Session Outline

The Transformative Effects of decentering the grade: a radical personal tutoring approach for Higher Education

Alexandra Hay (Manchester Metropolitan University)

Grades have been a feature of educational systems in the Western world since the turn of the last century and their purpose, and effects, has been a constant source of debate by policy makers, educationalists, employers and other stakeholders. Grades operate as a ‘value laden symbol’ that ‘encourages social comparison and renders hierarch salient’ (Pulfrey et al 2011: 684). They provide the ticket to access further study perhaps, or employment. In addition they have a manifest function to socialise students in preparation for competitive, meritocratic world of professional life (Deutsch 1979). Grades are a badge, and indicator of merit, a cause for celebration, but not always. Increasingly in my work with undergraduates I have witnessed grade obsession (Rickey et al 2023) and the damage this causes to critical thinking skills, general learning behaviours and student motivation (Blazer 2011, Muth and Luftenegger 2025). Grading produces fear of failure even among high achieving students (Pulfrey et al 2011), often rendering learning secondary to the instrumental pursuit of the grade.

This talk examines the impact of grading on university students’ learning, motivation, and wellbeing, and explores the potential of “decentring the grade” as a personal tutoring approach. Drawing on critical pedagogy and hooks’ (1994) concept of transgression, a small-scale action research project was conducted with final-year Education Studies undergraduates at a UK university. Within a student-led Community of Practice, participants were encouraged to avoid metric-driven language during group tutoring sessions. Thematic analysis of focus group data revealed that grades hold significant emotional power, often generating stress, competition, and disengagement from learning. Conversely, decentring the grade fostered reflection, confidence, and collaboration, allowing students to reframe their achievement, and the achievement of others, in more holistic and inclusive terms. The findings suggest that while grades remain institutionally entrenched at all levels of the education system in the UK, creating grade-free spaces within a personal tutoring framework can nurture intrinsic motivation and deeper engagement with learning and subject content It also fosters an improved sense of belonging by releasing students from the emotional and psychological power grades hold and discouraging feelings of comparison and competition. This personal tutoring approach represented a ‘transgression’ (hooks 1994) against mainstream normative measures of success and value in the university system reliant on grades as indicators of academic value. This talk will demonstrate not only the damage grades can do to student learning and wellbeing and feelings of group belonging, but also offer ways to tackle this that are transformative to not only the individual student, but the academic culture in which they are situated.

Why Feeling Seen Matters: Embedding Mattering in the Personal Tutor Relationship

Clair Zawada (Birmingham City University)

Student belonging is widely recognised as a driver of engagement and retention (Thomas, 2012), yet recent research highlights that mattering, the extent to which students feel noticed, valued, and significant, may be an even more powerful predictor of academic outcomes (Elliott et al., 2004; Flett, 2018). Drawing on findings from a quantitative study of allied health undergraduates (Zawada, 2025), this session explores how mattering at university was the only measure to show a statistically significant correlation with grade outcome and was strongly associated with whether students had seriously considered leaving their course. These findings align with wider evidence that mattering influences engagement, wellbeing and intention to persist (Tovar, 2013) and carry particular relevance for healthcare students, who consistently report lower levels of institutional belonging than other student groups (Ahn & Davis, 2023).

In this session, I will translate these research insights into practical and achievable tutoring behaviours that communicate mattering without significantly increasing workload. The focus is on reframing the ordinary: small but meaningful actions such as noticing absence, acknowledging effort, following up when concerns arise, and using personal details students have shared to demonstrate awareness and care. These behaviours, while seemingly simple, can significantly influence a student’s perception of whether they matter within the university environment, and this perception shapes motivation, engagement and persistence (Flett, 2018).

The session will also explore the subtle but important distinction between belonging and mattering, clarifying why tutors may successfully cultivate a sense of group belonging while unintentionally overlooking the individual student experience. Understanding this difference enables tutors to refine their approach so that students feel both included and personally valued.

Audience involvement will take the form of questions to highlight common assumptions about tutoring interactions. This quick engagement will help connect the research findings to delegates’ everyday practice and prompt consideration of how mattering already shows up (or fails to show up) in their institutional context.

The session will conclude by offering a concise framework for embedding mattering into routine tutor-student interactions, giving participants a practical tool that can be implemented immediately after the conference.

Affective Futurity and Motivation for Student Support Seeking

Lisa Appleyard-Keeling (Manchester Metropolitan University)

We argue that a move away from the language of ‘independent learning’ towards the language of ‘inter-relational learning’ offers the possibility of strengthening understanding of how tutoring can foster a greater sense of belonging and motivate students to recognise that support-seeking is a fundamental factor that shapes future student success.

Engaging in Higher Education study is an emotional, affective endeavour. Yet increasingly, institutions are moving towards a systematised business model of tutoring (Yale, 2019) that adopts a multi-faceted metric focussed approach driven by big data (Richardson and Stepniak, 2025). While student engagement, progression, continuation, and student outcomes are inevitable consequences of mass education, they can shape an approach that cements tutoring within a transactional design, emblematic of the marketisation of the HEI sector (Wakelin, 2023). Poor quality tutoring impacts more negatively than no tutoring (Yale, 2019). Systemised output-driven tutoring can feel inauthentically impersonal (Prowse, Ruiz Vargas and Powell, 2021) especially to minoritised students who may arrive in HEIs with institutionally unrecognised stresses (Gabi et al., 2024).

Recognition of the affective, and embodied student experience is particularly important within disciplines that attract students from minoritised demographics. This is seen in the Department of Social Care and Social Work, where student demographics show a high percentage of students who are care experienced, racially minoritised, first generation, neurodiverse, and entering with vocational qualifications. For many of our students, the roadmap of academic study is an uncharted landscape. For students from educationally privileged households, higher education is a recognised landscape with well-imagined future outcomes, which shapes both understanding of, and motivation for, support-seeking. We acknowledge that this support-seeking is often via informal networks such as seeking guidance from family and friends. However, for many “widening participation” students, understanding of support-seeking can be limited to a deficit-based framing, originating from the negative connotations of special educational needs and additional support at school. Once in HE, this notion becomes sharpened by a belief that ‘independent study’ means alone and unaided. Limited knowledge of what university-study really means, combined with negative perceptions of support-seeking combine to diminish motivation for honest and open support-seeking.

We argue that motivation to seek-support is intrinsically linked to student success and, yet it is an ‘affective futurity’ (Zembylas, 2025) because it is dependent on both an ability to imagine future outcomes and an ability to imagine that support-seeking will be accepted; motivation for support-seeking is therefore intertwined with a sense of belonging. However, affective futurity can become ‘unmotivating’ without understanding of the factors which shape success (Kahu and Nelson, 2018) - including recognising that support-seeking is a fundamental aspect of the hidden curriculum within the successful student’s educational journey.

Tutoring that actively highlights the inter-relational aspects of learning, while making transparent the hidden curriculum, supports understanding of positive affective futurity ultimately building a sense of trust, and therefore belonging.

Using Padlet in this session offers interactive opportunities for a co-created re-imagining of vocabulary that reshapes student understanding of an inter-relational and future-focused tutoring model.

Co-authored with Louise Barnes (louise.barnes@mmu.ac.uk)

Learning Outcomes

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