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ABSTRACT
How could assessment inclusively consider the diversity of students? In higher education, the most common answer is: through individual assessment accommodations. Inclusive assessment design has also been promoted to foster accessibility for all students. However, both of these approaches have largely drawn on the procedural understanding of 'inclusion' as 'enhanced academic outcomes'. In this conceptual study, a critical, socio-political approach to inclusive assessment is taken instead, considering assessment in its wider context of academic ableism. The rationale for Assessment for Inclusion (AfI) is formulated to harness assessment to promote the inclusion of marginalised students as fully accepted, agentic members of academic communities. Five practical principles for promoting AfI are introduced: rethinking accommodations, anti-ableist work, celebration of human diversity, student partnership, and interdependence. This study suggests that if mass higher education truly wishes to include students from increasingly diverse backgrounds, assessment needs to be rethought from the viewpoint of inclusion.

Introduction: inclusive assessment in the age of exclusion

Slee () calls our time 'an age of exclusion' when discussing the inability of inclusive education to challenge the profound exclusion of disabled people. Slee's rather bleak essay provides an opportunity for reflection on higher education, as despite the massification of higher education and the diversifying of the student population that has followed, modern societies have been unable to truly include disabled people in academia (Brown and Leigh ; Dolmage ). In higher education, disabilities are largely seen as deficits that need to be accommodated, rather than understanding them as something that enriches academia and should thus be celebrated (Moriña, Sandoval, and Carnerero ). In this study, 'inclusion' is considered as a radical, political quest to include disabled people in higher education: not as 'the Others' (Allan ) but as fully accepted, resourceful and agentic members of academic communities (Gibson ).

Historically, assessment has struggled to meet the needs of student diversity in higher education (McArthur ), especially from the viewpoint of disabilities (Milic Babic and Dowling ; Fuller et al. ; Hanafin et al. ; Madriaga and Goodley ). In fact, assessment is deemed so inaccessible for disabled students that accommodations such as extra time or separate testing rooms are commonly administered in higher education institutions around the world. Often, support for disabled students is abridged solely for assessment-related accommodations (e.g. Brandt ; Nieminen ). Traditional forms of assessment such as exams carry heavy historic weight in higher education: 'Under this weight, it is easy for the needs of disabled students to become invisible' (Hanafin et al. , 443). Indeed, exclusion is deeply woven into the fabric of what we call 'assessment'. Through assessment, disabled students come to understand themselves as 'different', 'special', and 'lesser than other students' (Hanafin et al. ; Nieminen ), often in front of other students such as when the exam time is over and everyone leaves the exam hall - except the ones with extra time, who still remain seated (Goode ). This is ableism in practice: assessment is designed for a certain ideal of a normal, able student (Dolmage ). While assessment has largely contributed to the exclusion of disabled students, this study reconceptualises assessment as a vehicle for radical inclusion (cf. Allan ; Gibson ). This quest inherently understands assessment from a socio-political approach, within the 'age of exclusion'.

The ways to address the inclusion of disabled students in assessment have traditionally been arranged into two approaches. First, individual assessment accommodations can be administered to ensure that all students have the same opportunity to succeed in assessment (Kivijärvi and Rautiainen ; Weis and Beauchemin ). This approach aligns with the medical model of disability that understands disability as an individual deficit that needs to be considered, cured, and fixed (Oliver ). In higher education, the medical model manifests as disabled students requiring a diagnosis, which is then aligned with appropriate accommodations practices; hence, the analogy to medical practices that are sought to cure individual illnesses ('your bone is broken, so you need a cast'). In higher education, disabilities are largely seen as a negative feature that obscures the results of assessment, thus challenging its validity. Nieminen () stated that the medical model might be overemphasised in contexts where assessment is characterised by traditional practices such as exams - and indeed such practices have been named to dominate in higher education in general (Boud et al. ).

It has also been emphasised that assessment should be designed to be inclusive for all students in the first place - not retrospectively (Hanafin et al. ). This idea aligns with the social model of disability which acknowledges that disabilities are constructed in their sociocultural and historical contexts (Gabel and Peters ). From the viewpoint of assessment, the social model emphasises that assessment produces disabledness rather than only reveals it. However, while many scholars have called for inclusive assessment design (e.g. Brandt ; Hanafin et al. ; Madriaga and Goodley ), to date, very few studies have reported such assessments (Nieminen and Pesonen ; Tai, Ajjawi, and Umarova ). Overall, in assessment, the social model-minded studies have emphasised inclusive assessment design through diverse assessment practices that provide multiple ways for students to represent their knowledge and thus reduce the need for individual accommodations (Tai et al. ; Waterfield and West ).

What is lacking is conceptual rigour in how two substantially different approaches to inclusive assessment - inclusive design and individual accommodations - could contribute to inclusion. For example, assessment accommodations have been connected with ableism in how they internalise the structural issues of assessment in students' mental states (Nieminen ). At the same time, they are said to empower students by enabling them to show their true skills in assessment (Kivijärvi and Rautiainen ). What should teachers do: use them or not? How? Researchers have not reached a consensus in answering these questions (see Griful-Freixenet et al. ). Furthermore, the tension between individual accommodations and inclusive assessment is commonly presented as an issue about assessment design. Mechanical approaches to inclusive assessment (namely, the focus on which assessment practices to use and when) might undervalue the dominance of the medical model: assessment accommodations are commonly mandated in legislation, while inclusive assessment design is not. As Nieminen () noted, disabled students are predominantly seen as the problem to be fixed, not the assessment systems themselves. Furthermore, procedural approaches to inclusion might overemphasise 'enhanced academic outcomes' rather than 'radical inclusion' as the ultimate goal of inclusive assessment.

In this conceptual study, the notion of Assessment for Inclusion (AfI) is formulated to harness assessment as a vehicle for inclusion, reconceptualising the division between inclusive assessment design and individual accommodations. AfI builds on the purposes of assessment as explored in earlier literature. Commonly, assessment is framed through the purposes of certification (Assessment of Learning), learning (Assessment for Learning) and sustainability (Assessment as Learning) (Boud et al. ). McArthur () offered another crucial rationale for assessment that has greatly inspired the current study, Assessment for social justice, that emphasised the role of assessment in contributing to just societies. AfI adds the rationale of inclusion to this list of assessment purposes, reminding us that inclusion needs to be explicitly designed into assessment in order to truly consider the diversity of students. In this study, AfI is theorised through a socio-political approach, as assessment takes part in higher education, which is socio-historically situated in the 'age of exclusion' (Slee ; see also Dolmage ; Gibson ). Five AfI principles are identified as drivers of more inclusive assessment practice. First, AfI is defined, along with the theoretical frameworks of positioning and agency that provide an analytical background for the study.

A socio-political approach to assessment for inclusion

In this section, (i) the importance of this socio-political premise is discussed, (ii) a resistance model of disability is introduced to align with the socio-political approach and (iii) the theoretical framework of student positioning and agency is presented to offer conceptual tools to, finally, (iv) formulate the framework for AfI.

Both traditional approaches to inclusive assessment - assessment accommodations and inclusive assessment design - are predominantly focused on finding mechanical solutions to foster inclusion, such as how to design effective assessment accommodations (Weis and Beauchemin ) and how to design inclusive and diverse assessment practices (Waterfield and West ). Both approaches, ultimately, have understood the exclusion of disabled students in assessment as an issue that can be solved through assessment design. Here, there is a danger of pedagogisation (Popkewitz ). Pedagogisation refers to the processes through which societal and political issues such as poverty, exclusion and segregation are abridged into something that can - and should - be addressed through the modern expert knowledge on pedagogy and cognition. As such, the concept critically challenges a contextualised instructional design that has offered us the language of pedagogy in modern education, stripping 'pedagogy' of its critical and political roots. And indeed, inclusive design initiatives have been claimed to have forgotten the activist roots of disability rights movements (Hamraie ), trading activism with the promises of neuroimaging and cognitively-activating pedagogy (Nieminen and Pesonen ) and market-driven, performative approaches to inclusion (Stentiford and Koutsouris ). Unfortunately, mechanical practices alone are unable to challenge structural exclusion and enhance the life quality of disabled people (Hamraie ).

To prevent such pedagogisation, the present study draws on the resistance model of disability (Gabel and Peters ). This model emphasises disabled students' collective agency in determining their own life and identity. It highlights the communal nature of resistance: 'Resistance theory recognises agency in the sense that individual resistance operates across the individual and collective levels and is enacted through critical self-reflection coupled with action' (Gabel and Peters , 594). The resistance model rejects the understanding of disabled students solely as an oppressed minority and underlines the political struggle and system-wide assessment transformations by and with the disabled people themselves. Herein lies the risk of resistance: Resistance can be unpredictable, as students 'push towards dominance while also attempting to pull society into disabled people's way of seeing' (Gabel and Peters , 595). The resistance model does not reject the medical and social models but builds on them. The model recognises the crucial importance of medical knowledge, accommodations and embodiment (medical model), while also acknowledges that disabilities are constructed within their socio-historical contexts (social model). What it adds to the picture is the self-determination and agency of disabled people themselves. Next, the theoretical concepts that enable us to apply the resistance model in assessment are introduced: student positioning and agency.

Conceptual background: student positioning and agency

The concept of positioning is used to analyse disabled students' socio-cultural, -historical and -political roles and responsibilities in higher education and assessment. This concept is used similarly to Foucault's concept of subject positioning, understanding positions as discursive positions through which students build understanding of themselves (Foucault ). These positions regulate what can be said, done, and thought through them (Arribas-Ayllon and Walkerdine ). For example, the position of 'the student' offers students a certain socio-historical repertoire of discourses (Arribas-Ayllon and Walkerdine ) in assessment, which differs from the one of 'the teacher'. Such positions are understood as rather stabilised: the position of 'the student' takes different shapes in various socio-historical contexts (such as in different countries and eras), yet it is unlikely to change overnight. Often, positions are naturalised as they appear 'normal' and uncontestable.

A recent study (Nieminen ) outlined the socio-historical positioning of disabled students in assessment in Finnish universities, analysing the positions of 'assessee' and 'impaired'. First, the position of 'assessee' understood disabled students as the objects of assessment rather than as active participants. Through this position, disabled students could attend exams and perform rather than show their unique strengths through diverse assessment practices. Second, the position of 'impaired' framed disabilities through the medical model: disabled students were seen as 'patients', as adequate assessment accommodations needed to be validly paired with certain disability types. Moreover, an 'othering' discourse was identified to maintain this position, as disabled students were not only seen as disabled but substantially 'different' from other students. This study suggested that in order to attend higher education, disabled students need to take part in various assessment situations in which they must operate through the narrow positions of 'the disabled' and 'the assessee'. Even though Nieminen's study was conducted in Finland, the positions of 'assessee' and 'disabled' are likely to be rather universal. After all, assessment in higher education is largely based on exams globally (Boud et al. ), as is the medical model in providing support for disabled students (Järkestig Berggren et al. ).

Within positions, a certain kind of agency is constructed. Agency is defined through the repertoire of discourses that is enabled for students as they partake assessment through their positioning, and as students' capacity to renegotiate their own positioning (Burr ). This concept enables critical tools to examine how assessment restricts disabled students' agency by only offering them certain kinds of 'othered' and 'special' ways of participating in assessment, thus restricting their full inclusion in higher education. Discursive understanding of agency focuses on 'the social, cultural, historical and political structures of assessment and feedback that either hinder or promote and construct "agency"' (Nieminen et al. , 11), thus focusing on the collective agency as constructed for disabled students. Nieminen () argues that the dominant positionings of 'assessee' and 'disabled' restrict disabled students' agency, as they only enable a predetermined set of social practices that exclude disabled students from the 'other, capable students'. While these non-agentic positions are prevalent, they can be critically examined, challenged, and even redefined (Burr ; Foucault ). Thus, fostering disabled students' agency in assessment becomes a quest to promote their possibilities to actively and meaningfully participate in assessment by disrupting the potentially harmful positions predetermined for them. This idea links to the resistance model of disability, and to collective acts of agency.

Defining assessment for inclusion

Finally, the framework of AfI is formulated as a major contribution of the present study. This framework is student-centred as it places students at the very centre of inclusion work. While this study takes the specific focus of disabilities and disabling assessment practices, AfI holds promise for equity-driven inclusion work in assessment in general (e.g. anti-racist work). Similarly, even though the idea of AfI is formulated in the context of higher education, it also offers tools to understand inclusive assessment at lower levels of education.

