large metropolitan college of education in New Zealand revealed that making such judgements was not a straightforward activity. In particular, there was a reluctance to award failing grades. The college's published guidelines referred to the passing and failing of courses and the programme as dependent on the quality of submitted work or demonstrated performance. The everyday discourse and observed practice of lecturers and student teachers suggested, however, that both groups construed a fail grade as a judgement of personal worth. This shift from judgements about performance to judgements about personal worth was associated with the utilisation of criteria other than those outlined in published documents. The use of 'other' criteria enabled positive judgements to be made about students who did not meet course requirements and/or whose work failed to meet the minimum standard. Lecturers thus appeared to be reluctant to act as gatekeepers to an initial beginning teacher position.