Your terms can be translated to having a performance focus or a learnign focus, two opposing educational goals. Speaking as a secondary school teacher, the systems around the world seem to develop a performance focus. It is built into the system. The system tells students that thismis what we as a society value. My observations of student behaviour suggest that they respond mostly by becoming performance focussed. A few retain their learning focus. I regard these as excellent students. Some give up entirely. Society loses their contribution. SO:

The problem is social. Valuing performance is built into the system. To change it requires a change to the system. It is possible but difficult and requires a change in political viewpoint away from seeing education as a political football. I have been experimenting with how small changes to the system can change student perceptions. My judgement is that the only way to make this change effectively is to ohange the system of assessment & reporting to focus on improvement in the lower grades of sohooling ( until about 15 / 16 years old). Doing this changes both teachers ' & students' perceptions,

I agree that performance focus is a problem in the context you have described, The No Child Left Untested governmental strategy has certainly exacerbated the problem of teaching for test results rather than for learning outcomes. As a en educator of graduate students in the profession of pharmacy we have a very high calibre student population and they are great kids, but we have to attempt to overcome years of grade seeking behavior to teach them to become self directed learners. And it is a tough battle.

Some of our experience with performance based rubrics and novel test score reporting formats has been amazingly effective. By designing major exams around competencies rather than content and providing subscores based on the competencies rather than the raw score, the tone of the conversation has changed dramatically in the students.

I think we can win the fight but it is going to take all of us doing things differently than we have. Carol Dweck of Stanford has some excellent articles and books on the subject of fixed mindset versus growth mindset people and their approach to learning.

I think the discussion of what Dweck calls mindset indicates that many unintentional social cues from parents, teachers and society combine to make the fixed mindset student reluctant to change.

Here are some references for you.

http://alumni.stanford.edu/get/page/magazine/article/?article_id=32124

http://pss.sagepub.com/content/18/4/314.extract

http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=8VCLdg2DmoQC&oi=fnd&pg=PA31&dq=Carol+Dweck+Mindset+articles&ots=jWI7e1eCHZ&sig=BA8hSpsqDLi4rzUg9nb9aGGe7gs#v=onepage&q=Carol%20Dweck%20Mindset%20articles&f=false

Excellent! thank you.

Its really harsh truth and its my personnel opinion that many student I have found following the grade seeking performance. But we need to change their tradition of getting grade and all that. We need to plan quizzes or innovative session for increasing their understanding related to the science.

Arvind,

Grade seeking unfortunately means knowledge seeking. Knowledge seeking devolves into , What do I need to know for the test? Therefore knowledge seeking becomes learning how to ignore the journey to focus on collecting mileage on your odometer.

Imagine deciding to take a wonderful four year trip to visit the great destinations of the world, Paris, Rome, London,New York, San Francisco, Sydney, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Venice, Jerusalem, Delhi, Barcelona, Beijing, etc and instead of engaging in the experience and unique culture of each place ......

....you simply got there, bought a postcard, checked it off your bucket list, and left to go to the next destination.

You would be wasting the opportunity to expand your horizons. And that is the exact metaphor for the way most students approach college. Take the class, get the grade move on take the next class etc.And don't bother to engage in order to enrich your ability.

Wonderful simile. I must remember it.

Or maybe it's a metaphor???

We better ask an English teacher because I didn't pay attention during that class. I believe it's probably best labeled an analogy. I could never make a living as a copy editor. For all I know it could be different down under then up yonder in North Carolina.

Ah yes analogy. Senior moment!

I agree the context & few suggestions as below;

1. Apply to the Teacher Preparation Program.

2. Attend a Teacher Education Admittance Orientation.

3. Completion of COMMUNICATION 1310 or its equivalent with a "B" or better to demonstrate competency in oral communication.

Competence is more important, because it let students feel themselves capability and stable. Grade can be changed by situation. Which one is more important for students to know and experience it.

If we borrow from business management, performance means accomplishment of desired or target objectives. Kaplan & Norton (1992 or thereabout) published performance measure manifestos (in Harvard business review), which clearly indicated that focussing on tangible and intangible aspects of a business operation rather than focussing on balancing the books actually led to success. Using this analogy, students focussing on learning is the only way of achieving good academic performance. Therefore, good academic performance can only be achieved through genuine learning. This is why course objectives are written with action verbs... At the end of this course, students should be able to do ...... a list of performance statements.

Now to the question of whether students are knowledge seeker or grade seeker, I believe many students nowadays are grade seekers while a size-able number are true learners, who would go all out to engage with their teachers. It is not wholly the fault of grade seekers. Society seems to support it and school systems and their accountability systems also support grade-seeking phenomenon. First, the only way to know a good teacher is by students' outcome in a course, regardless of what goes on in the classroom. By that I mean, no one worries about students' preparedness for the course, how many lectures were missed, assignments uncompleted, etc., Also, only the students can determine, through evaluation of course and the instructor, whether the teacher is good or bad. Hence, for majority of teachers to retain their jobs, they have to please the students, not necessarily ensuring that they learn! I remember being awarded a "zero" in my first year dispensing lab for failure to record that a dusting powder was sieved before packaging, even though the TA could see the sieve used on my desk. I gladly learn from the experience the essence of complete reporting. For a student to get zero nowadays may amount to "suicide" for the teacher. To avoid that, they often ask for what part of a course to study for test and exams.

Paper qualification also has a share of the blame. Heavy reliance on GPA and test scores for future admissions, residency programs, scholarships, etc will no doubt encourage students to seek grade. However, if learning diligently took place, there is no offense in seeking grade to complement it.

I guess you can see it is a multifactorial problem that should be approached holistically, starting with the society and school systems. Students' themselves have a role to play. I wouldn't want to pay fees and spend years on a program only to be given a "dummy" qualification that will keep me in the box for ever. I'd rather say: don't give me fish, teach me how to fish!

Hi Mark and Gregory. I could be wrong but I think the post card focussed tour/grade seeking comparison is an analogy and 'expanding horizons' is being used as a spatial metaphor, but the distinction is often lost on me. However, 'expanding horizons' is being used in a figurative sense - an abstract concept (knowledge gain)or at least an aspect of it, is being understood/ referred to in terms of a familiar spatial experience (that we have a limited distance of vision - the horizon). So Gregory seems to me to be using the terms correctly.

Personally I think there is always a gap between teachers and learners regarding the goal of education. Teachers as educators tend to target at helping students to bring out their potential competences so that they will become sufficiently competent at their future workplace. By contrast, learners seem to be more concerned about grades because they perceive grades as the measures of their learning success. Having said this, I am aware of the risk of over-generalization. Despite this, there is some truth in what I believe though the concern for grades may vary from one learning to another. Where students' competence is defined chiefly by their grades, both teachers and students tend to be preoccupied with gaining points in their grades. So, the solution might be that testing has to be radically changed in such a way that grades become more compatible with competences.

More specifically on the question asked, an answer (https://www.researchgate.net/post/How_do_classroom_teachers_define_learning?cp=re65_x_p2&ch=reg&loginT=HMXr4_YBBRZwU7JuNXXHfWg0uvbvj2kzRKjQjAYE0cL5cxQ7DwOP2g%2C%2C&pli=1), and the literature that I referred to in it, seems relevant here. Part of the system discussed above are the conceptions of teaching and leaning that the students hold, along with the approaches to learning that students take - which although from a different research tradition do have similarities with the concepts referred to by others above. I am baby sitting my Grand son at the moment and he is likely to wake up soon, so forgive me pasting the answer here without any editing to fit this discussion. I hope the relevance is clear.

