Vignette 4 What Counts?

In the vignette I thought that it was unfair to give the student a lower mark because he does not pay attention in class. I think that the student should receive the mark that his "knowledge" of the material reflects even though he may not be the best behaved student in class. I can see why we are not supposed to include non-achievement factors such as work habits and effort in our assessment of the student's ability to meet the learning outcome. Non-achievement factors should be treated like formative assessments in this sense and not be used. From this vignette I understand that I am not supposed to judge the student's grade except by the criteria which pertains to their meeting of the outcomes they are being evaluated on. The role that achievement factors would play is they are the ones that will judge the ability of the student's success with an outcome. So then why do some teachers include a mark out of the outcome grade section for participate in class if it is not suppose to be part of the graded mark?

The textbook says that progress (formative assessments) and work habits should be in reported separate from the grade that is given and these two components should not be combined either. What I am not sure about is how that would look on a report card? Is it reported in a similar manner as a grade? What I mean is in this section do teachers give an "A" if say the student always arrives on time for class? Or is it more of a comment section where they would just note that a student is always on time for class and never late. So I know these should be separate from the outcome aspect of the grade but how do you report on this.

Something that I found interesting was the textbook mentions that, "...there are no studies that support the use of low grades as punishment for low academic performance. Instead of promoting greater effort, low grades more often cause students to withdraw from learning." (page C23) I thought this was interesting because I can see why this would work the way it does. If I normally got good grades and then all of a sudden I did not I would probably not want to work any harder than either. I can see why a student would want to put in even less effort especially if they felt they were going to get a low grade anyway which does not deal at all with their ability in the subject material. I will keep this point in mind once I am a teacher.