Pupils’ perceptions of grades: a narrative analysis of stories about getting graded for the first time

ABSTRACT

The starting point for this article is changes in the Swedish assessment system which stated that pupils are to receive grade reports in school year 6 (12–13 years old) during the academic year 2012–2013. Since the 1970s, compulsory school pupils have received their first grade reports in grade 7 and/or 8. The issue here is to present pupils’ narratives about the possible future significance of grade reports in school year 6. Pupils were interviewed about their experiences of getting their first grade reports, and a narrative analysis was conducted. More specifically, we investigated pupils’ conceptions of themselves as pupils and of their future possibilities, as described in their stories of getting their first grade report. The findings show that pupils perceive grades in year 6 differently, showing both adaption and resistance to the new grading discourse. Our conclusion concerns pupils’ learning and well-being when national assessment policies are changed.

KEYWORDS:

• Grades
• narratives
• assessment
• pupil perspective

Introduction

In 2012, major changes were introduced to the Swedish school assessment system, including grade reports from school year 6 instead of year 8 and a new grading scale from A (highest grade) to F (fail). In this article, we address how the first pupils involved in this system relate to future possibilities in education and life in their stories about getting their first grades.

Since the 1970s, compulsory school¹ pupils have received their first grade reports in grade 7 and/or 8. We believe that the re-introduction of grades in school year 6 in Sweden has implications for how assessments are made and ultimately for how pupils are shaped and shape themselves as pupils at school. Many teachers teaching in school year 6 (12-year-olds) have never graded their pupils’ achievements, while older teachers might have given grades using a different assessment system. In addition, even though grades have been mandatory from school year eight, no other pupils in school have any experiences of getting grade reports so early in school. Yet, we know little about the ways in which pupils, who sometimes are described mainly as subjects of imperative policies (Ball, Maguire, Braun, & Hoskins, 2011; Lindgren, 2007) or as actors with some influence on the enactment of assessment policies (Löfgren, Löfgren, & Pérez Prieto, 2018), talk about their experiences of assessment and grades. In this article, we explore how their experiences of being graded are ascribed meaning as the pupils, in their stories, link them to images of what they think will happen to them in the future.

In the Swedish context, the reintroduction of grades in year 6 can be described as an expression of an increased governmental interest in pupils’ school results. The Government bill (2009/10:219) Betyg från årskurs 6 i grundskolan (Grades from year 6 of compulsory school, prop. 2009/10:219) underlines the importance of the ‘pupil perceiving the grading to be just, and that it provides the pupil with support in their development’ (p. 20). In this bill, the former Government also expressed the hope that ‘Earlier grading should also be able to get the pupil in the habit of receiving grades, which could perhaps reduce the pressure of grades felt by many of today’s pupils’ (p. 13). Previous research, however, says little about what pupils feel about being tested or graded, or how they think the grades may affect their educational future and prospects in life (Forsberg & Lindberg, 2010). In two previous articles we have shown that parents’ views of grades influence pupils’ sense of educational resilience vis-à-vis their experiences of getting their first grades (Löfgren & Löfgren, 2017b), and how pupils tend to relate to a testing discourse when conducting national tests in school year 6 (Löfgren & Löfgren, 2017a). This testing discourse consists of instrumental rules for test-taking and how to manage to perform a test. In line with this, Black (2015) argues that pupils, involved in practices which provide marks on their work, tend to be looking for confirmation that their achievements are right or wrong and that this stigmatizes pupils as ‘smart’ or ‘dumb’ based on ideas of a ‘fixed intelligence’ (p. 169). In a Swedish study describing pupils who were about to get their final grades, it is reported that pupils demanded extensive feedback on their work in order to ‘fix’ (p. 115) things before the final grading (Jonsson, Lundahl, & Holmgren, 2015). This ‘fixing mentality’ (p. 115) may cause pupils to be short-sighted and passive recipients of directives from the teacher (Jonsson et al., 2015). In school, teachers and pupils alike deal with policies in performative ways that align with the demands for transparency, control and competition (Ball, 2006; Lindgren, 2007; Löfgren & Löfgren, 2015). However, we are not convinced that the introduction of grades necessarily ‘damages their [the pupils] development as learners’ (Black, 2015, p. 169) and makes them short-sighted in their prospect of learning. Hence, we argue that a detailed analysis of pupils’ stories about getting grades for the first time will broaden the picture of how pupils interpret these experiences in relation to images of their future.

In view of this, we want to explore if Swedish pupils tend to address short- or long-sighted images of their future when talking about their experiences of getting grades in relation to the new and more precise assessment system introduced in school year 6 in Sweden. The aim of this article is to contribute knowledge of how pupils are shaped and shape themselves as pupils at school when talking about their first grade reports, both in the present tense and in the future tense. Our research questions are: What positions do the pupils take in their stories about grading at school? How do pupils talk about the role of their grades in relation to their present performance at school and for future possibilities to succeed at school (and in life)? Finally, we wish to discuss our findings in relation to culturally available narratives about school performance and commitment in future working life.