Assessment for Inclusion in practice: five principles

Next, five practical principles are presented in striving for AfI. So far it has been argued that AfI turns assessment into a vehicle of inclusion by disrupting the ableist positioning of 'the disabled assessee', and the restricted agency it enables for disabled students. Next, the theoretical framework of AfI is put into practice. The five principles, presented in no specific order, bring together relevant literature from various fields, such as assessment research and disability studies. The principles represent distinct yet overlapping strategies that need to be considered while implementing AfI. Each of them aims to contribute to the collective agency of disabled students in assessment. Table 1 sums up these principles.

Assessment for Inclusion: rethinking inclusive assessment in higher education

Rethinking the assessment accommodation system

In 'an age of exclusion', there is always a need for certain accommodations for disabled students; no disability activism would deny this (Gabel and Peters ). However, the dangers of overemphasising the medical model of disability are well reported (Oliver ). This criticism applies to assessment accommodations in higher education. The accommodation process relies on medical knowledge that overrides disabled students' own knowledge about their condition (Hopkins ). Furthermore, accommodations have been stabilised as a certain menu of services that itself is rarely problematised (Nieminen 2021). This might in turn result from the stabilised menu of assessment practices. The first AfI principle recognises the need for accommodations for disabled students (and beyond) but problematises the dominance of the prevalent assessment accommodation model.

The menu of assessment accommodations should be expanded and diversified beyond the 'traditional' set of extra time and separate testing rooms, and so forth. Denhart () shed light on the complexity of the needs of students with learning disabilities and identified the needs for (i) self-understanding, (ii) writing assistance, (iii) strategies for organising one's studies, and (iv) visual strategies, in addition to the need for traditional accommodations. In assessment, the traditional extra time and separate testing rooms are unlikely to address all these complex 'needs' or their socio-political and -historical origins. Of course, diversifying assessment practices offers a fruitful ground for developing assessment accommodations as well. For example, authentic assessment (Villarroel et al. ) that taps into authentic ways of being a professional in one's field, might offer possibilities for flexible, diverse and creative authentic accommodations. These kinds of adjustments would reflect the authentic flexibility that one might face after graduation, in opposition to 'inauthentic' accommodations such as 'extra time in exams'.

The overall accommodation system could be problematised from the viewpoint of who it is for. Currently, the assessment accommodation institution is administered almost solely for students with a diagnosis (be it psychological and/or medical; a specific learning disability, physical disability, mental health issue, chronic pain, illness ...). It must be asked: As we focus our gaze on diagnosis-based support, what are we not seeing? Intersectional approaches will be useful to shed light on systemic exclusions related to assessment. Often, the mere notion of 'individual needs' ignores the systemic discrimination in terms of, for example, race, gender, class, and disability, and their intersections. As written assessment has been shown to cause barriers for learning not only from the viewpoint of ableism but also racism (Mahboob and Szenes ), it should be asked whether a widened set of accommodations could be provided for marginalised students beyond 'disability status'. For example, might accommodations offer affordances for meeting the needs of first-generation students in written assessment with the required linguistic resources (cf. Mahboob and Szenes )? This idea might sound out of place in modern higher education where institutionalised support in assessment is strongly tied with the idea of psychological and/or medical needs. However, the argument of 'some adjustments are always needed' (e.g. Griful-Freixenet et al. ) might ring true beyond what we now call 'adequate reasons for applying for assessment accommodations'.

Yet the accommodation system produces specific barriers for disabled students. As Goode () aptly states, disabled students need to battle the system. Hopkins () describes the path of least resistance that disabled students need to follow to thrive in higher education; often, staying on this path means that to prevent hassle and forced disclosure, disabled students choose not to apply for assessment accommodations. AfI initiatives should then strive to make individual accommodations easily available by drawing on proactivity. The current medical model requires students to initiate and maintain the accommodation process. It would be a strong message by higher education institutions if accommodations were offered in a proactive manner; if they were 'pushed a little', as a participant in Nieminen's study (, 41) put it. Proactive approaches are likely to be effective for marginalised students with less resources to initiate the accommodations process that includes both a diagnosis process and a further application process - both of whom might be both time- and energy-consuming (and in many countries, costly). Proactive approaches would reduce the risks related to student-initiated disclosure of disabilities as there is always a power imbalance in such situations (Nieminen ): to access support, students are required to disclose their personal information to staff which already creates an asymmetrical interaction, often repeated multiple times over one's studies (Goode ).

Assessment accommodations rely on ready-made, binary categories to describe students' medical and psychological states. Based on these categorisations, certain students are segregated from others in assessment situations, both socially and physically (Madriaga and Goodley ). Instead, AfI relies on the fluidity of disabilities and neurodiversity, as these are not dichotomous states but conditions that take their shape over various assessment environments during one's studies (Barnartt ). Barnartt () challenges us to reconsider disabilities not as fixed categories but as roles and statuses that certain people need to undertake as they take part in disabling practices. While some disabilities and conditions are more stable than others, there is always a sense of fluidity in how disabilities are made visible in certain social practices: yet to access assessment accommodations, a student needs to undertake the fixed role of 'a student with a disability'. Perhaps flexible assessment accommodations could draw on options in both assessment and accommodations (Hanafin et al. ). There is a specific need for flexible procedures for situations in which students' needs change and intersect - without lengthy application processes. For example, a student on the autism spectrum might develop symptoms of burnout and depression during their studies. In this case, not only the categories of 'disability' and 'mental health' but also their fluidity and intersections should be met with adequate accommodations and support.

Anti-ableist work

AfI cannot rely solely on individual teachers' actions but requires faculty- and university-wide policies on anti-ableism. First and foremost, disablism, direct discriminating actions against disabled people (Dolmage ), needs to be challenged. For example, negative attitudes have been reported to lead to teachers not providing assessment accommodations even when they are officially administered (Brandt ; Nieminen ). However, such a scenario is not only about 'negative attitudes' but about systemic discrimination. What is needed is a critical and transparent conversation about disability, neurodiversity, accessibility, and ableism in relation to assessment (Baglieri and Lalvani ). Such a conversation needs to be maintained in faculty and department meetings concerning assessment, grading, and feedback policies, especially in contexts where the prevalent policies do not currently enable AfI. Who is the 'normal', 'able' student that assessment is designed for - and who might be excluded in the process? Assessment design should always include the viewpoints of disability, neurodiversity, and diversity more generally. Anti-ableism needs to rely on systemic top-down approaches: structural ableism needs to be challenged through systemic changes in assessment. For example, teachers need to be systematically trained about AfI and its socio-political underpinnings.

A crucial part of anti-ableism is the demystification and destigmatisation of assessment accommodations. Accommodations are predominantly mystified: there is often little information available on these 'special' practices for a small and seemingly insignificant group of students (e.g. Nieminen ). Inaccessibility and lack of information is an important factor for students not to apply for accommodations (Brandt ; Hanafin et al. ). The strong stigmatisation of disability and neurodiversity is reflected in assessment, and disabled students might not apply for accommodations amidst the fear of being labelled as 'different' (Goode ; Nieminen ). To reduce the risk of stigmatisation, assessment accommodations must be normalised. Information about the application process should be added to all course instructions and syllabi; accommodations should be explicitly talked about. This can be done by raising awareness and visibility of neurodiversity and by bringing it into the centre of assessment policy (Milic Babic and Dowling ).

A key mechanism for active anti-ableism is the representation of disabilities and neurodiversity. Brown and Leigh () ask: where are the disabled and ill academics? The same could be asked about students. Disabled students might feel they are the only student with dyslexia, or the only one with depression - the 'special cases' (Nieminen , 42). Problems arise as disabilities and neurodiversity are dominantly framed as a deficit in relation to assessment: they are only brought up when discussing support or hindrances. Representation can be promoted through teachers' own disclosures, as this sets a powerful example and shows that no student is left alone. Of course, teachers must also take part in risk-benefit analysis amidst the ableist structures of higher education and societies at large (Brown and Leigh ). Disabilities can also be represented in assessment tasks by diversifying the people represented in study materials such as in authentic assessment tasks. To summarise, as often noted, representation matters - and so it does in assessment.

Key points for practice

While striving for AfI, one needs to take part in socio-political discussions and activism about assessment policies.

Teachers need to be trained in inclusion in assessment. Discrimination needs to be actively challenged - and framed as such.

To work as intended, assessment accommodations must be destigmatised. This means that they must be actively framed as 'business as usual'. Information about accommodations needs to be present and accessible.

Representation of disabilities and neurodiversity in assessment breaks stigma.

Student partnership

A profound issue concerning both assessment accommodations and inclusive assessment design is that these practices are predominantly designed for disabled students: students are the objects rather than active agents in the design process. Disabled students are rarely heard in assessment design in higher education, at least when it comes to reporting such initiatives in research (Nieminen and Pesonen ). The Students as Partners (SaP) philosophy offers a valuable approach to tackling such issues. SaP sees students as meaningful collaborators in teaching as partners (Bovill, Cook-Sather, and Felten ). While SaP has gained considerable attention, it has rarely been connected with assessment (Matthews et al. ). Matthews and colleagues () highlight that combining assessment and SaP would disrupt the prevalent structures of power. Here, SaP is used as a mechanism to disrupt the positioning of 'the disabled assessee' by directly promoting disabled students' agency over assessment design (cf. the resistance model of disability).

SaP could be incorporated into inclusive assessment design by drawing on dialogue and trust (Matthews et al. ). As both teachers and students are invited to co-design assessment, the prevalent roles of 'the assessor' and 'the assessee' are disrupted, opening a reflexive space to promote inclusivity. The SaP model could be used to develop novel, student-driven assessment practices that support many purposes of assessment - not only AfI but AfL and AaL as well. While all students should be welcomed to participate in inclusive assessment design, extra attention needs to be given to inviting marginalised students into the co-design process (Mercer-Mapstone, Islam, and Reid ). Otherwise, equity work might only reach 'the usual suspects' (Mercer-Mapstone, Islam, and Reid ). This is detrimental to determining whether the co-designed assessment and feedback practices are truly inclusive. According to Mercer-Mapstone and colleagues (), special attention must be paid to advertising SaP (accessibility should be noted through, e.g. plain language, readability with assistive technology), student ambassadors (disabled students hired as accessibility experts in assessment design), recognition (payment for the SaP process), and targeted student invitation (all students are welcomed to participate, but disabled students are specifically invited to share their views). SaP models should not, however, force students to disclose their disabilities (cf. Goode ). For example, SaP workshops could include opportunities for anonymous online participation. A warm and welcoming atmosphere around SaP models is crucial in equity-oriented initiatives (Mercer-Mapstone, Islam, and Reid ). Importantly, the inclusivity of the SaP process itself should be evaluated by disabled students themselves.

Assessment accommodations can also be co-designed. This way, SaP enables disabled students agency over accommodation design. Co-design of accommodation challenges the strong boundaries between disabled students and the experts who traditionally make decisions over accommodations, understanding that students themselves have valuable knowledge about their own conditions. Accommodations have drawn on psychological approaches by determining whether disabilities and accommodation types match, and whether such alignment would promote student performance (as predominantly measured through summative tests; Nieminen ). Much less attention has been given to goals beyond academic performance, such as well-being, motivation, belonging and indeed inclusion. Overemphasis on 'academic performance' in assessment accommodations can be seen as ableist. This overemphasis distorts our understanding of what kind of support disabled students themselves need in order to be fully included in academic communities. Combining SaP and assessment accommodations provides an understanding of how these practices could be developed to consider these socio-affective aspects as well: how accommodations could promote disabled students' belonging and positive identity construction. SaP might enable us to explore new possibilities beyond traditional accommodations, and to extend these from summative assessment to formative and sustainable assessment practices, as well (Brandt ; Hanafin et al. ).

While multiple SaP models have been introduced with various levels of student autonomy, it is inherent to all these approaches to include risks (Bovill, Cook-Sather, and Felten ; Mercer-Mapstone, Islam, and Reid ). As disabled students gain more agency over assessment, they might not simply do what we as educators would wish them to. Instead, students might disengage, slack, cheat, or completely redefine the purposes of assessment: partnership in equity work is a risky business!

