Pre-Service Teachers' Perceptions Toward Grading Practice

dr. pudjo sumedi, as, se, m.ed; silih warni, ph.d.; siti zulaiha, m.a., ph.d.;

In educational context, grade is used to measure students’ capability towards certain subjects in school and it is valuable for not only the students but also the teachers. Although grades play such important role, there are still problems in grading such as variety of meanings assigned by teachers in one grade which is due to their lack of understanding regarding what grades must reflect. The present study attempts to investigate pre-service teachers’ perceptions on grading practice since pre-service teachers will bring along their view towards assessment, especially grading, into real practice when they become in-service teachers. This study adapts a questionnaire from Link (2018) and generates interview questions from the questionnaire to explore pre-service teachers’ perceptions towards grading practice deeply and how they perceived their teacher training program regarding the grading
course. This study investigated thirty nine pre-service teachers who were in fifth semester and above because they were most likely to start having grading course in their fifth semester or above. The findings revealed that even though the pre-service teachers received grading course and were helped by the grading course, all of them considered other aspects than students’ achievement such as students’ efforts and attitude in their grading practice. Additionally, they also expressed their needs of more grading course in teacher training program, especially about traditional educational measurement professionals. The present study recommends teacher training program to pay more attention to the grading course, especially regarding
traditional educational measurement professionals and make the pre-service
teachers aware of this in order to have an accurate grading result.