Can Grades Be an Effective Form of Feedback?

• In Event: Practical Issues in Classroom Assessment: Deconstructing and Reconstructing Research to Offer Practical Recommendations

Abstract

In most discussions of effective feedback to students, grades are portrayed as a cruel and malicious villain. Some researchers suggest that grades stifle creativity, foster fear of failure, and weakened students’ interest (Lipnevich & Smith, 2008). Others contend that grades diminish students’ affect, especially their emotional and behavioral engagement in learning (Poorthuis, et.al., 2015). This has led some practitioners to believe that students’ affective characteristics and classroom learning conditions could be significantly improved simply by eliminating grades and “going gradeless” (Barnes, 2018; Burns & Frangiosa, 2021; Kohn, 1994, 1999; Spencer, 2017).
Close inspection of this research reveals, however, that findings are far more nuanced than most researchers or practitioners have interpreted them to be. The impact of grades on students varies depending on not only the nature, purpose, and meaning of the grades, but also on a multitude of contextual conditions related to characteristics of the students, the assessment, and learning conditions. For example, students’ reactions to grades are known to differ depending on whether the grades are criterion-referenced and task-focused versus norm-referenced and ego-focused (Guskey, 2019). Students’ perceptions of grades as well as their follow-up actions to grades also vary depending on the specific grade they receive (Link & Guskey, 2019).
This paper describes the potential and demonstrated influence of these complicating qualities, aspects, and distinctions on students’ interpretations of grades as a means of feedback. Research results are discussed in terms of these factors, common misinterpretations of research results that ignore these confounding variables are presented, and recommendations are offered for better practice.

Author

• Thomas R. Guskey, University of Kentucky