There is already a considerable literature on teachers conceptions of teaching, which may or may not have a parallel with their conceptions of learning. Teachers might have one conception of learning, but what they actually do when teaching does not match this. For example, in conditions of high accountability, they may teach to the test while believeing that learning is about developing a sense of personal identity and meaning.

What seems clear is that the range of conceptions of learning and teaching are relatively stable and come out as something like those below. ‘Range’ is emphasised because people may display different conceptions from the range at different times and in different contexts. – it is the range of possible conceptions that seems reasonably stable, not necessarily those that individuals hold over time and place. Many of the people in this line of research are concerned with how to encourage what they see as the higher, more advanced conceptions in educational contexts.

What is teaching?

Teaching is imparting information

Teaching is transmitting knowledge

Teaching is facilitating understanding

Teaching is changing students’ conceptions

Teaching is supporting student learning

What is learning?

Learning is getting more knowledge

Learning is memorising and reproducing

Learning is acquiring and applying procedures

Learning is making sense or meaning Learning is personal change

Derived from Watkins & Mortimore (1999).

Conceptions of knowledge are also part of the mix. The attached diagram might be a useful contribution to this discussion.

Entwistle, N. (2009) Teaching for Understanding at University; Deep Approaches and Distinctive Ways of Thinking. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Watkins, C. & Mortimore, P. (1999) Pedagogy: what do we know? in P. Mortimore (Ed.) Understanding Pedagogy and its Impact on Learning. London: Sage.

People might also find the following links and attachment relevant.

http://maaikerotteveel.pbworks.com/f/Entwistle%2Bapproaches%2Bto%2Blearning%2B1991.pdf Although an introduction to a special issue, this makes some points about approaches that are still relevant.

http://www.tlrp.org/pub/acadpub/Entwistle2000.pdf Attempts to develop the concepts further. I find the diagrams useful, so hope others do as well. Entwistle also, includes his own work on conceptions of understanding that may be interesting.

Now or infuture engineering students must have all these qualitie apart from logical-apptitude-resioning:( In my view grade-seeking or competence-seeking both are same).

- Student convert a idea in useful application module

- Study with earn( course related: Nothing wroung send a student sell project to some person out side market)

- if he or she is good update his level due to his job oriented approach.Bcz employment is big threat for all student of all college in FUTURE.

Colin, thanks for the links great resources. The big picture agenda for me is that in the rapidly changing global economy in which someone living anywhere in the world can provide valuable services to any part of the globe, the person that remains resilient and self-directed will survive economically. People that labor under an industrial age model of, I work for GM and the company will take care of me are putting their livelihood at risk.

The short story is:

1.Learn how to do something valuable

2.Start doing it

3.Continually revise and improve

4.Reinvent Yourself as needed

This is the business model for the 21st century. With the decay rate of knowledge accellerating, the key skill to possess will be Value Creation/Provision. See my attached blog post.

http://bit.ly/1gdYtxf

And to make my point about the global economy one has only to look at the locations of the people who have responded to this question. Good people with good ideas exist in every nook and cranny of this planet.

The reality is that central control of the hearts and minds of people is a vestige of the last century, the free flow of ideas can not be prevented any longer even in oppressive regimes that try.

As soon as Google invents the universal language translator we will all be able to speak to each other person to person.

In Any language our methodology of teaching seems not to have kept up with the need to develop skills rather than knowledge.

Good Leaders must be Good People Who understand how to lead

http://bit.ly/GLU5Jw

Globally we the teachers treating ourselves as 'bankers' and a student is nothing but an account holder when he/she enroll with us - we just wish to load them , with marks- and we, policy makers, job market, guardians, society set an parameter for them - i.e. how much wealth (marks) you have - we put the tag line "you are the best" by virtue of your marks ! But in real life marks are not always guarantee for performance- That is why odd job holders are getting more attention , earning more money and status - a 'Tendulkar' a ' Spielberg' a 'pele' a 'Jackson' are all examples - 'Piggy bank' mode to be changed - sooner the better - but how to do that ? We all should try without blaming students - !

Hi Gregory, Mark, Colin et al., my better students are looking for knowledge and skills (competence). They are interested in learning, in the process of enjoying learning more and more. However, the others do the minimum, just to get the minimum grades for entrance into university. They don't enjoy studying, as they enjoy their sports, films, entertainment, food and sleep.

When I get a chance, I remind them that if they seek the knowledge and skills, the good grades will come along. I have about 2 minutes of motivation time, at the end of day.

Hi Miranda,

That does seem to fit into the concept of approaches to learning. I sometimes wonder if we could ever really change that and, if trying to manipulate it is always (emphasise 'always' - it might be in some circumstances) ethical - as you imply the students have a wider world to make their choices in.. That is why I think sharing concepts such as mindsets and approaches to learning with students is the way to go. Armed with the concepts that there are alternative ways to view learning, they make their own choice.

From my own experience of a long time in teaching adults I have realized that when learners are motivated by a stimulus such a scores / grades or degrees they focus on points rather than competence :I have taught third and fourth year English / Translation & French Department students for many years / I also taught postgraduate students preparing for their higher degrees ....when teaching all those , I realized that their main aim was to get the highest marks that will qualify them for the next step .....

Teaching Adults such as the UN staff members, various ministerial officials as well as other candidates and applicants whose aim is to achieve a certain goal from learning and that is mastering the language in order to get their target - competence ....

In my opinion and experience most of them seek the grade.

I love work with the others ;-)

In my opinion and experience most of them seek the grade.

Derek Rowntree argued in his book, Assessing Students: How shall we know them? that grades serve only an administrative function. We have created these, no one else. It serves no real purpose for the learner. It does little to inform students or other stakeholders about their actual knowledge or skills, their strengths and weaknesses. I believe this still holds true today. He wrote that in the 1970's as I recall (first edition) and remains my favorite book on assessment. Whenever we move away from that orientation to a learner orientation, we will begin to see the real gains in our efforts.

I find the discussion very interesting. I teach nursing students dosage calculation and in order to pass they have to perform a flawless test (they cannot make any mistake what so ever). My experiences is that because of this claim students shift focus from learning to passing a test. They also experiences high test anxiety that causes cognitive interferences. In line I think this may cause medication errors..

Yes Kari, fear of failure is recognised as one of the reasons why students move away from really trying to understand to the mechanics of test passing. Having said that , your example is interesting because we don't want students who really understand the principles of dosage but are slapdash in some way in applying them. Can we assume that students who really understand dosage calculations will not be careless at some time. I assume 'really understanding; includes understanding the need not to be careless.

Please note [after 10+2 grade students take responsibility towards]:

1.Correctly choose the course, like Bill G

2.Serve the humanity at large, like Mahatma MK Ghadhi

3.Complete education example,like military education.

4.Merit oriented education must apply all over the world like in sports

5.Earn & Learn concept

6.Problem based learning and solving

7.Unity for good cause

8.Be good Follower/Leader means take/apply

good ponits across the world.

