The school year is well underway. Our new Dean has asked us to reconsider our assessment practices. As always, I am torn. Assessment, in my opinion, has two competing purposes - 1) Feedback for students to help encourage deeper learning, and 2) Reporting out to the public (the university and the field, specifically) to tell them who is the best. Many people maintain that the two go hand in hand. I can't get my head around that. Either, in case 1) I am asking students to take risks, to believe in success, to accept feedback, to let go of past practices of focusing on marks in favor of focusing on learning, and to trust that it will all work out. Or, in case 2) I need to warn students that grading is competitive, only one student can be the best, most can expect to be average, and a few should prepare themselves for failure. I'm not sure how I can expect students to buy in to the first set of requests once I have created the second environment. Furthermore, it is simply not right to be working within framework 2) while telling students that they are participating in a case 1) class.
I believe that I developed my philosophy of assessment from my own perspective as a student. I do not handle criticism well. It has never been helpful to me. It makes me feel like quitting. It makes me dislike and distrust the teacher. I am good at critiquing my own work. I am not easy on myself. I like gentle prodding. I like suggestions. I like mentoring. I like praise. I have never been someone who focuses on marks.
I can think of two examples to illustrate how this has played out in my life. First, my friend's mom was our home room teacher in grade 9. In the fall, after we had returned to school in grade 10, I remember my friend telling me that her mom had shared with her that I had the highest average in our grade nine class. It wasn't something that I expected. It wasn't anything that I had worked to achieve. There were many bright and capable people in my class and although we were all somewhat competitive about marks, I didn't really keep track. My friend's news was a surprise to me. It created within me a picture of myself that I had never had before - the picture of a competent academic.
Fast forward several years to the second example, I was cleaning and sorting trying to pare down my-two-bedroom-bungalow-with-full-basement worth of belongings so that they would fit in a one-bedroom student apartment where I planned to live while I completed my PhD. In one box that I sorted that was full of university assignments and memorabilia, I found a statement of grades from my undergraduate degree (a time before I could check online) unopened. I sort of laughed at myself and my lackadaisical attitude. Why would I neglect to open the envelope? I guess, I knew I had passed. I was uninterested in knowing anymore. My marks were unimportant.
When I opened the transcript more than 10 years and a Master's Degree later, I smiled to think that in that one semester my marks had varied from a perfect score in one class to a low average in at least two more. The difference? Really, it came down to how much I liked the teacher. So, even though at that time the marking would have been comparative with the intent of sorting students, I'm not sure it was accurate. The fact that I was 'outstanding' in Language Arts Methods and 'low average' in Social Studies Methods had little to do with my aptitude and much more to do with my attitude! I have no way to judge how similar or different my experiences are from everyone else's, however, I feel confident that if I am going to err (which no doubt both of my professors at the time did) I would prefer to be the professor who won me over with her charms and received my best work on every assignment. I worked hard to get that perfect mark because she was kind, because I trusted her, and because I could tell that she saw that I was worthy. I want to be kind enough and trust worthy enough and positive enough that my students will work really hard to do well in my class. When they work really hard, and when they succeed, I want to encourage them with positive feedback!
What can you learn from my marks when all of the marks in the class are relatively high? You probably can't tell who was the best student. You probably can tell whether or not I judged the student to have met all of the criteria that I had set for the class. I would say that an A+ indicates that a student met all of my criteria. Students who received As or A minuses met most of the criteria. Students who received Bs needed to do more. It probably meant that I gave them feedback saying that they needed to improve and then I did not see the corresponding improvement. If my students are like me, a high mark probably means that they worked hard to do well in my class, they asked for feedback, they made improvements, they met my criteria! That is still lots of information to be learned from a transcript. How could lower grades with greater divergence be any more informative?
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