ELT News Think Tank

This Month's Think Tank Panel

Marc Helgesen

Peter Viney

Curtis Kelly

Chris Hunt

Panelists: Marc | Peter | Curtis | Chris
Date: November 2003

Topic: "How important is grading and testing?"

Curtis Kelly

(My contribution this month is from a letter exchange I had on the topic with some members of ETJ.)

Many of us are interested in the issue of grading. I am too.

I believe now that it is not as simple an issue as should we grade or not. This decision depends on our educational situation and goals. On one hand, we must consider the effects of testing on the local situation in our classroom, often positive, while on the other, the effects of testing on society, generally negative. In deciding the value of grading ( = testing), we must evaluate each situation, while keeping the global cost in mind at the same time. As for the local situation, grading in our classroom, as Stephen, a teacher in Japan, said:

"I think most people would probably agree in the abstract that school is 'preparation for life,' or 'socializing.'

In this light, then, when can grading help or harm our students? When do we have a situation that requires a Freire or Summerhill non-grading solution, and when do we have one that requires grading as either a filter, or motivator towards excellence, although a faulty one?

“One of the discoveries made in my field, adult education, the scholarship of which is still relatively unknown in Japan, is that testing and grading adults generally doesn't work.”

I teach at a school where testing and grading tend to be more of an inhibitor to student growth, because so many of my students, not having the brain configurations that make them likely to succeed in competitive testing, are already suffering from low self-esteem. (Analytical learners do better memorizing details than relational learners; detail-oriented left-brain dominant learners do better than global right brain learners; auditory or verbal learners do better than kinesthetic and visual learners; and my students, as is generally more likely for women, score higher in the second categories.) I have been to Mike G's school however, and I can imagine, from the students that I met, that competitive grading serves as a powerful motivator.

On the other hand, consider this case. I know a dental student that has skipped most of his classes for four years, while drinking, gambling and skirt-chasing, but will probably still get a practitioner's license because his grandfather has pull in the industry. I don't want dentists like him anywhere near my mouth. I am all in favor of students like that being tested and failed, and to prevent abuses of power, the government has recently set up a tough qualifying test for dental internship. It has only about a 30% pass rate. (Ironically, though, the medical industry is so old-boyish that many medical and dental professors are able to "acquire" information on the tests beforehand. My slacker will probably still pass.)

On the other hand, one of the discoveries made in my field, adult education, the scholarship of which is still relatively unknown in Japan, is that testing and grading adults generally doesn't work. Adults are independent learners and tend to be self-motivated. Adults are life-centered and need to shape learning to their own situations. Adults need to be facilitated, not taught, and so, teacher-centered methods with required content to memorize and tests don't work as well. Instead, adult ed. programs, like mine at Nova Southeastern University, use a pass-fail system (which doesn't hamper motivation at all), project-based learning, competency standards, and another tool that is quite interesting, learner contracts. The learner decides what he or she will master, how to accomplish mastery, and a means of validating it.

Therefore, in my view, grading creates another problem. While grading might be a good motivator in many cases, it is also a system that reinforces learner dependency. That might be all right if you teach children, though I am not sure, but for college students, on the brink of adulthood, becoming an independent learner is a difficult, but vital task. If we really do agree with Stephen that "school is 'preparation for life,'" then we should also keep in mind that teacher-centered approaches, such as testing and grading, suppress maturation. They extend the dominant parent, dependent child relationship. Grades might help us get our students to conform to our wishes, but maybe allowing for some independence, and the resulting chaos, is also necessary. It better prepares them for life.

Panelists: Marc | Peter | Curtis | Chris

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Curtis Kelly, Heian Jogakuin University

Author of Writing from Within

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