At the same time, SaP offers valuable affordances for developing students' assessment and feedback literacies (Smith et al. ). As disabled students are not simply the objects of assessment but engage meaningfully in co-designing disciplinary assessment practices (e.g. what do academic standards and criteria mean in certain contexts and how knowledge and skills could be assessed based on such standards), their agency in assessment is fostered (Nieminen et al. ). This is exactly what assessment and feedback literacies are about: not only procedural knowledge about how assessment works but critical reflexivity over the mechanisms and purposes of assessment (Smith et al. ). Through fostered assessment and feedback literacies, disabled students gain agency over the expert knowledge in assessment that has traditionally defined their educational pathways. Simultaneously, teachers can develop their assessment and feedback literacies while co-designing AfI practices. Certainly, teachers might learn valuable lessons about inclusivity of assessment from disabled students - the experts in the accessibility of assessment.

Celebrating human diversity in assessment

'Celebration of human diversity' is a catchphrase used by many higher education institutions (Stentiford and Koutsouris ). However, traditionally, disabilities have not been something to 'celebrate' in assessment; instead, student diversity needs to be 'tackled' through extra resources (namely, accommodations). To meet goals such as 'inclusion' or 'social justice' (McArthur ), assessment needs to value human diversity and capabilities.

This is where the study by Bearman and Luckin () about assessment and Artificial Intelligence (AI) comes in useful. Bearman and Luckin argue that in the modern world, assessment needs to emphasise those complex and multi-faceted skills and capabilities that are inherently humane. If AI could succeed in an assessment task, the task does not fulfil this purpose. They pinpoint three elements of such assessment that hold promise for AfI: meta-knowing, evaluative judgment, and personal epistemologies. The elements are 'very human - unique, contextualised, based on past experiences and full of personal meaning' (Bearman and Luckin , 56). These ideas are extremely powerful when thinking about student diversity, as higher education produces future professionals who need to apply their skills and capabilities in their own personal ways. When assessment allows disabled students to demonstrate their personal epistemologies, disabilities become strengths; diversity and neurodiversity become not obstacles but necessities, as all knowledge is always demonstrated through personal epistemologies (Moriña, Sandoval, and Carnerero ). The neurodiversity movement has resisted the stigma around disabilities and mental health by turning these into strengths. Future research could explore the affordances of personal epistemologies and meta-knowledge for inclusivity in authentic assessment that corresponds with real-life disciplinary practices (Villarroel et al. ).

While promoting personal epistemologies and meta-knowledge is beneficial for all students, this approach is specifically inclusive for disabled students, as it promotes diverse ways of demonstrating knowledge. Assessment in higher education has traditionally been based on written language as the main form of communication. At the same time, academic standards have marginalised many forms of knowledge (e.g. embodied knowledge, cultural knowledge), positioning disabilities as a barrier to 'real' academic knowledge. As assessment celebrates diversity, assessment practices themselves must diversify and widen our understanding of the epistemologies of 'academic standards'. Traditional assessment has not allowed disabled students to show their true skills and knowledge, systematically limiting their agency as learners and knowers. This is why AfI must be based on diverse, dialogic assessment practices such as self- and peer-assessment and portfolios, and beyond. Digital formats offer many possibilities for inclusivity through flexibility in format and time (e.g. images, video, voice recordings, code, social media ...). To summarise, celebrating human diversity through AfI enables a way to reposition disabled students as resourceful and agentic knowers and doers of their discipline (cf. the resistance model).

Interdependence

Assessment research has scarcely characterised such communal aspects, especially from the viewpoint of inclusivity. Some important contributions can, however, be identified. First, peer assessment has been introduced as a practice that promotes communal learning (Merry and Orsmond ). Merry and Orsmond discuss peer feedback through the notion of 'communities of practice' and relational learning. As students engage communally with peer feedback, they need to co-construct the meaning of feedback. In the process, students build their professional identities communally with each other. Moreover, Wood () showed that peer feedback communities can be fostered in online environments. Wood's study emphasised the importance of dialogic feedback for the learning communities. In addition, peer feedback provided informal affective support for students. Future studies could examine the affordances that peer feedback offers for student diversity in such learning communities. For example, psychological safety and accessibility of digital feedback tools in peer feedback should be carefully considered.

Interdependence should be promoted in assessment research, too, by involving disabled students in assessment research. This way, research itself could be a mechanism for interdependence by offering marginalised students access to the production of expert knowledge about themselves (Mercer-Mapstone, Islam, and Reid ). Interdependence fosters collaboration between various fields of research (e.g. psychological interventions and socio-political analyses) and involvement of disabled scholars themselves (see Brown and Leigh ).

Conclusion

In this study, Assessment for Inclusion has been formulated as a crucial purpose for assessment. As assessment has been shown to drive students' learning and studying, its role in systematically excluding students should not be neglected. In order to challenge such exclusion, assessment needs to explicitly draw on AfI amongst other crucial purposes of assessment. For example, the validity of Assessment of Learning might be enhanced by greater accessibility due to student participation in assessment design. AfI reaches beyond assessment accommodations and inclusive assessment design by challenging pedagogised, procedural approaches to inclusion. It ties assessment to its socio-political and -historical context of academic ableism (Dolmage ) and to the resistance model of disability (Gabel and Peters ).

This conceptual study has its limitations. First, the focus has been mostly on disabled students, given the systemic exclusion of disabled people both from and within higher education (Dolmage ) and assessment in particular (Nieminen ). However, AfI holds promise for marginalised students in general, and future research could widen the discussion through intersectional approaches. Furthermore, the focus has been student-centred. Teachers and other staff members in higher education are also diverse, and AfI should indeed be inclusive for disabled teachers as well. Of particular interest for future studies is the exploration of teacher agency, as in many contexts teachers might face barriers of culture and policies while striving for AfI. The five principles as depicted in this conceptual study are of course speculative: empirical research is needed to enhance the inclusivity of assessment in practice. In this quest, collaboration between the fields of assessment and inclusion research is essential. Assessment research is already promoting promising practices for inclusion, such as authentic assessment (Villarroel et al. ) and peer feedback (Merry and Orsmond ). This field could greatly supplement research on inclusive practices with up-to-date knowledge on assessment. On the other hand, the field of inclusive education could foster assessment research through a greater understanding of student diversity.

In the times of the massification of higher education, the value of this 'higher' level of education is measured by whether it is successful in promoting the learning and inclusion of students from diverse backgrounds. If higher education truly aims to 'celebrate diversity', assessment simply needs to align with the goal of inclusivity given its pivotal role for learning and studying. AfI contributes to building inclusive higher education by understanding diversity as something that enriches academia. Boud and colleagues () argue that changing assessment is not easy; yet reshaping the ableist contexts of assessment is not exactly a simple task either! The extremely important quest to render assessment - currently a vehicle for individualisation, comparison and exclusion - as a tool for inclusion will not be a simple one. This study has outlined some future directions for inclusive assessment, which will hopefully find their way to actual classrooms.

Principle

How does the principle contribute to disabled students' agency and inclusion?

Rethinking the assessment accommodation system

Widening the repertoire of accommodations enables many forms of participation and thus agency.

Anti-ableist work

Shifting the focus from assessment design into re-shaping the ableist contexts of assessment. Anti-ableist work provides a fertile ground for inclusive assessment to flourish.

Student partnership

Reminding that AfI is not done for students but with students. Co-designing assessment directly promotes accessibility and student agency.

Celebrating human diversity in assessment

Recognising marginalised forms of knowledge in assessment. The agency of students is promoted as they are enabled to grow as future professionals through assessment with their diverse strengths and needs.

Interdependence

Emphasising the communal aspect of AfI. Without interdependence, 'inclusion' is likely to remain individualistic and performative, creating a false sense of inclusion.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

1 'Disabled students' is used rather than 'students with disabilities' to address the active role of assessment in disabling students - rendering them as 'less able' and as 'the Other' (Allan ; Dolmage ). Thus, the focus is on assessment practices that disable rather than on the categorisation of students as disabled. This study employs a broad definition of 'disability' to consider various kinds of disabilities, illnesses, mental health issues, and impairments, and their intersections, while acknowledging the social, historical and political underpinnings of what counts as 'disability'.

References

Arribas-Ayllon, Michael , and Valerie Walkerdine. 2008. "Foucauldian Discourse Analysis." In Handbook of Qualitative Research in Psychology, edited by Carla Willig, and Wendy Stainton-Rogers, 110-123. London: SAGE.

Ashworth, Mary , Sue Bloxham, and Leonie Pearce. 2010. "Examining the Tension Between Academic Standards and Inclusion for Disabled Students: The Impact on Marking of Individual Academics' Frameworks for Assessment." Studies in Higher Education 35 (2): 209-223.

Baglieri, Susan , and Priya Lalvani. 2019. Undoing Ableism: Teaching About Disability in K-12 Classrooms. New York: Routledge.

Barnartt, Sharon. 2016. "Role Theory and the Fluidity of Disability: World Perspectives in Culture and Society." In Rethinking Disability, edited by Patrick Devlieger, Beatriz Miranda-Galarza, , and Megan Strickfaden, 47-57. Chicago, IL: Garant Publishers.

Bearman, Margaret , and Rose Luckin. 2020. "Preparing University Assessment for a World with AI: Tasks for Human Intelligence." In Re-imagining University Assessment in a Digital World, edited by Margaret Bearman, Phillip Dawson, Rola Ajjawi, Joanna Tai, and David Boud, 49-63. Cham: Springer.

Bearman, Margaret , and Rola Ajjawi. 2019. "Can a Rubric Do More Than be Transparent? Invitation as a New Metaphor for Assessment Criteria." Studies in Higher Education, 1-10. doi:https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2019.1637842.

, Phillip Dawson, Margaret Bearman, Sue Bennett, Gordon Joughin, and Elizabeth Molloy. 2018. "Reframing Assessment Research: Through a Practice Perspective." Studies in Higher Education 43 (7): 1107-1118.

Bovill, Catherine , Alison Cook-Sather, and Peter Felten. 2011. "Students as Co-Creators of Teaching Approaches, Course Design, and Curricula: Implications for Academic Developers." International Journal for Academic Development 16 (2): 133-145.

2017. Academic Ableism: Disability and Higher Education. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

2013. "Designing Collective Access: A Feminist Disability Theory of Universal Design." Disability Studies Quarterly 33: 4.

Kivijärvi, Sanna , and Pauli Rautiainen. 2020. "Contesting Music Education Policies Through the Concept of Reasonable Accommodation: Teacher Autonomy and Equity Enactment in Finnish Music Education." Research Studies in Music Education 43 (2): 91-109.

Matthews, Kelly E. , , Eimear Enright, David Carless, Caelan Rafferty, and Naomi Winstone. 2021. "Transgressing the Boundaries of 'Students as Partners' and 'Feedback' Discourse Communities to Advance Democratic Education." Teaching in Higher Education: 1-15. doi:https://doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2021.1903854.

Mercer-Mapstone, Lucy , Maisha Islam, and Tamara Reid. 2019. "Are We Just Engaging 'the Usual Suspects'? Challenges in and Practical Strategies for Supporting Equity and Diversity in Student-Staff Partnership Initiatives." Teaching in Higher Education, 1-19. doi:https://doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2019.1655396.

Moriña, Anabel , Marta Sandoval, and Fuensanta Carnerero. 2020. "Higher Education Inclusivity: When the Disability Enriches the University." Higher Education Research & Development 39 (6): 1202-1216.

Nieminen, J. H. 2021. "Governing the 'Disabled Assessee': A Critical Reframing of Assessment Accommodations as Sociocultural Practices." Disability & Society, 1-28. doi:https://doi.org/10.1080/09687599.2021.1874304.

Nieminen, J. H. , and . 2020. "Taking Universal Design Back to Its Roots: Perspectives on Accessibility and Identity in Undergraduate Mathematics." Education Sciences 10 (1): 12.

Nieminen, J. H. , , , and Michael Henderson. 2021. "Student Agency in Feedback: Beyond the Individual." Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 1-14. doi:https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2021.1887080.

Oliver, Michael. 1996. Understanding Disability: From Theory to Practice. London: Macmillan Press.

