When I was going through high school, I was highly motivated by grades, probably unhealthily so. I was deeply competitive with my peers about academic achievement, and looked forward to the days report cards came out for weeks. For this reason, I find it very hard to imagine a world where math classes, or school in general, were not focused on grades. This really highlights to me how focused our education system, and our culture in general, is on grades, and how our obsession with grades distracts us from the bigger picture. However, I also do think that feedback plays an important role in the classroom, and grades are one of the ways that students receive feedback on their mastery of the material. I think perhaps it is not the concept of having grades that is itself inherently broken, but rather the way in which these grades are calculated.
High stress testing situations where students are forced to work through a huge number of problems (more than most of them will have time to complete thoroughly) seem counter-intuitive to me. I think testing should reflect the real-world situations where you would use mathematics -- therefore I don't see why students shouldn't be able to have their notes, as well as ample time to complete the problems and check over and defend their answers. If we change the way we think about tests, I think it might do a lot to reduce the "math anxiety" talked about in the article.
However, making these changes would only solve part of the problem - we also need to address how we think about grades. I think that grades as a feedback tool are valuable, but when they become a measure of self-worth or a point of competition among peers, it becomes a significant problem. Growing up, I deeply cared about my grades, and what they reflected about me as a person - which sometimes caused me great stress and unhappiness. I think we need to work to detach grades from ideas of personal worth or achievement, and reframe them as a measure of how much of the material a student has mastered so far. In order to do this, I think we need to leave more room to adjust grades. It makes little sense that a student should be stuck with a grade they got in September for not yet understanding material that they come to understand in December. The grade should reflect how much a student has learned by the end of the course.
At this moment, I can't imagine teaching without giving any grades at all (though I intend to think more on this - I know my own relationship with grades was not ideal and I don't want to carry this on into my teaching). However, I think a grade system that is not percentages or letters, but rather descriptive comments such as "not yet"/"meets expectations"/"exceeds expectations" is worth considering. And overall, I think we need to reframe our understanding of grades as primarily a feedback tool, and not a measure of a student's worth, or potential for achievement.
High stress testing situations where students are forced to work through a huge number of problems (more than most of them will have time to complete thoroughly) seem counter-intuitive to me. I think testing should reflect the real-world situations where you would use mathematics -- therefore I don't see why students shouldn't be able to have their notes, as well as ample time to complete the problems and check over and defend their answers. If we change the way we think about tests, I think it might do a lot to reduce the "math anxiety" talked about in the article.
However, making these changes would only solve part of the problem - we also need to address how we think about grades. I think that grades as a feedback tool are valuable, but when they become a measure of self-worth or a point of competition among peers, it becomes a significant problem. Growing up, I deeply cared about my grades, and what they reflected about me as a person - which sometimes caused me great stress and unhappiness. I think we need to work to detach grades from ideas of personal worth or achievement, and reframe them as a measure of how much of the material a student has mastered so far. In order to do this, I think we need to leave more room to adjust grades. It makes little sense that a student should be stuck with a grade they got in September for not yet understanding material that they come to understand in December. The grade should reflect how much a student has learned by the end of the course.
At this moment, I can't imagine teaching without giving any grades at all (though I intend to think more on this - I know my own relationship with grades was not ideal and I don't want to carry this on into my teaching). However, I think a grade system that is not percentages or letters, but rather descriptive comments such as "not yet"/"meets expectations"/"exceeds expectations" is worth considering. And overall, I think we need to reframe our understanding of grades as primarily a feedback tool, and not a measure of a student's worth, or potential for achievement.
Comments
Post a Comment