Initially, we describe changes in the different assessment systems in Sweden. This historical background is followed by a description of research on pupils’ perspectives of assessment and grading at school. After this follows a section dealing with methodological considerations and procedures, ethical issues, data collection and a description of the analysis of the pupils’ stories. In the results, we describe pupils’ stories about their grading experiences and how they position themselves and view their future possibilities in education. In the concluding discussion, we address the different rationales that pupils use when they relate to different discourses and discuss some possible implications of the study concerning pupils’ learning and well-being in school.

A historical background to recent assessment systems in Sweden

Major changes in the Swedish assessment systems were made in the 1960s and the 1990s, and the contemporary Swedish assessment system was introduced in 2011. In 1962, a norm-referenced assessment system was introduced at the same time as centrally controlled nine-year compulsory schooling (Lgr 62, 1962). A new grading scale (1–5) was introduced, where grades were to be distributed among pupils according to predefined percentages (the norm against which students’ results were to be distributed). The grades were based on results from tests produced by teachers and on national standardized tests in Swedish and mathematics. However, during the approximately 30 years this assessment system was in effect, the school year in which these tests were given varied, as did the interpretation of what impact the results in the national test should have on pupils’ final grades in their school leaver certificate (Lindberg, 2002). In 1994, a new assessment system was introduced simultaneously with a new national curriculum for compulsory school (Lpo-94, 1994). This reform was preceded by various decisions for decentralized control, resulting in a shared responsibility between the Swedish state and municipalities or independent schools. Norm-referenced assessment was abandoned in favour of a goal- and criterion-referenced assessment system (Carlgren, Forsberg, & Lindberg, 2009), and a new grading scale: Pass, Pass with Distinction and Pass with Special Distinction. At this time, grades were given from school year 8.

Between 1994 and 2011, the Government made several further changes related to assessment procedures and documentation and the central control of teachers’ assessment practices was increased. In 2011, another new assessment system was introduced with the new national curriculum for compulsory school (Lgr 11, 2011). The former curriculum only stated wide goals for teachers to interpret (cf. Gipps, 1995; Popham, 1978) and assessment criteria were supplemented by nationally prescribed central content for teaching. Goal- and criterion-referenced assessment remained, albeit accompanied by a new grading scale A-F, with A as the highest grade and F representing a fail, and also by new terminology. The simultaneous reintroduction of grades for year 6 was politically motivated and described as a solution to address declining results in international measurements like PISA² and TIMMS³ (Swedish National Agency for Education, 2013). The liberal minister of education at that time claimed that the introduction of grades in school year 6 would mean that pupils would put more effort into school work and that it would be more clear to them what they should learn with regard to criteria stated in the national syllabus. In the long run, he argued, this would improve the results on the international standardized test.

Since the 1990s, constant governmental changes in Sweden – major as well as minor, national as well as local – have had an impact on Swedish teachers’ assessment work, which can be characterized by great instability, with changes to conditions resulting in constantly becoming a newcomer in aspects of assessing and assigning grades to pupils’ performance. The continual critical public debate as well as increased control over teachers’ assessment, not only regarding governmental decisions but also in terms of external evaluations by authorities and global organizations, has also, we argue, made pupils in Sweden more aware of assessment and grading.

Pupils’ perspectives of assessment and grading at school

On the one hand, the global expansion of standardized testing and grading is supposed to provide efficiency and equality in learning outcomes at a national level (Swedish National Agency for Education, 2013; UNESCO, 2015). The rationale behind such an idea is that ‘testing becomes synonymous with accountability, which becomes synonymous with education quality’ (Smith, 2016, p. 7). In other words, the results on standardized tests legitimize educational policies and are used as arguments for decisions that policy makers believe will improve learning and equalize pupils possibilities in different schools (Löfgren et al., 2018). On the other hand, the strong focus on results and standardized tests has been questioned since this may not contribute to improvement in pupil learning and fairness or high levels of equality (Black & Wiliam, 1998; Klenowski, 2014). This focus on testing for accountability has been described in terms of a global testing culture (Smith, 2016). Harlen and Deakin Crick (2003) show in their review that high-stake testing as well as grades only concerned with pupil achievement can cause negative feelings among pupils in terms of fear and test anxiety. They also show that younger pupils may find it difficult to understand the complex assessment systems applied at school, and it may thereby be difficult for them to understand the meaning of the grades they receive, which in turn may leave them with a sense of being treated unfairly or with feelings of helplessness. Further, Evans and Engelberg (1988) show that younger and lower achieving pupils blame the system or external factors for failure to a higher degree than older and high achieving pupils do.

