Josh Eyler, an educator and father, tackles the real-world implications of academic grading. He discusses how grades often lead to fear rather than genuine learning, questioning their role as accurate measures of understanding. Eyler emphasizes the emotional toll grades take on students and families, advocating for environments that nurture intrinsic motivation. He argues for the necessity of revamping grading systems, suggesting that fostering a love for learning should outweigh the pressure of numerical scores.
Grades often exacerbate anxiety in students, focusing them on scoring rather than engaging genuinely with learning material.
Rethinking grading practices can help cultivate intrinsic motivation and transform assessments from judgment into supportive tools for improvement.
Deep dives
The Impact of Grades on Student Well-Being
Grades can significantly affect a student's mental health and overall learning experience. High-stakes testing and grading systems often lead to anxiety, undermining students' love for learning. For instance, a narrative shared about a daughter who receives rewards based on grades highlights how these evaluations result in emotional turmoil, as students grapple with feelings of exclusion based on arbitrary scores. This suggests that grades can turn education into a source of stress rather than a pathway to knowledge and growth.
The Distinction Between Evaluation and Assessment
Understanding the difference between evaluation and assessment can reshape how educators approach student feedback. Evaluation typically involves judgment and can carry negative connotations, while assessment is meant to inform and guide students toward improvement. This distinction is critical as it frames grades as not just measurements of performance but as tools that should motivate learning. The failure to recognize this difference may lead to an oppressive grading environment where students feel their worth is tied solely to their scores.
Grades as Social Constructs
Grades serve not only as indicators of academic performance but also as social constructs that can reinforce inequities within educational systems. They often marginalize students, akin to a 'scarlet letter,' by labeling them based on arbitrary metrics rather than their true potential or abilities. This has been exacerbated in contexts where marginalized groups face additional barriers within the grading framework. By analyzing the implications of grades, it becomes evident that they more often reflect societal biases than actual learning outcomes.
Rethinking Motivation in Education
The interplay between internal and external motivation is essential in educational settings, yet typical grading practices often stifle intrinsic motivation. While grades can motivate compliance, they fail to foster a genuine desire to learn, leading to a culture where students are more focused on attaining scores than engaging with material. Research suggests that students who receive feedback without grades show greater motivation for learning over time, challenging the effectiveness of traditional grading methodologies. Educators are encouraged to rethink their approaches, integrating more constructive methods that promote a genuine interest in learning.
Josh Eyler shares even more problems with grades on episode 533 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast.
Quotes from the episode
Being a dad who is an educator takes things from the academic and intellectual and brings them immediately to the surface, to the real world and to the real consequences for students and families.
-Josh Eyler
The conflict between what we think and what we value and what we want for our kids and what the world and our school systems say are important can sometimes be almost irreconcilable.
-Josh Eyler
We need to create environments that will cultivate intrinsic motivation.
-Josh Eyler
In situations where grades are given, students tend to be more fearful of making mistakes. They produce more behaviors of trying to get the grade rather than learning.
-Josh Eyler
Grades are not objective accurate measurements of learning according to this research.
-Josh Eyler
If grades don’t measure what they’re supposed to measure, why are we using them, and why are we putting so much pressure on them?
-Josh Eyler