How Grading Policies Relate to Students’ Perceptions of Teachers’ Beliefs

• In Event: Course Grade Policies: What are the Consequences for Motivation, Achievement, and Equity?

Abstract

Objectives
As a core feature of classroom climate, grading policy is an instructional practice that reflects instructors’ beliefs about learning. However, less is known about how students interpret these underlying beliefs. This study examined how grading policies predict college students’ perceptions of their instructors’ beliefs about intelligence, effort, and failure.

Theoretical Framework
Research has shown that students’ perceptions of course syllabi are linked to learning outcomes (Jones et al., 2022; Willingham-McLain, 2011). For example, Jones and colleagues (2021, 2022) found that when students perceived more autonomy in syllabus statements, such as decision-making opportunities, they reported greater engagement and better evaluations of teaching. Studies have also shown that students focus primarily on performance-related elements of the syllabus, such as grading policy (Doolittle & Siudzinski, 2010; Wheeler et al., 2019). Grading policy communicates expectations but also reflects instructors’ views on learning, such as valuing mastery, effort, or improvement, conveying implicit messages about what is important in the learning process. However, little is known about how students interpret such beliefs from grading policies in real classrooms. Thus, we investigated how different grading policies relate to students’ perceptions of instructors’ beliefs about intelligence, effort, and failure. These beliefs were selected because prior work shows they shape instructors’ practices (e.g., Muenks & Yan, 2022) and influence students’ learning (e.g., Fong et al., 2025).

Method
Data (N = 264; Mage = 20.06, SD = 1.32; 57.31% female) were collected from a large public university in the Southwestern U.S. The racial/ethnic makeup was 43.32% Latino/a, 30.21% White, 9.78% American Indian or Alaska Native, 4.21% Asian, 3.06% African American, and 9.42% mixed/other. Students from 13 courses across English, Chemistry, Math, and Education completed an online survey after midterm. They rated the extent to which they believed their instructors endorsed fixed intelligence (Dweck, 1999), negative views of effort (Blackwell, 2002), and failure-as-debilitating (Haimovitz & Dweck, 2016). Grading policies from syllabi were coded into four binary types: absolute vs. curved grading, flexible vs. strict attendance, makeup exams present vs. absent, and extra credit available vs. unavailable. Given students were nested within classes, multilevel analyses were conducted in R, with students at Level 1 and classes at Level 2. Separate models were estimated for each grading policy type and instructor belief.

Results
Absence of makeup exams predicted perceptions of instructors holding unproductive beliefs about intelligence (B = 0.21, SE = 0.09, p = .02) and failure (B = 0.18, SE = 0.08, p = .03). Unavailability of extra credit predicted fixed intelligence beliefs (B = 0.22, SE = 0.10, p = .03). These results suggest students may interpret a lack of recovery opportunities as signaling a belief that ability is unchangeable. No significant effects were found for the other two policies or for effort beliefs.

Significance
Unlike prior experimental studies, this real-world study showed students perceive instructors’ beliefs through grading policies. This opens avenues for using grading practices as a focus in instructor training and emphasizes aligning instructional design with the beliefs instructors intend to communicate.

Authors

• Shengjie Lin, University of New Mexico

• Yu-Yu Hsiao, University of New Mexico

• Jennifer Jordan, University of New Mexico

• Yiqiu Yan, University of Texas at Austin