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Conclusions

Summary of research

In my action research I set out to explore what would happen if I replaced letter grades
with reflections on Core Growth Areas. I was frustrated with how I was spending so much
time grading assignments and filling in the grade book which led to students receiving a
grade that was devoid of meaning. Many times I would look at a students grade and think
that the letter does not truly represent what I believed the student achieved that year. It
was just how the math worked out. I also felt like the time checking assignments could have
been better used getting to know the students work intimately and providing feedback. It
wasnt until I explored existing literature that I saw a deeper issue with grades. The
apparent effects on student self esteem and motivation was shocking and encouraged me
even more to change how I assessed my students as well as how I communicated that
assessment back to them.

The change I made was to eliminate letter grades and percentages from my assessment
system. Instead, completion of assignments was recorded and students completed regular
self-assessments/reflections on eight Core Growth Areas. These growth areas reflected the
type of work I valued in my engineering class. Work that required 21st century skills. Work
that encouraged life-long learning. To succeed in my class, my students would need to work
in groups on projects that required these skills and demonstrate that they were growing. In
this conclusions section I will highlight the key findings from my experience and their
implications, the limitations to my research, and possible next steps for further exploring
this topic.

Key findings

Assessments highlighted student strengths.

Before starting my research, an issue I had with letter grades was that it was difficult to
assign a grade to a student that really represented what they deserved. I found through my
research that grades often missed the qualities in a student that I valued. How do you
assign a grade to creativity or pride? If you dont assess these, then what happens to a
student whose strengths lie in these areas? This was the case with Diego, who
demonstrated an excitement for learning through projects and was an amazingly curious
individual. Yet, Diego has struggled with school in the past. For Diego, grades limited him.
They were used as an evaluation of his worth, while only highlighting his weaknesses as a
student. During my action research Diego had the opportunity to tap into his strengths and
show that he could be a valuable individual in the classroom, as well as the world in
general. All the while, being motivated to grow.

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Assessments motivated rather than intimidated students.

Motivation is essential for a successful classroom. Students who are motivated will want to
learn. They will push themselves and, given the right environment, move towards high-
quality work. But what motivates students? This is a really difficult question to answer and
there is not necessarily a single answer. What motivates one student may not motivate
another. Teachers are trying to motivate all of their students though and it would be
awesome to have a catch all so that we dont need to expend the time and energy tailoring
every single aspect of our class to each individual. Grades have been used in the past as this
catch all, but my research shows that grades are not needed to motivate and, in some cases,
can actually demotivate students. Diego, a student who would be labeled as unmotivated,
showed amazing initiative and created work he could be proud of in our projects. Tyler, a
student who would be labeled as motivated, worked hard in the past but his ultimate goal
was the grade, not personal improvement. Getting anything other than an A made Tyler
feel like a failure. During the action research Tyler did not see setbacks as a negative or
unwanted thing. He shared with me that being asked to redo a presentation or revise a
paper no longer felt like a black mark in the grade book, but an opportunity improve his
work and be proud of it. My class in general felt the most energetic and driven as it has ever
been, all without grades. Instead of using grades to intimidate students into working, I used
the goal of personal improvement through engaging projects to keep them excited about
learning.

Reflections: The need to scaffold while maintaining freedom.

The assessment system I used during my action research relied heavily on self-reflection.
Each student grew so differently and found personal connections to what we were learning
in class that it would have been impossible for me to be the only one assessing growth
against these Core Growth Areas. I had done plenty of reflection in my classroom in the past,
but this was the first time that I completely re-imagined the reflection process. In creating
such a big change, students struggled. I had hoped that students would focus their
reflections on the Core Growth Areas. I wanted them to self-assess their growth and identify
areas for potential improvement. To try to guide my students, I created a Personal Growth
Tracking Form that asked them through a series of prompts to determine within which
areas they had grown and to provide evidence of this growth.

