Anyone remember the “60 Minutes” piece on self esteem?
It was about 10 years ago I think. Of the population groups studied, prisoners who were jailed for serious felonies scored amongst the highest.
Not that this result deterred the movement in any way.

I recommend Mindsets by Carol Dweck
for a solid look at how to motivate appropriately.

I am disappointed at the persistence of the “self esteem” thing. We know that feedback is powerful but it is NOIT the same as praise or blame.

I also wonder if thios is more an American thing since news from the US is too oftewn cited as applying to things in Canada.

John,

If only this were an American thing, but has seemed to permeate Western attitudes in general.  It goes far beyond the schools.  There was an article last spring about a minor soccer league over by Ottawa that created a rule that stated (something like - can’t remember exact numbers):  if a team is winning by more than 5 goals, they automatically forfeit the game to the losing team.

The whole self-esteem thing does come to a crashing halt in high school.  We can be as positive as we want, but if the student does not have the marks to pass - they don’t.  (Caveat:  there are exceptions I noted on another thread.)

This is why I never bought into the ‘no zero’ policy - and I never had one.  The way it was presented to us, if a student got 80% on ONE assignment - and that was the ONLY assignment they handed in - then we were to record their marks as 80% on all reports going home.  At the end of the semester, we were to record a failing mark on the final report card because the student did not do the required work.  THAT does wonders for their self esteem!

John, I’m glad that you brought up the concept of feedback.  Kind of ironic how the whole self-esteem movement has created a false feedback loop.  Not much point in feedback if it doesn’t accurately reflect the situation.  Imagine this working in industry:  you’re fine -  fine -  fine - now you’re fired!

ironies abound!

the “no zero"policy is not quite related to the issue of feedback.

Grading is NOT feedback, however useful it may be.

Hi John,

I agree that grading and no zero policies are not formal feedback.  I’m just as concerned with the underlying message students get:  you’re getting 80 - you’re doing fine, when they may be failing miserably.

Grading has an interesting history.
Good grades have little effect of achievement.
Poor grades have a negative effect in that students give up.
With inner city kids, improvement scoring in which you get bonus marks for improving on previous scores (or for perfect scores) offer hope and thus encourage students to try harder.
I conducted a small study in the early 1980s in high school with similar effects.
The problem with “0” is that too many students give up.
Carol Dweck’s book highlights why students need to prove and how we can encourage this.
If school stay as they were in the 1950s- when the dropout rate was 65% (OECD stats)- that is not good enough.
Yes we need higher standards and better teaching.
One way, as John Hattie and others have pointed out, is to improve the quality of feedback we offer.
Grading is NOT feedback; neither is empty praise or blame.
Back to prep for class.

John,

Many students do give up - under either system.  What is the real difference in their marks if they can’t hand in their assignment (zero policy), or they never complete it (no zero policy)?  Too many students under both systems are failing to do much of the required work to earn a credit.  If a student was failing to complete a significant amount of work in my class, I would go to the student’s other teachers and ask them what the student’s main problem was - the answer was invariably “not doing assignments.”  Although I was one of the few teachers who kept a zero policy, the student wasn’t doing any work in their other classes where there was no zero policy.

The key lies in balance - providing some consequences while helping the students shape their behaviour to be successful in class.  I would start the year with an easy assignment to complete.  For example, let’s say I had the students work on ten questions in class - and we even took it up so that they had the right answers.  Then I would say, “Hand it in and I’ll mark it.”  Some would ask for extra time (no they don’t like working in class either.)  And I’d say, “Hand it in tomorrow before I hand the rest back and I’ll mark it with no deductions - but after that the mark is zero.”

The next level would be to cover and take up 8 questions in class and leave 2 for homework.  They would hand it in the next class, and I would even give them an extra day if they forgot.  Again, after that the mark would be zero.  To keep moving up in expectations, I would gradually give them more and more to do on their own and up the number of questions as well - moving to 15, 20, 30 and so on.

Here’s the key:  most students would find that they messed up once or twice early on, but improved.  They noticed that one or two missed assignments out of ten had very little effect on their overall mark when weighed against 40 and 50 mark assignments at the end of the semester.  Their marks went up as time went on (intrinsic rewards) as well as their self esteem.

How good do students feel when it is December, there’s four weeks left in the semester and they know they haven’t done any real work since September.  They have four teachers pestering them to hand in dozens of assignments that were never done because there never was any real due date.  What is their response?  They give up.

Not sure what you mean by “either” system?
Evidence is clear that quality feedback works.
We also know that student motivation is a key issue
- more students go farther in school
- more distractions for them
so
We need to find ways to motivate them to work harder. Much of this comes from better teaching that may use among other things
- the work of Caril Dweck, John Hattie, and others on the power of quality feedback
- explaining to students WHY they need to learn something (that it is in the curriculum or on the test does not count
It is amazing based on interviews over the decades with hundreds of teachers and students how seldom this happens.

There are other approaches too but these one I have mentioned
- pay off
- do not cost extra $$

One approach which does cost money, maybe
is substituting quality professional development with what too often happens

There are NO magic bullets, but we must do better in the area of encouraging students of all ages to work harder and smarter in schools.

No magic bullets?  For someone who doesn’t believe believe in magic bullets, you sure have been touting the latest buzzword, ‘feedback’.  For SQE readers who are not up on the latest Ministry crazes, you will begin to hear this word more and more often from teachers and board officials.  Here is how it is supposed to work:

Teachers are to mark often - but give no marks.  They are to take most student work as ‘formative’ evaluation and not count it toward students’ marks.  Rather, they are to use it as an opportunity to provide descriptive feedback to the students.  Teachers are to only mark 3 or 4 tests, assignments, projects and exams per semester as ‘summative’ and base their final mark on those few examples of student work - talk about high stakes testing! - and this comes from people who are usually against high stakes testing.  Our principal has gone one step further - he would like teachers to provide him with lists of WHICH 3 or 4 evaluations are going to count before the beginning of the semester so he can approve them.

Odd how these crazes assume that: a) is not being done, or b) has never been done.  I did this a quarter of a century ago.  It worked really well for the first assignment.  The students thought I was really marking it and handed it in and were disappointed when I handed it back with only words on the page - I told them everything they did right, everything they did wrong and how to improve.  Then came the second assignment and the first question from the students was, “Is this going to count, or is it just practice again?”  As soon as they found out it was for ‘practice’ as they called it, not one was interested in completing the work.  That was back then when most students were at least somewhat interested in doing schoolwork.

John, don’t get me wrong, I really wish you well with this, but I think you will find it difficult providing feedback on work that is not done.

Feedback is NOT a buzzword.
It works, in music, in sports, in class: any time you do a rehearsal or a practice.
Your description of how it works in your school is NOT ministry policy in Ontario.
As for trying it once or twice and seeing students revert to their old ways- practice counts for them too!
You cannot unlearn bad habits built up over years in a few tries, whether they be effective pass blocking or using the right math formula to solve an equation.

Expecting students to come to class always motivated and ready to work- nice when it happens- is like having only healthy patients come to the medical clinic.
It has NEVER worked that way, but in the old days kids dropped out at grades 4, 6, 8, or 10 and found decent jobs.
Those days are gone.

A related issue is the power of a viable curriculum. One reason students in North America do not get to practice based on quality feedback is because they are too busy flitting from topic to topic. At most they develop a casual acquaintance with knowledge. In Asian schools they do more work with fewer concepts and skills.