Susan Harter was interested in the effects of extrinsic rewards on children. In 1978, she found that grades influenced whether students chose to complete tasks at a higher difficulty. In this study, 6th graders were assigned to a “game” group, or “grade” group and were asked to solve 8 anagram puzzles. The children in the game group were told to choose one of four difficulty levels. Those in the grade group were given the additional instructions that they would be graded on the number of correctly-solved anagrams (i.e., 8 = A, 6 = B, 4 = C, 2 = D, and 0 = F).

Unsurprisingly, the game group (i.e., ungraded) chose the more-challenging tasks, while the grades group chose the less-challenging tasks. Surprisingly, when children were asked which tasks they might have chosen if they were in the other group, the responses matched. That is, the game group said that if they were in the grades group they would have chosen easier tasks, and the grades group said that if they were in the game group they would have chosen harder tasks. In other words, each group confirmed that being graded discourages taking risks.

As if the negative association of grades on learning weren’t clear enough from those findings alone, Harter also recorded the children…smiling! Yes, smiling. It turns out that children in the games group smiled more after solving each puzzle than children in the grades group.

This all makes sense.

In talking to various stakeholders, high-achieving students are overly concerned with their GPA. They will do anything to maintain it, which includes opting for classes that get an “easy A.” Sadly, these students are often stressed out, motivated by high-stakes rewards, and tend to enjoy themselves less. They don’t do much smiling, and tend to be unhappy with their academics. On the other end, struggling students aren’t motivated by grades at all! For them, these rewards are actually punishments (i.e., low grade, after low grade, after low grade). They hardly smile, and tend to be unhappy because there’s often very little hope for improving, especially in grading systems with zeros and averaging low scores into the course grade!

Families are another important stakeholder group. They often view grades as a motivator that gets their students working hard, and striving to do better. But do they know grades are likely keeping their star-student from going above and beyond? I wonder what they would think about Harter’s findings. After all, it’s almost impossible to know that grades are negatively impacting students from the surface. That is, when the focus is on achievement, the process of how students get there tends to be ignored. High grades might give family members the sense that their student is being challenged, but are they? Who’s to say they aren’t doing just enough to get those high grades, and nothing more once they’re achieved? Who’s to say they’re actually taking the kind of intellectual risks their families want? And are they even enjoying learning? Harter’s study suggests otherwise.

To summarize Harter’s findings, grades discouraged children from taking risks, and children had less fun solving puzzles because of grades. This is just one more study showing how grades get in the way of learning. Furthermore, Harter’s findings support my work in searching for ways to 1) reduce summative grading (i.e., grade fewer assessments, less often), and 2) use formative grading alternatives (i.e., use practices that allow formatives to remain ungraded).

Reference
Harter, S. (1978). Pleasure Derived from Challenge and the Effects of Receiving Grades on Children’s Difficulty Level Choices. Child Development, 49(3), 788–799. https://doi.org/10.2307/1128249