9.Provide the necessary information to the government

to improve the quality of education.

10.Be darefull to apply point 1_10

11............you can add or continue or..ask question..

I don’t think it is realistic to expect students to be unconcerned with grades, since in the long run, grades constitute the basis for promotion and certification. Teachers too are notorious for “teaching to the test”. Since evaluation (unfortunately) seems to drive both teaching and learning, perhaps we should be more concerned about what and how we evaluate. Entwistle cites Biggs on the importance of constructive alignment, “in which the aims of a course are stated in terms which stress the importance of personal understanding, with the curriculum and teaching-learning environment then being aligned directly to support those aims.” This kind of alignment needs to be extended to evaluation. I worked on curriculum development at the Ministry level for a number of years and have witnessed many a beautiful curriculum become twisted, demolished or abandoned as soon the evaluation department stepped in and reduced all the goals and expectations to measurable objectives - usually bits and pieces of knowledge to be memorized and repeated - that can be standardized and quantified. Qualitative methods (such as naturalistic evaluation, portfolios, authentic evaluation, ecological evaluation, etc.), which are more suitable to the goals of “deep learning” (Entwistle), are rejected on the grounds that they are (a) too time-consuming and (b) depend on the teacher’s “subjective” judgment (as if teachers were not professionals whose judgments are worthy of respect!). My own response to docimologists is that just because something cannot be quantified and tested “objectively,” it doesn’t follow that it is not worth teaching or learning.

My students would like to do the bare minimum to get a pass. They really not concerned about subject mastery. All they want is to memorize answers to examination questions. Somehow we are failing to stimulate interest in the subjects we teach. It's time we stopped teaching and start creating learning situations based on the pupils' experiential knowledge. I've tried this and it always works. And let's stop asking factual questions and start asking questions that will lead to the creation of new knowledge. Don't ask: State Newton's laws of motion. But ask: Are Newton's laws of motion appropriately named? In Newton's 3rd law, which is the action and which is the reaction? Explain. Are action and reaction really two forces or they are simply opposing effects of the same force? Explain.

Yeah , Iam happy about your last part of discussion.i.e.Yes, similarly we have to set the questions,which make the students to think, like demirits & merits based on applications.Then, link the same question with algorithm to miniimize the demerits

Futher extend with new or old mathematical modelling relations ,if it is found new , then evaluate how much new it is expected. Finally..use the latest one and try apply for the need of scoiety.

On teaching, I found starting with applications and concluding with abstractions to be more effective that otherwise. Take the topic Matrices for example. Most of us draw some strange Cuneiform on the board and introduce it as a 2x2, 3x1, etc matrix. Results: "Hey guys, Math is difficult." We need to be more practical; more down to earth; more real. Try this: "Good morning class. Write down a list of five grocery items you usually buy, stating the quantities you buy at a time. Now write another list of the same items, stating the cost per item. How can we find the total cost of our groceries? Now remove the names of the grocery items and bracket the remaining arrays of numbers …" Math made simple!

We've also failed to develop analytical skills in our students, because we usually teach using specific examples, and no generalizations. Just ask any learned colleague this simple question: What is the formula for area? They're likely to be taken aback and ask you: Area of what? But analysis of the various formulas of various shapes will give you the general formula: Area = average length x separation of lengths.

@ Denise Morel: "Since evaluation (unfortunately) seems to drive both teaching and learning, perhaps we should be more concerned about what and how we evaluate."

I find it difficult to interpret this statement because of the interjection "unfortunately" and the verb "seems" which is of course "doubletalk" as it serves both to strengthen the surrounding statement "evaluation drives both teaching and learning" and at the same time to express your uncertainty or doubt whether your observation is correct.

Given my preoccupation for the last seven years with CBA (Classroom Based Assessment) which aims at systematically closing the loop between teaching-learning-assessing through formative evaluation and rich feedback (see my previous contributions here and at several other places on ResearchGate and LinkedIn, or my website www.passorfail.de.vu), it will not come as a surprise that I only agree with your final claim "we should be more concerned about what and how we evaluate", without the "perhaps", and including the annotations that you gave later in your contribution.

Unfortunately it is NOT the case, according to a seven-year literature study and ten-year private experiences, that teaching and learning are generally driven by systematic two-way evaluation and feedback from teachers to students and from students to teachers, i.e. classroom-based assessment with the purpose of improving, if not optimizing, both teaching and learning. We are dealing here with a goal-oriented system driven by fallible human beings, which should rely on an intact feedback loop in order to evaluate and communicate the quality of goal achievement.

As far as there is a sense of evaluation-driven, it is mostly of the wrong type, the notorious "teaching to the test", which undermines the principle goal of teaching and learning. For the rest, I have to conclude, that either ad hoc approaches and methods are being used or - worse - expensive procedures are installed with the only purpose of "proving" that an evaluation strategy is being followed, which is just lip-service, no full service.

Of course, IMHO, teaching and learning should be driven by evaluation, assessment, feedback, etc. in order to close the loop (see above)! If not, by what should it or can it be driven? By the assumption, that teaching and learning are so simple that almost anybody can do it effectively, efficiently and errorless, so evaluation and steering aren't an issue? By the assumption, that teaching and learning are based on innate or quickly learned rules and procedures, which just have to be "run" by reflex in order to reach the goal once set? By the assumption, that neither teachers nor learners mature and adapt over the years to the very processes of teaching and learning, i.e. learning to teach and learning to learn? By the assumption, that nothing can go wrong when teachers teach and learners learn, given a fixed and agreed upon curriculum? By the assumption, that all stakeholders, in particular teachers and learners, bring with them all the physical, mental and social prerequisites and the best intentions when they step into the common process?

As long as this kind of wishful thinking, a kind of default logic, is in place as the basis of educational poliy and politics, evaluation and assessment will indeed be seen as something superfluous, unnecessary burden on the primary stakeholders. And when it is nevertheless called for by policy and politics, the result will be vacuous actions just for the sake of conformance, not in order to keep the teaching-learning process on track and to optimize it.

@Denise Morel Biggs believes that assessment techniques such as the SOLO Taxonomy ( http://www.johnbiggs.com.au/academic/solo-taxonomy/ ) complete constructive alignment. The question then is whether SOLO is an adequate model of understanding.

@Paul Vossen. Your thinking suggests to me that we need a much richer conception of education. See my question on metaphors for education.

@ Denise Morel: What are "docimologists", please?

"... just because something cannot be quantified and tested “objectively,” it doesn’t follow that it is not worth teaching or learning."

How true! Unfortunately there is still this myth of quantification leading to objectivity and the related myth of judgement leading to subjectivity, where objectivity and subjectivity are seen as opposites and irreconcilable.

I really don't know and can explain where those myths come from. There is nothing in the word-pairs objective/objectivity and subjective/subjectivity which would justify such a sharp distinction in meaning, let alone such an evaluation, i.e. objectivity = good and subjectivity = bad.

Furthermore, quantification can have extremely bad consequences, if people misinterpret or misunderstand the nature of the numbers assigned. For instance, if the task at hand is judging the aesthetic quality "beauty" of paintings and if you use a 10-point scale for that, does it really make sense for you to calculate the mean of those beauty scores? Still, people do so with grades, although strictly speaking (and why shouldn't one be strict here?) grades have the same structure as such beatury scores. Furthermore, very often the pretended objectivity comes at the cost of a statistic approach, which strictly tells you only something about a collection of "items" (here: students) and nothing about the person you (as a teacher) are speaking with. Judgement is a personal (read: subjective) individual (read: non-statistical) matter!