I found in my research that scaffolding the reflection process in this way in reality limited
the students freedom to reflect honestly. There was not enough depth in reflections.
Evidence was weak and did not clearly support claims. Students viewed the tracking form
as a worksheet and were trying to get the right answer rather than thinking meaningfully
about their work. Reflecting back, I was also trying to force a type of reflection that did not
feel natural to the students. I did not adjust my own expectations. Although I still believe
the Core Growth Areas are a great lens to reflect through, I cannot demand that they be the
only way. I have learnt that first I must give students the freedom and support needed to
reflect deeply, and afterward start to push them towards using the language of the Core
Growth Areas.
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The A student and F student are redefined.

Through my experience using the Core Growth Areas I found that I had to redefine what it
meant to be either an A student or an F student. Tyler had been labeled an A student
his entire life. He was an amazingly intelligent young man and grasped material extremely
quickly with little struggle. When compared to other students he was the cream of the crop,
but comparing between students is a mark of letter grades. In a classroom focused on Core
Growth Areas, Tyler needed to show me more. He could not cruise by with the bare
minimum needed to get an A. He needed to demonstrate personal growth. Tyler totally
stepped up to the challenge and demonstrated the potential of the Core Growth Areas to
challenge high performing students. On the other end of the spectrum there was Diego.
Diego had struggled in school in the past and had some weaknesses that could easily set
him up for failure; procrastination, bad work habits, distracting behaviors. He was easy to
label as an F student, but should his weaknesses predetermine his outcomes in my class?
No. Despite his weaknesses, Diego had strengths that shone through while using the Core
Growth Areas. Rather than trying to motivate him with a gradewhich in the past
demotivated DiegoI was able to let him find success through his strength in curiosity. His
weaknesses werent ignored, but became growth areas instead of disabilities. As long as
there was effort and improvement, Diego was no longer an F student.

Tips for educators

Tailor the assessment to your class.

One of the most worthwhile experiences during my research was one of the earlier ones;
reevaluating what content I value in my class. In creating the Core Growth Areas I forced
myself to forget the nitty gritty of the specific skills engineers need (CAD, criteria based
decision making, etc.), and identified the broad competencies that were important to me. I
was able to connect these competencies to everything we were doingsometimes even
connecting to topics outside of our classroomessentially finding the overarching themes
that everything we did was based on. For teachers wanting to use this in their own class, I
suggest taking the time to think deeply about the broad competencies that you value. What
are your personal Core Growth Areas? Chapter one of my findings outlines the process for
discovering and defining the growth areas and can be used as a guide. Once you know what
you truly value, you will know what to build your classroom around and where to focus
your assessment.

Are your assessments accurate?

In my research I discovered that when I had assigned grades in the past, they were wildly
inaccurate. Students who received an A should have gotten much lower since they came
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nowhere near to reaching their potential. I have failed students because their weaknesses
blinded me to their strengths. These inaccuracies stem from grades being calculated by a
formula that was defined at the beginning of the year without knowing any of the students.
Of course this would not be adequate for assessing each individual. I would encourage
every teacher to ask this question of themselves, Is my grading system assessing my
students accurately? Letter grades have so little meaning that it is impossible to do this.
How many times have you gone into your grade book and added some random extra credit
because you felt a student deserved a higher grade? With a qualitative system, the students
can learn from an assessment and reflect upon themselves. It can adapt to them and tell the
story of their growth. If you can push just a little bit more towards qualitative assessment,
it is my belief that you will better understand your students and better support them.

Share the assessment burden.

One reason why I pursued this research topic was that grades were a pain in the butt. I was
spending tons of time grading assignments and inputting them into the grade book, a
demand on my time that had so little meaning or payoff. I had hoped that removing grades
and shifting to Core Growth Areas would allow me to focus my efforts onto assessments of
more value. I found that I was still spending way too much time on my assessments.
Although I had built in self-assessments, I did not trust the students to get the job done
adequately. I felt like I had to be the final arbiter of assessment. I discovered that this
mindset needed a shift. I suggest that teachers who transition from grades to a qualitative
assessment system also shift their perspective from teacher centered to student centered
assessment. Resist the urge to always evaluate your students. Move from assessment of
learning to assessment as learningto a classroom where students learn about themselves
through their assessments.

