Teachers give grades based not on ability but on students’ personalities

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Pupils at many Finnish schools fail to receive the grades that they deserve because of teachers’ personal expectations and attitudes.
      According to a recent study, over a quarter of the value of a given grade comes from how the teacher conceives the student’s personality.
     
"Teachers associate temperament with aptitude and intelligence, even though no such link exists", says the supervisor of the study, professor Liisa Keltikangas-Järvinen of the University of Helsinki.
      In the study temperament refers to the student’s way of acting, which incorporates, among other things, perseverance, activeness, and mood. Behind excellent grades one finds personalities that match the teachers’ own preconceived ideas of a model student.
      Female teachers in particular value traditional qualities of a good pupil, such as participation in the classroom, showing respect to teachers, and diligence.
     
The study claims that the teachers' ideals are misleading. Keltikangas-Järvinen gives an example: if an adult goes to get several cups of coffee in the course of a workday and socialises with his or colleagues, he is not considered a lousy worker. If a student tries the same in school the interpretation is different.
      "It is not a question of providing every single student with individual tutoring. Instead, teachers’ understanding of the criteria for grading should be improved. A teacher should admit to himself or herself if a pupil’s specific character trait is acause of annoyance, and ignore this when giving grades."
      According to Keltikangas-Järvinen, how the grades are determined should be as unequivocal as possible. The received grades have a tremendous effect on applications for further studies and consequently on the rest of the student’s life.
      As one alternative the study suggests that teachers from neighbouring schools would occasionally mark each others’ test papers.
     
The study also uncovered anomalies in the evaluation criteria. For example, being sociable and good-humoured aided girls in their school success, whereas for boys a similar impact was not noted.
      Also those pupils who had changes classes or schools were invariably graded more harshly than others. They never received the highest possible grades.
      In all, 4,255 students and 274 teachers from 64 schools took part in the University of Helsinki study. The study relates to Sitra’s Young People and Social Exclusion project. Sitra, the Finnish Innovation Fund, is an independent public fund, which under the supervision of the Finnish Parliament promotes welfare in the Finnish society.


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