Assessment for marks or learning? Interrogating students’ fixation with marks as opposed to feedback and life – long learning
This paper is based on the researcher’s three years’ experience teaching Social Sciences courses to pre-service teachers at an institution of higher learning in South Africa. The Social Sciences courses is meant to equip student teachers with skills which are necessary for teaching Social Sciences in the upper primary and lower secondary school levels. Over the three-year period, the writer has assigned various assessment tasks that are critical for developing the students’ various teaching skills; including critical thinking and research abilities, oral and written communication competencies, body language skills, boosting the confidence of the student teachers, enhancing their appreciation of content knowledge, and how the various concepts and content would influence their pedagogical choices. The researcher has noted a concerning trend that, at the beginning of the semester, students are very eager to engage with the various assessment tasks, producing well researched papers and making quality presentations. The student-to-student feedback has equally been enriching. Unfortunately, the quality of their work, the presentations and feedback deteriorate from the first, second and third of such tasks, upon students’ realisation that I have not assigned marks for some of these assessment tasks. I have been wondering why this is the case, even though students get valuable feedback from both peers and me during and after presenting the assigned tasks. Therefore, this paper explored various factors underlining students’ fixation with marks. It has gathered data through observation of students’ behaviours and attitudes towards non-award of marks, has gathered information through focused group discussions, interviews with individual students as well as through analysing students’ written work and through engaging with existing literature on the subject. Therefore, while not underrating the value of marks, paper discusses strategies to motivate students to appreciate that learning is not always about marks; it is also about the experiences which students go through as they engage with various tasks and among themselves, consistent with Vygotsky's socio-constructivist theory, which recognises the significance of social interaction in knowledge construction. Deep level learning also involves appreciating feedback, a crucial aspect of lifelong learning which is necessary for the teaching profession.

Keywords: Assessment, feedback, life-long learning, mark fixation.