@ Mtafu Norwin-Maseleka : You wrote : "Don't ask: State Newton's laws of motion. But ask: Are Newton's laws of motion appropriately named? In Newton's 3rd law, which is the action and which is the reaction? Explain. Are action and reaction really two forces or they are simply opposing effects of the same force? Explain."

Fine. Asking open questions however forces one (I mean: the teacher in his assessor role) to consider how he or she will evaluate the diverse answers (explanations in this case). There are a lot of technical and practical problems here and I would love to know how you deal with them:

Is there a single right/correct answer to the question or could there be several distinct but equally correct answers, even when ignoring the precise wording? What about students answering with a single line and other ones answering with half a page or a full page? Do you expect mathematical formulation plus verbal explanation or just one of both? If you have 10 questions and fifty students, how do you manage time? How do you calculate the scores for each questions and the overall score? Can students gain bonus points for certain aspects or parts of their answers? What do you do with students who can answer all questions in just a fraction of the time that other students need? And so on, and so on.

Anybody proposing (new) types or methods of teaching and learning and questioning and testing should please also consider the assessment-and-scoring process - without detailed information about the latter process nobody can really tell whether your proposal is actually feasible at all.

In my experience and opinion, it is way easier to come up with some new fancy teaching methods and types of assignments as it is to think through till the end and suggest a feasible, consistent way of assessing and scoring such assignments, and thus the learning achieved by the student. In fact, what I have found in the literature over the last seven years is really disappointing in that respect. Sorry to say. For further background information see my ATLAS project.

CBA:

Note: when I am talking about assessment, of course I always mean some sort of CBA, classroom-based assessment as set up by you, the assessor (and teacher) in a way that is systematic and justifiable and fair. It is usually qualitative, but that doesn't exclude it can also be quantified in a proper way. In any case it is more than a quick single line response, because that is uninformative and doesn't help the student in his learning process.

Paul, I'll put my 2 cents worth in here because it relates to a discussion we had earlier. I avoid the issue of 'scoring' by using standards based assessment. The quality of the response is the key. Students have to know the criteria for quality and there has to have been a teaching process about quality prior to assessment. In Queensland this teaching is intrinsic to our whole system as it begins in year 1. So to specifically answer your question. To use this kind of question probably requires a move towards qualitative evaluation processes and this is a complex change requiring teachers to be trained over a long period of time to understand the processes. Our criteria include conceptual aspects, communication aspects etc.

wrt teaching for quality, when I am explaining to my students what a quality response means, I use the acronym '5CR'. I tell them to ask themselves - is it Clear? Is it Concise? Is it Complete? Is it Correct? Is it Connected (well constructed with linking ideas) and is it Reflective (meaning is there evidence of self critique or critique of ideas or consideration of context or etc) I've appended my faculty literacy document which explains the 5CR further. I will also begin to upload documents to my profile that are related to the qualitative processes we use if anyone is interested. Note that the focus of our assessment processes is on justifiable decisions against stated criteria, not on any scoring regime. Each new piece of assessment is seen as 'improving the quality of the teacher judgement about a student's ability'. In other words: at the beginning of a semester, I only have information about a student's standard from previous teachers. This is then my starting point, after the first assessment, my judgement improves. With each subsequent assessment, my judgement improves so that at the end of the session, I can fairly safely say that Student A is most like an A or B+ or C- etc.

@Paul Vossen. Sorry, I don’t think my previous comment was very clearly stated. We work in different contexts; I was not talking about higher education, but rather elementary, secondary and adult literacy education, where both the curriculum and the testing instruments are developed by the State (Ministry of Education), although by different departments. I agree with everything you say about formative evaluation, but when I said that “unfortunately” evaluation drives teaching and learning, I was thinking about summative evaluation, not formative, and I was referring to the typical standardized tests (produced by the State/Ministry) that measure discrete, quantifiable items of knowledge. All I was saying is that if both teachers and learners are motivated by grades, and those grades are wholly based on the results of standardized tests (which is the case in my own context), then it is no surprise if students are only motivated to memorize content and teachers are only interested in transmitting facts. Not a particularly deep insight, and probably not too relevant to this thread.

BTW, since I work in French, I was using the term “docimologist” as a rough translation of “docimologue”, from “docimologie” (scientific approach to assessment).

Great, Mark! I would wish, assessment were so seriously considered and run all over the world. My very personal opinion is, that there is currently way too much emphasis on all sorts of fancy teaching and learning enabled by another wave of technology (push instead of pull), while the existing excellent concepts of teaching and learning has not even been disseminated fully and absorbed correctly, not to mention the available books, papers and reports about genuine CBA. My only hope: the desillusion will follow sooner or later, following the famous Gardner Hype Curve.

Thanks for the positive comment. I also want assessment to be taken much more seriously, but also with much more respect for the students. I do not regard high stakes testing as serious testing. It does not do a good job of assessing those things that we educate for such as the attributes of a life long learner, and also has negative impacts on learners. We have a long way to go in understanding the whole value and meaning of the assessment process in education. IMO assessment is not really understood in a philosophical sense by very many people at all as is evinced by the many complaints and discussion by caring teachers and academics on RG.

@ Denise Morel: OK, now I understand and of course fully agree. Never heard of the french term, not even of Henri Piéron who according to WP introduced the term in 1922, about the same time that Binet et al started/run their (applied) research programme on psychological testing.

Seems to me to be more or less equivalent with general (classic) testing theory, which evolved over many years into psychometrics, as it is called nowadays: the science of measurement in psychology, education and related disciplines, whereby "science" includes - as usual - both theoretical and empirical aspects and "measurement" goes further and far deeper than just assigning numbers!

As a former professor of mine used to say: "If you have a good theory about something, you get the numbers for free!". I would add now the other half, which is often forgotten: "If you don't have a good theory about your research object, you won't get any valuable information about it, let alone numbers."

Thanks for sharing the literacy strategy document, Mark. Think I will 'steal' much of it for my Office of Lifelong Learning Class. I agree that high stakes assessment is not really serious testing, nor does it provide any meaningful insight for the students into how they might guide their own learning in genuinely useful ways. Learning in educational contexts is a much more complex process than many realise. Some people have heuristically tried to model the process (that is, to represent the range of things that affect learning in educational institutions), but there are always things that have been missed out or are difficult to represent in the model format chosen. Not surprising that we don't fully understand assessment either.

You and anyone else are welcome to any of my material Colin!

I like to do both the written and verbal approach to student assessment. I have noticed that some of the "top" students with the highest grades can not apply the material when questioned (rather, they regurgitate information but do not understand the concepts fully). I have also seen poor test-takers master the verbal component of my assessment. I have noticed that when an educator takes the time to work with each student individually the retention of information improves. I like to make education fun. I try to use humor with my students; I break down complex subjects into its simplest form. I use every day analogies and visual effects to help the information become more clear. It is very important to me that students learn the material well enough so that they can go on to teach others.

There are goal orientation inventories that you can use to assess whether your students are more 'performance' oriented or 'mastery' oriented.

