Faculty Grading of Quantitative Problems: A Mismatch between Values and Practice

# Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2012 Abstract Grading practices can send a powerful message to students about course expectations. A study by Henderson et al. (American Journal of Physics 72:164–169, 2004) in physics education has identified a misalignment between what college instructors say they value and their actual scoring of quantitative student solutions. This work identified three values that guide grading decisions: (1) a desire to see students ’ reasoning, (2) a readiness to deduct points from solutions with obvious errors and a reluctance to deduct points from solutions that might be correct, and (3) a tendency to assume correct reasoning when solutions are ambiguous. These authors propose that when values are in conflict, the conflict is resolved by placing the burden of proof on either the instructor or the student. Here, we extend the results of the physics study to earth science (n=7) and chemistry (n=10) instructors in a think-aloud interview study. Our results suggest that both the previousl