February 18, 2009
Student Expectations Seen as Causing Grade Disputes
By MAX ROOSEVELT
Prof. Marshall Grossman has come to expect complaints whenever he returns graded papers in his English classes at the University of Maryland.
“Many students come in with the conviction that they’ve worked hard and deserve a higher mark,” Professor Grossman said. “Some assert that they have never gotten a grade as low as this before.”
He attributes those complaints to his students’ sense of entitlement.
“I tell my classes that if they just do what they are supposed to do and meet the standard requirements, that they will earn a C,” he said. “That is the default grade. They see the default grade as an A.”
A recent study by researchers at the University of California, Irvine, found that a third of students surveyed said that they expected B’s just for attending lectures, and 40 percent said they deserved a B for completing the required reading.
“I noticed an increased sense of entitlement in my students and wanted to discover what was causing it” said Ellen Greenberger, the lead author of the study, called “Self-Entitled College Students: Contributions of Personality, Parenting, and Motivational Factors,” which appeared last year in The Journal of Youth and Adolescence.
Professor Greenberger said that the sense of entitlement could be related to increased parental pressure, competition among peers and family members and a heightened sense of achievement anxiety.
Aaron M. Brower, the vice provost for teaching and learning at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, offered another theory.
“I think that it stems from their K-12 experiences,” Professor Brower said. “They have become ultra-efficient in test preparation. And this hyper-efficiency has led them to look for a magic formula to get high scores.”
James Hogge, associate dean of the Peabody School of Education at Vanderbilt University, said: “Students often confuse the level of effort with the quality of work. There is a mentality in students that ‘if I work hard, I deserve a high grade.’ “
In line with Dean Hogge’s observation are Professor Greenberger’s test results. Nearly two-thirds of the students surveyed said that if they explained to a professor that they were trying hard, that should be taken into account in their grade.
Jason Greenwood, a senior kinesiology major at the University of Maryland echoed that view.
“I think putting in a lot of effort should merit a high grade,” Mr. Greenwood said. “What else is there really than the effort that you put in?”
“If you put in all the effort you have and get a C, what is the point?” he added. “If someone goes to every class and reads every chapter in the book and does everything the teacher asks of them and more, then they should be getting an A like their effort deserves. If your maximum effort can only be average in a teacher’s mind, then something is wrong.”
Sarah Kinn, a junior English major at the University of Vermont, agreed, saying, “I feel that if I do all of the readings and attend class regularly that I should be able to achieve a grade of at least a B.”
At Vanderbilt, there is an emphasis on what Dean Hogge calls “the locus of control.” The goal is to put the academic burden on the student.
“Instead of getting an A, they make an A,” he said. “Similarly, if they make a lesser grade, it is not the teacher’s fault. Attributing the outcome of a failure to someone else is a common problem.”
Additionally, Dean Hogge said, “professors often try to outline the ‘rules of the game’ in their syllabi,” in an effort to curb haggling over grades.
Professor Brower said professors at Wisconsin emphasized that students must “read for knowledge and write with the goal of exploring ideas.”
This informal mission statement, along with special seminars for freshmen, is intended to help “re-teach students about what education is.”
The seminars are integrated into introductory courses. Examples include the conventional, like a global-warming seminar, and the more obscure, like physics in religion.
The seminars “are meant to help students think differently about their classes and connect them to real life,” Professor Brower said.
He said that if students developed a genuine interest in their field, grades would take a back seat, and holistic and intrinsically motivated learning could take place.
“College students want to be part of a different and better world, but they don’t know how,” he said. “Unless teachers are very intentional with our goals, we play into the system in place.”
I found this article very interesting because it really applies to our attitudes toward grades and it brings up good questions: Are we so focused on what grades we get because of the system in place, or because of ourselves, and isn't it reasonable that we feel entitled to a certain grade for 'x' amount of work?
Sorry this is so long...
(Arvind Kalidindi)
6 comments:
Well I think that we are so focused on grades right now because of college. We're all juniors and understand that are grades and activities are going to be examined by different colleges. To them, the symbol does matter. The letters that we receive on our report card play a major in determining whether we are accepted into a certain college.
