Season's Greetings

Before we go off for our winter holidays, I would like to share how grateful I am to be part of the Squamish Elementary School community.  I have taught in nine schools in the past twenty years: in Vancouver, Richmond,  at HSSS, Mamquam, Brackendale, and this is my fourth year at Squamish.  In my experience, I have never encountered such  affectionate, caring students as we have at this school.  Their parents have obviously done a great job of teaching and guiding them and for this we are all most appreciative.

I am also thankful for the adults I work with:  the teachers, the teaching assistants, the counsellors, the custodians, bus drivers, maintenance folks, and of course, my trusty secretary, Mrs. Morfini.

We live in an amazing place.  From my office window, I  marvel at the magnificence of the Chief know that I have the best view in the whole district.  But it is not for this reason that other principals should be envious.  I also have the best students, parents and colleagues one could wish for.

Thank you, everyone, Merry Christmas and all the best for the New Year.

Feedback, Please

Think about a time in your adult life when you were learning something new.  (I think about learning to drive a stick shift at the age of 40.)  Chances are, you had a teacher or coach who was helping you in your learning.  How did they help you?  Were they encouraging and supportive?  Did they offer suggestions and feedback  for how to improve?  Were they patient and kind?  And - did they give you a mark or a letter grade during or after your learning experiences, and was that helpful to you?  Chances are, you did not get a score out of ten, you did not get marks taken off (every time you stalled the car), and you were not penalized because it took you longer to learn than your neighbour.  Nor were your attempts averaged.  Imagine taking your driver's test:  you fail miserably the first time, but practice and practice, and pass on your second attempt.  But the instructor says, "Sorry - the average of your two scores was below 50% so you still fail."

Does that make sense?

We are not sure that some of our grading practices in schools make much sense, either.  A colleague recently shared this article with me.

Blog post by Joe Bower, a teacher in Alberta

for the love of learning

Assessment is not a spreadsheet -- it's a conversation.

Grades and the fear of failure

In a study that appeared in the Journal of Educational Psychology (August 2011), Caroline Pulfrey et al., took Swiss students who were in their upper teens and mid twenties from an English as a foreign language class and asked them to do assignments that involved listening and comprehending.

There were 3 experiments.

In the first experiment, one group of students were told that they would receive a grade for their learning while the other group was told they would not receive a grade. In the second experiment, on a single assignment students either received only a grade, only a comment, or a grade and a comment. The third experiment was similar to the second experiment, but this time the students received their respective feedback and completed a second assignment.

Together these three experiments revealed that the anticipation of a grade, as opposed to no feedback or a comment, increases performance avoidance, a fear of failure and a loss of interest. It's important to note that this was true of both high and low achieving students. While conventional wisdom might tell us that grading should inspire learners to do their best, this is not what the research is telling us.

Common sense might also convince us to adopt a "more the merrier" kind of attitude towards providing students with both a comment and a grade, but again, research shows that the presence of a grade (with or without a comment) is responsible for lower levels of motivation, a loss of interest for learning, and a preference for easier tasks.  Unfortunately, the positive benefits of a formative comment is overshadowed by the negative effects of the grade. 

All this supports Ruth Butler's (1988) research from twenty years ago that grades and grades with a comment are responsible for lower levels of intrinsic motivation for learning.

If you are looking to increase a child's anxiety, desire to escape and fear of failure, or decrease their intrinsic motivation and self-efficacy then it makes perfect sense to grade students.

However, if you are interested in helping children learn, you might want to consider leaving the grade out and only providing them with the formative comments they need to improve.

I think it is time to have a conversation about assessment practices and how we might bring them (and ourselves) into the 21st century.