Quality of the work alone or possible
consequences to the student
When assigning grades what would be
the morally correct criteria and standards to apply? What would be the
morally correct set of considerations? Should the grades be based on the
quality of the work alone? Should the social and psychological
consequences of the reception of the grade be considered? Should the
educator consider the potential consequences on the performance review of
the educator related to the tenure and promotion process ?
Alan Goldman holds that the
assignment of grades by professors is the sort of situation that would
support a claim that the norms governing the profession of education would
not be the same or derived from those of the more general society. He held
that there were norms of conduct for teachers that are not applicable to
those outside of the profession and may even be based on interests against
those of others not involved in the relationship of teacher to student.
He held that there are norms that are profession specific. This idea of
morality runs counter to the popular views that hold that moral principles
need to apply to apply to all rational agents and need to be
universalizable. He thinks that the professional roles require special
norms and principles to guide their well-intentioned conduct. He holds
that the role of a professional educator is strongly differentiated.
Goldman found strong differentiation only among parents, teachers and
judges.
A professional role is strongly differentiated
if it requires unique principles, or if it requires its norms to be
weighted more heavily than they would be against other principles in
other contexts. .--- Goldman, Alan. The Moral Foundations
of Professional Ethics. Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield,
1980. p. 2.
Goldman held that for educators there
are certain fixed norms as education is a profession that is strongly
differentiated. He held that educators have norms such as are related to
developing knowledge that appear to governing despite the impact of
certain professional practices on others outside of the profession and on
society itself.
the understandably single
minded-pursuit of goals central to professional practice and service,
goals with great social value, like health care and economic production.
It is natural for professionals to elevate the primary concerns of their
particular professions to predominant status, even when they are opposed
by values equally prominent in our common moral framework.--- Goldman,
Alan. The Moral Foundations of Professional Ethics.
Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1980. p. 292.
He expresses concern over this.
For academics conducting
research and teaching the results of their research, he asks “Can
professional license or duty to seek and report the truth in such areas
override the potential social harm from the findings no matter how
disastrous.---.--- Goldman, Alan. The Moral Foundations of
Professional Ethics. Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1980.
p. 287.
He repeats this concern with regard
to grading. Acknowledging the social and psychological effects of grading
on students he notes that the profession of education would hold the
academic norm of grading based on quality of work alone.
that students should be
graded on grounds of the quality of their work alone, that factors
normally relevant in interactions with other persons, such as the drastic
effects of actions on their well-being and life prospects, are to be
ignored in grading decisions. This norm not only reflects the academic
purpose of grading, but appears necessary to its social function as well.
.--- Goldman, Alan. The Moral Foundations of Professional Ethics.
Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1980. p. 288.
What are the factors that are not to
be taken into account in grading that Goldman thinks would be
considerations if not for the academic norm of quality of work alone?
Fairness itself might become a norm and if fairness were to be taken into
account in grading then a number of factors might need to be considered
were it not for the purported norm of quality of work alone. These
factors might include effort, prior handicaps and so on. Such factors as
might be thought of a relevant and even essentially so in contexts other
than within the profession of education and the teacher-student
relationship.
The more focused and essential
concern for Goldman is what would be the foundation or justification for
the acceptance of the professional norm against the norms of others
outside of the profession. He finds an answer in the idea of fallibility
and the impossibility of strict fairness. Goldman held that educators can
not escape from being fallible and less than omniscient when they consider
the assessment of learners and the assignment of grades and thus they can
not be consistent and can not be fair in taking into account all that
might be relevant and should be considered by an educator who in assigning
grades is also producing consequences in the lives of learners that extend
beyond the educational institution.
Considerations of
fallibility and consistency also enter directly into the justification of
special norms in other professions. Consider the assignment of grades by
professors. Since grades not only inform students of the quality of their
work, but may drastically affect the future course of their lives, there
may appear to be many morally relevant factors other than the quality of
their work that enter into proper grading. A major problem with allowing
such factors to influence grading, however, is that they cannot be
consistently and fairly taken into account, given professors' fallibility
and ignorance of the personal situations of many students. It is not
simply that students and admissions officers alike expect grades to be
assigned on the basis of scholastic achievement, since we can still ask
whether such expectations are proper. It is also that, despite the
scholastically superfluous function of sorting students for later careers,
professors are not in a position to evaluate in a consistent way the moral
deserts of students, their material and psychological needs, backgrounds,
etc., that might be relevant in the abstract to a moral distribution of
career positions. -- Alan H. Goldman,
"Authority, Autonomy and
Institutional Norms", PERSPECTIVES on the Professions,
Vol. 3, No. 1/2, March/June 1983
Thus Goldman concludes that for
educators that follow an academic norm that obliges them to behave in a
manner that they would otherwise eschew for concern over the consequences
of their actions on others. They grade based on the quality of the work
alone no matter what the negative impact might be on the learners.
