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Re: grades, pass/fail etc.



While pass/fail can certainly just be another variant of grade driven
education, the absence of grades can result in better student gain.
Unfortunately by the time that students get to college they have learned not
to work unless given the external reward of grades. One wonders if the no
grading method could be successful if started at an early age.

For some evidence see An interesting article by Alfie Kohn was just
published in Ed. Week.

http://edweek.org/ew/ewstory.cfm?slug=03Kohn.h22
Here is an exerpt.
====================================================
Example 1 comes from the world of math instruction. A few years back, a
researcher named Michelle Perry published a study in the journal Cognitive
Development that looked at different ways of teaching children the concept
of equivalence, as expressed in problems such as "4 + 6 + 9 = ___ + 9."
Fourth and 5th graders, none of whom knew how to solve such problems, were
divided into two groups. Some were taught the underlying principle ("The
goal of a problem like this is to find ..."), while others were given
step-by-step instructions ("Add up all the numbers on the left side, and
then subtract the number on the right side").

But why not do both? What if students were taught the procedure and the
principle? Here's where it gets interesting. Regardless of the order in
which these two kinds of instruction were presented, students who were
taught both ways didn't do any better on the transfer problems than did
those who were taught only the procedure—which means they did far worse than
students who were taught only the principle. Teaching for understanding
didn't offset the destructive effects of telling them how to get the answer.
Any step-by- step instruction in how to solve such problems put learners at
a disadvantage; the absence of such instruction was required for them to
understand.

Both approaches were effective at helping students solve problems just like
the initial one. Consistent with other research, however, the
principle-based approach was much better at helping them transfer their
knowledge to a slightly different kind of problem—for example, multiplying
and dividing numbers to reach equivalence. Direct instruction of a technique
for getting the right answer produced shallow learning.
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Example 2 has to do with how learning is evaluated. In a study that appeared
in the British Journal of Educational Psychology, Ruth Butler took 5th and
6th graders, including both high- and low-achieving students, and asked them
to work on some word-construction and creative- thinking tasks. One-third of
them then received feedback in narrative form, one- third received grades
for their performance, and one-third received both comments and grades.

The first finding: Irrespective of how well they had been doing in school,
students were subsequently less successful at the tasks, and also reported
less interest in those tasks, if they received a grade rather than narrative
feedback. Other research has produced the same result: Grades almost always
have a detrimental effect on how well students learn and how interested they
are in the topic they're learning.

But because Ms. Butler had thought to include a third experimental
condition—grades plus comments—she was able to document that the negative
effects of grading, on both performance and interest, were not mitigated by
the addition of a comment. In fact, with the task that required more
original thinking, the students' performance was highest with comments,
lower with grades, and lowest of all with both. These differences were all
statistically significant, and they applied to high- and low-achieving
students alike. As in Michelle Perry's math study, the more traditional
practice not only didn't help, but actually wiped out the positive effects
of the alternative strategy.

One recalls the bit of folk wisdom—confirmed by generations of farmers and
grocers—warning that a rotten apple can spoil a barrel full of good apples.
It would be pushing things to postulate a kind of educational ethylene
released by traditional classroom practices, analogous to the gas given off
by bad fruit. But it does seem that the quest for optimal results may
sometimes require us to abandon certain practices rather than simply piling
other, better practices on top of them.

In other instances, too, the rotten-apple theory offers a better fit with
educational reality than does "the more, the merrier." Consider schools that
try to have it both ways: They work with students who act inappropriately,
perhaps even spending time to promote conflict-resolution strategies—but
they still haven't let go of heavy-handed policies that amount to doing
things to students to get compliance. On the one hand: "We're a caring
community, committed to solving problems together." On the other hand: "If
you do something that displeases us (the people with the power), we'll make
you suffer to teach you a lesson."
====================================================

Some currently common practices may have the spoiled apple effect. For
example doing problems on the board for students is similar to teaching step
by step problem solving in math, so it will only teach students how to do
just the particular problem and will not result in bridging to similar
problems. Conventional lectures may have such an effect also.

John M. Clement
Houston, TX

Pass/Fail can work reasonably well with well motivated students with good
work ethics, but consider what would happen (does happen) with the greater
proportion of students under pass/fail systems. They figure out how to do
the minimum amount of work to pass. While such students aren't
going to go
out of their way to 'learn' in graded classes, you can often get
them to do
enough work to actually develop a skill or two and even learn something in
spite of themselves. Under pass/fail the only goal is to 'pass'.