Research Bite #3: A marked improvement?
By Education Endowment Foundation and Oxford University
Hello!
This half-term, I am going to try something different. Each week, I will use my favourite AI tool, NotebookLM, to summarise a research paper that has profoundly affected my teaching, coaching, and thinking about education*.
Title: A marked improvement? A review of the evidence on written marking
Authors: Education Endowment Foundation and Oxford University
Access the original paper here
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Paper summary
This review of marking practices, commissioned by the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF), examines the evidence for a variety of marking approaches. The review notes a dearth of high-quality research in this area, particularly in primary and secondary school settings. The authors synthesize findings from various studies, offering a comprehensive analysis of common marking practices, including grading, providing corrections, thoroughness, pupil responses, creating a dialogue, using targets, and considering frequency and speed. The review highlights the need for further research on specific marking strategies, particularly those that focus on the long-term impact of different approaches and their effectiveness in improving pupil progress. The authors also emphasize the need for a balance between efficient marking practices and ensuring that feedback is meaningful, manageable, and motivating for teachers and students alike.
What are the key implications for teachers in the classroom?
The quality of existing evidence focused specifically on written marking is low. Few large-scale, robust studies have examined marking practices. Most studies that have been conducted are small in scale and/or based in the fields of higher education or English as a foreign language (EFL).
Teachers should differentiate between careless mistakes and errors resulting from misunderstanding. Errors resulting from misunderstanding may be best addressed by providing hints or questions that lead pupils to underlying principles. Careless mistakes may be best addressed by simply marking the mistake as incorrect, without giving the right answer.
Awarding grades for every piece of work may reduce the impact of marking, particularly if pupils become preoccupied with grades at the expense of considering teachers’ formative comments.
The use of targets to make marking as specific and actionable as possible is likely to increase pupil progress.
Pupils are unlikely to benefit from marking unless some time is set aside to enable pupils to consider and respond to marking.
Some forms of marking, including acknowledgement marking, are unlikely to enhance pupil progress. Schools should consider marking less, but marking better.
There is an urgent need for more studies so that teachers have better information about the most effective marking approaches.
Teachers should consider the multiple trade-offs involved in many decisions about marking. Trade-offs might relate to workload, but also relate to other areas, such as the amount of work undertaken by the teacher versus the student, and the speed with which marking is completed versus how detailed feedback is.
Additionally, a 2016 report from the Independent Teacher Workload Review Group suggested that providing written feedback on pupils’ work has become disproportionately valued by schools, and the quantity of feedback has too often become confused with quality. The report noted that there is no ‘one size fits all’ way to mark, and recommended an approach based on professional judgment.
Quote
A mantra might be that schools should mark less in terms of the number of pieces of work marked, but mark better.
What are the implications of this research for you?
What questions does it make you want to ask?
Let me know in the comments below
🏃🏻♂️Before you go, have you… 🏃🏻♂️
… read last week’s Research Bite about motivation?
… read my latest Eedi newsletter about why no-one ever includes constructions in the Do Now?
… listened to my latest podcast with Ollie Lovell where we discuss the Do Now?
… considered becoming a Patreon to support my work?
… considered booking some CPD, coaching or maths department support?
*Note from Craig Barton’s legal team: Research Bites is in no way, shape, or form influenced by Peps Mccrea’s Evidence Snacks.
Really enjoyed reading this. It’s so true that giving feedback more intelligently makes it more effective.
I have occasionally, in the past, marked a piece of writing and left the individual with a Post-It note detailing the improvements they can make. If I’m able to do that for everyone, they start the following lesson by making my recommended changes. Going forward, I’d like to make use of technology to help speed up the marking because I do find this system really helps but it just takes too much time!