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Now researchers have investigated how children who receive grades so early are affected.
– You have to be aware that there are children who get sad, very sad. We have several examples of this in the report about children expressing that they give up, or ignore this and then they should think that this is the first grade they get and that they are 10 years old, says Håkan Löfgren, who is an assistant teacher. at Linköping University and who led the research study.
He has previously investigated how students were affected by sixth grade grades. Do you see a difference?
– There are individual students who are greatly affected by context when they receive grades. I did not see such cases in the sixth year, he says.
Experimental activity with qualifications In the fourth year, in which 12 schools are now participating, which began in 2017 and ends this summer, it emerged after a political battle. The agreement included that the National Education Agency should evaluate the experiment. And this research report, which Ekots has read, will form the basis of that assessment. The researchers followed five selected schools and compared them to some schools that did not enter grades.
The selection is therefore small, and the schools were special, according to Håkan Löfgren. They already had a clearly developed way of working with student assessments. But it is still possible to point out the consequences for which directors who want to introduce degrees must prepare.
– I also see it as a risk that you focus more on the assessments that have to do with being able to report a result than that you should invest in assessments that will help students to advance in their learning.
Degrees and others Assessments can govern both teaching and student motivation, according to the report. It can put strong pressure on students, both high achievers and those who have the most difficulty in school, says Håkan Löfgren.
– If you listen to students, it is very difficult to predict whether grades lead to increased motivation or lead to increased stress and anxiety. They express both and exist at all levels of awareness, so to speak.
Regarding students in need of support, Håkan Löfgren could see that teachers more quickly sought help from special education staff when a student is at risk of failing, in schools with grades in grade 4. At the same time, teachers They also expressed that they were already aware of the need for support even without qualifications. Some members of the special education staff were concerned that students who needed special support could be adversely affected by grades, says Håkan Löfgren.
– Make it very clear to them that they have problems and that other colleagues in the environment also see that they have problems, he says.
But what are the benefits? That students can become more interested in what they should be able to do and that teachers improve their evaluation of students.
– I think something really good is that teachers talk more about knowledge goals and talk about what students should be able to do. So I can think that it has a disadvantage, that sometimes you speak a lot of criteria and that there are a certain type of evaluations that are prioritized in those conversations, says Håkan Löfgren.
