The Language of Assessment Matters
I have been thinking a great deal about the language we use for assessment, and I have found myself returning to one distinction that once felt obvious to me. In the contexts in which I trained and have taught, 'marking' and 'grading' were not the same thing. Marking meant carefully reading student work to notice strengths, identify misconceptions, and offer next steps. It was part of the learning process. Grading was something different and done much less often: a professional judgement made after enough evidence had been gathered across time. More recently, I have noticed the word 'grading' is used for almost everything. A piece of work is submitted, and we talk about “grading” it. Feedback is added, and we still call it grading, often attaching a score at the same time. This continues despite longstanding evidence that grades can overpower feedback. Butler (1988) found that students who received comments alone showed greater gains than those given comments w...