In Finland grade reports are mandatory from school year 8, but in practice many teachers give grades from school year 4 (Utbildningsstyrelsen [Board of Education], 2014), so many young pupils there have experiences of being graded. Some Finnish studies address issues of malleability among pupils in relation to different ages and school subjects (Kärkkäinen, Räty, & Kasanen, 2008; Kasanen, Räty, & Eklund, 2009; Räty, Kasanen, Kiiskinen, Nykky, & Atjonen, 2004). The studies are based on standardized interview questions where the pupils answered by choosing between different alternatives or ratings of their malleability or potential for improving their educational competencies. These studies show that Finnish pupils in school year 6 are quite pessimistic about their opportunities to change their competencies in subjects such as mathematic, English and their mother tongue language compared to pupils in school year 3. Based on the interview results they also claim that pupils’ views of themselves tend to stabilize the older they get and that pupils’ faith in their abilities decreases over the course of their school years (Kärkkäinen et al., 2008; Kasanen et al., 2009; Räty et al., 2004). The authors conclude that one possible explanation of this is that pupils adopt the ‘school’s dominant view of ability as a stable quality’ (Kärkkäinen et al., 2008, p. 455). In another study Rautiainen, Räty, and Kasanen (2015) state that ‘as assessments of pupils become more vigorous during the course of their schooling, parents’ and teachers’ faith in their educational potential grows’ (p. 474). However, in a previous study our results show a wide variation of qualitatively different aspects that pupils refer to when they talk about their potential and their opportunities to succeed in school (Löfgren & Löfgren, 2017b). This indicates that pupils’ views of themselves are situated and related to different positions that become possible in certain social contexts, therefore we do not regard pupils views’ of themselves as stable.

Previous large-scale studies in Sweden concerning grades in school year 6 describe how pupils who received low grades in year 6 had trouble getting higher grades later on (Klapp, 2015; Klapp, Cliffordsson, & Gustafsson, 2014). Klapp (2015) compared the long-term effects of grading on a sample of low-scoring pupils. Half of these had received grade reports in school year 6 and half had not. Due to a curriculum reform, municipalities were allowed to decide whether or not pupils were to receive grade reports in school year 6 during the 1980s. The results show that pupils who had received grade reports in school year 6 had poorer chances of being successful at upper secondary school than those pupils who did not receive grade reports. However, the assessment system at that time was norm-referenced which may explain, at least to some extent, the pupils’ interpretations of the grade reports given. Granting their importance in pupils’ life, little is known about the personal meaning of grades to pupils, especially pupils’ feelings and understandings about grade reports.

In contrast to these descriptions of stable perceptions of grades in early years, in a Swedish study from 2009 where classroom work in school years 6–8 was followed, the pupils highlighted their own efforts to achieve higher grades by talking about how important it is to ‘work harder’ and ‘study more before the tests’ (Eriksson, 2009, p. 63). Eriksson states that this is in line with a ‘more general tendency in late modern society that expects each individual to design his/her own life’ (Eriksson, 2009, p. 54). This shows that competencies such as taking responsibility for one’s own learning and being accountable for one’s own learning outcomes have become important competencies trained for at school. In accordance with this, we show in a recent study that parents’ views of pupils’ grades and parental expectations often contribute to a pressure to perform and feelings of uncertainty about their educational future (Löfgren & Löfgren, 2017b).

Our argument for listening to pupils’ stories about assessment and grades is that we wish to contribute knowledge of how pupils are shaped and shape themselves as pupils at school when talking about their first grade report, both in the present tense and in the future tense, in relation to the latest grade reform carried out in Sweden in 2011/2012. The situations experienced by pupils in school year 6 describe in what way the grades are made important or unimportant. We believe that this could help us to further understand and nuance the picture of assessment and grades at school from a pupil’s perspective.

A narrative approach to pupils’ experiences of grades

In order to understand how pupils are shaped and shape themselves in their stories about grades, we have taken a narrative approach. Narratives are seen as socially and contextually situated actions (Mishler, 1999). Looking at stories of personal experiences as a social practice means that a story recounted in an interview is seen as co-constructed by the interviewee and the interviewer. To further examine the pupils’ positions in their stories and storytelling, we address three analytical levels suggested by Bamberg (1997, 2004). The first level focuses on the content of the story, the characters present in the story and how they are positioned in relation to each other. In the second level of the analysis, the focus is on how the narrator positions himself or herself in relation to the listener. The story can, for instance, be told as a way to blame others or a situation for an incident, or as a way to advise the audience (Löfgren & Karlsson, 2016). In this article, we also stress time as a narrative resource in order to understand how the interlocutors position themselves in the present tense as well as in the future tense in the interview situation. When telling a story, the narrator sometimes uses time as a resource to accomplish actions in the telling (Blomberg & Börjesson, 2013). Time could play a major role as an organizing principle of narrative experiences, or as an explicit subject. It is possible to move from the past to the future and back to the present: ‘Every narrative about my past is always also a story told in, and about, the present as well as a story about the future’ (Brockmeier, 2000, p. 56). In this article, we analyse how the pupils construct a plot from the present tense to the future tense when they talk about the role of their grades now as well as for their future possibilities. We do this in order to analyse how long- or short-sighted constructions of their future self take shape.

