4 Say goodbye to grades and hello to conversations

A lot of what we do in higher education is about assessing and measuring (Price et al., 2008). We spend a lot of time judging our students while learning is, to a large extent, relational. Learning can bring happiness and joy and be a struggle and discomforting too! We talk about students as partners, but there are power asymmetries. We need to acknowledge these and find ways to eliminate them and help our students feel and be connected to themselves, the subject they study, their peers, tutors, and others outside their course, and feel empowered to learn critically and creatively and make a positive contribution to the worldwith others. Ahmed (2017, 1) asks us how we can “create relationships with others that are more equal?” I am exploring this question and propose two ideas.

Grades don’t help

They don’t help our students, and they don’t help educators. They also don’t help our relationship with students. Do they help employers? Parker (2020) states that employers seem to be looking more for social skills in graduates… They don’t seem to say we want graduates with higher grades! It is a reality that marks focus students’ attention on assessment. Assessment of learning! However, it wasn’t always that way. Up to the massification of higher education and the shift of focus on economic gains, the assessment landscape was based on conversational peer-review approaches as formative assessment (Saliyeva & Levesley, 2018). Today, formative assessment, or assessment of learning, while we recognise their importance to drive learning, are under-utilised (Price et al. 2008; Saliyeva & Levesley, 2018). Anything that is not assessed does not warrant their attention, it seems (Carless, 2024). Marks bring the competitive side out in students. Some are really good at it and thrive in competitive environments. But do they chase the mark, instead of chasing the learning? And what about everybody else who may feel anxious? Do they just need to toughen up and become more antagonistic? Is this what we really want and need? What about discovery learning, exploration, and experimentation?

In conversations, students often ask how they can get a high(er) grade (the assessment criteria are shared, but how often do students use these during their learning for self-feedback for example, to push themselves further?) instead of how they can deepen their learning. What has happened to their inner motivation and drive to learn? This situation saddens me and I am wondering if grading plays a key role in this and makes them feel this way. How easy it is to forget that it is about the learning.

Marking is a challenge for educators, even if we don’t admit it openly, at least to our students. We are making a judgment. A judgement based on specific criteria and grade descriptors. Often, we focus on what has not been learnt (yet) instead of celebrating what hasand encouraging our students to stretch further! Why do we keep doing this? I feel uncomfortable about such practice. Am I the only one? I have not found anybody else yet who actually enjoys it (Nerantzi, 2024a). Of course, there are standards and benchmarks that students will need to meet; nobody denies this,but do these really need to be translated into and communicated as grades? Have we explored alternatives (enough)?

Saliyeva and Levesley (2018, 180) say it loud and clear: “It must be acknowledged that our current system of assessment, which focuses on marks and grades, is not working.”

We may talk about no grades or ungradingand recognise the value of a grades-free space for students to experiment and learn from the process and mistakes (McDowall, 2022) but how often do we follow it through (Stommel, 2023; Sorensen-Unruh, 2024)? The whole higher education culture is based on individual progress, competition, and grades (Gravett et al., 2021). In such an environment where it seems to matter to be seen and be better than anybody else, who would like to get a note on their transcript that they “just” passed a module or whole programme of study? How does this help them stand out? O’Keefe et al. (2018, 77) make an interesting proposition. “… if the term pass is an imperfect expression of achievement, how can we express student achievement in a better way? Other academic developers have suggested the use of the term ‘success’ rather than ‘pass’.”

What would it be like if we had no marks and focused our exchanges on learning instead? Also assessment for and as learning? Dron (2023, 231) suggests the following “Getting rid of grades and replacing them with opportunities for discussion and feedback are a good start.” Sorensen-Unruh (2024, online) goes further and links ungrading to emancipatory and critical pedagogies through which power asymmetries are reduced. She states characteristically that “In emancipatory pedagogies, including ungrading, this practice also includes the critical questioning of authority figures. Ungrading uses dialogic engagement to foster learning between student and higher education instructors, student and peer, and student and self. Some of this dialogic engagement happens orally in conversations regarding the student’s progress, and some of this happens via text-based feedback.”

