Reflection on exam grades to improve calibration of secondary school students: a longitudinal study

Marloes L. Nederhand,Joran Jongerling,Huib K. Tabbers,Remy M. J. P. Rikers

doi:10.1007/s11409-020-09233-9

Abstract

Grades provide students with information about their level of performance. However, grades may also make students more aware of how well they have estimated their performance, their so-called calibration accuracy. This longitudinal quasi-experimental study, set in secondary education, examined how to increase students’ awareness of the accuracy of their grade estimates in order to improve their calibration accuracy. During an entire school year, students from year 1, 2, and 3 provided grade estimates after each of their French exams. Subsequently, when students received their grades, the level of reflection support on their earlier estimates was manipulated. The first group of students just received their grade, the second group had to calculate the difference between their estimate and the actual grade, and the third group also had to reflect on reasons for a possible mismatch. We expected that more reflection support would lead to more improvement in calibration accuracy. Results showed that providing grade estimates already improved calibration accuracy over the school year, regardless of level of reflection support. This finding shows that asking for grade estimates is an easy-to-implement way to improve calibration accuracy of students in secondary education.

Highlights

If asked to estimate their outcome after an exam, many students tend to provide estimates that are far off their actual outcome (Dunlosky and Rawson 2012; Kruger and Dunning 1999)
We studied effects of the level of reflection support when students received their actual grades in their course French
Our data from the Reflection group showed that all students had indicated which cues they had used when estimating their performance, and that 74.5% of the students whose estimate deviated more than 0.5 points had provided a written reflection on their mismatch

Summary

Introduction

If asked to estimate their outcome after an exam, many students tend to provide estimates that are far off their actual outcome (Dunlosky and Rawson 2012; Kruger and Dunning 1999) Such misjudgment of performance in education can cause problems, because students may not recognize the need to change ineffective learning strategies, or fail to ask for help, leading to underachievement (Dent and Koenka 2016; Dunlosky and Rawson 2012; Nelson and Narens 1990). The most common form of performance feedback is grades From their secondary school years onwards, students take many exams, and receive lots of grades. Recent studies have shown that just providing grades fails to improve calibration accuracy, even after many feedback moments (e.g., Foster, Was, Dunlosky and Isaacson 2017). These findings raise the question whether providing grades is ineffective in improving calibration accuracy, or whether students perhaps need more guidance to adequately use and interpret their grades (e.g., Black and Wiliam 2009; Wiliam 2016)

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Conclusion