Popkewitz, T. S. 2008. "The Social, Psychological, and Education Sciences: From Educationalization to Pedagogicalization of the Family and the Child." In Educational Research: The Educationalization of Social Problems, edited by Paul Smeyers, and Marc Depaepe, 171-190. New York, NY: Springer.

, Kate Worsfold, Lynda Davies, , and Ruth McPhail. 2013. "Assessment Literacy and Student Learning: The Case for Explicitly Developing Students 'Assessment Literacy'." Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education 38 (1): 44-60.

Stentiford, Lauren , and George Koutsouris. 2020. "What Are Inclusive Pedagogies in Higher Education? A Systematic Scoping Review." Studies in Higher Education, 1-17. doi:https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2020.1716322.

, Rola Ajjawi, and Anastasiya Umarova. 2021. "How Do Students Experience Inclusive Assessment? A Critical Review of Contemporary Literature." International Journal of Inclusive Education 45: 1-18. doi:https://doi.org/10.1080/13603116.2021.2011441.

Thompson, C. J. 2009. "Educational Statistics Authentic Learning CAPSULES: Community Action Projects for Students Utilizing Leadership and E-Based Statistics." Journal of Statistics Education 17: 1.

Villarroel, Verónica , Susan Bloxham, Daniela Bruna, Carola Bruna, and Constanza Herrera-Seda. 2018. "Authentic Assessment: Creating a Blueprint for Course Design." Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education 43 (5): 840-854.

2021. "Making Peer Feedback Work: The Contribution of Technology-Mediated Dialogic Peer Feedback to Feedback Uptake and Literacy." Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 1-20. doi:https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2021.1914544.

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Assessment for Inclusion: rethinking inclusive assessment in higher education

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ABSTRACT How could assessment inclusively consider the diversity of students? In higher education, the most common answer is: through individual assessment accommodations. Inclusive assessment design has also been promoted to foster accessibility for all students. However, both of these approaches have largely drawn on the procedural understanding of 'inclusion' as 'enhanced academic outcomes'.

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https://www.advance-he.ac.uk/knowledge-hub/student-partnerships-assessment-spia

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The Student Partnerships in Assessment (SPiA) Connect Member Benefit Series was coordinated by Advance HE through the Spring-Summer of 2021 to support Advance HE member institutions around the globe to engage in conversation about getting started with embedding student partnerships in assessment.

This guide is informed by the contributions of a global community engaging with this initiative and features some overarching principles for SPiA, current thinking on assessment and partnership, and how those principles can be applied in practice with examples from institutions across the world and useful resources.
Access the guide below.

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Student Partnerships in Assessment (SPiA)

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The Student Partnerships in Assessment (SPiA) Connect Member Benefit Series was coordinated by Advance HE through the Spring-Summer of 2021 to support Advance HE member institutions around the globe to engage in conversation about getting started with embedding student partnerships in assessment.

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When Beckie Supiano, for The Chronicle, examined the debate surrounding a NYT article, At N.Y.U., Students Were Failing Organic Chemistry. Who Was to Blame?, this jumped out at me as I read:

Students struggle in introductory courses in many disciplines, but failure rates tend to be particularly high in STEM. Those introductory courses "have had the highest D-F-W rates on most campuses for several decades at least - in fact, most of them persist back into the '30s and '40s," says Timothy McKay, associate dean for undergraduate education at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor's arts and sciences college. "To me, this is a sign that they're unsuccessful courses."
At N.Y.U., Students Were Failing Organic Chemistry. Who Was to Blame?

I have multiple connections to this controversy, including two decades of navigating college students who often find my courses "hard" and my feedback "harsh" as well as almost four decades of resisting a traditional education system that requires testing and grading.

For the record, students are not as happy with courses absent tests and grades (where grades are delayed until the final submission of grades required by the university) as you might imagine.

And despite how conservative politicians and pundits characterize higher education as filled with leftwing radicals, higher education in practice is extremely conservative and traditional-including a mostly uncritical use of so-called objective tests, grading students on bell curves, and not just tolerating but boasting about courses and professors with low grades and high failure rates.

Departments and professors who have students succeeding with higher grades are routinely shamed by department chairs, who have been shamed by administrators. We receive breakdowns of grade distributions by professors and departments and the unquestioned narrative is that high grades ("too many A's") are a sign of weak professors/departments and low grades are a sign of rigorous professors/departments.

And here is something I think almost no one will admit: Anyone can implement a course with multiple-choice tests designed to create a bell curve of grades that insures some students fail each course session.

In fact, that is incredibly easy (I would say lazy and irresponsible), and teachers/professors who adopt that model of instruction will almost always be praised as a "hard" teacher and the course will be lauded as "rigorous."

This is academic hazing-not teaching, and it inhibits both teaching and learning.

I want to extend McKay's comment above that low grades and high failure rates in introductory (or any) courses is a sign of "unsuccessful courses" because of negligent teachers/professors who hide behind a traditional system of grading.

This debate about who is to blame for students failing a course is a needed discussion, but I fear it will not focus where it should-just what is the purpose of education?

The high-failure-rate introductory courses in colleges are intentionally designed to "weed out" weak students and recruit good students for departments and disciplines.

Again, academic hazing.

I started de-testing and de-grading as a high school English teacher because I found both tests and grades did not support my students' learning and tests/grades contributed to a hostile relationship between students and teachers. As well, tests and grades are elements in a deficit approach to how we view students and learning.

However, since this debate is grounded in a college professor, I want to focus on how grading practices are particularly egregious in higher education.

As a junior in college just starting my courses in education (my major), I had my first experience with a very modest challenge to traditional grading. My advisor and professor, Tom Hawkins, noted in class one day that college students are a mostly elite subset of all high school students, and since a bell-shaped curve is relevant to representative samples, he anticipated students in his college courses to fall on the A-C range of grades, not A-F (unless of course a student simply did not do the work, etc.).

At that moment, I began to interrogate grades and concepts such as "objective" in multiple-choice and standardized testing.

I, like Dr. Hawkins, anticipate that my students will not only engage seriously in my courses but that they will likely produce A or B work if they trust and follow my guidance. This is reinforced by my teaching at an academically selective university.

Another element of this concern about college courses, professors, and grades must acknowledge that college students are adults.

The teaching/learning dynamic among adults must have consent, cooperation, and common goals.

This brings me back to the problem with antagonistic dynamics among students and teachers/professors.

Building a reputation as a professor or department that many or some of the courses offered are guaranteed to have students fail is establishing antagonism and eroding teaching and learning. Period.

Whether intentional of not, The Chronicle's headline is almost perfect: What Does It Mean When Students Can't Pass Your Course?

The key here is "can't" because there are many courses across the U.S.-disproportionately in the so-called hard sciences and hard-science adjacent disciplines-that predetermine how many students receive specific grades and monitor that grades fall in a proportional way across the entire spectrum of grades from A to F.

That sort of a-statistical nonsense is not just common, but almost entirely unchallenged even though it is being imposed on non-representative populations of students.

To be specific, in my first-year writing seminar with 12 students at an academically selective university, where several of the students were valedictorian/salutatorian (and almost all of them graduation in the top 10% of their classes), a final grade distribution of 1 A, 2 Bs, 6 Cs, 2 Ds, 1 F would be pure orchestrated nonsense, but would almost never be challenged.

When my classes routinely have all As and Bs (because they submit work, have conferences with me after receiving written feedback, and then are required and allowed to revise), however, I am repeatedly challenged for those grades-directly and indirectly-and framed as "easy" or that I "give" As and Bs.

The NYT story about Dr. Jones will be fodder for "kids today" lamenting and the failure of higher education to hold students accountable. Some will likely drag out the tired "grade inflation" nonsense that has been voiced for 100 years (when, o, when, were grades not inflated?).

But the real story is that grades inhibit teaching and learning, but remain a central feature of traditional schooling-yet even more proof that higher education is mostly conservative, not the leftist indoctrination factory conservatives rail against.

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Introduction to Failure: Why Grades Inhibit Teaching and Learning

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When Beckie Supiano, for The Chronicle, examined the debate surrounding a NYT article, At N.Y.U., Students Were Failing Organic Chemistry. Who Was to Blame?, this jumped out at me as I read: Students struggle in introductory courses in many disciplines, but failure rates tend to be particularly high in STEM.

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https://onehe.org/resources/ungrading-an-interview-with-susan-blum/

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Huge thanks to everyone who replied here. A helpful and diverse set of responses. The big takeaway for me is that ungrading is as much about the 'why' (the rationale for ungrading) as the 'what' (the specific practices).

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Huge thanks to everyone who replied here. A helpful and diverse set of responses. The big takeaway for me is that ungrading is as much about the 'why' (the rationale for ungrading) as the 'what' (the specific practices).

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Can someone, in a single tweet, please define what #ungrading is? Even better if you can state how it’s different to assessment for learning.

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Huge thanks to everyone who replied here. A helpful and diverse set of responses. The big takeaway for me is that ungrading is as much about the 'why' (the rationale for ungrading) as the 'what' (the specific practices).
— Phillip Dawson (@phillipdawson) September 4, 2022

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Huge thanks to everyone who replied here. A helpful and diverse set of responses. The big takeaway for me is that ungrading is as much about the 'why' (the rationale for ungrading) as the 'what' (the specific practices).

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Can someone, in a single tweet, please define what #ungrading is? Even better if you can state how it’s different to assessment for learning.

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Huge thanks to everyone who replied here. A helpful and diverse set of responses. The big takeaway for me is that ungrading is as much about the 'why' (the rationale for ungrading) as the 'what' (the specific practices).

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Huge thanks to everyone who replied here. A helpful and diverse set of responses. The big takeaway for me is that ungrading is as much about the 'why' (the rationale for ungrading) as the 'what' (the specific practices).

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Can someone, in a single tweet, please define what #ungrading is? Even better if you can state how it’s different to assessment for learning.

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SERIOUS request to fellow ungraders: a young colleague at another uni is getting pushback from chair about #ungrading. Can you please reply with your favorite evidence of ungrading’s efficacy in terms of content learning as well as other benefits?

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SERIOUS request to fellow ungraders: a young colleague at another uni is getting pushback from chair about #ungrading. Can you please reply with your favorite evidence of ungrading’s efficacy in terms of content learning as well as other benefits?

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SERIOUS request to fellow ungraders: a young colleague at another uni is getting pushback from chair about #ungrading. Can you please reply with your favorite evidence of ungrading’s efficacy in terms of content learning as well as other benefits?
— Matt Winslow (@mpwinslow) September 3, 2022

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SERIOUS request to fellow ungraders: a young colleague at another uni is getting pushback from chair about #ungrading. Can you please reply with your favorite evidence of ungrading’s efficacy in terms of content learning as well as other benefits?

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SERIOUS request to fellow ungraders: a young colleague at another uni is getting pushback from chair about #ungrading. Can you please reply with your favorite evidence of ungrading’s efficacy in terms of content learning as well as other benefits?

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SERIOUS request to fellow ungraders: a young colleague at another uni is getting pushback from chair about #ungrading. Can you please reply with your favorite evidence of ungrading’s efficacy in terms of content learning as well as other benefits?

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https://www.jessestommel.com/ungrading-a-bibliography/

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When I first started ungrading 20 years ago, I was inspired by one of my teaching mentors, Marty Bickman, who taught a graduate course called "Theory and the Teaching of Literature." As Marty writes, "The course was built around a beginning undergraduate course that we all taught together. We met for the hour immediately after each undergraduate class to share our perceptions and analyses of it, to relate it to theories we had read or formulated ourselves, [and] to plan the upcoming class in the light of all this." We gave no grades to the undergraduates in our co-taught course, aside from a final grade based on their own self-evaluations. During that same semester, I was also teaching freshman composition, the first course I'd taught as instructor of record. I didn't put grades on student work in that course either. As I wrote in a piece for The Chronicle of Higher Education, from this first semester of my teaching career, I learned "to constantly inspect and wonder at even the smallest of choices we make as teachers."

I recently wrote about the first steps toward ungrading, that the best way to begin is through open conversation with our students about grades. Perhaps, just as important, is that teachers begin by having these conversations more often with each other. There has always been a reflective layer to my teaching, a community of colleagues and co-teachers I turn to for intense discussions about the nature of teaching, both in philosophy and practice. In higher education, this kind of pedagogical community is unfortunately rare. More than 50% of higher education teachers get basically no preparation for the work of teaching. And, among new and continuing faculty (70% of whom are now precariously employed), very few resources are offered to support the development of teaching skills or the building of pedagogical community. Where and when can we safely ask the question, "What if we didn't grade?"