Every single student goes through a grade-seeking phase. Fortunately, they evolve into competence-seeking individuals at some point in their educational carreer.

practical and theory must go together.I mean update information & try to impliment.Future, higher education is only by learn-earn concept.

Currently, what matters most is the Grade, however one gets it. So both students and teachers are searching for that magic pill to get the passing grade. We are not even worried about the quality of the grade, as long as it is a passing grade. We need a serious paradigm shift in our approach to education, and here we do have some great answers and comments to consider.

Great question,

My experience is that unfortunately most seek better grades, even when the harder courses would intellectually enrich them more. It only becomes a real issue if they fail to parlay their education into lifelong learning, though..

@Gregory, nice thread! Since 1990, due to my experience, the number of students who are of grade-seeking type was increasing rapidly, while the number of competence-seeking students decreased! Unfortunately, this trend is still present!

@ Sarvesh Singh ~ "... here it is like score marks ,score marks ..no matter how !!!"

Oh my God! Did I spend a large part of my precious free time during the past seven years, while identifying the fuzzy-logical basis of scoring systems, working out the required mathematics and developing some (software) tools for that, on something which - by a closer look - is serving the wrong ends?

Perhaps, but I'm still not convinced. What's the purpose of scores? It's all in the eyes of the beholder. Scoring is an inevitable part of my job as a lecturer. At least as this job is currently defined. Roughly: fifty percent teaching, fifty percent assessing. I can fail in the teaching part, I can fail in the assessing part. I learned both the hard way: by self-education, implying trial-and-error (poor students ...), and a small number of seminars on learning and teaching, which just told me things I already knew from my first study.

Remarkably: not a single seminar was offered on the equally important topic and issue of assessment! Worse: when asking for help, nobody could give me substantive support. Why not? Is assessment something so trivial that you may just as well leave it to the creativity and imagination (read: own experiences and common folklore) of every teacher? Can you really do assessment without some form of scoring? I have my own answers, of course, but I leave it to the readers to ponder these questions.

As to your 4 points above, dear Sarvesh, don't assume or believe, that it is much more different in other parts of the world, although it may be that in my country "we are lamenting on a higher level", as some call it ;-)

There are at least two co-acting explanations for it: one based on the evolutionary game-theoretic principle of "survival of the fittest", and another one based on the multiple prisoners' dilemma, in that society, faculty, staff and students are together caught in a system that relies on shared symbols (certificates, credit points, grades, scores, ...) to allocate and communicate the status of the symbol-bearer. Such systems are notoriously difficult to change, because no one may risk to be the first and only one to step out, while all others remain bound and get their small pay-off for loyalty to the system (if they are good players).

Thanks, Gloria, for your comments, it underscores my firm belief that Grades Are Symbols, Not Numbers (this may sound strange in those parts of the world where grades are A's and B's etc., but remember that in large parts of the world grades look like numbers, e.g. 0-10 or 6-1, etc, although they aren't).

Grades are for communicating. They are to be understood as tags or symbols. Therefore, the concept of an average grade is pure nonsense. Did you ever calculate the average beauty of two or more pictures? If so, please share your formula with me!

In PASS *), my Fuzzy Logic based assessment system, grades don't play a crucial role. They come at the very end, as an afterthought, if at all required.

Scores are different, they are numbers with well-defined properties and meanings, but still not apt for the usual arithmetical operations. Used in the proper way, it helps you to analyse/diagnose the learning status of a student on any number of qualitative dimensions and to provide him/her detailed feedback on qualitative criteria, thus closing the teaching-learning-assessing cycle. Closing this cycle is essential, without it, learning will be blind, as will be teaching.

*) www.passorfail.de.vu

@ Gloria Latham:

This question reminds me of my own question, several months ago: "Would education really break down if there were no examinations anymore?" There were several interesting answers, not too much however, which confirms my hypothesis, that examinations-in-education-in-conjunction-with-grading are deeply rooted in the rituals of almost all cultures (nations), so that even the act of imagining alternatives (Gedanken-Experiments) is asking too much.

Of course, education or something like that would NOT break down if there were no examinations! Of course, the core business (oops, some may not like this metaphor) of universities and other academia is NOT to provide grades or scores, whether based on examinations or not.

I am sure, if we decided together, on the basis of sound research (and there IS already a stock of valuable research on this important issue, but it is mostly ignored) that examinations and grades are obsolete, we are competent and skilled enough, to propose a handful of quite sensible alternatives, which would be equally effective and efficient if not better. In other words: if universities weren't required to provide grades or scores based on some sort of examination, other ways to fulfill the same task would be found and installed.

But this reaction would NOT be a answer on the hidden question behind the original question. That hidden question is: why do universities think and behave as if it is their duty to provide examinations and grades?

My hypothesis (and again I am sure that there will already be educational theory and research backing up this hypothesis) is, that - long time ago - the field of education has allied with both government and business to provide some sort of symbolic information (euphemistically called objective data) which can be used by government and business for purposes of selection based on individual quality instead of societal status.

In other words: academia is taking over a duty/job that originally belongs to government and industry. In return, they get money and perhaps some better social status and ... power!. Thus it's a (Faustian) deal, well hidden behind the facade of rituals (examinations, certifications, accreditations, ...). You can (try to) change the form of rituals, which will be tough enough, and still leave the real culprit untouched.

This is, BTW, just one of the reasons, why age-old didactic principles like the Socratic Dialogue are hard to implement nowadays: they stem from a time and culture where this alliance between education and 'the rest of society' was not yet so tight and strong as it is in our ages.

I beg to disagree Paul.

I've been through a Grande Ecole and have observed up close other competitive, high pressure academic environments. I guarantee that if it had not been for the pressure of exams, no one would have put in the extraordinary effort, the sacrifices, the many coffee-fueled all-nighters we did to be able to come up to scratch, in the short timeframes there were , and absorb the sheer volume of knowledge and develop the non linear thinking modes we needed to.

Chris, I see what you mean, but this kind of inner competition - in contrast to the outer competition I was describing - would also exist without this horribly frightening examination and intransparent grading system (read what our indian friend Sundaresan Muthuswamy has to say about it!) and ... it always existed, although ... if I read sometimes about the lively correspondence between scholars and scientists in the 16th up to the 19th century without all that so-called smart technology we are oberwhelmed with nowaways I tend to believe that there was a "temps perdue" in which there was more cooperation and less competition ... and that modern fairy-tale about 'Collaborative Communities' may be a shallow replacement for that friendly cooperation ..maybe

Both, though from my higher degree in Education, assessment drives learning

As a student, I will say the program play the role to offer and open the door for students to the knowledge. Whether it is grade seeking or competence seeking, that is actually the choice of each student. Competence seeking ones will always find and grab chance to learn more, with or without "feeding" from the program. And we should not condemned the grade-seeking ones because they did make effort to score and they deserve every right to the result and the graduation scroll.

Paul, i wish i could double vote your response. Chris, i think that the reason the exams pushed students to great heights is because there is a synergy with there own paradigm. Students at le grande ecole are selected because of their learning pervormance so the drivers of effort are consistent. This is not true of all students AND more importantly, there is the question et to be answered 'is it ncessary or positive in the long term'. To me there is a disjunction between the expected school behaviour of high levelcompetition and the (maybe) more prevalent 'real' world behavior that Paul describes.

