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As Long as it Doesn't Affect My Grade

1) What are your "student bird" and "teacher bird" thoughts about assigning percentages or letter grades in the assessment of student work? What do the grades indicate? How are they arrived at? Whose purposes do they serve? What are positive and negative aspects to giving grades? to be assigned grades by an instructor?


2) What are some of the unintended side effects of grading? How do grades and marks in themselves format the social relations and learning situations in a classroom, a school, a district?


3) Could you imagine teaching math and/or science without giving grades? How could a teacher encourage learning without having an emphasis on grading?

Is this the right question?

Completion vs. performance assessment

relatedness and connectedness

perceived competence

feeling of autonomy


(this is literally the ABCs that we talked about in EPSE)



deemphasize tests and grades

acknowledge how external control through marks impacts motivation

competition through grades is a mixed bag

use student interest to bolster motivation



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