Monday, September 22, 2008

Grading and Constructivism

This has been on my mind as well, in the last week, and that is grading as it relates to constructivism.

If the process is just as important as the final result, evaluating that process may be in certain terms a bit subjective. It would be hard for a teacher to evaluate all that goes on in the different groups, unless there is a record of it (wiki, group discussion). That may not be workable in a setting such as a school. If you had each student evaluate each other, that could be disastrous in that you will not get a true evaluation because of social issues.

I thought of this topic because I am concerned that I see teachers take off points in a student's grade if they misbehave, for forgetting the date, writing in pen instead of pencil, not formatting it correctly. I saw a student get a B+ on a paper, instead of an A- because they forgot to date the paper. To me it is not measuring their congnitive abilities and the teacher could find a better way to take care of that problem. It is something that just bugs me.

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