Examinations and scores are a carrot and stick approach.  It provides extraneous rewards to the learners. I doubts we can do totally with this BUT let not that replace or distract from the pleasure of learningg, which is the internal direct self-given rewards of learning.  Too much focus on the carrots will detract from the pleasure of doing and replace it with competitive social pleasures.  Not only it will do that during education but will promote this in the professional life where motivation will be less on pleasure in the perfection of your craft than on promotion and salary.

In my opinion, students' attitudes towards grades are largely shaped by the local culture. In a culture where grades are considered to be the indicators of academic performance and academic competence,  students tend to be more concerned with their grades. And in such a culture teachers may be more 'generous' about grading. On other other hand, performance is to some extent abstract in the sense that it is hard to be accurately assessed. So, grades seem to be taken for granted that they are indicators of performance. This may be the reason why standardized assessment survive despite strong criticisms against this it. What;s more, students are also interested in grades without which they may not know what their performance and achievement would be like. 

As a doctoral student (nearly half way through) and having in the last 5 years completed my undergrad (BSc-Psychology,Hons) I found exams to be a way to determine who can hold the most information then regurgitate it in the two-three hour time slot under pressured conditions. There were students who did well at this, and students who did not. Often I discovered, after talking to many students, they did not remember much, just glad it was all over, and the stress that is involved with exams is over when they get their marks back. I was always one who excelled at exams, as I had excellent memory recall.  As I got older, this diminished somewhat, and exams became a source of stress and sometimes depressive scenarios. I learnt more from assignments, and class interactive assessment, than exams. One subject I actually received the exam back (in my fourth year) to enable me to 'learn from my mistakes', which is a thing that is rare, as exam papers may be passed on to future students.

To me, from a psychological point of view, exams are mainly about memory and recall, not about learning. I discovered those who were good at exams, enjoyed exams, and those that were not, did not. I wonder if there is the possibility (or will it create too much work for the educator) of giving the student a choice. Whichever way they learn best they can do. If they learn by the pressure of exam to make them strive, or if they prefer, assessment and delving deeper than just recall. I found that most people only use about a quarter of what they take in, but it is the area that they continue to use that they retain. Is it all about the student and allowing them to learn? There has to be a balance otherwise quality will diminish in the amount of time and effort educators have to give, or burnout will ensue.

If anyone is interested in doing a study on the possibility of offering the choice of exams or assessment feel free to contact me.

First, it depends, of course - on the student and on the situation. Even students who seem strictly interested in "what they'll get" for grades, will at times lose themselves in exploring new knowledge or practicing certain skills. Heather, your point about student choice is critical. Whether we're talking about selecting topics for study or ways to show what we've learned, having a choice often adds that layer of motivation connected to autonomy, I think. Many years ago as a guidance department, we offered incoming ninth graders (and their families) a choice of "styles" for learning science (project-based, traditional extensive homework-based, or "college" lecture-based). In one year we decreased the number of students who sought us out due to problems with their science class/teacher by 90%! The failed class rate went down as well - but even students who didn't pass science that year, when asked whether they wished they'd selected a different option, said they were happy with their choice and expressed regret they hadn't focused more or put in more time! A really interesting experiment.

Dear All,

Most of the students I have ever met wanted to have a degree with least efforts and the biggest ease. For many of them a cheating was not a problem.

in response to Andras. I remember vividly the year I decided I didn't need my degree. I had decided to be a professional dancer instead. (1974) It was the best learning year of my life. I tend towards a learning focus rather than achievement focus anyway, but once the pressure was off, i just enjoyed my studies. I was doing 3rd year chemistry, and during lectures, i listened carefully and asked questions based on interest rather than need. At the end of the year, the Chemistry professor offered me an honours position. What I learned that year was that there is a recognizable difference between a learning focus and a performance focus, and moreover, that the learning focus yields better outcomes. Once I stopped worrying about performing and just enjoyed learning, i did better than I ever had previously. Students change their focus depending on circumstances, so when Andras says tht all the students he met wanted to get their degree the easiest way possible, maybe thy were placed in that position by the social circumstances and with some change to the system would become different and better learners.

It is interesting the issue of testing being so important when in real life consulting the literature and being able to research when facing a problem or a question is allowed, why memory is tested and not the capability of finding answers in the reality of life? I remember my father remembering his finals at his  Budapest, Hungary university, back in the 1930's, being written in the library of the university with no restriction, opening books for their answers was perfectly accepted. 

Some students, I was one of them, are very interested to learn and would not need to be motivated by examination but would like to be given opportunity to be creative while learning.  To do research at an early age.  Only a minority is self-motivated but programs for such minority should be created.  An education that were learning and research goes hand in hand and where satisfaction is derived from learning and discovery.  I had the chance to experience this for one month when I was 13 when I participated in a naturalist camp during a summer.  We were trained as real scientist and doing original empirical studies of our own choosing at the same time as receiving basic training by little doses.  Why is it that we delay such approach for graduate studies as if we need twenty year of theories before doing research.

Louis Brassard brought me backto junior high when my math teacher was replaced, the new teacher made math a fantastic game, playing we learnt the so called horrible subject, no more hating math in my life, even after the teacher was gone, and to this day I still love it.

Dear Mark,

You were a very talented and brave young man for having so much self-confidence! Professional dancer! I was glad in that time  when I was able to follow a bit of the rhythm of music.

Dear Mark,

Those students – unfortunately – lack of interest in studying and prefer playing computer games as well as visiting pubs.

I guess not everyone is going to be interested in learning. If they all were, I might be out of a job. I have noticed that really the majority of people I know are not interested in thinking in a scientific way. Quick answers, no effort being preferred. Vive le difference!

Linda - I believe that there probably would be a lot more effort involved in giving individual ways of assessment, and as most educators are over-worked and underpaid do not have the energy, are time-poor, and the old ilk of working for the love of it has sadly, but understandably, gone in this technological day of wanting everything now with the smallest amount of effort. Most people are working at least 10 hour days, including Saturdays. Students generally, while enjoying their journey, it is more of a what can I get out of it, as quick as I can.

The conundrum is, in Australia higher education is either free (scholarships/awards) or study now/pay later scheme. This is fantastic, as it opens the doors to those who normally would not be able to take the higher education path (me included).  Sadly though, it also opens the way for the 'expectation of entitlement' and creates less motivational scenarios, and more 'end results' students, who just want to get through, get their degree so they can earn more money to get what they want (similar to what András is talking about). I'm not saying this is everybody, just generalising. Australia is going down the path of making higher education unobtainable for the 'average' Australian, and in the ensuing years people will have to pay for higher education before embarking on it. Which will take it back to only the 'privileged' able to afford degrees.

I have always found it interesting as well Jorg. We still have deadlines in real life, we still need to have the quality and conciseness. However, I think again, as students learn differently it would take a lot of time, energy, and perhaps many educator would not be prepared to sit with the slower ones.  Higher education is more of a business in these days than ever before. Especially since the global connections with technology. It also brings about competitiveness to entice more students (from overseas) and therefore becomes more of a sales enterprise than a quality educational exercise.

