Pass-Fail as a System of Evaluation

Abstract

The list of colleges and universities that have in troduced some form of limited pass-fail system into their curriculum is continuing to grow. Almost all the pass-fail systems have been limited in some way. The student may be limited to some definite number of hours, in many cases either 12 or 15, that can be taken for pass-fail credit. While full credit is allowed for a grade of pass, the student's grade point average is unaffected either way. This may encourage students to expand their academic program into elective areas they might have otherwise avoided. One of the more widespread usages of the pass-fail system has been widely applied in th? student teaching sequence. This reflects the widely discussed need for improving the student teaching experience. Many prac tices continue to prevail that render the various pro grams less than efficient in terms of learning and in the building of professional competence. Certain practices are not only inefficient but actually demoralize the stu dent teacher before he assumes his initial position. Among these practices, Olson1 has included the fact that too much stress is put on evaluation at the expense of meaningful systematic assistance for the student teacher. Junell2 has stated his belief that whatever genuine help the college supervisor may be able to offer is often overshadowed by the specter of the grading system. The fact that the student teaching grade assumes a much greater importance than do grades in other courses af fects the relationship between the college supervisor and the student. Accordingly, many college and university authorities have advocated the pass-fail system of eval uation for student teaching. The institution of a pass-fail system of evaluation for the student teaching sequence provided the back ground for the present research. The system was to a certain extent instituted at the request of students and was hoped to be for the benefit of students. The research was designed to answer the following questions: (1) whether or not student and faculty attitudes were essen tially of a positive or negative nature, and (2) whether or not there is a statistically significant difference be tween student and faculty attitudes toward the pass-fail system. A questionnaire designed to measure attitudes toward the pass-fail system was administered to 158 student teachers during the 1970 spring semester. The student teachers responding had recently completed an eight week sequence of student teaching in public schools. The form was administered also to the 32 faculty members serving as supervising professors during the spring semester. In addition to responding to the pass-fail system by way of general comment, students and faculty members were asked to respond to the following statement: In the fall of 1969, the university abandoned the practice of assigning letter grades and instituted a pass-fail system of grading for student teaching. After a semester's ex perience, my attitude toward the change could be de scribed as extremely favorable, favorable, no opinion, unfavorable, extremely unfavorable. The results of the student and faculty responses are presented as percentages in Table 1. The extremely fa vorable and favorable categories, as well as the two un favorable categories were combined according to the technique suggested by Downie and Heath.3 In addition, chi-square, calculations were carried out in order to de termine whether the responses reported for the students and the education faculty were significantly different.