I think it's reasonable to think that we deserve a certain grade after putting a certain amount of effort into the task. As the article mentions, you don't want to think that all that hard work was for nothing. However, how 'hard' a student has worked can be left up to debate. A student may think that a lot of thought and energy was put into the work, while the teacher may think the exact opposite.
Overall, I think I agree with the college professors in this article. Even though the student may have worked hard, that work really doesn't matter if the correct goal is not achieved. It reminds me of topic essays. You may spend a lot of thought and energy on the essay you write. However, if the essay is completely off topic, it doesn't complete the task at all. Is it really fair to give that essay a high mark?
I have one main problem with grades: they seem to be subjective from time to time. It is surely difficult to move from one year to the next and adapt to a new teacher, new learning method, new way of doing things come Fall. Sometimes I feel that we are asked to simply erase/forget all that had been studied the previous year in order to fit a new mold based on the likes and dislikes of the new instructor. (Europeans never thought that the world was flat?!)
What if I interpreted the most significant outcome of the Civil War to be the inclusion of the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to the Constitution of the United States of America? What if my teacher was expecting me to say "the reunification of the Union"? Who is to judge which answer is more correct than the other? What, then, is the definition of "correct"?
Grading is difficult. I recall from the few times that we have done peer-editing work, I have found myself at a loss when making corrections/adjustments and giving the work a rough numerical grade. Rubrics are useful tools. Yet again, without grading policies, how would our work be measured successfully? Is there any other way?
(Sam Maliha)
What if instead of giving out numerical grades that correspond to a certain letter, teachers graded on a pass/fail basis? I'm pretty sure that many professors at certain colleges do this. Although it is still subjective, students don't get caught up in the fact that perhaps they received a C when they thought they deserved a B. Teachers can still get their point across by failing a student if their work falls far below their standards, so what is the problem? Why isn't pass/fail grading the default as opposed to letter grades?
To clarify, this is not a rhetorical question. Besides being able to compete with classmates, what other purpose does letter-grading serve? I'm probably ignoring a very obvious answer.
(Paige Schlesinger)
Though many schools do operate at least some of their classes on a pass/fail basis, I think it would be unwise for all of them to be run in this manner. True, there are many faults with grading, but their are also many faults with standardized testing and other ways of determining an individual's ability. It would be ideal that students not need grades and could simply be judged by their abilities and the amount of work they put in but this is impossible. There need to be grades for students to apply to college and later, to graduate school. The methods of grading many not be perfect but there needs to be some way to distinguish between students.
Molly Dunbar
At a certain level, if a student works hard and applies as much effort as can be expected or more, it seems that a certain grade should be expected, or the student is "entitled" to a certain grade. This seems to ignore pure talent and ability, though. There always seems to be that student who studies not nearly as much as I did, yet receives a higher grade. Why is that? S/he is more talented than I am, possibly. This is hard for a lot of students to accept because grades have become such a touchy and competitive area.
So, why do we place so much weight on grades? As students, our goal should be to learn, right? Grades should be the least of our concerns, right? According to "the system" this line of thinking is wrong. We are encouraged to earn the highest scores possible so that we can go to the best school so that we can get the best and highest paying job possible. In the end, this seems rather unfulfilling. But how can we change the system so that the emphasis is more on learning than earning a grade?
There needs to be some way to measure progress without causing competition. But this is impossible. We are human. We compete to survive. So, how do we measure progress without creating competition and tension among students?
Emily T.
Emily's question caught my attention: "How can we change the system so that the emphasis is more on learning than earning a grade?" I truly wish that this could be possible, so that then we would not be at each others' throats for the highest grades, but I honestly believe that there is nothing that can be done to change it. I think that students seek some sort of incentive or benefit from working hard in school; earning a high grade serves as this incentive. Without it, students would not be willing to go to class every day to learn, since this requires concentration and work on their part. Therefore GRADES are naturally emphasized rather than the LEARNING itself. Of course, the fact that universities admit students based on students' grades greatly augments this emphasis, and as Molly noted, colleges need a way to distinguish between applicants. Thus it looks like (unfortunately for us) the emphasis on grades is here to stay...let the sighs begin.
Particularly pessimistic,
Janet Lee
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