EDible News: Michael Gyssels, Staff Writer
Consecutive I/S: English & History
Call me brazen and reckless, but my interpretation of this month’s theme, Students in Motion, will likely seem, at first, only obliquely related. The educative system as it exists tends to mark punitively. In other words, students are punished with poor grades when assignments do not meet expectations. The current system, however, does not recognize that “does not meet expectations” can mean any number of things: that students have not handed in their work (often due to circumstances beyond their control); that students did not understand the assignment; that the assignment itself and the grading criteria were unclear; or that students simply did not pay enough attention in class—and their marks therefore suffered.
A common thread runs through four of those five scenarios: other than not paying attention in class, the student is not directly responsible for their poor performance, though our current system almost always assumes it to be the case. Thus my thoughts here focus more so on evaluative motivation and student ascension on the grading scale than physical movement: how can we help students help themselves?
Punitive grading ignores the impact of poor pedagogy, placing too much emphasis on student agency or lack thereof. Of course, students should be actively working toward better education for their own sake, but without inspiring teaching methods students have no reason to want to learn. Moreover, students must also possess the means to learn—a healthy home environment and stable emotional state, for example.
Thus when considering that students who are struggling are likely struggling for a plethora of reasons that do not include laziness—especially marked laziness or disinterest different from their high-performing peers—punitive grading severely hinders those students already struggling within a specific classroom paradigm. In other words, marking low-achieving students harshly only reinforces their low achievement; it sets a precedent for poor performance and predicts further failure because it enforces the rules that cause said failure.
More troubling is that, especially in the case of work not submitted, punitive grading actually validates poor behaviour: the student is, for whatever reason, not doing the work, yet we are giving that non-work a grade. That is, if a student resists work or does not hand it in, stamping a violent O or F ascribes value—uncharacteristically negative value—to work that does not exist. Thus unengaged students never actually have to confront work and will thus never have to challenge themselves the way the work asks: they never have to do that thing they don’t want to do, and are therefore not learning in your classroom.
In effect, punitive grading also devalues the educator’s teaching practices and skillset—though perhaps justly. Where teachers are valued based on student performance, punitive grading both shifts blame to the student, but also implies that the teacher was unable to connect with the student, was unable to teach them.
Consider Growing Success, which emphasizes a culture in which student and teacher learn together in a collaborative relationship, each playing an active role in setting learning goals, developing success criteria, giving and receiving feedback, monitoring progress, and adjusting learning strategies. (30)
Thus pedagogical success should not be measured by student grades, but student achievement, which is markedly different (i.e. where a final grade indicates an average, a student’s performance on the last assignments in a course better demonstrates their learning). We owe it to students, and to ourselves as educators, to conduct more assessment for learning, rather than assessment of learning, to ensure that learning is actually happening.
When we assess for learning before evaluating, we give students a chance to learn and to ask questions, and we gain the opportunity to flex our pedagogical muscles, so to speak. In other words, we are able to teach in a healthy environment. By deemphasizing numerical feedback, we reemphasize student thinking.
But how do we assess for learning? A valid question, for anyone who has taught in a high school or elementary classroom likely finds my suggestion naïve and utopic. Still, I stand by my answer, no matter how equally naïve it might seem—that answer being “building trust.”
Punitive grading is entirely distrustful and cruel. As I noted above, it ignores students’ emotional climates. Perpetual, unfair evaluations emphasize and rely on the uncomfortable and unlikely assumption that if a student does not complete an assignment, the student is wholly and undoubtedly to blame.
Teachers problematically forget that they were also young once and that, as highly educated persons, we likely had the academic tools we needed most of the time. Many of our students will not. And so, those students are hesitant, they are resistant, they sometimes cannot muster the requisite energy to complete an entire assignment, but we must trust that our students are doing the best that they can, with the tools they have, in the environment that they inhabit.
Of course, as a TC I have heard often about “assessment for learning” without any idea how to implement it. Like most of my peers, I was extremely hesitant.
- “Students won’t complete the work.”
- “They don’t care.”
- “They’ll zone out during the lesson if it isn’t for marks.”
I learned quickly, however, that if students are not interested they’ll zone out anyway, regardless of numerical punishments. I also learned quickly that “incomplete” does not mean “invaluable,” and that students might very well produce insight, even if they only answer half of your questions.
Though seemingly contrary to this notion of trust, my first suggestion for implementation is: don’t let students take the work home. One of three things happens: they take it home and finish it; they take it home and cheat; they don’t take it home. And none of those three things guarantees that the students bring it back to class on time.
