Vignette 5: Getting What They Deserve?
Well, in my humble opinion, Joan's stance is archaic. I'm in a phase of my education where I am questioning the validity of grades at all. I'm actually really excited to learn more about it (doing away with grades, that is!). Joan says that she wants to look at a mark and see a reflection of a student's academic achievement, but a grade is just a grade, and like a picture it is worth a thousand words. I think Joan is fighting the wrong battle here.
To approach this more literally, I do agree with Joan that while non-academic factors do inform their academic counterparts, they should be kept separate. At least this way if we see a low achievement mark we can immediately refer to the non-academic portion of the mark. As I wrote that last sentence, however, it occurred to me that looking at the non-academic mark can only lead to speculation about its effect on the academic portion, but that speculation may or may not be accurate. So what good does a non-academic portion of a mark even serve? Now that I think about it, it seems to just be a classroom management tool ("you'd better be good or you'll lose valuable participation marks).
Joan says that a mark is meaningless if the two components are not separated, but I fail to see the meaning even if they are separated. Gosh.
Saturday, February 25, 2012
Saturday, February 11, 2012
Week 5
Vignette 4: What Counts?
Mr. Sanchez is well within his right to be upset. It doesn't sound like Juan's teacher is differentiating between achievement, progress, and classroom behavior in his grading practices. If he is, however, he did not communicate that clearly to Mr. Sanchez. The teacher's explanation that Juan "just doesn't listen during instruction" strikes me as mildly uninformed; does he really know for a fact that Juan isn't listening? Is it possible to "just not listen" and consequently turn in exemplary work as Juan has done?
I've heard a few times this term that we cannot be graded for participation, and now I am confused about if that is the case for us university students or if this is the case in the Alberta Education system. I don't disagree with having a participation component, but this again is something for which the standards must be clearly set forth in the course outline. As I write this, though, I flip flop. I also do not think it is unreasonable that grades be based solely on learning outcomes. Participation fits better into the Physical Education POS because there is a lot of 'citizenship' inspired outcomes in it, but at the same time there are tinges of these outcomes in the ELA POS also - effective communication skills for example.
I understand where Juan's teacher is coming from and I don't think he's out of line, but it was his spotty communication of standards to Juan's father and perhaps to Juan himself that have caused an issue here.
Mr. Sanchez is well within his right to be upset. It doesn't sound like Juan's teacher is differentiating between achievement, progress, and classroom behavior in his grading practices. If he is, however, he did not communicate that clearly to Mr. Sanchez. The teacher's explanation that Juan "just doesn't listen during instruction" strikes me as mildly uninformed; does he really know for a fact that Juan isn't listening? Is it possible to "just not listen" and consequently turn in exemplary work as Juan has done?
I've heard a few times this term that we cannot be graded for participation, and now I am confused about if that is the case for us university students or if this is the case in the Alberta Education system. I don't disagree with having a participation component, but this again is something for which the standards must be clearly set forth in the course outline. As I write this, though, I flip flop. I also do not think it is unreasonable that grades be based solely on learning outcomes. Participation fits better into the Physical Education POS because there is a lot of 'citizenship' inspired outcomes in it, but at the same time there are tinges of these outcomes in the ELA POS also - effective communication skills for example.
I understand where Juan's teacher is coming from and I don't think he's out of line, but it was his spotty communication of standards to Juan's father and perhaps to Juan himself that have caused an issue here.
Week 4
Vignette 8: Decisions Decisions
What a coincidence! I'm a little late getting this particular blog in, but thank goodness, because yesterday at teacher's convention I took in a session where the presenter spoke on this exact topic. He talked about using a lot of project based learning and authentic assessment in his math classroom; aside from the midterm and final he does not use tests in his class. This led to questions and conversation about how students are much more engaged and clearly have a more fulfilling and authentic learning experience, but things can be much more difficult for the teacher when it comes time to assign a grade. This in turn led to the hypothetical question of what the difference is between 90% and 95%. Or 80% and 83%. Aside from the literal difference in the numeric value of each, the idea here is that this is an immeasurable difference (for our purposes).
The presenter (David Martin was his name-o) talked about how feedback is very meaningless if there is a grade attached to it - it was encouraging to hear someone else say this as I've been suspecting this is the case since my IPT.
To answer the question, Mr. Brit seems like he has been using a number of different assessments throughout the year. Hopefully a lot of these have been incorporated into his overall marking scheme. It sounds like he is left with the task of assigning an 'achievement' mark which sounds to me like it will be mired in subjectivity. If this is so then he needs to have some sort of a rubric in place; I don't think that he should attach a number to a student's performance if he cannot justify it. Having said that, I hope we are moving in a direction where he won't have to justify it. He should be able to give the student and his/her guardians a detailed description of the learning and improvement that the student has achieved throughout the year, and the number attached to it should be trivial at most.
What a coincidence! I'm a little late getting this particular blog in, but thank goodness, because yesterday at teacher's convention I took in a session where the presenter spoke on this exact topic. He talked about using a lot of project based learning and authentic assessment in his math classroom; aside from the midterm and final he does not use tests in his class. This led to questions and conversation about how students are much more engaged and clearly have a more fulfilling and authentic learning experience, but things can be much more difficult for the teacher when it comes time to assign a grade. This in turn led to the hypothetical question of what the difference is between 90% and 95%. Or 80% and 83%. Aside from the literal difference in the numeric value of each, the idea here is that this is an immeasurable difference (for our purposes).
The presenter (David Martin was his name-o) talked about how feedback is very meaningless if there is a grade attached to it - it was encouraging to hear someone else say this as I've been suspecting this is the case since my IPT.
To answer the question, Mr. Brit seems like he has been using a number of different assessments throughout the year. Hopefully a lot of these have been incorporated into his overall marking scheme. It sounds like he is left with the task of assigning an 'achievement' mark which sounds to me like it will be mired in subjectivity. If this is so then he needs to have some sort of a rubric in place; I don't think that he should attach a number to a student's performance if he cannot justify it. Having said that, I hope we are moving in a direction where he won't have to justify it. He should be able to give the student and his/her guardians a detailed description of the learning and improvement that the student has achieved throughout the year, and the number attached to it should be trivial at most.
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