rethinking grades: assessment and motivation in the 21st century
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Rethinking Grades:Assessment and Motivation
in the 21st Century
Matt EdmondsSaint Mary’s School
Presentation Defining the Challenge: Putting Grades in Context
Where We Have Been Where We Are Where We Need To Go
Motivation Mindset Culture
Discussion
Overview
Where We Have Been(According to Sir Ken Robinson)
Education as we know it is a product of the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution.
http://unclutteredwhitespaces.com/2010/07/sir-ken-robinson-on-creating-an-education-system-that-nurtures-creativity/
What purpose does industrial education serve in a post-industrial society?
The Key Question
Where We Are:The Changing Marketplace
Abundance Can your product/service really
compete in a marketplace that is flooded with similar products and services? What sets it apart?
Asia Can your job be outsourced
more cheaply? Automation
Can your job be performed more efficiently by a computer or machine?
http://www.archwebb.com/blog/?p=120
“When we went to school, we were kept there with a story, which is if you worked hard and did well and got a college degree, you would
have a job. . .
. . . Our kids don’t believe that, and they’re right not to.”
- Ken Robinson
Where We Are:The Reality for Young People
Even if it is possible to get a job based on one’s credentials—including grades—the key
will be keeping it.
Where We Are:Credentials to Competencies
Critical ThinkingCommunicationCollaboration
Creativity
Initiative and Entrepreneurialism*Agility and Adaptability*
* Tony Wagner, The Global Achievement Gap: Why Even Our Best Schools Don’t Teach the New Survival Skills Our Children Need—
and What We Can Do About It
Where We Are:Credentials to Competencies
Where We Are:The Push for Innovation
Grant Lichtman,The Learning Pond
http://learningpond.wordpress.com
Even as we search feverishly for the latest technologies and most cutting-edge pedagogical
approaches, many of us often rely on “old-school” grading methods that undermine our stated commitment to “21st century” learning.
As independent schools, we have the freedom to completely re-invent our curricula—but if we don’t get assessment right, the puzzle will
remain unfinished.
Curriculum and Assessment: Two Pieces of the Same Puzzle
1. Grading practices should strive to encourage intrinsic motivation and engagement in students.
2. Grading practices should cultivate in students a mindset that is oriented toward long-term growth
rather than short-term achievement.
3. Grading practices should nourish classroom (and school) cultures that reflect our “21st century”
needs and values.
Where We Need To Go:Three Tests
Grading practices should strive to encourage intrinsic motivation and
engagement in students.
Test No. 1
“Carrots and Sticks” vs. Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose
Carrots and sticks (e.g., grades, cash, etc.) don’t
work nearly as well as we think they do.
Instead, people are motivated by three
primary factors: autonomy, mastery, and
purpose.http://jonrwallace.blogspot.com/2012/06/12.html
Why Carrots and Sticks Don’t Work
Less of What We Do Want
Intrinsic Motivation High Performance Creativity
More of What We Don’t Want
Short-Term Thinking Unethical Behavior
http://americancreed.wordpress.com/2012/09/14/carrots-and-sticks/
Autonomy
Mastery
Purpose
Three Factors Influencing Motivation
Autonomy
Mastery
Purpose
Three Factors Influencing Motivation
“This era doesn’t call for better management. It calls for a renaissance of self-direction.”
- Daniel Pink
Autonomy
Autonomy
Mastery
Purpose
Three Factors Influencing Motivation
Mastery
The “Three Laws of Mastery” Mastery Is an
Asymptote Mastery Is a Pain Master Is a Mindset
http://ryanmassey.wordpress.com/2011/01/15/mastery-is-an-asymptote/
Mastery
“People who have an easy time of things, who get 800s on their SAT’s, I worry that those people
get feedback that everything they’re doing is great. And I
think as a result, we are actually setting them up for long-term failure. When that person
suddenly has to face up to a difficult moment, then I
think they’re screwed, to be honest. I don’t think they’ve
grown the capacities to be able to handle that.”
- Dominic Randolph, Riverdale Country School (NY)
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2011/09/18/magazine/18-magcover-20110918/18-magcover-20110918-sfSpan.jpg
Autonomy
Mastery
Purpose
Three Factors Influencing Motivation
“Whatever they’re studying, be sure they can answer these questions: Why am I learning this? How is it relevant to the world I live in
now?”
Purpose
Purpose?
“My goal is to get a 3.7 or higher. . . . My dad will give me 50 bucks if I get it—even though 50
bucks isn’t really that much. . . . Do I have any other goals? [long pause] I mean look, grades are the focus. I
tell you, people don’t go to school to learn. They go to get good grades which brings them to college, which brings them the high-
paying job, which brings them happiness, so they think. But
basically, grades is where it’s at.”- High school student
http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp?isbn=9780300098334
As both carrot and stick, grades have the potential to undermine autonomy, mastery,
and purpose all at once.
How Grading Can Influence Motivation
Grading practices should cultivate in students a mindset that is oriented
toward long-term growth rather than short-term achievement.