When I talk to other faculty (and students) about grades, I start with a simple set of questions. These kinds of dialogues influence all the work I do:

Why do we grade? How does it feel to be graded? What do we want grading to do (or not do) in our classes (whether as students or teachers)?

What do letter grades mean? Do they have any intrinsic meaning, or is the value purely extrinsic? Does assessment mean differently when it is formative rather than summative?

How do written comments function as (or in relation to) grades? To what extent should teachers be readers of student work (as opposed to evaluators)?

What is the role of self-assessment and peer-assessment?

What would happen if we didn't grade? What would be the benefits? What issues would this raise for students and/or teachers? Would we be forced to rethink our systems for evaluation?

These questions are what hum beneath the writing that is foundational to my thinking about grades. Some of my initial recommendations do get to the nuts and bolts of ungrading and radical assessment, but the focus is more squarely on rethinking the structures in education that short-circuit the work of teaching and learning.

Foundations

I struggled to pick just two books or articles to recommend from Alfie Kohn. I'm currently in the middle of reading another excellent book by him, "Unconditional Parenting: Moving From Rewards and Punishment to Love and Reason." Kohn's piece, "The Case Against Grades," is relatively recent, and it captures much of what I appreciate about his work. His writing is clear and straightforward, while also turning our most common presumptions about education on their head. Kohn's central tenets are: "Grades tend to diminish students' interest in whatever they're learning"; "Grades create a preference for the easiest possible task"; and "Grades tend to reduce the quality of students' thinking." His survey of almost 100 years of research is compelling, but his statements of what should be obvious (but isn't) are what makes his work so necessary and vital: "We have to be willing to challenge the conventional wisdom, which in this case means asking not how to improve grades but how to jettison them once and for all."

Peter Elbow is one of the very first pedagogical theorists that I read, and so much of what I learned from him remains central to my approach. Much of his work is about the teaching of writing but is nonetheless extremely relevant to every discipline. Two things I find particularly valuable from Elbow: (1) the concept of minimal grading, about which he writes, "I would rather put my effort into trying to figure out which activities will lead to learning than into trying to measure the exact quality of the final product students turn in"; and (2) the notion that "liking" our students' work could be both pleasurable and also an effective pedagogical strategy. Elbow writes, "Good teachers see what is only potentially good, they get a kick out of mere possibility-and they encourage it."

Asao Inoue and Cathy Davidson's experiments with contract grading are different in many ways but both of them have helped drive much of my thinking about this approach. My concern about contract grading at its surface is that it runs the risk of centering grades more than decentering them. However, Inoue and Davidson show how the approach can be used to raise critical conversations about what grades are, how they make meaning, and how they can be interrogated in the service of marginalized students. Asao Inoue writes that labor-based grading contracts specifically "avoid many of the harmful and racist consequences of conventional grading ecologies by not using the dominant white discourse as the standard for grades." The link above is to a brief handout that masterfully introduces the work he describes at length in his book, Antiracist Writing Assessment Ecologies: Teaching and Assessing Writing for a Socially Just Future.

This is a relatively short piece, but it's filled with links to research into the problem(s) of bias in education, and also standardized grades. For example, she shares studies that show "teachers spend up to two thirds of their time talking to male students; they also are more likely to interrupt girls but allow boys to talk over them. [...] When teachers ask questions, they direct their gaze towards boys more often, especially when the questions are open-ended." For anyone thinking about ungrading or inclusive pedagogies, I'd recommend opening and reading every single one of Chemaly's links. But I will also warn that some of the studies are more gut-wrenching than others. Grades are not a coincidence. Our systems for assessment reduce students to rows in a spreadsheet, to data points, and strip them of their humanity.

I often turn to this piece for its account of the history of grades in higher education. Every one of their sentences is packed with detail. They couple incisive commentary with refreshing (well-documented) statements like this one, "It would not be surprising to most faculty members that, rather than stimulating an interest in learning, grades primarily enhance students' motivation to avoid receiving bad grades." In spite of a rather bleak account of what grades have been and are becoming, the piece ends on an optimistic note, "One wonders how much more student learning might occur if instructors' time spent grading was used in different ways."

Other Points of Entry

Ungrading is not as simple as just removing grades. The word "ungrading" (an active present participle) suggests that we need to do intentional, critical work to dismantle traditional and standardized approaches to assessment. There's a lot to read, certainly, but no neat and tidy point of entry. Rather, each teacher (and each student) must find their own ways into the work. Here are a few more places to start.

My Own Posts and Articles

Here are my four most recent posts about grades and ungrading, not in the order they were written, but probably in the order they should be read: Why I Don't Grade; How to Ungrade; Ungrading: an FAQ; If bell hooks Made an LMS: Grades, Radical Openness, and Domain of One's Own.

Interviews and Podcasts

Some amazing folks have invited me to talk about grades and ungrading, and I've gather links to those discussions here.

Keynotes, Workshops, and Talks

The video here is from a casual conversation with a group of folks at Digital Pedagogy Lab Toronto. The slides are a variation on a talk I've given in a handful of places, and my workshop notes include links to much of what's here, along with activities and discussions I invite folks to lead on their own campuses. (Everything on my site is licensed CC-BY-NC, so feel free to borrow at will, or bring me for a visit).

Twitter Threads

Just a couple of many #ungrading Twitter threads worth sifting through, I especially appreciate the replies to this first one, featuring the voices of students talking about their own experiences with grades and ungrading.

For students, how does it feel to be graded? What effect do grades have on your learning? If you've been in a class that approaches grading differently or one without grades (like mine), how did that feel/work? RT to invite more folks to join the conversation. #colabungrading https://t.co/yuzZux7Kuj
- Jesse Stommel (@Jessifer) December 14, 2019

As a teacher in higher education, if you are required to grade, how much preparation did you receive in assessment strategies and the what/why/how of grading?

Answer, retweet, reply with more thoughts. #digped #realcollege
- Jesse Stommel (@Jessifer) August 8, 2019

News

As much as folks argue ungrading isn't new (indeed, it isn't), I've been glad to see major educational news outlets increasingly interrogating the topic with the nuance it deserves.

Alfie Kohn, "From Degrading to De-grading"

Starr Sackstein, Hacking Assessment: 10 Ways to Go Gradeless in a Traditional Grades School

Heather Mitchell-Buck, "Adventures In Ungrading"

Thomas J. Tobin, "In the Halls of the King Under the Mountain (of Grading)"

Clarissa Sorensen-Unruh, "Ungrading: A Series"

Clarissa Sorensen-Unruh, "Ungrading: What is it and why should we use it?"

Susan D. Blum, "Ungrading"

Marc Kissel, "Going Gradeless"

Arthur Chiaravalli, "Teachers Going Gradeless: Toward a Future of Growth Not Grades"

Laura Gibbs, "(Un)Grading: It Can Be Done in College"

John Warner, "Continuing Adventures in Ungrading"

Kevin Gannon, "How to Escape Grading Jail"

Steve Greenlaw, "Adventures in Ungrading"

"Learning is Not a Mechanism," along with a handful of other chapters featured in my 2018 book with Sean Michael Morris, An Urgency of Teachers: The Work of Critical Digital Pedagogy

More Books, Articles, and Blog Posts

Other Lists of Stuff to Read

I've barely scratched the surface in this post, so if you're looking for even more to read, here's a few excellent resources.

One More Thing...

As I've written previously, "Ungrading works best when it's part of a more holistic pedagogical practice-when we also rethink due dates, policies, syllabi, and assignments-when we ask students to do work that has intrinsic value and authentic audiences." Asking students to be directly involved in the grading process and in helping dismantle grades as a system is an extension of my core teaching philosophy, which is grounded in the work of critical pedagogy. My approach to ungrading has arisen as much from that core philosophy as it has from stuff I've read about grades and assessment. So, I'll end by recommending two incredible books, one of the first pedagogy books I read, and the book I'm reading right now. Neither of these books is about grades specifically (nor really has grading as a focus at all), but they are exactly about core philosophies, and thus a wonderful place to begin.

"The classroom remains the most radical space of possibility in the academy."

"Pedagogy cannot be neutral. [...] Neutrality is a luxury of the comfortable; in these uncomfortable times, our students and our academic communities need more from us."

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When I first started ungrading 20 years ago, I was inspired by one of my teaching mentors, Marty Bickman, who taught a graduate course called "Theory and the Teaching of Literature." As Marty writes, "The course was built around a beginning undergraduate course that we all taught together.

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https://twitter.com/mraspinall/status/1566222452417613825?s=21&t=l27d3k9uLNtrx8QmAG6LwQ

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Kids don’t hate learning. Kids hate the intimidation of timed testing environments and the embarrassment of being labelled wrong.

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Kids don’t hate learning. Kids hate the intimidation of timed testing environments and the embarrassment of being labelled wrong.

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Kids don’t hate learning. Kids hate the intimidation of timed testing environments and the embarrassment of being labelled wrong.
— Brian Aspinall (@mraspinall) September 4, 2022

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Kids don’t hate learning. Kids hate the intimidation of timed testing environments and the embarrassment of being labelled wrong.

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Kids don’t hate learning. Kids hate the intimidation of timed testing environments and the embarrassment of being labelled wrong.

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Kids don’t hate learning. Kids hate the intimidation of timed testing environments and the embarrassment of being labelled wrong.

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This is still a work in progress, but talking with @physicswithmcp, @natabasso, and a bunch of Ts at this year's #EPlus2022 @Perimeter, these ideas started to hit me and I think it might be a good way to start meaningful conversations.

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This is still a work in progress, but talking with @physicswithmcp, @natabasso, and a bunch of Ts at this year's #EPlus2022 @Perimeter, these ideas started to hit me and I think it might be a good way to start meaningful conversations.

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On #MTSPDDay I want to invite Ts to question their grading and take a step off that starting line. My first step was gamification, then skills-based grading, and now collaborative grading, trying SBG in my math classes along the way, but everyone’s journey can be different 3/3

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This is still a work in progress, but talking with @physicswithmcp, @natabasso, and a bunch of Ts at this year's #EPlus2022 @Perimeter, these ideas started to hit me and I think it might be a good way to start meaningful conversations.
— Chris Sarkonak (@CSarkonak) September 3, 2022

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This is still a work in progress, but talking with @physicswithmcp, @natabasso, and a bunch of Ts at this year's #EPlus2022 @Perimeter, these ideas started to hit me and I think it might be a good way to start meaningful conversations.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props_source.includes.tweets[].text
On #MTSPDDay I want to invite Ts to question their grading and take a step off that starting line. My first step was gamification, then skills-based grading, and now collaborative grading, trying SBG in my math classes along the way, but everyone’s journey can be different 3/3

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This is still a work in progress, but talking with @physicswithmcp, @natabasso, and a bunch of Ts at this year's #EPlus2022 @Perimeter, these ideas started to hit me and I think it might be a good way to start meaningful conversations.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.text
This is still a work in progress, but talking with @physicswithmcp, @natabasso, and a bunch of Ts at this year's #EPlus2022 @Perimeter, these ideas started to hit me and I think it might be a good way to start meaningful conversations.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.referenced_tweets[].text
On #MTSPDDay I want to invite Ts to question their grading and take a step off that starting line. My first step was gamification, then skills-based grading, and now collaborative grading, trying SBG in my math classes along the way, but everyone’s journey can be different 3/3

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https://jeffreyaustin.org/2022/08/06/ungrading-and-saviorism/

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In my previous role as an instructional coach and a department chair, I felt strongly about advocating for grading reform, especially given the multiple ongoing crises impacting students. My students spoke openly about the negative effects of grading on their mental health, and a few even worked on a grading reform project that surveyed their peers and made recommendations to experts based on research they've done about alternative methods. Unsurprisingly, the resistance was fierce, and some of the fiercest resistance was around whether ungraded classrooms could prepare students for the rigorous expectations of college professors and corporate bosses. One colleague even said that ungrading encourages students to "want something for nothing," as he vigorously defended traditional grading as way to instill notions of capitalist accountability, which he saw as vital to the work of schooling. Ungrading was just a fancy name for low expectations.

