Grades: They Either Make or Break You
Imagine arriving home. You received a letter. This letter has a letter grade in red ink. All this paper says is “F”. Your grade for your life up until now has just come in. You have no idea why this is your grade. You don’t know what mistakes you made or how to fix them. In school systems today, grades are handed out left and right without any students learning their mistakes or finding out ways to get back up from a mistake that was made. I believe intelligence can be measured in many ways, but when it comes to the education system, there is a set goal for students to understand all information that is taught and to memorize it. Identifying a common misconception on what students can do, and how they should learn to get good grades without making mistakes overtime. Learning can be measured without grades as failure is looked down upon, and students are told to accept failure and learn from these mistakes. How can school systems focus away from grades and teach more about accepting failure to learn?
Grades are a method of teaching failure itself, where students drive off of grades that haven’t satisfied their needs. Motivating each student to pursue success through constant hours of studying and pushing their limits to a test. In "To grade or not to grade: Student perceptions of the effects of grading a course in work-integrated learning" written by Gregory Reddan. Appealing towards educators, students, and employers, this article tries to portray grades as motivation for students, pushing the intensity of grading to help students understand the aspect of what is required in their field of work to create a willingness in students to participate in a new
learning process. Grading systems can help mound the professional development of students, and higher educated students have already mastered their learning strategies and understand how grading systems work, unless they are switched up on them. Thus, showing a case study on real life interaction of a professional career, based off grading for a pay or reliability to work. A conducted study was created in the Bachelor of Exercise Science Program conducted at Griffith University. They created a course to make students aware of the requirements and work environment of the industry they wish to enter. "Students are required to complete a minimum of 80-hour work experience in an industry of choice. The course includes both career development learning and work-integrated learning with 13 two-hour lecture/workshops" (pg.226). It was a real-world position in industries relevant to their undergraduate studies in Exercise Science. However, this article primarily focused on grades creating a motivational strategy within higher level students. It didn't factor in failure as a way for students to learn and just talked about grades being a motivational tactic in increasing progress. Grades are not a measurement of learning, any student has the potential of being a passing student, but the way that each student retains information is different. Studies show that a majority of students may understand a teacher's teaching techniques, but what can be done for the remaining percentage to retain the same information without teachers having to go out of their way to teach one on one?
The focus then needs to be what teachers must do to encourage retention and growth from failure rather than achieving a grade. Prior to the knowledge of teachers not having the ability to teach or correct mistakes, there has been research that coordinates upon grading policies in school bordering teacher's capabilities in teaching. Written by Conni Campbell, "Learned-Centered Grading Practices," is directed to teachers of all subjects. The research follows up on the idea of understanding a matter of fairness, other than just handing out mistakes
and asking for corrections. Students should be able to hand teachers grades that accurately reflect what the student knows and is able to do, and this is what can show the teacher what he/she is lacking or what the policies of a school district lack in improvement. Conni Campbell used more facts to help back up her proposals. She aimed to get a point towards what students thought themselves, by setting up a survey to take. This allowed there to be a result with each proposed survey category. And with these fact-based numbers, there was more of a push towards what is right and wrong. In the beginning of the article, there were topics and facts towards the result that grades had towards a student's mindset, however, this research is useless upon the idea of teaching how to learn from failure. It informs about all the consequences of being in a minimal grading system or teaching students in a more cooperative way in helping them understand the context and handing out grades that relate to the knowledge that the student is receiving. This leaves out the recommendations on how to learn from these mistakes and help students understand that a second chance isn't because you are unable to succeed, but for your mistakes to be corrected and accepted. For no grade really matters until a student understands the material, and the topic in discussion needs to be: what can be done for teachers to understand a student’s intelligence on a subject? I had interviews with two students who attend The University of Rio Grande Valley, who are academically praised, and work their hardest to obtain certain letter grades. The interviews are discussed following a couple paragraphs, but do you believe that teachers are going off of a grading policy due to its effectiveness or because of their criteria? The question here focused on teachers having no borders to their way of teaching and correcting.
