Student grade expectations and the need for positive student evaluations of instruction probably both contribute to the shaping or altering of the grading philosophies of some faculty. Pressure from colleagues to give lower or higher grades often causes some faculty members to operate in conflict with their own views. The recent response to grade inflation has caused some faculty, individually and collectively, to alter their philosophies and procedures. Grading policies of the department, college, or campus may limit the procedures which can be used and force a basic grading plan on each instructor in that administrative unit. For example, a mastery learning approach1 to teaching is incongruent with a grading approach which is based on competition for an arbitrarily set number of "A" or "B" grades. The type of instructional strategy used in teaching dictates, to some extent, the type of grading procedures to use. As any of these factors change there may be a corresponding change in belief. The instructor who believes that the end product of a university education should be a "prestigious" group which has survived four or more years of culling and sorting has different grading policies from the instructor who believes that most college-aged youths should be able to earn a college degree in four or more years.Īn instructor's beliefs are influenced by many factors. An instructor's view of the role of a university education consciously or unwittingly affects grading plans. It is not sufficient to have some method of assigning grades-the method used must be defensible by the user in terms of his or her beliefs about the goals of an American college education and tempered by the realities of the setting in which grades are given. But all instructors must ask similar questions and find acceptable answers to them in establishing their own grading policies. There are no research studies that can answer questions like: What should an "A" grade mean? What percent of the students in my class should receive a "C?" Should spelling and grammar be judged in assigning a grade to a paper? What should a course grade represent? These "should" questions require value judgments rather than an interpretation of research data the answer to each will vary from instructor to instructor. What might a faculty member consider to establish sound grading policies and practices? The issues which contribute to making grading a controversial topic are primarily philosophical in nature.
When grading policies are practices are carefully formulated and reviewed periodically, they can serve well the many purposes for which they are used.
Unless instructors use generally-accepted policies and practices in assigning grades, these grades are apt to convey misinformation and lead the decision-maker astray. These grades are used by students, other faculty, university administrators, and prospective employers to make a multitude of different decisions. The end-of-course grades assigned by instructors are intended to convey the level of achievement of each student in the class.
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