I started taking steps toward ungrading about a decade ago because grades negatively impacted my relationships with students and students' relationships with their work in the course. While I'd encourage students to take risks in their work in ideas, genre, and form, my reliance on traditional grading sent a different message. After all, we are what we do. Because of the mixed messages, students often took the surest path to an "A," even when they were encouraged to do more. Who can blame them? Over time, I grew resentful that students played it safe, and they were resentful that my words seem disingenuous based on my actions. This mutual frustration wasn't sustainable, especially if I was going to stay in teaching.

This story isn't unique-I've told it before, and it probably mirrors the origin story of many other ungraders-but lifting again feels critical to make the point that, for me, ungrading wasn't about what students couldn't do, but what they could do when they weren't, as Alfie Kohn says, punished by rewards. Put differently, I turned to ungrading because I had higher expectations-not lower expectations-for both my teaching and my students' learning. One of my biggest realizations about traditional grading was how just how much pushing students toward a single standard that I created based on preferences, experiences, and ways of knowing was rooted in pervasive deficit orientations.

Problematically, deficit orientations combined with good intentions-"preparing students for college" "upholding standards"-is saviorism ( Alex Shevrin Venet's work is vital on this topic, especially for white teachers). Part of my moving away from saviorism and restoring my relationship with students on healthier terms required me to also move away from traditional grading. Imagine thinking so highly of yourself and so little of your students that you believed their only motivation is points. This is, at least in some circles, and prevailing view, and to borrow from Jesse Stommel, if we believe that students need a reason as banal as points to do our work, then they'll likely believe it, too. For me, breaking up with traditional grading meant breaking up with my ego, and it made me a better teacher by compelling me to, with students, consider reasons for our work together that pushed beyond banal point accumulation; we leaned into purpose, into mission, into values, and into imagination and world building. I had to listen, to be wrong, to be apologize, to repair harm I had caused, and to change my actions.

There are some things to acknowledge here: ungrading, like anything, can also be a weapon that causes harm (we might think of Autumm Caines' work on the weaponization of care as an example); sometimes ungrading can also cross into savorism, especially if the shift isn't rooted in high expectations or accompanied by changes to the pernicious pedagogies underlying traditional grading. In other words, simply "going pointless" tomorrow isn't going to change much at all, maybe except the window dressing. We can ungrade and still find ourselves complicit with grading when our philosophies and core values are still doggedly rooted in compliance, command, and control, our practices still compel students to perform to a single standard, and our personal interactions with students lack relational care and are abundant in what Cornelius Minor calls "deservedness." Jesse Stommel, as usual, tells us what we might need to hear: "We can't simply take away grades without re-examining all of our pedagogical approaches, and this work looks different for each teacher, in each context, and with each group of students." Jesse warns us to beware of the Zeitgeist.

There's nothing particularly heroic or sexy about ungrading; it's comprised of small-yet-intentional changes-what we might call "micro-moves"-over an entire career to make learning environments more humanizing and relationally caring. There's no seismic shift, shining spotlight, grand pronouncement, or enduring fame, and that's okay. I just wanted better relationships with students and students wanted to have more freedom, so I had to figure out, in my classroom, how to make that happen, and I'm ever grateful for a network of people that helped-and continue to help-me, whether they know it or not. I hope that the might help someone else in the same way I've been helped. Each time we model just practices and relational care, help create conditions for students to feel safe taking intellectual risks, or see students advocate against harmful systems and structures, especially those based on flawed foundations like rigor, accountability, ranking, sorting, and exclusion, we're pushing against the traditional system, urgently, even if it might feel like we're moving in slow-motion.

Ungrading doesn't make you a savior, but, if you're like me, it might stop you from trying to be one.

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In my previous role as an instructional coach and a department chair, I felt strongly about advocating for grading reform, especially given the multiple ongoing crises impacting students. My students spoke openly about the negative effects of grading on their mental health, and a few even worked on a grading reform project that surveyed their peers and made recommendations to experts based on research they've done about alternative methods.

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https://docs.google.com/file/d/1cmtk0cTXAofKhP9FQnD3rxuvhDW9mXF7/edit?filetype=mspresentation

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https://www.chronicle.com/article/ungrading-light-4-simple-ways-to-ease-the-spotlight-off-points

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Questioning the educational value of assigning grades is one of the hottest topics in higher education. Professors have always felt strongly about grading, and perhaps even more so about its newest alternative: "."

A recent collection on the subject, edited by Susan D. Blum, a professor of anthropology at the University of Notre Dame, features lively essays by teachers who've all put their particular stamp on the practice of de-emphasizing or abolishing grades. Its appeal is not hard to understand when you consider that:

Ungrading tracks with classic research on motivation. Famous studies have shown that tangible incentives depress creativity and reduce the intrinsic appeal of work for its own sake. (It's important not to oversimplify here: Real-life situations involving motivation are complicated, and it's perfectly plausible for both intrinsic and extrinsic factors to be at play.)

Practically speaking, faculty time is better spent offering thoughtful feedback rather than bartering credit for work. Perhaps nothing eats up our emotional resources faster than disputing points with a disgruntled, grade-focused student.

Similarly, dealing with suspected or actual cheating is draining, and there's at least some suggestion that minimizing high-stakes, high-points assessments helps neutralize the temptation to cheat.

Last but not least, overhauling how we handle grades might also help support marginalized students in a system rife with bias.

For all of those reasons, plenty of academics are now on board - at least in part - with the "why" of ungrading, but lots of questions remain about the "how." Faculty questions about this approach range from the elementary (How do you summarize a student's performance at the end of a semester?) to the advanced (How does ungrading work in a science course with fairly fixed learning goals? How do you mesh ungrading with specifications grading?) And most everyone wonders about the amount of time involved, which could be prohibitive for all instructors except those with the smallest classes and lightest teaching loads.

More than most teaching innovations, ungrading immediately gets faculty members wondering how to pull off such a drastic change. Hence this essay, which offers four simple, moderate ways to start de-emphasizing grades in your courses and putting the focus squarely on learning.

Design some required assignments for which the score is irrelevant. Some activities are important for students to do for their own learning, but their actual performance on the work is less important. Can you design meaningful assignments and offer full credit to any student who makes a good-faith effort?

This is something I've been doing in my own courses with gamified quizzes. Each week students play along in class - something they've enthusiastically endorsed as a helpful and engaging way to master the material. It's a worthwhile activity, and required. But I have zero interest in the stressful and time-consuming enterprise of handing out more or fewer points based on how they scored.

So instead, I require students to turn in a short assignment with enough information to document that they did, in fact, take the quiz. They also have to write - and this is key - a few sentences reflecting on their own performance. They tell me how they think they did, whether they were surprised (pleasantly or unpleasantly) by their performance, and what they plan to do differently next time.

Drop your penalties for late work. Try retiring punitive, points-based policies in favor of giving students reasonable amounts of extra time to turn in assignments.

For some time now, I've been disenchanted with enforcing deadlines through grades. The traditional approach - a 10-percent penalty for each day that an assignment is late, zero points for anything submitted online more than five minutes late, and so on - encourages students to engage in elaborate cost-benefit analyses to try to figure out what to tackle next. All of that cognitive effort would be much better spent on doing quality work in the first place. After all, the main purpose of the work is their own learning.

If we want students to approach assignments in a spirit of deliberate, thoughtful effort - as opposed to grade-obsessed frenzy - we need to set the conditions for that to happen. In my courses, I've been explicitly stating that my deadline policy prioritizes two things:

Communication. I ask students to get in touch with me when they're going to fall significantly behind on a deadline. The point isn't for me to pry into personal matters, or impose intrusive requirements (like asking for a doctor's note). I simply want them to let me know when I can expect to receive the work. That way, students take responsibility for making a plan and following through on it.

Quality of the work. I tell students this: I would rather see your best work handed in a few hours - or even a few days - late, rather than have you turn in something you threw together in a panic shortly before the deadline.

But could a no-penalty policy favoring communication and flexibility result in chaos - with some students falling so far behind that they fail?

Possibly. However, that has not been my experience. A flexible policy for late work means that even students who really are struggling have a better chance of making it across the finish line, given that they're not facing an increasing drain of unrecoverable points once they start falling behind.

And again, the goal here is to make grades and points much less of an all-consuming concern. Most students are perfectly willing and able to finish their work without the constant threat of grade-based punishment, once you put a better system in place and take the time to explain it.

Offer two-stage exams. Nothing about a course is more entangled with grades than the traditional, closed-book exam. I'm not arguing that we get rid of such tests - in fact, I give formal graded tests in my courses. But I am a strong advocate of extending learning through a two-stage exam. It's a productive way for students to go back over exam material, with a focus on improving their understanding rather than bickering over points.

Briefly, a two-stage exam involves having students redo an exam in small groups, during the first class period after they individually take the test. You can pull this off in different ways, but I like to randomly assign students to groups. During the second stage of the exam, each group has to reach a consensus on the correct response for each test question before writing down a group answer. I then offer a modest amount of extra credit (that goes toward each student's individual exam score) based on how well the group does on this new, collaborative exam.

The value of this method of revisiting the material is head and shoulders above the traditional practice of "going over the exam" by reading off correct answers in class. It exploits the value of tests as learning experiences in themselves, ones that help reinforce knowledge. Most important, with respect to ungrading, a two-stage exam shifts the focus off individual points gained or lost and onto the reasoning behind the answers. Students get to hear and discuss how others thought about the test questions, work through the evidence, and find a factual basis for each answer. That kind of substantive reflection is the antithesis of grade-driven cramming.

Tellingly, in the five years I've been doing two-stage exams, not a single student has challenged the validity of one of my test questions. Such challenges used to happen all the time. That approach has transformed the post-test class period from an atmosphere of tense negotiation to one of open discussion of ideas - nicely capturing the spirit of ungrading.

Practice "maximal availability" (within reason). Give your students ways to reach you quickly with questions and problems about coursework, instead of getting stuck and making excuses later for why they didn't finish an assignment. During the pandemic, I started experimenting with new avenues for students to ask for help, mostly because a lot of them seemed to need extra support. Here's what I did:

I added a new section to my syllabi that explained exactly how students should proceed when they needed different kinds of assistance.

For in-depth questions, I directed them to make an appointment (aided by a convenient online scheduling program) or come (virtually, at the time) to office hours.

But for quick questions, I tried something I never dreamed I would do: I gave students permission to text me on my cellphone.

Giving students my personal phone number might seem a bit far afield from ungrading, so let me explain the connection. One of the drivers behind students' stalled progress and ensuing panic over grades is hitting a roadblock while doing work outside of class. Until they get an answer to their question, they can't finish the assignment. And that tends to pull the students and me down into a spiral of grade-focused excuses and blame.

Yes, students shouldn't wait until the last minute to do their work. Yes, they should make sure they know how to complete their assignments before they exit the classroom. But procrastination isn't always the culprit here. Students with multiple commitments and tight schedules (i.e., most students today) don't have the flexibility to just set aside an assignment until I can get back to them hours later or the next day. This might be the only window they have to do the work. Personally, I've found that it's the early-starters - not the last-minute crowd - who are most likely to send me quick texts between classes. They're not grubbing for grades; they want clarification about something because they're eager to do a good job, which is exactly the kind of mentality I'm trying to nurture.

For years I avoided making myself too available to students outside of class, on the assumption that the sky would certainly fall. Students would see it as an invitation to communicate unprofessionally, or worse: They'd send incessant demands, maybe even stalk or harass me. None of that has happened - at least not yet. And I do want to be clear that being able to share a personal cellphone number is a reflection of my privilege and status. As a white tenured faculty member, I'm less of a target for abuse and unreasonable demands than the untenured or than faculty of color, and as a middle-aged woman, I am less likely than younger instructors to get overly personal texts from college-age students.

So this might not be a good idea for everyone. Fortunately there are other ways to accomplish the same ends. Platforms such as allow you to send and receive messages without sharing your cell number, and set times when you're officially unavailable. Even a class Slack channel could be a workable solution.

To be clear: I am not saying that faculty members should be perpetually on duty and constantly working. I don't - and no one else should - agree to answer students' messages instantly or around the clock. My students get this, and don't have a problem waiting for an answer to a question that came in at midnight, or in the middle of a faculty meeting for that matter. But students see texts as better and quicker than email, and better still than waiting for a chance to raise their hand or pull the professor aside after class.