Limitations

As I was performing my action research I was teaching engineering. My class focused a lot
on processes of an engineer and modeling what they do in the workplace. As the students
placed themselves in the shoes of an engineer, the Core Growth Areas were very well suited
for assessing the skills that engineers need. At the turn of the semester I switched to
teaching statistics with the same group of students. I was excited about my experience
using the Core Growth Areas and was looking forward to continuing with them.
Unfortunately, my experience was not as fruitful during statistics. I have not had the
opportunity to delve deeply into why this may be, but my belief is that the Core Growth
Areas were tailored for my engineering class and did not suit the format of the content of
my statistics class. Statistics, although being taught through projects, had much more
knowledge based content than engineering, and there were fewer opportunities to practice
the 21st century skills that drove my research. At the beginning of my findings I spoke
about how I formed the Core Growth Areas. I was inspired from several resources, including
talking to professionals in the engineering field. In transitioning to teaching statistics I
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should have reevaluated the Core Growth Areas and modified them to better suit the type of
content I was teaching.

The context of my class (the content I teach, the culture of my school) allows me to
experiment with grading policies quite easily. I understand that in many schools there are
external pressures that may push teachers to use certain types of assessments. There may
be milestone tests. Teachers may be required to cover certain standards in a short amount
of time. Grades are a quick and easy way to evaluate students in that sort of environment. I
have found though that the negative effects of grades demand at least a refocusing of
assessment in the classroom. Why are the kids coming to school and doing the work? Are
they striving to create products they are proud of or are they just trying to get an A and
be done with it? It may be difficult to completely transform an assessment system, but
adding self-reflection, giving more qualitative feedback, and emphasizing broad
competencies similar to the Core Growth Areas will help to shift what is valued in the
classroom and by the students.

Next steps

How to better implement reflection in the classroom.

My research has shown me not only how important self-reflection is, but also how difficult
it is to cultivate. I found that I cannot assume that just because my students have done a lot
of reflection in the past, that they will come into my class with deep, moving, reflections;
effortlessly weaving rock solid evidence with rich narrative. Since completing my research I
have discovered the many levels of reflection that exist. Grossman (2009) puts them on a
depth-continuum from content-based reflections up through transformative reflections. He
found that students of all ages, even into college, struggled with even the lower level
reflections since they were unable to identify when a conclusion needed to be supported.
They saw their experiences as true and therefore did not need to justify their conclusions.
I was expecting too much of my students when I pushed them to reflect about their
transformations in the growth areas. I first needed to create structures to guide students in
simply supporting their claims with evidence. When I next use the Core Growth Areas I will
dedicate much more time in class to explicitly teaching reflection. This means being
thoughtful about when to reflect and what to reflect about. This means providing feedback
on the structure and content of reflections and providing models of good reflections. I will
also need to adjust my expectations. I need to realize that the types of reflections that I
cravereflections on how students understandings of themselves have changed over
timerequire advanced levels of thinking and metacognition. This cannot happen until the
very end of the semester and only with the necessary scaffolding


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How to add the evaluation to the assessment.

I have suggested in these conclusions that assessments should not focus on evaluation.
Assessments are tools for facilitating growth. Yet, at some point students do need to be
evaluated. Have students actually been making the advances in the Core Growth Areas as
they have been saying in their reflections? At the very end of my action research, it was
very difficult for me to definitively say whether a student has grown in an area. I could look
at the collection of Personal Growth Tracking Forms, but as I have said above, little evidence
was provided to support claims. How could I tell if a student was being truthful or not
about their growth? As a next step I would like to focus on really understanding where
students stand with the Core Growth Areas. Better understanding this would help me to
support my students, both by encouraging their strengths, as well as by pushing them to
grow in their areas of weakness.

How to adapt to many contexts.

My ultimate hope for this research is that I can help other teachers change how they assess
students in their classrooms. To help me reach this goal I need to explore how to apply my
system in other classroomsfirst in the rest of HTHCV, but ultimately to any school that is
looking for a change in its assessment structure. I am curious how teachers of different
disciplines may define their own Core Growth Areas. I am also curious what other non-
grade based systems are out there and how my system may fit. Removing grades from the
classroom is a hot topic at our schools and many teachers are trying different methods. In
order for any of us to find success it is important for us to share our ideas and work
together to show skeptics that yes, it can be done.