Test No. 2
Mindset
Fixed mindsetvs.
Growth mindset
http://blackboardbattlefield.com/2012/02/25/book-review-carol-dwecks-mindset/
Fixed = Proving
Growth = IMProving
Mindset
The Tortoise and the Hare
http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/the-tortoise-and-the-hare
“As children, we were given a choice between the talented
but erratic hare and the plodding but steady tortoise. The lesson was supposed to be that slow and steady wins
the race. But, really, did any of us ever want to be the tortoise? No, we just wanted to be a less foolish
hare.”- Carol Dweck
The Tortoise and the Hare
http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/the-tortoise-and-the-hare
“The story of the tortoise and the hare, in trying to put forward the power of effort, gave effort a
bad name. It reinforced the image that effort is for the
plodders and suggested that in rare instances, when
talented people dropped the ball, the plodder could sneak through. . . . [T]his is part of the
fixed mindset.” - Carol Dweck
When grades are seen as personal judgments, it is natural to avoid being judged negatively.
How?
How Mindset Influences Performance (and Vice Versa)
Reducing effort
Blaming the teacher, resisting help
Cheating
Avoiding more challenging tasks or quitting altogether
How Fixed Mindset Students Avoid Being Judged Negatively
“[L]ow-effort syndrome is often seen as a way that adolescents assert their independence from
adults, but it is also a way that students with the fixed mindset protect themselves. They view the adults as saying, ‘Now we will measure you and see what you’ve got.’
And they are answering, ‘No you won’t.’”- Carol Dweck
“Low Effort Syndrome”
Lazy or Rational?
“Students of all ages who have been led to concentrate on getting a good grade are likely to pick the
easiest possible assignment if given a choice. . . . The more pressure to get an A, the less
inclination to challenge oneself. Thus, students who cut corners
may not be lazy so much as rational. They are adapting to an environment where good grades, not intellectual exploration, are
what count.”http://www.betterworldbooks.com/what-does-it-mean-to-be-well-educated-id-0807032670.aspx
“Each April when the skinny envelopes—the rejection letters—arrive from colleges,
countless failures are created from coast to coast. Thousands of brilliant young scholars
become ‘The Girl Who Didn’t Get Into Princeton’ or ‘The Boy Who Didn’t Get Into
Stanford.’”- Carol Dweck
Fulfilling Our Mission?
Especially if we claim to prepare students for more than just college, the cultivation of a growth mindset should be non-negotiable.
Fulfilling Our Mission
Grading practices should nourish classroom (and school) cultures that reflect our “21st
century” needs and values.
Test No. 3
In keeping with the shift toward post-industrial education, we need classroom cultures that
emphasize deep, meaningful learning and the development of new skills.
These valued new outcomes are difficult to assess—and especially difficult to quantify.
Conflict No. 1
In a smaller, increasingly connected world, we need classroom cultures that emphasize ethical decision-making and the interdependent nature of a global
society.
Grades have the potential to make students more self-centered, manipulative, and unethical in their
pursuit of success.
Conflict No. 2
“A school’s use of letter or number grades may encourage a fact- and skill-based
approach to instruction because that sort of learning is easier to score. The tail of assessment thus comes to wag the
educational dog.”- Alfie Kohn
The Tail That Wags the Dog
There might be good reasons not to abandon what has worked for us in the past—tests and
quizzes, traditional essays, etc.—but we should be sure that we’re not keeping those things around simply because we’ve figured
out how to grade them more easily.
Keeping What Works
Sorting our students might be part of the job, but the fact is that grades tend to put teachers
and students in an adversarial relationship. That makes it more difficult to help them learn
and grow, which is a more important part of the job.
Grades and theStudent-Teacher Relationship
As classrooms become more active, more collaborative, more differentiated places, teachers will necessarily function more as
coaches than as disseminators of information. Thus, it naturally follows that student-teacher
relationships will become even more important than they always have been.
Grades and the Student-Teacher Relationship
Comparison Competition
Students: Lower self-esteem Sends the wrong message about the purpose of education
Teachers: Lower standards Provides an incentive to sabotage the sometimes messy process of collaboration
Grades, Peer Relationships, and Collaboration: Two Dangers
Grades and Unethical Behavior
“Again, we can continue to blame and punish all the
students who cheat -- or we can look for the structural
reasons this keeps happening. Researchers have found that the more students are led to
focus on getting good grades, the more likely they are to
cheat, even if they themselves regard cheating as wrong.”
- Alfie Kohn
“The practical difficulties of abolishing letter grades are real. But the key question is whether those difficulties are seen as
problems to be solved or as excuses for perpetuating the status quo.”
- Alfie Kohn
Conclusion
How might we give our students autonomy and still maintain high standards?
How might we make the pain of mastery more bearable?
How might we move students from the fixed mindset to the growth mindset?
How might we grade in a way that values the process as much as the product?
How might we promote healthier classroom and school cultures by rethinking grading practices?
Some Questions for Discussion