Alternative representations of achievement
2 August 2024
Potential supervisors: Juuso Nieminen, David Boud
The use of traditional course/unit grades in higher education has been criticised in scholarly work at least for a century. Grades have been claimed to drive student learning; they have been called inaccurate and ineffective; and they have been connected to neoliberal and performative values. More recently, there has been criticism that they don’t portray the achievement of learning outcomes and that they are inappropriately aggregated into Grade Point Averages. So far, the criticism of grading has not led to change in the representation of student achievement on a wide scale. This project could consider the empirical effects of alternative forms of reporting outcomes of learning, or new theoretical approaches for thinking about portrayal of performance.
- Ajjawi, R., & Boud, D. (2023). Changing representations of student achievement: The need for innovation. Innovations in Education and Teaching International, 61(3), 597–607. https://doi.org/10.1080/14703297.2023.2192513
