Abstract This article examines the linkage of grading criteria and students’ epistemic agency—students’ capability to use knowledge to shape their lives and society. It has been argued that assessment can both foster and limit students’ epistemic agency. Moreover, it is known that grading criteria are particularly powerful in signalling what knowledge is worth knowing and how students are expected to engage with it. Our study focused on Finnish basic education in which teachers assign students’ final grades based on national criteria. We employed Anderson and Krathwohl’s taxonomy to analyse how the notion of epistemic agency was manifested in the criteria. This led to two key findings. First, the criteria offered various manifestations of epistemic agency, which we organised into seven distinct types. The breadth of manifestations suggested that teacher-led criteria-based assessment, as opposed to high-stakes examinations, enables a more comprehensive reflection on educational objectives, including epistemic agency. Second, we found that manifestations of epistemic agency were concentrated in the higher-level grade descriptions, whereas the lowest acceptable level scarcely entailed them. Although it is natural to expect deeper engagement with knowledge at higher levels of expertise, the gap between grade levels appeared unnecessarily large. We conclude that grading criteria can provide a variety of affordances for students’ epistemic agency. Therefore, to promote equity, it is essential that criteria across all grade levels are consistent with educational aims, including epistemic agency.
Ketonen et al. (Fri,) studied this question.