Teachers Scoring and Grading of Students’ Responses to Tasks: The Ghanaian Basic School Experience

Abstract

This paper explored the scoring and grading practices of teachers in basic schools. The study sought to understand the various factors teachers take into account when scoring students’ responses to tasks in the classroom. The stratified sampling procedure was used to select 278 primary and junior high school teachers from whom data were collected for the study. In the descriptive analysis, the results revealed that teachers considered students’ behaviour such as punctuality, interest in subject and neatness of work presented, and number of questions attempted by a student, and awarded marks when grading. These academic and non-academic factors considered by teachers in this study during scoring and grading are consistent with the literature. In independent samples t-test analyses, primary school teachers did not differ significantly from their counterparts in the junior high schools in terms of factors they considered during the scoring and grading of students’ responses to tasks in the classroom. This study adds a circumstantial data to the existing debate on teacher classroom assessment practices.