Almost all students are grade-seeking this is what they grow up with, passing exams and aiming for higher grades, this is the fault of grade based education. Some type of courses such as health, education, law where students must do placements introduce this behaviour to students, and we can see this in their reflective journals, as being a shock to them, as they have to apply knowledge, demonstrate skills, critically think and become problem solvers. Using problem based and case based learning introduce this idea to students in the class room, however when we turn this to OSCE / OSCA at the end of the year, we then changed their perception again to grades not competency, accordingly, in my openion, leaving competency assessment as competent/not yet competent, with no other grades, emphasis the knowledge use and retention better than grades.

Dr Hana Morrissey

Hana and Gloria are on point. The goal should be skill  development using what Carol Dweck refers to as a growth mindset. Only through failure do we learn what we don't know.When we are confronted with our own shortcomings and recognize this deficit is the moment we are inspired to learn to overcome. Typical lecture test strategies are educationally unsound if the goal is to develop skill.

Gregory, we need to be careful about the term 'fail'. In latter years it seems to have picked up too many negative connotations, particularly in the North American context as a backlash against the self esteem movement. Failure can have connotations of 'loser' with negative impact on self efficacy if not managed in a supportive context. There seems to be a number of educationalists who think failure should be created to 'make' students realise their weaknessed, and this is counter-productive for all but for the most resilient. Failure should be recognised by the student as a step towards success, not as it is mostly constructed, as the final judgement on their performance. Personally, I don;t like the word any more. I prefer to use 'mistake', 'misunderstand', 'error','needs changing', 'needs clarification' etc in terms of feedback.

Hi Mark, Gregory and Gloria, thank you for your comments. Regarding the sensitivity of using certain words; unfortunately all words in our English language carry negative and positive influences. We cannot expect students to re-try without accepting the fact that they did not achieve the required level. it is like protecting children from infection by making them live in sterile environment and not playing outdoors. so i think using satisfactory and not satisfactory are the two grades that using the marker perspective not the students’ performance and in my opinion are safer the competent/not yet competent, fail, pass, credit, distinction or a, b, c, etc.

Hana Morrissey

The problem with using new words is that they always fall back into meaning exactly what they were meant to replace - life eventually wins every time over semantics. We can try to use some euphemism to shun the word 'fail', but what will likely happen is that the new word will begin to mean 'fail' - as long as failure remains a reality of life.

e.g. Remember the word 'toilet' ? It was a fanciful French word meaning 'little washing cloth' used by the English upper classes so as to eschew using the word then in use. I guess the fanciful, upper class connotation has long been irretrievably lost .....

I find that it depends entirely on the students you are addressing, and the connotation that is taught to students. If they are taught that fail means 'loser' then that is the connotation that is attached. It all depends on the perspective. To me fail means a grade that is attached to something tried. However, I am the resilient type, and failure to me, while it does get me down, tells me what not to do the next time I attempt it. If students are berated for failing, they will associate negativity with the word. If they are told that they have learnt the way not to do it, and are given guidance how to succeed in what they failed at, it gives them more motivation. However, I think the definition of the word fail, is not a matter of whether students are grade seeking or competence seeking. If you are not competent, then you fail. If you do not get a pass mark, then you fail. You can not half fail, you either pass or do not pass, even on competency assessed criteria. I think that students who are driven by grade seeking, are often more motivated by the possibility of failing, than those who are competence seeking. It would be a good study to collaborate on, if anyone is interested?

I am having trouble getting the post to stick. This is my third try. Hope it works.

To clarify: I am concerned about younger students up to, say, 15 years old because their sense of self in all its variations is still forming. Their self efficacy is easily damaged, especially if the system also reduces resilience, which is what I think.

Secondly, the word failure is more or less irrelevant, it is the concept that is important. for example to 'have failures' while trying to do something is positive. To 'be a failure' at something is negative. It is the latter that students attribute too often to themselves in school because of the design of reporting and the social milieu. I would be perfectly happy with the attribution to 'have failures' but it is not the norm in school.

So the word is more or less irrelevant, however, the word failure is part of the social milieu of schooling and already has those negative attributions, so should be treated with care as as I said.

What I am suggesting is a redesign of school systems (for younger students) such that they are given feedback (reporting) in terms of realistic notions of where they are on their learning journey and their learning approach as opposed to how they have performed compared with some predetermined norm.

In a nutshell, failing to do something as well as one would like while on a path to being successful is not a problem. Perceiving oneself as 'being a failure' is a problem and should be avoided at all costs, and requires careful consideration and possibly manipulation of every part of the social and systemic milieu in schools.

Just to add a further clarification: Heather said that you are competent or not competent, nothing in between. You achieve the pass mark or not, nothing in between. That is only one way of looking at it and it is the crux of the problem. eg a skill/competency/ability/concept could be described  at say 10 levels. When a student does some work it can be matched against one of those 10 levels, while it is true that 10 is better than 9 etc, there need be no pass mark, just a position on a journey. Some students may never get to 10 and some my potentially exceed it. Working this way, managing the linguistics carefully, and building a system around it, I did manage to improve the resilience and self efficacy in science in some very disengaged students for a few years until I was told to stop and go back to the old system. I reported in terms of position on a 7 point scale that was clearly linked to progress rather than any sense of pass/fail. Students at both ends of the spectrum loved it because even the top students saw themselves as still on the journey and still able to improve. As one student said "I don't care that some others are better than  me, as long as I am improving." Students clearly knew who was better or worse, but they didn't attribute being a failure to themselves.

A further point: imagine a system where A is best and E is worst and C is nominally a pass.

Now imagine you start school a bit behind the 8 ball because your family is low SES and you didn't get read to. As so often i n this case, you are in the lower half of the class in a range of measures because of poor reading skills. So you get a 'D' in a lot of things. Next year you improve at the same rate as the other students but since the pass mark goes up, you still get a 'D'. This is likely to continue because you retain the orignal deficit unless you improve more than the average. After a while you attribute the concept 'failure at school' to yourself and stop trying. This is too common in our schools because of the system. The word failure need never be used but the attribution remains.

Just to address the competent, not yet competent aspect. I guess I was looking at the original post of whether students are grade centred or competence centred, and my own grade-centred bias was showing. To me, and may I just reiterate that I am not an expert, but a learner on a journey, having just come through my undergrad and in my second year of my doctorate, competency and grade can mean two different things. You can be competent in knowing your material, but fail at an exam (graded result). I often was very competent at passing exams (not failing), but often failed to be competent in knowing the material thoroughly enough to understand at a deeper level the necessary requirements to complete a job satisfactorily (competence). I know of many students who just memorised the required amount of work to pass the exams, but it was a means to an end. I was not one of those, I usually have to understand what I am learning, before I can memorise it, to have it sink in at the deeper level of understanding (long-term memory). To me, passing an exam involves the ability to retrieve information that has been stored, the firing of neural networks (in the frontal, occipital, temporal and parietal lobes) accessing the long-term and working memory, and retrieving the information.  Then there is processing, which I guess is what competency is about.

