Search results for: Grading

In this article , the authors sought to determine how instructors are actually assessing student participation, or what leads to the decision to grade or not grade students on their classroom participation. The findings suggest that the majority of instructors across disciplines do incorporate a “participation” factor into students’ final course grades. One impetus for the this study was the desire to identify the circumstances in which students are expected to be “active participants” in their undergraduate courses. This was determined by the percentage of instructors who reported including “participation” among the stated requirements on the course syllabus. However, some differences may be observed by discipline. Instructors of Math and Science courses were found to be less likely to grade participation than their colleagues teaching in other disciplines.

The purpose of this article is to present findings from a qualitative investigation into how authority was negotiated in an undergraduate teacher education course in which the author - as the teacher of the course - established course obligations with students through designing individualized grading contracts. The findings suggest that four themes emerged from the data represent potential frameworks for negotiating authority in teacher education: seeking mutually satisfactory agreement, finding several solutions to the problems being negotiated, compromising based on principle rather than pressure, and deriving legitimacy from mutually recognized sources.