Ungrading isn’t a word for all alternative grading practices. It’s a set of conversations (drawing together teachers and students) that push against and ask hard questions of grading and standardized/quantitative assessment. There are lots of entry points to those conversations.
The word “Ungrading” has use value right now, which is why I’ve used it and why I’ve worked to catalyze conversations about #ungrading. But the conversations aren’t new. We have to look back in order to look forward.
https://twitter.com/jessifer/status/1584227461029847040
The first step toward #ungrading is a series of conversations about the failures of standardized assessment, the harm letter grades do to already marginalized students, and the harm they do to relationships between teachers, between students, and between teachers and students.
I’ve said before, we need to stop having conversations about the future of education without students in the room. This means students have to be drivers of the conversations we have in education about assessment, grades, and #ungrading.
The next step toward #ungrading is to knock down the barriers that keep teachers and students from working together to actively reimagine how we do assessment in education. There’s lots of ways to begin this work, but there are a few glaring barriers that get in the way.
We need to start by trusting students. Every dollar we invest in proctoring software, plagiarism detection tools, and other policing technologies needs to be reinvested in student support and faculty development.
We need to start by trusting teachers. Institutions and administrators should not be making critical pedagogical decisions for teachers. Institutions should not universally adopt technologies or models (like Quality Matters) that make critical pedagogical decisions for teachers.
Less than half of higher education teachers get meaningful or significant preparation for the work of teaching as graduate students or as new faculty. This is a fatal structural flaw.
Collaboration between teachers is actively discouraged. Most institutions have no strategies or policies in place to support collaborative teaching. This is a fatal structural flaw.
70% of faculty in higher education are contingent or adjunct. This is a fatal structural flaw.
How do we support struggling students if the bulk of faculty have little structural power to do or advocate for that work?
Looping this back into the thread:
https://twitter.com/jessifer/status/1615582436724772867
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