Conversations can do wonders!

Having the curiosity, asking questions, and engaging in conversations can provide strong foundations, motivation, and a drive for learning. Helping students to develop their critical and creative capacity and capabilities in this area is important. It will help them sharpen and expand their desire and commitment to learning, growth, and making a positive contribution. It is about connections and connecting.

Educators recognise this. They are in education as they deeply care for others and have a strong commitment to help students learn, to help them make connections. Educators invest in learning relationships and partnerships to foster such conversations, often despite the challenges and pressures they face, such as increased workloads, redundancies and casualisation (Walker-Gleaves, 2019; Gravett et al., 2021). Connecting with students remains important, and sustainable ways need to be found within higher education to create the space for learning conversations to happen and educators to feel supported in this important endeavour. Genuine conversations that provide space for open exploration into multiple directions, ideas, dilemmas, and aspirations when there are trust relationships. Sutherland et al. (2024, 1) state characteristically: “Trust is commonly understood as a key element for the development and sustenance of positive educational relationships that result in student learning, motivation, well-being, and degree completion.”

While nobody can do the learning for anybody else, we desire to learn with and from others and see value in the connections and the exchanges we have. We challenge and are challenged. We ask and we are questioned. Opening up to such honest, open, and at times revelatory conversations and truly benefitting from thesemeans that educators must actively participate, not just expect students to disclose. With such practice and learning relationships of trust comes vulnerability (hooks, 1994; Brantmeier, 2013). Learning relationship and partnership can reduce power asymmetries, break free from hierarchies and make learning mutual possible (Zakharia, 2024). It is true, education does not mean that students are the only ones doing the learning. Educators are learning to, with and from students as well. Ahrenkorah (2021) acknowledges the difficulties narratives around safe and brave spaces create and how utopian these are. She suggests instead investing in accountable spaces in which individuals and the collective take full responsibility for their behaviours, actions and interactions. Such spaces lay the grounds for democratic participation and conversations for a plethora of diverse voices and practices to be shared, heard and considered.

I have not mentioned assessment yet in this section but when we talk about conversations, we know that many of these are focused on assessment due to the assessment-driven nature of higher education. Assessment remains a hot topic! The pandemic does not seem to have brought significant assessment changes (Nerantzi, 2024a). Gravett et al. (2021) propose a shift in our thinking and practice that could help students truly feel connected with assessment and invest in it in authentic way as they would experience assessment as something that matters to them and is therefore seen as meaningful learning.  Gravett et al. (2021, 399) state that “making assessment a more lively affair by enfolding into it the things that matter to students. This, of course, means we may need to take time and create space to get to know and appreciate students’ lives and contexts beyond the classroom. However, if that is possible, then assessment might become a means for students to embody and affectively experience knowledge, rather than seeing it as an impossible to attain standard external to them.”

While we recognise the important role educators and their learning relationships with students play (Armellini et al., 2021), students seem to have been turning almost exclusively to educators for feedback on their work. This can easily create dependencies. The educators give feedback and the students receive it. It seems like a one-way street. It is about time to turn feedback into a dialogue, a conversation – an ongoing learning conversation (Robinson et al., 2023). Peers, self, others outside a course of study, can and should be part of dialogic forms of feedback conversations (yes, conversations) as these will further enrich and diversify connections and learning (Gravett et al., 2021; Dunbar-Morris et al., 2023). Gravett et al. (2021) look at this from an angle of mattering and state “pedagogies of mattering foreground the need to incorporate more flexible opportunities to connect with students.” Human and beyond human connection can make a real difference also connection to space and materials including, potentially, genAI. This has started happening as students can easily and quickly turn to genAI to discuss their work at any time without being judged (Wiersma, 2024; Nerantzi, 2024b).

Educators are deeply invested in learning and helping their students learn in critical and creative ways. How can we say goodbye to grades and competition and say hello to diverse conversations, relational pedagogy, practice and collaboration that place transformative and mutual learning at the heart of higher education and make a wider positive contribution to the world?

References

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