"The student accustomed to receiving As is likely to have her academic confidence bruised; the C-acquainted student is sure to have her confidence boosted.Context is not always everything, but it colors everything" (p 342).
I am not bragging when I say this, because Dr. Usher mentioned something to this effect in a post. Graduate students are supposed to be A students. University policy compels it. I have a 4.0 graduate GPA both here and in my master's program, one of just a fraction to accomplish that.
This article brought up several thoughts, but most prominent in my mind is that there are different levels of A. In my graduate school experience, I believe there are three types.
The first is what I call a marginal A. It is really a B but a B has become socially unacceptable. You get this A when your work is competent, but not excellent. Giving a B might either demotivate the student or the professor is not interested in engaging substantively the reason for assigning a B and so it is the most expedient action to assign the A.
The second kind of A is acceptable. To earn an acceptable A means that you maintained satisfactory progress but added only a little to the class or to yourself as a result of metabolizing the material. This is the kind of A most faculty give. However, it also probably means that the professor will not remember you as a student in class a year or two down the road.
The last is the masterful A. This is the A that says you own the material. You have processed it, making deep connections. You have compartmentalized or discarded what is less useful and weaved what is important into your personal schemata. Masterful students make an impact on the class and leave the teacher with an impression, even if they do not agree with the student on philosophical points or if the student shows his or her novice.
Why we are so loathe to assign and accept less than an A grade was something of a mystery to me. However, Pajares says that it has a lot to do with how we see ourselves relative to our own personal self-beliefs and the environment in which we operate. Additionally, we live in a world where relative performance is of utmost concern. We have to rank individuals. I understand the need to do this in certain contexts, but in others it is perplexing.
Chris,
ReplyDeleteI find your commentary on the various shades of "A" to be fascinating. As I mentioned earlier, assessment and the consequential assignment of a grade has so much wrapped up in it. In our earlier readings Kegan (1995) mentioned the concept presented by Kierkegaard of fourth order consciousness. I should suppose that a student who has attained to the fourth order of consciousness would scarcely need a grade at all. Just the simple awareness that I have learned something, have, as you mention, "processed it, making deep connections...and weaved what is important into...(my)personal schemata" should suffice. Yet, as you also point out, there are cultural implications wrapped up in the grade as well. Grades work as motivators, as true assessment, as signs of acceptance into a society, as certification, as a representation of effort, as a representation of skill, as a way-marker for future study. A student could easily divorce learning from grades, and, as such, could cause the desire to get a good grade to interfere with true academic investigation. This to me is the saddest of all.
Thanks for responding, Ben. I think a lot of our problems with regard to the societal influences of education is that we are so firmly ensconced in the educational system relative to the Industrial Revolution that it is a real challenge to break out of these norms and practices.
ReplyDeleteThere is an area of instructional design dedicated to mapping various knowledge domains and then carefully tracking student learning outcomes. The implication here in my mind is to look more with more depth at all of the myriad components that make up a competency relative to a given learning outcome and measure individual achievement of smaller tasks. In my thinking, this might eliminate the need to assign so many grades and focus our attention on task competency, which could be a yes/no question rather than a scaled answer.
Yes, relative performance is still a necessity, but not for every profession and certainly not at lower grades.
You can check out the book that contains that chapter here:
http://www.amazon.com/Instructional-Design-Theories-Models-III-Knowledge/dp/0805864563
The rivalry of the patterns is the history of the world. ~ William James, "The Social Value of the College-Bred"
ReplyDeleteWhile grades do serve a purpose as a symbol of ones’ level of achievement in a particular area, I wonder if this phenomenon is a testament to the fact that, once you get to graduate school what you walk away with is (for the most part) entirely up to you. If, as Dr. Usher mentioned last week, self-regulatory skills might be the best predictor of graduate student persistence, then perhaps it doesn’t matter so much what the letter grade is as much as it matters that the student is able to gauge their own progress and effort. In a way, such a general approach to grading takes the focus away from progress measured by comparison to our peers and forces us to focus on individual learning and progress.
ReplyDeleteIs there a solution? Can there be a solution? As long as there is competition among peers, will students not find creative ways to communicate their own progress and effort? Will students be content with the subtle success of comparing their current growth with their past growth? I do not doubt that Edison rejoiced the day his light bulb worked. He would have been self-satisfied. But, how long would it have lasted if he hadn't been able to share his genius with others? Does not social interaction serve as a motivator as well?
ReplyDeleteI think it depends on what we are talking about. Pajares (2007) suggests that teachers should emphasize and praise effort over ability. Think about it. Who do you think worked harder- The student who raised his or her grade from a D to a B or the student who raised it from a high B to an A? What does 3-5 percentage points represent anyway?
ReplyDeleteAll my K-12 life I hung out with kids who were classified as being much smarter than myself. I started doing poorly in school while they made the Principal's list, carried home numerous trophies on awards night and got full rides to state universities. Some of these folks went on to do great things in life, or at least have successful careers. However, most of them did not because they lacked the tenacity to sustain a high level of achievement into their undergrad years or had problems maintaining the proper focus requisite to pursue what they loved.
This is not to say there is anything wrong with being a nurse or a manager of a drug store or a pizza delivery guy. Gainful employment is honorable. What I am saying is that tenacity and focus will trump an assigned grade every time.
So even in my own obsessive compulsion to get an A in every class because I was labeled a poor student and am now trying in some small way to restore the esteem of the child inside me, I have to remind myself that it is not the grade that matters, it is realizing my own personal goals and what I do with the knowledge I have amassed that will ultimately matter.
Ben, what you are saying is exactly my point. Edison improved upon an existing idea and stuck with it until a commercially acceptable product was viable. He got the credit in the public consciousness because he stuck to it. He took someone else's genius and made it work. Hard work will trump pure genius every time. Additionally, I think inventors are generally such mavericks that most of their contemporary scholars do not know what to do with them. This speaks to the Gladwell (2008) work.
BTW- thank you all for responding to this extra post. This is one of the main reasons I am in school- To hear other perspectives and interact with others.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Chris. You presented some interesting thoughts through your autobiographical self-reflection. I agree. The exchange of ideas speaks to some deep need within me as well.
ReplyDelete