I've also found that being more available via my phone hasn't added much to my net workload. If anything, it's easier to handle quick questions with a text message than to have them all end up sitting in my email or lobbed unpredictably into an already-busy class period.

What's next for ungrading? Inevitably, more and better ideas are going to come along for putting ungrading into practice. Lots of faculty members will be trying - and improving upon - the smart ideas that are already out there. And as we get additional data on the actual impacts of these changes, we'll know how to better direct our efforts.

Just as important as the techniques, though, is the change in focus and mentality associated with ungrading - the shift away from points and toward purpose. This is why we need to put wide boundaries around the concept, as I do with the ungrading-adjacent ideas I've offered here. I agree with Robert Talbert, a professor of mathematics at Grand Valley State University, when he characterizes ungrading more as a philosophical framework than a specific set of practices. Likewise, the pedagogy activist Jesse Stommel nails it when he : "Ungrading works best when it's part of a more holistic pedagogical practice - when we also rethink due dates, policies, syllabi, and assignments - when we ask students to do work that has intrinsic value and authentic audiences."

Reorienting our own attention is where ungrading really starts. Once we've done that, our students will follow.

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Advice | Ungrading Light: 4 Simple Ways to Ease the Spotlight Off Points

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Questioning the educational value of assigning grades is one of the hottest topics in higher education. Professors have always felt strongly about grading, and perhaps even more so about its newest alternative: "." A recent collection on the subject, edited by Susan D.

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"I spent a whole year learning about all the different kinds of clouds. I still refer to them as 'puffy clouds', 'rain clouds', 'snow clouds', 'hazy clouds'. If I was some master of knowledge or learning like the school system tells me I am, wouldn't I remember these things?"
-Miranda Dean, undergraduate student,In 'What an Open Pedagogy Course Taught Me About Myself

In A Call for Critical Instructional Design, Sean Michael Morris explains why he doesn't use traditional rubrics or learning objectives when he teaches. He argues that "participation is an individual choice"; "learner contributions are meaningful content in the course"; and "there are no 'right' answers to the questions I'm bound to ask." Many who teach in the 'hard' or 'natural' sciences might say: "That is just great for those of you who teach in the humanities, but you can't do that in a STEM class!" While I consider the work that I've been doing with my biology courses a pilot study on a pathway towards more deeply engaged experiments, my experiences using open pedagogy strategies suggests that yes, yes you can.

When I was a biology undergraduate years ago, nearly all of my science classes were in large lecture halls. Content was delivered by lecturers, and students spit back answers on multiple choice exams primarily graded by Scantron. We've come a long way since then, with many science teachers incorporating more active learning in their courses, developing powerful case studies (check out the National Center for Case Study Teaching in Science), and using jigsaw strategy, discussion groups, peer review, open-ended research projects, co-ops, service-learning, and more.

But these active learning strategies, while adding a great deal to the teaching of science, can often still fall short of what I consider to be the most salient and powerful features of open pedagogy. Inspired by the ideas of Robin DeRosa (see Open Pedagogy at the Program Level, and What is Open Pedagogy?), for me, this includes 1) student agency, and 2) a commons-oriented approach to education - both of which encapsulate the ideals of equity, access, connection, and sharing. When we blend the best of what we have learned from those who have labored to transform education with ideas integral to feminist pedagogy, engaged pedagogy, constructivist pedagogy, and critical digital pedagogy, and then embed them in a larger commons paradigm, open pedagogy emerges.

Student agency is ultimately about how we share power in our classrooms and work collaboratively with students. It has historical feminist roots from Adrienne Rich's plea for women students to claim their own education to bell hooks questioning the power and authorityin the teacher/student relationship where she asserts that the classroom should be "a place that is life-sustaining and mind-expanding, a place of liberating mutuality where teacher and student together work in partnership." And viewing pedagogy through the lens of the commons (the cultural and natural resources accessible to all members of a society) situates student agency in the praxis of equitable and inclusive access to learning, learning structure design, knowledge, sharing knowledge, creating knowledge and community participation (see diagram). The open license and the 5R permissions provide a tangible way for the knowledge commons to be manifested and for us to participate in its ongoing construction.

But what does this all mean on the ground? Can giving more power and control over to students really be effective for teaching in the natural sciences? Can students create scientific knowledge? How does sharing do anything for student learning?

Agency and Course Content

I often hear a version of the following objection to giving content control to students: "But...there are right answers, many of them - these are called facts. And many scientific facts simply need to be memorized." Of course there are many known facts, and especially in this brave new world where the phrase "alternative facts" is used regularly and dangerously, it is important to acknowledge that. And some questions do have right answers (although Sean probably isn't bound to ask simple scientific questions). But many scientific questions don't have right answers, or at least don't have them yet. So while facts are very important, the ways that we have come to know them as facts are even more important for students to learn, which is why we emphasize the steps of the 'scientific method' and teach that scientific knowledge is produced through observation, analysis, and experimentation. We also end up committing many facts to memory. But which facts need to be memorized? And which processes of memorization should we use? The premise that there are important facts to learn, does not automatically imply that one should rely on a stack of flash cards (whether paper or digital). In my experiences teaching biology, stimulating student interest and motivation have been far more effective than rote memorization. I think this gets to the heart of student agency in the ethos of open pedagogy. Thanks to Gardner Campbell, the primary learning outcome I have for my students is to increase their depth and breadth of interest.

* * *

"Now ask me about the one connecting factor between murder, violence, and loneliness. It's dopamine. Come back in ten years and ask me again and I'll still know the answer. Why? because it's not information that was dumped on me. It's not information that I was forced to regurgitate. It's information that I voluntarily sought out and connect with my personal interests."
-Miranda Dean, undergraduate student, In 'What an Open Pedagogy Course Taught Me About Myself'

"But...students in STEM courses can't just choose what they want to learn, there is important content to cover that can't be missed." So much has already been written that challenges the idea of 'content as king' in teaching and learning. For example, in "Through the Open Door: Open Courses as Research, Learning, and Engagement," David Cormier and George Siemens argue that "the true benefit of the academy is the interaction, the access to the debate, to the negotiation of knowledge - not to the stale cataloging of content." But it's not usually instructors of STEM courses that challenge the importance of content. The position for content as king in STEM often comes down to the argument that there is an appropriate order in which material must be learned. The way that concepts incrementally build on one another is the reason why instructors must control the order in which they are presented, usually in a step-by-step method that builds from simple to complex ideas. You can't understand a complex molecule if you don't even know what an atom is, the argument goes.

So it's really ' foundational content as king'. "But...there are basic foundational ideas and terms that need to be understood first, without those basics and scaffolding the concepts, students will be lost." This objection brings to mind a non-scientist friend of mine who had spent months and months researching information about her illness and said to me, "Have you heard of these things called oxidation-reduction reactions? Fascinating how they work!" My friend's enthusiasm and passion intrigued me. Anyone who teaches basic chemistry and has experience with saying something like, "OK class, today we are going to cover oxidation-reduction reactions" can say that, in most cases, glazed over eyes are more likely than fascination as your equations and electrons begin filling the board.

Is it really true that memorizing all the basics must come before tackling more complex questions, such as "What is the nature of a cancerous cell"? Does one need to learn all of the details of atomic structure, bonding, molecules, chemical properties, macromolecules like DNA, RNA, protein structure and function, cell structure and function, DNA replication, transcription, translation, cell cycle, etc., in (or close to) that order? Ask someone who has been diagnosed with cancer (or is close to someone who has) what they know of these foundational topics. The answer might surprise you. You can research quite a bit, starting at the end and working your way back down, or in the middle and jumping around. What is that? How does that work? Yeah, but what does that mean? Yeah, but what does THAT mean? It is all driven by interest, motivation, a passion to learn or even a burning necessity to learn. Our primary role as teacher can be simply to create the best culture chambers for students to flourish. They will find the content. Examples from my tropical-marine biology course are students who chose to learn about the Effects of Plastic on Marine Life and Ocean Acidification. These led to a need to understand ocean gyres, the corioliseffect, amplification of chemicals via food chains, the chemistry of ocean carbonic acid formation from atmospheric carbon dioxide, and more. My instruction: explore some environmental threats to coral reefs.

Agency and Course Design

"But... science students can't design courses; they need to be provided with a clear syllabus, assignments and a grading structure from experts who know best." Recently, when reading my students' final self-assessments, I was struck by the different ways in which each student approached the course. The more nebulous I was about my expectations, the more they had to work to find their own way. They had to figure out how much time to put into the labs, which labs to work on more deeply, how many blog posts to write, whether to cover a broad range of groups or focus on a few, how to structure their websites, and so on. Essentially, what they were grappling with was determining the pieces that were motivating enough for them to spend their precious time.

A student taking a journey into discovery, who is encouraged to pursue their own interests and take any pathway using any tools, assignments, practices, and policies that they want, may end up stumped or confused - but also intrigued. The desire to know more is the genesis of learning. And a wonderful synergy happens as a student figures out both what they are trying to learn and how they learn best. As instructor, knowing just when to strategically intervene is challenging, but letting go of control can have powerful effects on student learning. Students will only be frustrated by "not knowing what you want" as long as you take the fear of grades away and communicate as clearly as you can that what you most want as a teacher is for them to find their own way to uncover their passions. When we stop judging students they stop judging and censoring themselves. They begin to actually learn. Even in a STEM class.

As open pedagogy instructors in science classes, we can ignite the spark for the search that leads to foundations, and facilitate (not direct) the process along the way. Then students make their own connections and find the social contexts in which science needs to be understood. When my tropical-marine biology class arrived to our field trip destination, they stated: "We are not drinking water from disposable plastic bottles." The whole class felt united in this, not just the one student who wrote the post about ocean plastic, because they were reading, sharing and talking about their openly licensed work. This is where writing in the open, sharing ideas, connecting to others (including professionals in social media spaces like Twitter), and deciding what you want to pursue next results in real and significant learning, and continues beyond the course itself. At the time of this writing, one year after the course ended, these students are still tweeting about marine biology and issues in ocean conservation.

Open Licenses, Sharing, Connection and Open Science

" But...students can't create scientific content, they aren't yet capable." Scientific practice and undergraduate pedagogy would suggest otherwise. For science educators have led the way in facilitating student contribution to academic content via the incorporation of undergraduates into faculty research programs. Even including first and second year students in the PI research lab has been the norm for decades. While for some this has meant more peripheral participation such as data collection only, others have had their students participate in all stages of research - from hypothesis formation, experimental design, data analysis and scientific writing. Outside of the PI lab, many students complete self-designed research projects. Such projects don't usually result in original data or publishable findings; but the remixing and recombining of materials in posts or articles that summarize, synthesize, and shape information so that the work is more accessible and relevant to other students is its own kind of originality. And sometimes, just the fact that another student wrote it makes it more enticing or interesting to them and sparks ideas and confidence for new investigations. As students share their experimental designs, data and analyses with an open license, they contribute to the open science commons and can benefit from constructive criticism and feedback from a much broader audience than their instructor and peers.

Undergraduate scientific research conferences and journals have been around for decades, and students have been contributing valuable content. But only a few privileged students are able to attend conferences or get their work published in conventional journals. We can increase the value and reach of student work by teaching students how to engage in the global learning networks of scientists who are using open platforms and social media in academic and effective ways. If we model ways for students to be transparent about all of the stages of the research process - encouraging them to publicly post and openly license their methodology and data long before it is polished into a final paper, they can receive broad and sometimes expert feedback on their work. Our role should be to indoctrinate students into those processes that emphasize collaboration and communication, and how to work as an authentic scientific community.

The growing Open Science movement, and what I am calling the Pedagogy of Open Science, has the potential to revolutionize both the teaching of science and scientific practice itself. The open science and open data communities envision a future where "the process, content, and outcomes of research are openly accessible by default." When every step of the scientific process is transparent, all students can have greater capacity to distinguish "alternative facts" or "fake news" from actual scientific knowledge. As science undergraduate educators, we need to teach and model these values and practices to our students now - before they are in graduate school, before they have lab or corporate jobs, before they are publishing their work, before they are writing grants, before they are worrying about promotion and tenure guidelines and before they are shaping those guidelines for the future.