Just to clarify though, when I mention about pass or fail, I am not saying there is no in-between, I am talking about the ones who do not pass, who fail. If you are studying to become a doctor and you do not know the anatomy of the body, well, you should not pass until you do.  Whether it is competency based, or graded result. To my understanding, competency means you can successfully complete the task given, and not yet competent (or not competent) means you can not yet complete the task. I am not saying that those who can complete the task, albeit poorly are failing, and those that can do the tasks better than others pass (to me that is the in-between). What I am saying is you have to draw the line somewhere, and those who fail are those that can not complete the task at all. When talking about the graded result, and failing I am talking about those who do not get the pass mark, whether that mark be 50/100 or whatever is deemed as a pass mark. I am not talking about those who get high distinction as opposed to those who just pass by their bootlaces. I am talking about those students who do not pass. A line has to be drawn somewhere, otherwise we may as well just pass everyone at the end of the year, no matter what they have learnt on the assumption that the information has been given and they will know. As I stated earlier, I believe that different students need to have different options, as they learn in different ways. We all know of the doctors who have passed their exams, but should never have been allowed to practice.

When marking, there are those that you can tell have tried, and therefore you give them the benefit of knowing they know their stuff, but just can not articulate it as well as some, and then there are those that you know have not  clue what they are talking about. Often it is quite easy to spot those who plagiarise, or just outright cheat, as well as those who have sat down the night before and decided they will not party tonight, as they had better put something down.

I guess it is the objective in the learning that will guide students and educators. If a piece of paper is needed to go further, then that is the important thing, from the student point of view, get that piece of paper. Many students have learnt along their journey that the piece of paper, while necessary is not the be all and end all, as you have shared Mark. It depends on the goal wanted.

I don't want to hijack the question, though I think the issues are related. Again, I reiterate that it is younger students, in the process of developig their self concept as a learner that I am concerned about. Different situations require different processes. As Heather says, 'We all know of the doctors who have passed their exams, but should never have been allowed to practice.' Says it all reeally. What does it mean to be competent or to pass when the above is recognised. The related point is the issue of deemed' pass mark. The pass mark is a social construct, which, when taken with the previous comment about doctors makes me question the process. HOWEVER, of course we need some way of deciding suitability. Maybe there are different ways of measuring though. In the end it is the need to correlated social requiements with lerning outcoes tht causes the problems. What I thnk is tht we need to be sensitive to the needs of the lering situation and design systems that better suit those needs ie for younger learners, measure differently, in a way that doesn't diminish their self efficacy as a general learner too quickly.

@ Mark : it seems to me that an old but still neglected distinction in Assessment Theory would in principle be an adequate - though not full - answer to these issues; Emphasis on Formative Assessment (much feedback, no grade) instead of Summative Assessment (no feedback, just a grade). And Formative and Summative Assessment should ideally never be confused or mixed-up.

Educators and Assessors are responsible for Formative Assessment, not for Summative Assessment. The latter is a burden that has put on public education, but really belongs to another social domain and responsibility, as has been made clear by several statements before, if not by logic alone.

Would education or society break down if universities and academies would stop issuing grades at all? I don't believe so. I know that many companies in many countries, e.g. Spain, don't put much weight on regular grades any more: they fully rely on their own entrance and long-term asesssment procedures. So it works well. I recommend, educational institutions should more concentrate on their main job, and leave the rest to those who are responsible and have to live with the consequences of hiring people who are not fit for the job they are offering.

Does that make sense to you / all?

Agree once again Paul. In Queensland the education system at exit (pre university approx 17 years old, requires me to use formative assessment to support student success, summative assessment to measure against criteria and  a separate process to rank order and place students on a linear scale with approprite gapping for university entrance. They are fundamentally different processes and cause quite a lot of angst. I have long advocated entrance examinations at universities to get rid of at least the ranking and positioning process. The psychology of entrance examinations is also far better than that of exit ranking, but that is a discussion for another time. Surely universities know what they want in first year students in each faculty more specifically than the generalised school exit data. The issue of no grading, although as I have tried to make clear, I have no qualms using a continuum measure to say where a student is on a continuum of learning at any time.

Indeed there is tendency in all of society and industry - not just educational practice - to increase the amount of evaluation of all sorts on all levels. However, this is often tacitly associated with wishful and mythical thinking: more evaluation will automatically lead to better processes and outcomes. What kind of magic is this?

It is certainly the case that adequate reflection and evaluation will lead to valuable insights and conclusions, however, if it remains unclear for most stakeholders what to do with those insights and conclusions, there is a high risk that such reflection and evaluation will sooner or later transform into non-productive rituals for the sake of conformity to rules and policies, nobody is happy with. How many more valuable goals could be achieved by that lost time and effort?

Of course there are experts on evaluation and assessment who have already recognized the weaknesses and threats of an evaluation policy which is decoupled from feedback and intervention processes. Guess what many of them propose? Evaluate the evaluation policy! Again, wishful and magical thinking, but I have to admit: on a higher level. Perhaps it works, but I have my doubts, and it may even provoke angst for any sort of evaluation and assessment: death by evaluation.

IMHO we have to start to think again in terms of value-based goal-directed social systems which are more or less self-regulating and learning by means of adequate feedback (critical evaluation) and feedforward (constructive intervention). This way of thinking was very popular some fifty years ago and I still wonder why it has been silently abandoned, although it fits so well with what we know about living nature.

And to respond seprately to Glorias point about wishing she could have failed more students. I hope that the process of failing would have triggered a re-sit type of process or at the least easy access to redo the failed subject so that the failure was not too much of an end point. Failure in the way I imagine you mean it, must provide an avenue for students to put more effort in or else it is merely a judgement on their personal qualities, which brings us back to my original point about the attribution of 'being a failure' vs 'failing what I just did' (with the option of fixing it)

Mark, I'm interested to know, with regards your last comment, about the option of fixing it, what cohort of students are you referring to please? I imagine you are not generalising, and that you are talking about primary and secondary students and not tertiary students?  Otherwise, I cannot conceive the concept at the tertiary level, where helping students to 'fix their failure' would not only be time inefficient, but also economically inefficient. However, I am open to being enlightened.

In regard to no grading in university, would that change the way the world (business or academic) assesses people once they have finished university? My idea of university is to either produce academics and researchers to further better the university learning capabilities by producing quality educators and researchers, or to prepare, train, and equip students to fulfil their role in their chosen occupation. Except of course the perpetual student, who usually does well at both graded and ungraded competency courses anyway.

I believe one should not set a person up to fail, that is not complete the task they set out  to do. I also believe that grading helps this, if done properly. I am certainly not that knowledgeable about grading, and I am coming more from the student point of view, than the assessor. As a parent, I would not encourage my children to do something if I knew they would feel a failure, and therefore would affect their life. I have always encouraged my children into being adventurous, and trying new things, and that learning is the essence of living. I have also taught them that if they do not succeed (that is they fail) then they have learnt that either that is not the right way to do it, or that this was not their forte, and to try something else, or to practice and see if that is what they are to do. I do not encourage them to 'flog a dead horse' to use an old saying. One has to learn that failing at something does not mean that you, personally are a failure, it simply implies this is not for you. Some people just cannot do some things, and some people shouldn't. I would love to be a world-class cricketer, but I know I would fail at it. This does not mean that I am a failure, but that cricket is not my forte. I believe it is what the educator (whether teacher, lecturer, parent) teaches that is important. If we teach our students that to fail is ok, then they go home and are berated for being a failure by their peers and parents it makes it very difficult. Our society needs to change, starting perhaps with the educators, but also the parents need to be educated, as well as the workforce who hires. Competitiveness is something that is very strong (from a psychological point of view) in human nature and I am not sure this can be stamped out.