One need not accept that there are
such profession specific norms even norms set against norms outside of the
profession to accept that the norm with respect to grading ought to be
norm of quality only consideration. This is so because Goldman appears to
believe that grading based on the quality of the work alone would at
times, perhaps often, produce consequences for the student the
consideration of which in circumstances other than education one would be
obliged to avoid bringing about for another person. Assigning poor or low
grades might cause psychological and social consequences harmful to the
well being of the student and apparently Goldman holds that ordinarily one
would avoid producing such results for another .
Goldman does not consider that the
harmful consequences of grading may not be viewed as such from different
perspectives. A poor grade may reduce the self-esteem of a student but a
sense of high self esteem without foundation might just as easily be seen
as a harm. There are variety of harms and some might be unavoidable and
indeed even necessary for education to occur. The general norm that we
ought not to cause harm to others is not an unrestricted obligation. It
has been argued and shown in chapter eight that it is the unnecessary and
avoidable harms that are to be avoided. Learners submit to educators and
give consent either directly or indirectly through their guardians to be
subject to the educator and subject to instruction trusting that the
educator will exercise the fiduciary responsibility to benefit and not to
harm the learner, but it is the unnecessary and avoidable harms that are
to be avoided.
Goldman holds that for educators and other
professionals that
morals can be drawn for
both the morally minded professional and for the professional moral
philosopher. For the former the most fundamental question is whether he
should trust to his conscience and ordinary processes of moral reasoning
in professional contexts, or whether he should rather adopt certain fixed
professional norms in advance and resolve to abide by them. Only after
this methodological issue is settled can decision procedure in morally
charged contexts proceed. Of course the method for resolving the
methodological issue at this level must itself derive from ordinary moral
reasoning and more basic moral principle, but this does not necessarily
stack the deck against special, middle-level, institutional norms.---
Alan H. Goldman, "Authority,
Autonomy and Institutional Norms", PERSPECTIVES on the
Professions, Vol. 3, No. 1/2, March/June 1983.
It has been argued here that there is
no need to consider education as being strongly differentiated as a
profession and subject to or dependent upon norms specific to education.
A professional educator should, as Goldman expresses it just above, “
trust to his conscience and ordinary processes of moral reasoning in
professional contexts,”. In so doing the educator grades based on the
quality of the work because doing so provides benefit to the student as it
provides an assessment needed by the learner in order to have a proper and
accurate appraisal of progress made and further work needed. Grading
using the norm of quality of the work only does not set the behavior of an
educator on norms that are different from or opposed to that of the
general society.
Professional educators
working together set the standards for assigning grades. They do so in a
manner that serves the interest of their students as students and
particularly as students. To do otherwise would fail to fulfill the basic
responsibility to benefit students and avoid harming them. Those
standards are set in support of the fulfillment of the most basic
responsibilities of educators. Assessment processes and devices and
reports would all be set by professional educators in a manner that
educates students and supports the learning process.
Quality of the work alone or possible
consequences for the educator
When assigning grades what would be
the morally correct criteria and standards to apply? Should the educator
consider the potential consequences on the performance review of the
educator related to the tenure and promotion process ?
There can be situations in which the
grade distribution of an educator could be used to determine the quality
of instruction of that educator and the distribution would be an accurate
indicator of that quality. There are also situations in which this
would not be the case. It is not at all a simple matter to determine
in which cases grade distribution is an accurate indicia of quality of
instruction. To do so would require taking several other factors
into account.
When faced with colleagues who are
conducting a review of the performance of an educator and they are either
misusing the grade distribution report or not using it in a manner that is
sensitive to the variety of factors that contribute to a grade
distribution the instructor being evaluated is faced with what appears to
be a difficult decision. What exactly to do? There are a
number of options. The instructor can act in what is believed to be
a professionally responsible manner and submit grades that are accurate
and provide benefit to the students and colleagues who would act
responsibly to obtain an accurate assessment of the effectiveness of the
teaching and learning that is occurring. Another option would be to
act in a manner that is believed will support the continued employment of
the instructor and enrollments in the discipline and the college and
submit grades that are inflated above the grades that were earned by
students when considering the quality of their work alone. What
other course of action is available as a viable option? The
instructor can raise the issue of the use of grade distributions and
attempt to bring about activity amongst the faculty that would redress an
improper reliance upon, interpretation of or simplistic use of grade
distributions and work with colleagues to develop a more reliable
methodology for the consideration of grade distributions in the personnel
review process. There are other options no doubt. The three
above are not all mutually exclusive. More than one might be
attempted over time by educators wanting to act in a manner that is
professionally responsible and morally justifiable.