The third level focuses on how the interlocutors position themselves in relation to cultural discourses in order to answer the question ‘Who am I?’ (Bamberg, 1997, p. 337). The cultural narrative discourse stressed in this paper refers to the testing culture (Smith, 2016) and a pressure to perform (Löfgren, 2017) in a school system characterized by a strong agenda of accountability (Lindblad & Lundahl, 2015; Rönnberg, 2011; Pérez Prieto & Löfgren, 2017).

Methodological considerations

Setting, participants and ethical considerations

This paper draws on data collected when grading policies for school year 6 were reintroduced in Sweden in 2012. In total, we carried out 40 group interviews with 127 pupils (see Table 1). These pupils received their first grades in December 2012, and we conducted most of these interviews during spring 2013. We wanted to cover a variety of background factors (geographic location, different socioeconomic conditions, etc.) when choosing our participating schools. This was done because we wanted to listen to pupils from as many different kinds of schools as possible in order to cover a broad variation of experiences and thus to optimize the conditions for different stories about the new policy of grading. The ambition to create a variety of different types of schools is based on the idea that policies are enacted differently in different contexts with different conditions (Ball, Maguire, & Braun, 2012) and that this likely generates stories about different experiences.

Table 1. Collocation of schools, number of interviews and number of pupils.

Schools	Number of interviews	Number of pupils
A. Countryside school close to small town.	3	10
B. Multicultural school on the outskirts of a midsized city.	5	17
H. Suburb of a midsized city.	3	9
T. Inner-city school in a midsized city.	7	23
BA. Inner-city school in a large city.	4	11
KB. Inner-city school in a large city. Private school.	4	12
N. Inner-city school in a midsized city.	3	8
F. Suburb of a midsized city.	3	9
V. Suburb of a midsized city.	1	7
S. Countryside school close to a small town.	4	12
AG. Inner-city school in a small town.	3	9
Total	40	127

Pupils from eleven schools in five different municipalities were interviewed. Two of these schools are very competitive inner-city schools that attracted large numbers of pupils from a whide spread area in a metropolitan city (BA and KB), one of which is a private school (KB). Six municipal schools are located in different socioeconomic areas in two large cities with different demographic structures (B, H, T, N, F and V). The other three municipal schools are located in a commuter municipality (A), a manufacturing municipality (AG) and a suburban municipality (S), the last one in a sparsely populated area. Pupils were interviewed in groups (n = 2–7).

The pupils’ stories about the importance of their grades in terms of their future show a great variation regardless of which school they attended, and we see no causal relationship between certain stories and certain schools. We do not consider the different narratives representative of any predetermined categories (e.g. gender, social class or ethnicity). However, even if we regard our data as covering a breadth of variation regarding different contexts for grading, it would be hard to state that we have found a full or ‘real breadth of variation’ (Larsson, 2009, p. 32) regarding pupils’ experiences of grading. In this article, we present data from two of the municipal schools here called F, H, and from one inner-city private school in a large city, called KB. We have selected these stories because they illustrate how pupils refer to their prospective futures in three different ways and thus position themselves in qualitatively different modes vis-à-vis their present experience of getting their first grade report.

Half a year in advance, we gave the necessary information about our project to headteachers, teachers, parents and pupils. We also provided ethical permission letters to parents and pupils and every pupil that participated in the study have returned a signed document, this is in line with the ethical principles from the Swedish Research Council (2011). Interviews were conducted with all pupils who brought the ethical letter back to us showing that they and their parents agreed to them taking part in our study.

The interviews

Since we are interested in stories as socially situated actions, we designed this study to encourage storytelling by conducting semi-structured group interviews (Bryman, 2012; Löfgren & Löfgren, 2017a, 2017b). The interviews took between 30 and 60 minutes to perform and were held in group rooms at the school. The stories told in the interviews are regarded as joint constructions involving the interviewees as well as the interviewers (Mishler, 1986). The pupils were encouraged to interact with each other during the interviews. The main questions used in all interviews (e.g. ‘Can you tell us about your experiences of getting grades?’, ‘Is it possible to change your grades?’) are broad and strive to capture pupils’ feelings and experiences about getting grades, now as well as for the future. In some interviews, the pupils talked freely, and we did not need to draw them back to the interview’s focus, whereas in other interviews we also used several prompting questions in order to help pupils remember their experiences of getting grades. (e.g. ‘Are the grades important for you?’, ‘In what way are the grades important?’) We explored grades in relation to specific subjects (e.g. ‘Is every grade equally important?’).

