Grade-obsessed?

Are your students grade-obsessed?

Ideally I would rather seeing student motivated by "learning" instead of the grade. I guess many of us have unpleasant experience with students who ask the teacher"why they don't get an A" "why they lose points". For me, it feels unfortunate seeing the entire attention falling on the grade, instead of, how much you've learned, or how much they've progressed.

Growing up in Asia, I understand that when we had to achieve higher grade in order to ensure better learning opportunities on the next level. I myself cared so much about my grade at the time and didn't truly enjoy learning. Some of my students (mostly pre-med minor..so it is understandable that grade is overemphasized) are grade-obsessed too. I understand grades and test scores matter so people can measure success quantitatively. They play a role in measuring proficiency and provide important feedback to teachers, school, and policy makers. But to me, it doesn't mean the entire purpose of learning. Is it possible to reach a more productive middle-ground that will better facilitate learning and life success? Or what can we do to shift student's attention from the 'number' to learning itself?

My approach - be a role model first.

I started doing so from myself, shifting my primary attention from student's grade to their actual performance. I wrote longer feedback, not focusing on why they lose points, instead, the actual work they presented. I'll also include my comments for their in-class participation, the ideas or questions they came up with in class, and encourage them to keep doing so in the future. Before my feedback form was a grading table of "where you lose marks", I am trying to change it to "what you have learned/how you can improve your learning in the future". I tried not to talk about student's progress merely based on their grades of each assignment, instead, their understanding in each chapter, their in-class participation, or their motivation level that I observed. So far, I have fewer students come discussing about their grade, instead, they would ask for the best learning strategies, how to understand the materials better, where the misconception is. Hopefully it will make a difference at the end of the semester. Will follow up then.

*This was originally a forum post answering Jolene's question.*