In this Brave New World, students are to be graded on mastery of material rather than irrelevant considerations like organization.
Re "No More A's for Good Behavior" (Week in Review, Nov. 28), about schools that are giving grades for mastery of the material, separate from assessments of whether students are well behaved and hard-working: What kinds of lessons are we teaching children if we tell them it's O.K. to ignore deadlines and that there are no real consequences for being disruptive or unprepared?
The scores on the Pearlin Mastery Scale range from 5 (minimum level of mastery) to 25 (maximum level of mastery).
Every form of mastery involves some boredom.
Mastery-based learning is an educational philosophy in which students achieve a desired grade demonstrating mastery of given content before moving to new content in a course.
Those who complete the course will get a certificate of mastery and a grade, but no official credit.
Each of the 20 items, in 4 domains (dyspnea, fatigue, emotional function and mastery or level of control), was graded on a seven-point Likert scale.
If the student achieved the desired grade, they were moved to the next unit, and students who did not achieve mastery were permitted to repeat a unit until mastery (a grade of 80% or higher) was achieved.
Were students expected to demonstrate similar levels of mastery to earn particular grades and overall credit?
Of course, Bloom's work did not rule out the possibility that some teachers might still give high grades for undesirable reasons unrelated to standards of mastery (e.g., to be nice, to gain the admiration of students, etc).
The loose structure of the book follows his two-year struggle to raise his lowly chess grade – 133 at the outset – and achieve some kind of mastery of the game.