Analysis

All interviews were audio recorded and transcribed. We translated the excerpts used in this article and a professional translator approved the translations. In the transcriptions, we have rendered sentences from spoken language and where necessary used symbols to clarify. The names of pupils used in the interview excerpts here are pseudonyms to preserve the interviewees’ privacy. By investigating stories the pupils told and how they told them, we can analyse how they expressed and made claims for who they are or would like to be as pupils and how they negotiated a mutual understanding of what the story was about (Bruner, 2002). First, we distinguished or re-constructed different micro-narratives (Gergen & Gergen, 1997; Löfgren & Löfgren, 2017a) or topical units that enabled us to identify and select stories where grades were linked to pupils’ futures in different ways. This means that we have used different parts of the interview transcripts to provide context or clarify certain elements. The micro-narratives are not descriptions about the practice of grading in general but specific stories where events are ascribed situated meaning. In short, they guide the selection of what stands out as important to the pupils in the interviews. In the next step we conducted a positioning analysis, inspired by Bamberg’s (1997, 2004) analytical levels, in order to describe in detail how grades become more or less important in the pupils’ stories due to how they talked about their future prospects. The analysis targets the following steps:

1. What are the stories of grades about and who are the characters (pupils, teachers and parents, other people) present in the story? How are they positioned in relation to each other?

2. How do the pupils position themselves to the interviewer and each other in the interview situation? In this article, time is used as a tool to understand how the interlocutors use time as a meaning-making resource when telling their stories (Blomberg & Börjesson, 2013; Mishler, 2006).

3. What discourses were addressed, or used (Mishler, 1999), when the pupils talked about how grades might or might not be important for their future? Obviously, by asking the pupils about their experiences of grading and their future we position them within a discourse that enables certain positions where good grades are likely to play some role for their future. However, as we will show, it is possible for the pupils to take other culturally available positions when answering our questions.

In short, the narrative characteristics that we have attended to in the analysis are the organization of events in certain time sequences highlighted by the storytellers. This means that the analysis serves as a way to focus on what the pupils themselves have highlighted as important events, in the present tense or the future tense, rather than as a way to collect any stories about getting grades in general.

Results

In this section we analyse three stories that illustrate the variation of stories about pupils’ grading experiences and views of future possibilities in education and in life. The first story is a typical example of stories where the first grades in school year 6 are ascribed a major and long-term importance for the pupils’ possibilities in life. The second story, on the other hand, is about pupils who resist taking grades in year 6 too seriously and who emphasize factors other than grades as being more important for their possibilities to get a good job in future. The third story is an example of stories that are characterized by a view of the first grades as an opportunity that might enable good grades later on in school. The future is here regarded as quite close in time – just a couple of years ahead. In short, this variation covers stories about the first grades as highly important for the future, or as of less importance, or finally as a practice that will help them succeed at school when the final and more important grades are at stake.

The future is outlined according to your grades

The first story is told by three girls at school F. In this story, different future possibilities for different pupils are outlined. The interviewer asks about the importance of grades and the story starts with statements, from Alma, Amy and Ameera, that the grades in school year 6 are deemed important for your later possibilities of getting a job in future. They move back and forth from present (‘you must fight right now’, line 13, box 1) to future perspectives (‘to become a bit like what you dreamed of’, line 16, box 1). Further on in the story, the pupils provide detailed information about other pupils and their views of grades and the seriousness of schoolwork. Here, it becomes clear that these other pupils are not serious right now and this will be a mistake in terms of their future educational possibilities.

Box 1. Transcript school F.

The interviewee’s first question invites Alma, Amy and Ameera to talk about themselves as pupils who understand that one has to work hard right now (lines 13–14, box 1) since they only have a limited time to improve their grades (line 4, box 1). Good grades are important to make it possible to choose another school or in order to get a job in the future (line 3, box 1) The pupils in the story are thereby positioned as serious pupils. The pupils in the story are also positioned as subordinated to the new testing regime since good grades are the only way to ‘become a bit like what you have dreamed of’ (line 15, box 1). The grades they get will determine their future (educational) possibilities.

Other pupils are also present in the story. These other pupils are positioned as pupils who not care so much right now about grades, which can be understood as a mistake for their future dreams (lines 15–17, 19–21, box 1). Thus, the position as a serious pupil is further strengthened by Ameera’s example of how other – less serious – pupils are sitting with their cell phones instead of ‘doing their homework’ (line 16, box 1).

In the following, attention is directed towards the interactions and the narrative resources used in relation to one another. By talking about how to behave at school (‘fight right now’ and ‘attend lessons’) and also how to not behave (lines 16–17, box 1) at school, the pupils instruct the audience how a good pupil should behave at school in order to succeed at school and in life. They relate their results and grades in school year 6 closely to future dreams, which makes time an important rhetorical resource when taking a position as serious pupils who have understood the importance of working hard at school now in order to achieve success in the future.

The story refers to an agenda of accountability where everybody is made responsible for their own results and their future is related to and accepted in their story (cf. Eriksson, 2009; Löfgren & Löfgren, 2017b). They relate and adjust themselves to this strong discourse of grading and testing at school without criticizing the new grading and testing regime. Getting good grades stands out as an individual responsibility for anyone clever enough to understand that grades are a key resource for future success.

