The relationship between grading and teacher judgment

Teaching and Teacher Education, 2010

Despite the recommendations of some measurement specialists, teachers do not always assign grades based on achievement only. The primary purpose of this study is to clarify the meaning of grades, and to examine some of the factors teachers consider when assigning final grades with a focus on borderline cases. The sample consisted of 516 American public school teachers, selected via stratified random sample in a major metropolitan school district in the Southeast. A 53-item survey using Guttman’s mapping sentences, previously piloted in a separate school district, was created and distributed. Teachers were provided with scenarios that described student ability, achievement, behavior, and effort and the teacher was asked to assign both a numerical and letter grade. A four-way between-subjects ANOVA was conducted with the student characteristics ability, achievement, behavior, and effort as independent variables and final grade as the dependent variable. Findings demonstrate that teachers abided by the official grading policy of the participating school district assigning grades based primarily on achievement under most circumstances, however, in some borderline cases teachers report considering non-achievement factors. Implications for pre-service and in-service professional development are discussed.

Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice, 2018

The purpose of this study was to investigate the specific factors teachers consider when assigning students' report card grades. Data were gathered from 943 K-12 teachers from five school districts in a southeastern state in the United States who completed the Teachers' Grading Practices Survey. Analyses focused on how teachers weigh different factors in determining report card grades, and if these factors and weights differ among teachers who teach at different grade levels and have different amounts of classroom experience. Results revealed statistically significant differences among teachers at different grade levels but no differences associated with teachers' years of experience and no interaction effect. Differences by grade level were evident in teachers' consideration of both cognitive and non-cognitive factors of students' performance. Implications are discussed for improving grading policies and practices, teacher education and teacher professional development.

Economics of Education Review, 1999

Understanding the relationship between grading practices and student evaluations is especially important in higher education because of the increasing importance of this instrument in the promotion process. If evaluations can be increased by giving higher grades, then they are a flawed instrument for the evaluation of teaching. Further, this process may be contributing to the inflation of grades in higher education if faculty have an incentive to increase their evaluations. Also, grade inflation dilutes the signaling role of educational credentials in screening workers for the labor market. In this paper, we revisit the determinants of student evaluations in a model that allows for the possibility that (expected) grades are simultaneously determined. We estimate evaluations using both OLS and two-stage least squares (TSLS) and find that grades do affect an instructor's evaluation. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that instructors can "buy" better evaluations through more lenient grading.

International Journal of Physical Education, 2006

This study was conducted to investigate the consistency between what teachers say (espoused theories) and what they do (theories-in-use) regarding pupils grading. Participants were 51 physical education teachers. At the beginning of the study, teachers gave a written report about the weight of the criteria they use to calculate the final grade. Then, they were asked to provide the grades they assigned to selected pupils of their classes. According to teachers' reports, the most important grading criterion was effort. Behaviour was ranked in the second place and performance in the third. On the contrary, according to the grades they assigned to their pupils, performance was the most important criterion followed by effort and behaviour. The results of this study indicated a discrepancy between teachers' written reports and how they actually assign grades. Therefore, information from studies based solely on teachers' reports should be handled with caution.

Journal of ELT Research

Grading is a complicated process yet serves many significant roles such as judging students' achievement and providing parental feedback. However, studies suggest that grading practices are not always uniform in that non-achievement factors are also frequently included in determining grades. Thus it is important to review and further understand teachers' grading practices. This article explores the discussion and debates around grading practices both in the general education field as well as studies in the English as a foreign language (EFL) context. The discussion, in particular, focuses on the range of factors that influence teachers' grading practices. Finally, this article reflects on implications of grading practices and offers suggestions that have been commonly recommended by experts.

TEFLIN Journal - A publication on the teaching and learning of English

This study investigated teachers’ grading decision making, focusing on their beliefs underlying their grading decision making, their grading practices and assessment types, and factors they considered in grading decision making. Two teachers from two junior high schools applying different curriculum policies in grade reporting in Indonesian educational context were interviewed in depth to reveal their grading decision making. The results show that the teachers believe that assigning grades is not only for measuring the students’ ability, but also for making them active users of the language, giving them life skills and experience and motivating them. In addition, these teachers use various grading practices involving not only formal assessment but also informal one. Remedial tests, giving more tasks and grade adjustment are also done to reach the criteria of passing grade. The factors considered in grading decision making are achievement factors in the forms of scores from formal an...

2001

This study investigated Brazilian elementary teachers' decision making processes when evaluating and grading students' written work. Teachers analyzed the written work of four students who were unknown to them, then produced reports indicating: their perception of the author's grade level and reasons for believing it was that grade level; positive and negative aspects of the written piece; and the grade they would give for the work. Results indicated that the most visible characteristics of the texts (those most closely related to teaching contents and correction) determined how consistently teachers rated the students' grade levels and the grades that they gave to the texts. There were four evaluative patterns corresponding to: teachers producing reports that favored more formal and surface elements (orthography, punctuation, and paragraphs) and those related to such factors as theme development, cohesiveness, consistency, style, and genre; identification of reports that emphasized the formal aspects of the texts rather than the more subjective aspects; prevalence of informal or subjective aspects of the text over formal ones; and teachers' claims about needing to get to know the students and the contextual factors in order to be able to produce an adequate report. (Contains 13 references.) (SM)

JPP (Jurnal Pendidikan dan Pembelajaran), 2022

This study empirically investigated teachers' perceptions, current assessment grading practices, and views towards classroom assessment grading practice. The study randomly sampled 204 teachers and utilized three questionnaires for data collection. Cronbach Alpha Coefficient established the reliability of the various questionnaires. Frequency counts and percentages were used to answer the study research questions, while Pearson correlation was employed to test the study hypotheses. The study found that teachers do not positively perceive assessment grading practice, included non-achievement factors when grading students' assessments and used subjective knowledge when grading assessments. However, teachers viewed the assessment grading practice as an essential tool for quantification of students learning. Subsequently, significance difference was found between teachers' experience and teachers' perception towards assessment grading practice and views on the classroom importance of assessment grading practice. Nonetheless, no significant difference was found between teachers experience and teachers' current classroom grading habits.

2009

Teachers' classroom grading and assessment practices are important elements of assessment reform. The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of classroom learning factors such as class size, subject area, and school size on teachers' classroom assessment practices. The results of a survey of 513 high school teachers showed evidence that teachers had implemented some aspects of assessment reform and that one classroom learning factor (i.e., subject) had a modest effect on teachers' practices. The results also indicate a need for more research on factors that affect teachers' assessment decisions and the effect of these decisions on implementing assessment reform.

Review of Educational Research

Grading refers to the symbols assigned to individual pieces of student work or to composite measures of student performance on report cards. This review of over 100 years of research on grading considers five types of studies: (a) early studies of the reliability of grades, (b) quantitative studies of the composition of K–12 report card grades, (c) survey and interview studies of teachers’ perceptions of grades, (d) studies of standards-based grading, and (e) grading in higher education. Early 20th-century studies generally condemned teachers’ grades as unreliable. More recent studies of the relationships of grades to tested achievement and survey studies of teachers’ grading practices and beliefs suggest that grades assess a multidimensional construct containing both cognitive and noncognitive factors reflecting what teachers value in student work. Implications for future research and for grading practices are discussed.