Grading in Higher Education

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

Abstract

Objective: To review research on grading issues unique to higher education: the perceived relationship between grading practices and student course evaluations, and historical changes in expectations for appropriate grade distributions.
Method and Data Sources. The databases EBSCO Education Research Complete, ERIC, and ProQuest Education Journals were searched using “grades” or “grading,” and “university,” “college,” and “higher education,” yielding 610 articles for review. Forty articles were selected for this review. In addition, university websites in 12 different countries were examined; the presentation will include a description of international differences in higher education grading practices.
Results and Conclusions. The relationship between course grades and student course evaluations has been an issue of interest for at least 40 years (Abrami, Dickens, Perry, & Leventhal, 1980; Centra, 1993; Holmes, 1972McKeachie, 1979; Marsh, 1984, 1987; Spooren, Brockx, & Mortelmans, 2013 for key scholarship in the general area). The grade-leniency theory (Ginexi, 2003; Love & Kotchen, 2010; Marsh, 1987; McKenzie, 1975; Salmons, 1993) suggests students will give higher course evaluations to faculty who are more lenient in their grading practices. Others (Kasten & Young, 1983; Maurer, 2006) suggest cognitive dissonance between the student’s self-image and an anticipated low grade or revenge for an anticipated low grade explains the relationship. However, the observed relationship between students’ anticipated grade and course evaluation rating is small (between 10 and .30; Centra & Creech, 1976; Feldman, 1997) Smith & Smith (2009) suggest that this small relationship could simply reflect honest assessment of students’ opinions of the instruction.
Historically, grading in higher education has been norm-referenced, up until the 1960s. Cambridge University developed a norm-referenced approach to grading in the 16th century (Winter, 1993). American universities invented a variety of systems for ranking and categorizing students based on academic performance and on progress, conduct, attentiveness, interest, effort, and regular attendance at class and chapel (Cureton, 1971; Rugg, 1918; Schneider & Hutt, 2014). By 1900, grades were widely used but idiosyncratically determined (Schneider & Hutt, 2014). To resolve this issue of inconsistency, educators began to debate how normal curve theory and other scientific advances should be applied to grading systems. There was general agreement that the 0-100 marking system led to an unjustified implication of precision, and that the normal curve would allow for the transformation of student ranks into appropriate placements into categories, usually A-F but other systems as well (Nicholson, 1917; Meyer, 1908; Rugg, 1918).
In the 1960s, a confluence technical and societal events led to dramatic changes in perspectives about grading. These were criterion-referenced testing (Glaser, 1963), mastery learning and mastery testing (Bloom, 1971; Mayo, 1970), the Civil Rights movement, and the war in Vietnam, all of which supported criterion-referencing and the inclusion of teacher judgment. Grades have risen again dramatically in the past 25 years; Rojstaczer and Healy (2012) have argued that the primary cause is a shift in higher education toward considering students to be consumers, or even customers, and away from the notion of students as callow youth who need discipline as often as encouragement.

Authors

• Jeffrey K. Smith, University of Otago

• Lisa F. Smith, University of Otago