Coping with expectations

This story is told by two boys, Lars and Gustav, at school H. In contrast to the previous story that stressed the importance of grades for success in life, this one emphasizes factors other than grades for living a good life in the future. Lars talks about his father (line 4, box 2) and other ‘people’ (line 1, box 2) who got bad grades at school but still managed to get good jobs later on. By telling this story, the pupils play down the importance of the grades they get.

Box 2. Transcript school H.

The characters present in this story are Lars and Gustav, Lars’ father, and some undefined ‘people’ who are talked about as a reference group to strengthen Lars’ argument that people in general can succeed in life despite ‘crappy grades’ (line 1, box 2) when they were young. Lars is positioned in the story as a calm pupil who is convinced that the future depends on things other than grades at school (lines 6–7, box 2). The important thing is how you act as an adult. Gustav, on the other hand, considers grades ‘fun’ (line 12, box 2) and a somewhat important tool for motivation at school, and he is thereby positioned in the story as a pupil competing for good grades at school even if he refuses to describe them as important (line 15, box 2).

Through the way Lars positions his father, as a person who did not get such good grades when he was young but managed to do well anyway, it is clear that he compares himself with his father and is convinced that the future depends on things other than school grades. Lars also instructs the audience that this way of neglecting grades is not a sign of carelessness about a good life in future (lines 6–7, box 2). The future is regarded in a long-term setting, and they relate to present grades with both Lars and Gustav agreeing that grades are not considered an important issue at school right now. The outline of the future depends more on how much one cares about getting a good job as an adult than about the actual grades. However, the last statement about grades in school year 6 not being of great importance introduces the possibility that grades can become more important later on in school.

Lars’ father, as well as other people around him, can be seen as role models who enable positions referring to discourses other than the grading and testing discourse. Thus, the grading and testing discourse at school is played down and instead Lars adheres to a discourse of family traditions and a culturally available narrative of engaged adults who take responsibility for their professional careers. This can also be seen as a way to cope with expectations regarding school grades and a way to protect oneself from an accountability agenda (cf. Rautiainen et al., 2015; Smith, 2016).

Learning about grades by being graded

This story is told by three girls, Malin, Eva and Emilie, at school KB. Their story includes a lot of words describing the new grading system at school and a common construction of how grades now and later on might be or become important. Both Eva and Malin talk a lot about how they understand grading in school year 6 compared to grades later on in school. The future is thus regarded as only being a few years away in this story.

Box 3. Transcript school KB.

The characters in this story are the three girls, Eva, Emilie and Malin. Eva is positioned as upset at first (line 4, box 3), but later on as more relaxed about getting her first grades (lines 5–6, box 3). Emilie appears to be a bit hesitant regarding the importance of getting grades. Malin is positioned as a pupil who cares a lot about grades in school year 6 because they will help her avoid future positions of failure in school year 9.

The pupils talk about how to understand grades at school in a multifaceted way. Malin states at the beginning of the story that she ‘care[s] a lot about grades’ (line 3, box 3) and argues that grades in year 6 can be seen as an important step to prepare for grades later on in school and also as a motivation to ‘work hard to reach… higher grades’ (lines 22, 24, box 3). She nuances the role of the grades by talking about different subjects as more or less important. Eva and Emilie initially talk about grades in school year 6 in terms of ‘not so crucial’ (line 5, box 3) and ‘a little bit unnecessary’ (line 12, box 3). When Eva and Malin discuss the gap between grades in school year 6 compared with school year 7, Eva states that she thinks grades should be given in school year 7 instead of 6 to avoid a gap (lines 13–15, box 3), whereas Malin thinks that grades in school year 6 are valuable as a way to get used to grades and avoid ‘an awful shock’ (line 17, box 3) later. Eva also informs us that the grades can serve as a clear indicator of your progress (lines 21–23, box 3). The pupils thereby position themselves as well-informed pupils who can nuance the picture of grades at school. They do care about school, but they also make it clear that they understand that the grades in school year 6 are not of such great importance. Through the way Eva and Malin tell the story, it becomes clear that that they both seem to know a lot about the syllabus in school year 6 and how this can be understood in relation to the syllabuses in school years 7–9 (lines 16–20, box 3). This knowledge of the syllabuses and the grading system in schools are used as an argument that grades in school year 6 should mainly be used for formative purposes: ‘it gets clearer what you need to work harder on’ (lines 21–23, box 3). They also talk about their own effort and how important it is to ‘get confirmed’ (line 21) (cf. Eriksson, 2009). They thereby take a position as smart pupils who know how to handle the new grading system. Thus, the future in this story is quite close in time – just a couple of years ahead.

The pupils in this story take an active position vis-à-vis the grading system and argue for the importance of getting grades in school year 6, but also question the importance. This awareness of the grading system, or system smartness, is used as a tool to position themselves as pupils in relation to testing and grading discourses at school in an rather instrumental way (cf. Black, 2015). This is also in line with the study carried out by Jonsson et al. (2015), where a teacher describes how the students have developed a kind of ‘fixing mentality’ (p. 115) and demand more precise feedback in order to obtain a certain mark.

