One-Minute Lecture: Where Do Grades Come From?
Exams are just around the corner and the pressure is mounting — but where did grades actually come from? Kati Aus, Visiting Research Fellow in Educational Psychology at Tallinn University, provides the answers.
Nowadays, it is standard for a significant portion of school activities and assignments to end with a grade for the students. However, this hasn't always been the case. Grades emerged around the 19th century when education became a mass-market endeavor. There was a need to find a quick and easy way to "separate the wheat from the chaff," and numerical grades were introduced for this purpose.
The more grades were used, the more it was noticed that they began to influence student behavior. Consequently, grades became a tool for discipline. The question "What did I learn at school today?" was increasingly replaced by "What grade did I get today? How did I do?"
Today, we consider assessment an inseparable part of school life. If we had the chance to build the school system from scratch, would we continue with grades out of habit and give them the same weight, or would we perhaps look for other ways to support learners and their motivation?