The teaching style must be modified to allow student success. For example, when students are asked to focus on the material at hand, it can create several challenges. In the article "The Challenge of Grading in Self and Peer-Assessment" written by Elmir Gurbanov, the
research tries to find out the challenges of grading in student self and peer-assessment from teachers' and students' perspectives - trying to understand how students and teachers cope with opinion and what is a better source of grading and helping students understand. Showing teachers and students the benefits of self-affirmation towards understanding your grade in a class determined by how you choose to have your work be graded. Elmir Gurbanov was able to conduct a survey among English language learners in undergraduate programs to answer 10 questions. These questions were asked to a total number of students of 100 and 31 teachers. Students were randomly selected from the groups of language classes and in the same range of age (17-20). Nonetheless, the research talks about the challenges of grading instead of failure being a way to help improve grading. It tries to prove that students learn more from peer and self-assessment than from teachers handing out grades and having students learn from their mistakes on paper. Even though this plays an important role on creating a source of motivation in each student to learn, it does not show them how to understand what mistakes are made for. They are told to get help from teachers and not learn from teachers, but in my interviews with students, working with peers has benefitted in learning. There is the negative of three out of four students, paying attention to the subject of matter, and the remaining student being off topic. But thinking of the majority, there is a positive in learning with students. The student who doesn’t choose to pay attention in circumstances of peer assessment tends to fail or has no interest in school. This is information based off my experience of group work, and I can say that getting assessment from peers instead of higher figures shows more of a confidence in ignorance. This leads to answers being answered with honest questioning, and a constant reformation on an overall view of an understanding in the classroom. My sources had to do with either the grading policy restricting teachers to teach in their own manner or using grades as a motivational tactic to help students push and learn. In order to understand "How school systems can focus away from grades and teach more about accepting failure to learn?" This question relies on failure being a way for students to receive a second chance, which isn’t given because you are unable to succeed, but for your mistakes to be corrected and answered. For no grade really matters until a student understands the material. The benefits of the sources would have to be their link within education being useful within a student's growth. Consisting of a system of achievement, which sets a goal within a student's mind, instead of a hidden path to success. Although true understanding is synonymous with learning, my personal experience with the school system has shown this rarely occurs. I grew up going to public school where every teacher didn't care enough to want to have change in every student except for the ones who tried, and it got me thinking on what made specific students want to change and not continuously fail. I wanted to be one of these students who pushed themselves off of failure and made a change in results. I knew if my teachers in school would have taught me ways to improve in each mistake I made, there would be a change in how I study and learn. With each source, there was a series of gaps that failed to connect failure into comprehending a student’s misbehavior in education. For example, the secondary source that elaborates about peer and self-assessment teaches students to learn through conversation on their mistakes, but not how to push themselves back from a mistake. This shows the ineffectiveness of how our education system believes teaching works, and I plan on explaining a solution on how teachers should manage students in their teaching and learning. Providing answers from an educator on their honest belief of what experiences teaching has taught and how a teacher grows on learning to motivate and help students excel. I also
interviewed two students who excel in school and they have different perspectives towards what can be done with the grading policy, and what students need to do to learn from their failures.
I hope to fill in the gaps in my research, by interviewing an educator at my university. Which lead to a buildup of questions such as:
If you think about these three questions of many, they question what values and manners can be useful in providing a helpful teaching environment. With a total of fifteen questions, I am able to analyze what an educator views on the teaching in a certain manner, and the changes that he/she has made in order for each lesson to grow upon a student and stick with their learning curve.
The interview was done by Professor Garcia in the English Department of The University of Rio Grande Valley, resulting in the data I collected to be very precise and bold. Throughout my interview, what I learned from a professor’s perspective is that students tend to work more towards a grade than accepting to learn. In my opinion, working towards a specific grade was what motivated me as a student to want to succeed, so I would always ask for my letter grade before wondering what my mistakes were on an assignment. The grade is what motivates students, and once a student is pushed down by failure, it is on the student’s emotional psychology and behavior on wanting to get back up from this mistake or just accept and give up. I learned that as a student through trial and error. Once I was given the error, there was an immediate desire to quit and wait for a new start, but students shouldn’t relate to this and fight for results. Learning from your mistakes is valued higher in creating a confident and intellectual
individual. With there being a poor choice of actions, a common misconception occurs on blaming the educator instead of blaming yourself for the grade that was received. Students face having no helping hand when it comes to continuous ignorance to failure. Teachers from elementary to high school will have the weight of teaching responsibility, but if this isn’t driven into the mindset of students, they will fail in college - where the workload and responsibility of teaching and learning is separated 50/50. Being a freshman in college, responsibility has peaked its way into being a significant role in my life. You don’t have your parents around to tell you when to be responsible, but what you choose to participate in is what you get your results out of. If the workload is split in half, then students need to step up and face their fears. Our current school systems have a grading program with a set base of information to rank intelligence which is a complicated and strange tool to observe students, but a way of learning that we must handle in our lives. Failure depends on how every human works. The solution Professor Garcia introduced is having there be classes for emotional learning, to help students handle stressful situations. I believe this provides healthy forms of coping with disbelief and surrendering. This idea will teach students ways to learn from mistakes and help them build a knowledge of what relieves them in hard situations of struggle.