Concluding discussion

The findings in this article contribute knowledge about how Swedish pupils are positioned and position themselves as pupils at school when they talk about their first grade reports. The grades are made more or less important in the present tense, depending on how they are referred to in relation to the pupils’ beliefs about their futures. Our analysis illustrates how pupils take different positions vis-à-vis the question about the importance of the actual grades if they relate their experiences to a near future reaching over the next two or three years, or if they relate them to their opportunities to succeed later in life. In the following conclusion, we wish to discuss the findings in relation to two culturally available narratives, or rationales, about school performance as a means to future success – and the opposite – that is, about success in life due to commitment to hard work as an adult. We will also draw some conclusions regarding how the changed assessment policy might influence pupils’ learning and well-being in school and point out some implications that might be important to consider for those policy makers and teachers who will be responsible for changing assessment policies in the future.

Some pupils talk about a great concern for their grades in school year 6 in order to get a job or a good life in future. This is in line with previous studies from Finland and Sweden showing that grades at school can be seen as labels of who you are (Kärkkäinen et al., 2008; Räty et al., 2004). Grades in school year 6 can be seen as a prediction for later possibilities to succeed at school or later on in life (Klapp, 2015; Klapp et al., 2014). Such references to a strong testing and grading discourse can be compared to what Kärkkäinen et al. (2008) discuss in terms of a ‘restrictive sphere of education’ (p. 446) that is characterized by a normative view of education emphasizing the importance of assessments, comparisons and ranking (see also Smith, 2016). In this discourse, grades become a simple measure of success or failure, and the pupils who follow this rationale are subordinated to constantly achieving good results in order to succeed in life. One consequence of such long-term reasoning is that in order to have a good life later on, you need to perform good results right now – it cannot wait. Obviously, the subjective rationality in such cases calls for immediate actions that optimize the possibility to get good grades instantly. From the perspective of those who took the decision about earlier grades, these pupils’ urge to immediately increase their efforts in school work perhaps is idealic as they appear to have accepted that it is their responsibility as individuals to design their own life and future (cf. Eriksson, 2009). However, we argue that the policy also may shape a dividing line between those pupils who understand and accept that they are supposed to take a stronger responsibility to achieve good grades and those who do not. Our findings show that some pupils do not take the grades very seriously and previous research indicates that younger pupils sometimes find it hard to understand the meaning of a certain grade and that grades can cause feelings of fear and anxiety (Harlen & Deakin Crick, 2003). Earlier grades, we argue, risk to push some pupils that care too much into feelings of stress and pupils that do not understand or care about grades might lose their motivation for learning in the long run. This implies questions about who is responsible for the pupils’ wellbeing and desire to learn.

A qualitatively different type of story is told by pupils who do not pay so much attention to grades when they talk about their future. These pupils instead relate to family members and others who have worked hard in other ways to succeed later in life. By adhering to a rationale that stresses adults’ loyalty and commitment to their work, these pupils appear to ‘protect’ themselves from the current grading and testing discourse that characterizes today’s schoolwork (cf. Rautiainen et al., 2015; Smith, 2016). This, we argue, can be regarded as a way to handle and interpret a new grading and assessment policy and also offer a certain degree of resistance (cf. Ball, 2006). From these pupils’ points of view, it appears rational to avoid the risk of letting the pressure to perform take over their life right now. Such stories indicate that the grading reform does not work perfectly in line with the intentions. Not all pupils are prepared to work hard right now to get good grades but they have not given up the prospect of having a good future with a proper job. They do not report any indicators of stress over their school work and achivements, or any discomfort due to the new grading practice. One implication for the policy makers related to this rational is whether earlier and more detailed grades really is a good way to encourage pupils to take more responsibility for their own learning. Perhaps it is more effective to encourage teachers to take a stronger interest in the pupils’ experiences and learning in a wider sense and use their professional skills to create an alignment between the goals in the national syllabus and the pupils’ learning without nessessarily focusing on results in terms of numbers or letters.