How does this help students see their own value? How does confining work to the classroom emphasize trust? As the teacher, you spend time exposing their value in your feedback. Encourage lines of thought. Ask questions. Show students their thoughts have incited your own thinking process. To foster mutual growth, ensure students that learning is a conversation. Again, punitive grading assumes that the teacher knows everything and can subsequently assign students a numerical value based on correspondence between teacher-knowledge and student-thought.
The most important factor to successful assessment for learning, rather than of learning, is to hand back assignments quickly. When students are evaluated, they internalize their value based on the number you write on the page. That number is a cruel solipsism: it obscures the work the student did, the feedback you provided, even the assignment’s content. It does not matter how long the assignment has been out of their hands, students’ mood when they receive your feedback will correlate directly with the mark you’ve given them contrasted by the mark they want.
When you give verbal feedback quickly and directly, students retain context. Your most active and engaged students might still be thinking about the material from yesterday’s lesson when you give back their assignment. And when you give that assignment back, you open a dialogue and answer questions they might have had. You might also pose more questions yourself and continue a conversation later.
But more important are your struggling students: they might have forgotten about the assignment completely. They might have written only a few sentences and crumpled the paper into their bag, forcing you to stop them on the way out. But, when you ask the student questions and comment on their work, regardless of the scope or quantity of that work, you validate that student’s ideas. You remind them that their thinking does pay off, and that their contributions can, should, and will be valued in the classroom.
Likewise, assessments recognize that students may not fully comprehend something the first time, engaged or unengaged.
You may have noticed by now that I avoid “good,” “bad,” “strong,” and “weak” in my pedagogical discourse, the reason being that I believe all students have the skill to be strong if they can engage—and that means giving them the right tools to engage with the material.
So, we have an engaged student who misses the point of a lesson and answers unsatisfactorily. The student’s grade drops unnecessarily (and unjustly based on their normally outstanding performance). Later, we look at the grade report and notice a strange valley along the student’s performance graph and wonder “what went wrong, ” but it was the instructor who evaluated unfairly.
Thus we are inadvertently punishing a normally “strong” student because something in the most recent lesson didn’t click. I believe that we must always assume, first and foremost, that the problem comes from the instructor. Only by exhausting your pedagogical knowledge and strategies can we begin to blame the student. It’s our job to foster an environment that various students can learn in and from.
Luckily, the engaged student may approach you and ask where s/he went wrong and how s/he can improve.
The unengaged student, on the other hand, generally expects to do poorly. They may not meet the requirements, and even if they express flashes of insight that you respect and admire, their overall grade is poor—just as they expected. Will they give this grade a second thought? Not likely, as it’s par for the course.
You might comment on some strong insights within a poor assignment, but if they have no reason to read those comments no learning really takes place. Rather, the unengaged student learns that s/he gets 50s, s/he will always get 50s, and there is no way to stop getting 50s.
But, if we provide assessment—especially on new material—instead of evaluation, students might exceed their own expectations. If they stop associating their worth with a number and begin to associate their worth with class contributions, something interesting happens: your unengaged students engage, while your consistently engaged students enjoy the new voices in the room.
To cement my ideas, I want to consider an anecdote that sparked this lengthy tract.
Last week in my history class I delivered a lesson on Holocaust poetry. As 2P students, poetry in a history class is like mayonnaise on peanut butter sandwiches—or some other unappetizing analogy. They were hesitant and nervous—resistant, even. They chattered as we picked through poems to elucidate historical context and they snickered when we talked about “hope” and “butterflies.”
And then I administered a group assignment and I sat for the entire period with the snickering boys. They mumbled at the floor, fiddled with pencil shavings and averted their eyes. If I turned my back they begin to snicker again. With 10 minutes remaining, I asked them to “please write something for the fifth question. I don’t care about the first four, I just want to know what you’re thinking and feeling after this lesson.”
To my surprise, one of my consistently unengaged students produced an insight I hadn’t thought of myself. I frantically scribbled superlatives commending this student for such a profound thought and asked them some follow-up questions.
In my class the next day I returned the assignments and requested commentary. To my surprise, this student, a notorious “in-risk” student, a “weak” student, a “poor reader” managing a 51% average and has never raised his hand to say anything other than “Can I get a drink?” answered my call:
“I think the butterfly can escape and he can’t, so he’s jealous…and stuff”
“And stuff.” I smiled to myself. He’d spoken up, even if he left “and stuff” lingering like some rebellious and standoffish badge of honour.
I have an answer—but I still don’t care…not much, anyway.
And to think, if I had evaluated the assignment, he would have gotten a zero.