Following this interview, I had an interview with two students of The University of Rio Grande Valley, and they answered a following of questions that could help relate with our audience. Below you can find a list of my interview questions; considering these students, the majority of the population, we have a similarity in
answers. When it comes to teachers teaching a class, there is a similarity of all students not retaining the same amount of information. What helps a student learn better could be a one-on-one lesson with a mentor, or there can be a more hands on teaching strategy based on projects, creative group works, or self-assessments. Busy work needs to be taken out of the perspective when it comes to teaching because a numerically question based assignment sugarcoats the subject. This makes students memorize the information rather than base it on actual knowledge. Any student can memorize a few facts and learn how to use them, but if a student knows when they have learned something, it is better to have students become the teachers. Both students answered question 6 similarly: being able to teach another student what they know is how they acknowledge they have retained information. If students aren’t having to just memorize formulas and facts, they are able to use previous courses to benefit them in the following upper-level courses. These students excelled in pre-calculus, which led to an easier pathway in calculus, and an understanding in physics benefitted them in chemistry, which leads to the topic on if grading effectively determines what you learned. This is false because people forget information that was studied, and if a letter grade of ‘C’ corresponded to intelligence, then it comes down to laziness. The student knew most of the information and was getting good grades, but never pushed his/her self to get an A. This is not acceptable to teachers - a 100 is a 100 in their books, and this is the problem of our education system. In question 5, the students have gone through many courses, finished all the required tasks, and ended up not remembering the information again. They memorized all the facts needed in History “just to get an A”.
Students determine their own educational purpose. Even though grading may be in the wrong in how it is set up, here are a few facts on what a student can do to learn from their mistakes. Both students are firm believers that failure is needed to succeed, but a student can’t just justify their mistakes and plan on a better grade in the future - it requires a constant push of morals within self-understand. A student has to be able to know their strength and weaknesses, and with that they are able to prove wrong their weaknesses, and better them. . One of the students says a firm 65% of students learn from their failures, and they can easily change this by writing notes repeatedly. To dig the information deeper within their knowledge, or to use notecards that test your knowledge constantly. Some students create visual representations to help them remember the illustration used for a specific concept, but their formal answer is to just study more than they did previously. You must increase your intelligence to not fail again, and nothing can beat a student that tries their hardest when it comes to failure.
Students learn from their mistakes as growing adults and learning the process to success is what separates specific students from one another. I believe students who have a hard time fixing their mistakes should first learn how they react to failure, which will give them an understanding of what kind of student they are. If they go down the negative path of overstressing and giving up on a situation, a student should learn ways to de-stress and get back on track. I believe this matters to all students and professors in any teaching environment. Teachers need strong minded students, and their source of work and each students source of learning will diverse and expand based on a growing success rate in grades. This results in an overall achievement in the educational system.
Works Cited
Campbell, Conni. “Learning-Centered Grading Practices.” Learning-Centered Grading Practices, vol. 41, no. 5, May 2012, pp. 30–33. ERIC, web.a.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=2&sid=0a624eee-084e-44cd-b911-3244d8935e09%40sessionmgr4006.
GURBANOV', Elmir . “Journal of Education in Black Sea Region.” The Challenge of Grading in Self and Peer-Assessment (Undergraduate Students' and University Teachers' Perspectives), vol. 1, no. 2, 2016, pp. 82–98. ERIC, files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED569122.pdf.
Reddan , Gregory. “Asia-Pacific Journal of Cooperative Education.” To grade or not to grade: Student perceptions of the effects of grading a course in work-Integrated learning, vol. 14, ser. 4, 2013, pp. 223–232. ERIC, files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1113789.pdf.