Finally, there are pupils in our study who seem very used to, or trained in, talking about grades and their goals at school. They also appear to be more short-sighted in relation to their futures. Their stories bear witness to a kind of insight that you need to know a lot about the grading system in order to improve the grades, or at least not drop, over the years at school. In contrast to what previous research has shown, these pupils show good knowledge of the new and quite complex assessment systems used in schools (Harlen & Deakin Crick, 2003). One conclusion that can be drawn is that there seems to be comprehensive discussion about grades and assessment in Swedish schools today (cf. Löfgren & Löfgren, 2016). This comprehensive discussion about grades and knowledge criteria may not appear in the same way as in the 1980s, when the grades were norm-related and could not be related to specific knowledge criteria (cf. Andersson, 1991; Klapp, 2015; Klapp et al., 2014). These grading systems existed in a highly centralized education system that was regulated according to completely different principles. Since then, a number of school reforms, such as the decentralization of the school system and increased freedom of choice for parents and pupils, have been introduced in Sweden. Grades have thus been given a performative dimension (cf. Ball, 2006; Löfgren, 2017), as they now measure the ability of both schools and teachers to help their pupils to perform and demonstrate what they have learned. When listening to these pupils’ stories, it is easy to get the impression that their learning tends to be more instrumental with regard to their grades as a result of the new and more precise assessment system introduced in school year 6. This is in line with Black (2015) and Jonsson et al. (2015), showing that a focus on goals and precise criteria may cause instrumental and fragmented views of knowledge. A conclusion, based on our finding and on these studies, is that sometimes pupils pay too much attention to the actual grading system and therefore risk to devote less energy on learning subject content knowledge. The challenge for policymakers and teachers with regard to such stories is how we can avoid this shortsightedness regarding pupils’ ambitions to learn in order to get good grades rather than learning for the sake of personal development. Obviously, there is no easy solution to such challenge, but we argue that one way to do it is to encourage teachers to position pupils in a different way vis-à-vis grades in school year 6. We argue that it would be preferable to give teachers more trust and support to use their own judgement when giving instructions in the classroom. These instructions should be based on interaction with pupils and on teachers’ own assessments of various classroom situations, with regard to the pupils’ individual learning processes and their actual level of knowledge in a certain subject. This would promote a more holistic and sustainable assessment practice, which is in sharp contrast to the education policy in Sweden right now, where teachers are encouraged to devote their time and energy to work with standardized tests that are intended to serve as a support when grading their pupils.

To conclude, the now dominant discourse about testing and grading in Swedish schools enables the pupils in our study to position themselves in quite different ways. We argue that none of the pupils we have interviewed is completely untouched by grades and appraisal at school. Our findings illustrate how some pupils do everything they can to adapt their efforts in line with the grading system and we are worried that they are not encouraged enough to learn for the sake of learning and for the joy of understanding new things. Other findings illustrate how pupils try to resist the dominant discourse, or protect themselves from an agenda of accountability and we are worried that pupils with that attitude will experience setbacks later in school if they do not adjust. From our point of view there is reason for educators and policymakers to think twice over the consequences of the development where the testing discourse is allowed to dominate. An important conclusion that can be drawn from our study is that this development might jeopardize pupils’ joy and engagement in their own learning and make them more instrumental or exhausted in relation to school work.

Finally, an implication of this study is that it is important that policy makers and teachers realize that they have the full responsibility for the consequences for pupils’ learning and well-being when assessment practices are changed on a national level. This means, we argue, that the introduction of new systematic standardized testing and grading procedures should be accompanied by systematic procedures to ensure that pupils can optimize their learning and reduce their anxiety. To achieve this, future research needs to provide more knowledge that supports informed decisions among those with the power to influence policy decisions and enactments. Therefore, we suggest that future research should explore how Swedish teachers can became more confident in taking more of the responsibility for the enactment of the grading policy and thereby sparing the pupils from detrimental effects of the assessment system. Another, and perhaps even more urgent task for future research, is to investigate the relationship between the now stronger pressure to perform in Swedish schools and the pupils’ mental health. Preferably, researchers should direct a certain interest to pupils’ experiences of stress and relate that to issues of how or if pupils receive sufficient support to handle such pressure in school.

Acknowledgments

This research project ‘Pupils’ stories about grades: A study of pupils’ experiences of getting grades and of conducting national tests in grade 6 was funded by the Swedish Research Council (Dnr. 721-2013-1668).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Vetenskapsrådet [721-2013-1668].

Notes on contributors

Ragnhild Löfgren

Ragnhild Löfgren is an associate professor at the Department of Social- and Welfare Studies at Linköping University, Sweden. Her research interests focus on how science content is made available for students in tests and in other assessment situations, as well as in interaction and communication in the classroom. She is also engaged in questions concerning reform enactment in schools.

Ragnhild Löfgren is an associate professor at the Department of Behavioural Sciences and Learning at Linköping University, Sweden. His research interests focus on education policy, consequences of assessment from a students’ perspective and the teaching profession.

Håkan Löfgren

Ragnhild Löfgren is an associate professor at the Department of Social- and Welfare Studies at Linköping University, Sweden. Her research interests focus on how science content is made available for students in tests and in other assessment situations, as well as in interaction and communication in the classroom. She is also engaged in questions concerning reform enactment in schools.

Ragnhild Löfgren is an associate professor at the Department of Behavioural Sciences and Learning at Linköping University, Sweden. His research interests focus on education policy, consequences of assessment from a students’ perspective and the teaching profession.

Viveca Lindberg

Viveca Lindberg is an associate professor in pedagogy at Department of Humanities and Social Sciences Education at Stockholm University, Sweden. Her research interests focus on classroom communication, tasks, tests and other assessment situations in school.

Notes

1. Since 1962 it is mandatory for all children between 7 and 16 years to attend school.

2. PISA, Programme for International Student Assessment.

3. TIMMS, Third International Mathematics and Science Study.