I NTERFERENCE WITH GRADING PROCESS

The lecturer’s presence was a reoccurring theme across the interviews. Some students liked their personal tutor hearing how well they had progressed in practice. Conversely, negative comments about two lecturers’ behaviour during the

lecturers’ names but I knew who they were. This student started by imitating the lecturer’s words:

You are looking at 5-6’s in your first year, 7-8 in your second year and 9-10 in your third year. And that would be where she’d expect you to be. Now having spoken to other people that may be not having the same tutor, that’s not how they’ve been graded and that makes me worried about what my grade is. I know it’s obviously OK but it is going to, its lower than where I want it to be…. My mentor was constantly calling me a second or third year because she thought my knowledge and things were really good. You feel really good but my percentage didn’t reflect that because she was doing it how she’d been told to do it. I mean it was fine but it wasn’t up there with the firsts which is where I’d prefer it to be (S41/T2/G9).

The mentor apparently thought the student’s performance was at a level higher than her status and year of experience yet this was not the grade she received. The authority of the lecturer, it seemed, had influenced the student’s practice grade. The mismatch between the verbal feedback given by the mentor in practice and practice grade is also documented in Heaslip and Scammell’s (2012) research. When

mentors (n=112) were asked whether their feedback corresponded with the grade 89% (n=100) thought it did. However, only 60% (n=65 of 107) nursing students agreed (Heaslip and Scammell, 2012). The difference in perception was attributed to mentors preferring to give positive feedback rather than constructive criticism. Heaslip and Scammell (2012) do not state if there were any other influences in their study, in my research the presence of a lecturer added another layer of interpretation to awarding practice grades.

The unwelcome interference was echoed by 78-week students. And the grading… I felt it was really unfair (S51/T1/G11S).

Yeah it was from the beginning, just saying that we should be between 5 and 6, so that was always interfering with the marks that we were given because she was like saying the criteria it’s not changing it but using the tool in a different way than other mentors or other teachers (S47/T1/G11S).

I think that the knock on effect of that was the situation I had was that my mentor in practice thought that was the way that it was supposed to be done that we should be graded a slightly lower level to allow room for improvement that’s what she had been told by colleagues of hers and in fact when it came do the tripartite there was a big difference between for what I had graded myself and what she assessed me as. But luckily my personal tutor was able to put her straight so we were able to sort of meet in the middle but still I wonder if she hadn’t been given that sort of conflicting information, whether that mark might have been higher, ultimately (S50/T1/G11S).

When S50’s personal tutor was present at the tripartite, she explained to the mentor that all marks were available to grade the student’s progress but S50 was still concerned that the mentor had been unduly influenced by the previous information and this may have negatively affected S50’s final grade.

One of the lecturers admitted how she tried to make the practice grades align to a standard deviation curve, rather than the dichotomous pattern.

I explained it to the students and the mentors ... in any form of assessment you should get a standard deviation curve and to me that’s what that grid now does, is that you’ve got a lower end and a higher end but the bulk should be in those three boxes in the middle…. I kind of used that as my preliminary…. I don’t think you’re going to be in the top and bottom end too much but I am not sure that I wasn’t using it to try and control, to make the tool do what we wanted it to do. So, I felt that I wanted them to really, really justify if they’d given themselves 7, 8, I gave them a much harder time in justifying why they thought they were exemplary, than probably if they’d had given themselves a 6. So, I am not sure that I used the tool equitably …and I think that conflicts and I was wrestling with when I was using it with the guidance that we’d written, which says ‘All marks are available for all students, whatever their year’ (L1/T1).

The inconsistent use of the grading tool by the university staff caused confusion and was a source of dissatisfaction for some students.

But surely, we should have some sort of instructions for that because no one has a clue. When you go in there, without being rude, the tutors don’t have a clue because you got all different information from each tutor. The mentors don’t have a clue and the students don’t have a clue, so when, I know of one student that got marked and she got marked as a midwife. Do you know what I mean? (S30/T1/G7).

This student’s sense of frustration is palpable, there is so much interpretation of the grading process that it seems no one has the ‘correct’ solution.

There were a few positive comments about the May 2012 change, however none from students.

I personally feel that the latest version of the grading tool that we are using is much more effective in terms of applying an appropriate grade to the student which isn’t elevated unnecessarily……. the fact that we now have a fifth box has meant that it is far more discerning and that’s been complemented further by the explanations to the mentors as to what equating it to the degree

classifications has really, really emphasised what an exemplary student looks like (L4/T2).

While this lecturer considered the tool more discerning, the grades do not show this trend, with almost all students still receiving a first for practice regardless of the tool used.