K–12 Teachers' Perspectives About Grading and Grading Practices

• In Event: 100 Years of Grading Research: Meaning and Value in the Most Common Educational Measure

Abstract

Objective: To review research on teachers’ perspectives. Grading practices refers to how teachers use information from assessments and other sources of information to determine and report student grades. Teacher perceptions about grading includes beliefs, attitudes, and other dimensions of cognitive and affective views.
Method and Data Sources. Early decades of research are summarized. Research conducted since 1994 is more thoroughly reviewed. Literature since 1994 was limited to empirical studies of K-12 teachers’ perceptions of grading and grading practices. A search of ERIC, Education Research Complete, Dissertation Abstracts and Google Scholar, using the search terms “grade(s),” “grading,” and “marking” with “teacher perceptions,” “teacher practices,” and “teacher attitudes,” limited to English language and K-12 levels of education. References from identified articles were examined for further sources.
Results and Conclusions. Early reviews by Crooks (1933), Smith and Dobbin (1960), and Kirschenbaum, Napier, & Simon (1971) debated whether grading should be norm or criterion-referenced. While high schools tended to stay with norm-referencing to accommodate the need for ranking students for college admissions, some elementary school educators transitioned to what was eventually called mastery learning and then standards-based education. Systematic investigations of teachers’ grading practices and perceptions about grading began to be published in the mid to late twentieth century following a period of greater emphasis on classroom assessment in the 1980s. Brookhart (1994) reviewed studies of teachers grading practices, opinions, and beliefs. She found teachers use measures of achievement, primarily tests, as major determinants of grades; believe it is important to grade fairly; do include non-cognitive factors (ability, effort, improvement, completion of work, and, to a small extent, other student behaviors) in determining grades; and practices vary among teachers.
Thirty-four empirical studies of teachers’ grading practices and perceptions were identified from 1994 to 2015. Early in this period there were several investigations that essentially confirmed what Brookhart (1994) concluded. Most studies of teachers’ grading practices ask teachers directly about how different factors contribute to their grading practices (Aronson, 2008: Cizek, Fitzgerald, & Rachor 1995; Cross & Frary, 1999; Guskey, 2002; Lui, 2008b; Mc Millan, 2001; McMillan, Myran, & Workman, 2002; Randall & Engelhard, 2010; Russell & Austin, 2010; Sun & Cheng, 2013; Svennberg, Meckbach, & Redelius, 2014; Troug & Friedman, 1996; Yesbeck, 2011). McMillan (2001; McMillan & Lawson, 2001; McMillan, Myran, & Workman, 2002; McMillan & Nash, 2000) was able to show that most of the non-cogntive factors in grading were things like effort, ability,
Studies of teacher perceptions find teachers stress that grading should reflect fair assessment, be consistent with principles of standards-based instruction, and include professional judgment in addition to a specific grading formula (Bonner & Chen, 2009; Grimes, 2010; Guskey, 2009; Hay & MacDonald, 2008; Lui, 2008a; Liu, O’Connell, & McCoach, 2006; Svennberg, Meckbach, & Redelius, 2014; Tierney, Simon, & Charland, 2011; Wiley, 2011).

Author

• James H. McMillan, Virginia Commonwealth University