Grades in formative feedback

Table 7.5 shows how student preference for grades was divided, matching a degree of uncertainty among tutors regarding their effectiveness in formative feedback. Some have argued against standard approaches, stating that grades can have a

formative function (e.g., Elbow, 1993, cited in Burke & Pieterich, 2010). Indeed, in a recent study on student transition to university the vast majority of undergraduates interviewed expressed a desire that feedback should include a grade as a standard indicator (Beaumont et al., 2011).

Carless (2006), in particular, has argued that not giving grades is a way of avoiding stigma and negative effect on low achieving students. Tutor C also voiced such a concern, but added her view that grades were inappropriate for the formative task she set:

TC: You know, … sometimes it’s better to get that feel if you get that number… for this particular task I just thought it’s a bit inappropriate because, you know, it’s a thousand words, it’s not the full assignment so you can’t really give them a number for it. And I also think it’s such an early stage in the module and the year that if you give them something which is a firm number it’s only going to be not only inappropriate so you couldn’t really do it anyway but if you were to do that they might be, you know, very off-putting to some people. (P2F)

I also shared these views, stating in my interview, that “... students should be focussing on the comments and on improving various aspects of their work, rather than looking at a mark and therefore being turned off by it”. However, in reference to the preliminary study, I also suggested that students’ reaction to grades could also be in inverse relation to that suggested above:

TE: …I could see …with Archaeology students only last year that where students got an average to good mark, they were very often less, much less inclined to want to engage with the feedback. There was a sort of tendency to say, that was okay, so I don’t need to worry about that….certainly, when students got poor marks, that often galvanised them to look more closely at it. (P2F)

A key point for both studies is that the student participants were used to receiving grades and not used to this type of formative assessment. Indeed, in a recent study of Chinese students on a UK Master’s programme, many participants reported receiving only grades in China with no detailed feedback (Tian, 2008). Betty continued to value grades, and referred to this assessment culture:

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BS: Hmmm. But … so just going back, you’ve already said yeah the feedback is more important than a mark I think you made that clear, but you’d still quite like the mark you say?

Betty: Yeah, because you know we are used to get mark when I was in China you know, so marks can decide students’ maybe future or something like that. (B: FT)

Only tutor F gave a specific grade for her formative task, and the participant who received this grade welcomed it. Tutor F gave her rationale for this:

TF: I really see it as a map, as a road map. So, for example, you can tell somebody how to get from A to B, or how they got from A to B. With marks, and especially if you have a grading scale, it’s like on a road map; somebody says, well you are on A3 on page 62/63, and they go and they see and they say, okay, here is A, here is B and I’m here, and this is what I need to do, meaning they read the grade descriptors for the lowest and the highest, see where they are, and they can, sort of, based on that infer what it is they still need to do. (P2F)

Tutor F seemed to believe that grades show students, in the words of Hattie and Timperley, “how they are going” and “where they are going” (Hattie & Timperley, 2007), but she stated that it depended on their understanding of the grade descriptors, which she did not focus on in class. Other tutors’ rationale for not giving grades was based on the fact that it would not be appropriate for the type of task involved, but tutor B, for example, also admitted to being in “two minds” about this, stating that “...there was some logic to giving [students] a grade that helps to show them where they stand”.

Flora was the only participant totally convinced about the value of not receiving a grade, stating “some students need encouragement and maybe they will do better in the next time…if they not get the bad mark”. Ethel, on the other hand, commented that pressure from a poor grade helped students to improve. Anna concurred with this view, stating that she would have felt more “stressed…and put more effort into writing ..” had the tutor told her she was grading the work. Later, Ethel reported her concern that her own assignment was “terrible” stating “… actually I feel it is terrible and I didn’t get a mark so I don’t know how terrible it is”. Diane, while recognizing that the most important thing was “the feedback, not the marks…”, also felt that tutors should give “scores and marks…” as they might help them [students] to become “….more clear about criteria and marking.”

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The findings here provide evidence of a more complex relationship between grades and motivation than is often found in the literature, and as in the preliminary study, giving poor grades did not necessarily de-motivate participants. Students need to know if they are under performing and it may be that grades and marks are just as effective as comments in providing this information. Grades also featured

prominently in the experience of students in both the preliminary and main studies, and in the absence of guidance on how to use formative feedback, these students looked to grades to inform them of the gap between tutor expectations and their performance.