Agency, curiosity, questioning, creativity, design, experimentation, collaboration, contribution, connection, communication and discovery: These activities are embedded in the processes of both scientific investigation and open pedagogy. Not only can you "do that" in science courses, but the assertion that one 'learns science by doing science' (an idea widely championed in the science educator community) is manifested by adopting open pedagogical practices in STEM.

Acknowledgements

I am greatly indebted to Mark Long, Jenny Darrowand Robin DeRosa for their comments and suggestions on several earlier drafts of this article.

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"I spent a whole year learning about all the different kinds of clouds. I still refer to them as 'puffy clouds', 'rain clouds', 'snow clouds', 'hazy clouds'. If I was some master of knowledge or learning like the school system tells me I am, wouldn't I remember these things?"

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From Earning to Learning is the podcast where Dave Frangiosa shares research backed philosophies, thoughts on student engagement and classroom tested techniques that can help move students towards learning. In order for students to progress, they must practice. Adjusting the language used when discussing this practice can have a significant impact on the experience of our students. In this episode you will hear some strategies for framing practice and examples of when to use different types of practice. Twitter: @DavidFrangiosa Website: www.reimaginedschools.com

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The Role of Practice in Learning by From Earning to Learning

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The Role of Practice in Learning by From Earning to Learning

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From Earning to Learning is the podcast where Dave Frangiosa shares research backed philosophies, thoughts on student engagement and classroom tested techniques that can help move students towards learning. In order for students to progress, they must practice. Adjusting the language used when discussing this practice can have a significant impact on the experience of our students.

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https://reimaginedschools.com/2022/03/01/why-is-going-gradeless-controversial/

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I always knew grades were embedded in the fabric of education, but I didn't realize how divisive the term "Going Gradeless" would be. Even amongst people who identify themselves as progressive educators. From the conversations that I've had, there are a few themes that have emerged from the pushback. Many people don't understand the term gradeless because in most circumstances a grade must be issued, it is not the way most of us experienced education, making it unfamiliar and uncomfortable, and not knowing how to hold students accountable.

What is meant by Gradeless?

I can see how the term can be confusing. Afterall, most gradeless educators are still required to provide a traditional grade at the end of the semester or year. The best way I can explain the term is grading is a mindset. Traditional grading places an unavoidable emphasis on the final product. Practice and progress are judged, measured, and reported in the gradebook. While there are grading alternatives that reduce this emphasis, student work is still being judged.

With a gradeless mindset, there is no judgment. This is a difficult concept for some to wrap their heads around. Yes, I assess where students are in their learning, but wherever they are is merely the starting point of their journey. (For more details check out Striving Towards Inclusion, How I Differentiate Support, Differentiating Support with the Learning Progression Model.) Every student is provided with an on ramp to learning, and we provide them with their individual next steps. It's about process over product. Incremental improvement over time. Most importantly, it is about removing the interference of grades in the learning process for as long as possible. We have a flexible grade translation chart (because we have to) that is published at the beginning of the year. This is used to set goals and track progress. However, when it comes to reporting a final grade, students are involved. We have conferences ( Have you tried student conferencing?) and discuss their portfolio of learning evidence. The translation chart is the beginning of the discussion with maximum targeted level of development, which can be altered for a number of reasons. If it were up to me, I would move to a credit/no credit system ( Mastery Transcript is a great example) and never have to report a grade. I understand that is still technically grading if we are judging the value of a student's collective body of work. However, the mindset and interactions during the learning process are significantly different.

Some may argue that if there is flexibility in the final reporting, then the final grade is not reflective of learning. I disagree. I've written and spoken about this before, so I'll be brief with this point. A current mantra of education is to "meet students where they are." ( Are we sending a consistent message to our students?) If we are to value their experience and ability, then they can't be punished for it. For a student that enters the class without the same foundational understandings as their classmates or for a student that has processing delays, judging them by the same final bar as everyone else seems inappropriate to me. If they are making continued progress towards these targets, that should be reflected in our reporting. This is not assessing effort. It is reflecting progress.

Unfamiliar Territory

When the majority of parents and educators think of school, their experience has been the traditional model. As is the case with anything new, there is a learning curve and some uneasiness during the transition. For educators that fear is not knowing how this will impact classroom management, the thought that all of the resources they've developed over their career must be discarded, or if students would even do the work if points weren't assigned.

That last one is one of the more common concerns I encounter in my conversations. I understand why. In a points-driven class, anything without points is meaningless to students. It doesn't help them get to their goal of a grade, so it doesn't get done. That has been the experience of teachers who have tried a few assignments or a unit without grades. Students have not had the time to adjust their mindset around points and grades, making the approach ineffective. Shifting mindsets of both teachers and students is essential to this being successful. In a feedback-centered course, the only way to move towards their goal is to submit learning evidence to gain feedback. ( The Impact of Feedback)

Often, teachers implementing a gradeless approach are one of a few teachers and sometimes the only teacher doing this. From experience, I can tell you that does make it more challenging. It has gotten easier as more of my colleagues are moving towards alternate assessment methods. Even if they are not doing the same thing, the departure from traditional grading is opening minds. I no longer hear from parents, "You're the only one doing this."

Once again, I understand why this makes parents uncomfortable. They have been conditioned to see a single letter grade and determine from that symbol whether or not their child is "doing well" in the class. We all know the conversation is way more complicated than that, but that is what they're used to. When you compound that with the currency of grades for scholarships and college admissions, the anxiety of not knowing the grade increases exponentially. I've found that through proactive communication, this can be eased in most cases. They need to know that a grade won't be a surprise at the end of the course and there is time to intervene if goals are not being met.

Accountability

I'm not sure where the erroneous idea of gradeless classrooms being less academically focused came from. My guess is it's rooted in the idea of "rigor." We don't need to make students uncomfortable in order for them to learn. Yes, they need to be challenged, but that challenge should be appropriate to their level of experience and ability. It is not one size fits all and doesn't require two hours of homework a night.

With learning as the focus, my course is highly structured. However, it provides space for learners of different experiences and abilities. Content is available on multiple platforms. Guided and independent practice opportunities are available for every topic we study. If a student needs more practice with a specific concept, they engage with that practice while other students are engaging with different practice. (Check out The Role of Practice in Learning)

We ensure that we have collected enough evidence of learning to discuss where a student currently is in their learning journey and what their next steps are. Just because I don't use a zero to send a message doesn't mean a message isn't sent. Conversations are had with students that are not submitting enough evidence. If those conversations are not productive, we then get guidance and parents involved. These interventions happen much earlier in the year than they did when I was using traditional grading. I've had conversations start as early as October. This is much more productive than having a conversation at the end of May asking what the student can make up or what extra credit they can produce that will get them to pass. In my mind, a gradeless model holds students more accountable for learning.

Final Thoughts

Grades are not going away any time soon. I understand that. I also understand that change is hard, but change is necessary. When districts focus on initiatives such as diversity, equity and inclusion, SEL, or PBIS to name a few, they're missing the point. We need to stop compartmentalizing education. A singular initiative on its own will not have the desired impact. All of these facets of education are intractably intertwined. If we truly care about fixing education, we must create an action plan that addresses all aspects, including grading, simultaneously. Sending conflicting messages leads to frustration and the ultimate demise of whatever initiative is being introduced.

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I always knew grades were embedded in the fabric of education, but I didn't realize how divisive the term "Going Gradeless" would be. Even amongst people who identify themselves as progressive educators. From the conversations that I've had, there are a few themes that have emerged from the pushback.

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Microstructures to enable equitable, engaged, creative, constructive dialogue

Do you have an activity that you would like to suggest?

Discover and focus on what each person has the freedom and resources to do now.

Maha Bali, Jasmina Najjar

Rapidly clarify for individuals and a group what is essentially important in their work.

This activity will help students prepare for working in groups by discovering and building on the roots of their successes.

Maha Bali, Autumm Caines, Mia Zamora

Engage everyone in making sense of profound challenges. Use to address difficult or confusing topics.

Engage everyone in making sense of profound challenges. Use to address difficult or confusing topics.

Use the Purpose to Practice structure with students to co-develop “community guidelines” for the class.

Promote focus and reflection while allowing individuals to compose responses thoughtfully and calmly in writing.

Engage everyone in making sense of profound challenges. Use to address difficult or confusing topics.

Help people express and face their fears in a way that can help reduce stress and anxiety.

TRIZ can “Stop Counterproductive Activities and Behaviors to Make Space for Innovation”. Try it out!

Get students used to supporting each other without always turning to an “expert” for solutions.

This activity promotes small group intimacy and collaboration, making a large group session feel interactive.

Do you have feedback or suggestions?

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Chris Friend (@chris_friend) from Kean University presents "Assessing So That People Stop Killing Each Other" read by its author, Asao B. Inoue. The piece is from the edited collection Hybrid Teaching: Pedagogy, People, Politics, which is available as an ebook, a print-on-demand paperback, as a free downloadable PDF, and as open-access articles published at Hybrid Pedagogy and elsewhere on the open Web. The theme music is "Where Was I?" from Lee Rosevere. That song, the text of Hybrid Teaching, and this audio are all available under a Creative-Commons Attribution license, which means they can be re-used with author acknowledgement. Thanks to each of the contributors for allowing their material to be re-used in this project.

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Assessing So That People Stop Killing Each Other by Hybrid Teaching

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Assessing So That People Stop Killing Each Other by Hybrid Teaching

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Chris Friend (@chris_friend) from Kean University presents "Assessing So That People Stop Killing Each Other" read by its author, Asao B. Inoue. The piece is from the edited collection Hybrid Teaching: Pedagogy, People, Politics, which is available as an ebook, a print-on-demand paperback, as a free downloadable PDF, and as open-access articles published at Hybrid Pedagogy and elsewhere on the open Web.

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Transcript

John:
During the past two years, faculty have experimented with new teaching modalities and new teaching techniques as we adapted to the COVID pandemic. In this episode, we reflect on what we have learned during these experiences and what we are in danger of forgetting.

[MUSIC]

John:
Thanks for joining us for Tea for Teaching, an informal discussion of innovative and effective practices in teaching and learning.

Rebecca: This podcast series is hosted by John Kane, an economist…

John:
…and Rebecca Mushtare, a graphic designer…

Rebecca: …and features guests doing important research and advocacy work to make higher education more inclusive and supportive of all learners.

[MUSIC]

John:
Our guest today is Kevin Gannon. Kevin is a history professor who has recently accepted a new position as the incoming director of the Center for the Advancement of Faculty Excellence at Queen’s University of Charlotte. He is also the author of Radical Hope, a Teaching Manifesto, which is available from West Virginia University Press. Welcome back, Kevin.

Kevin: Great to be here with you both again.

John:
And we just saw you a couple of weeks ago when you provided a closing keynote address at the SUNY CIT conference. It’s nice to have a chance to talk to you a little bit more.

Kevin: Yeah, it was great to be up there with you all in Oswego and I miss the Oswego weather now that I am here where it is 100 degrees outsideinf Des Moines right now.

Rebecca: That’s a little toasty.

Kevin: Yeah, it was not what I ordered, that’s for sure.

Rebecca: So dare I ask, what our teas for today are? So today’s teas are… Kevin, are you drinking tea?

Kevin: I am actually drinking a Diet Coke. Usually about midday, I moved to the cold and bubbly caffeine. So we have made that transition.

Rebecca: Cold seems necessary based on just the temperature outside.

Kevin: Indeed. [LAUGHTER]

John:
And I am drinking a wild blueberry black tea from the Republic of Tea in a new mug that our graduate student at the teaching center had given us just a couple of weeks ago, as a thank you for working with us. And I don’t know why she was thanking us… she made it so much easier over the past year.

Rebecca: Yeah, big shout out to Anna Croyle for all her hard work on the podcast over the last year. And I’m drinking… is it Ceylon? How do you even say that? Ceylon tea?

Kevin: That’s how I’ve always said it. So if it’s wrong, I’ve been wrong. [LAUGHTER]

Rebecca: Me too. It’s one of those where you read mostly and not say out loud. [LAUGHTER]

John:
So we invited you here to talk a little bit about where higher education is going. You talked a little bit about that in the closing keynote address here and we thought it would be nice to get your opinion on the lessons that we’ve learned from the pandemic and where you see higher education as going, or where it should go, over the next few years.

Rebecca: Yeah, those might be two really different things. [LAUGHTER]

Kevin: Right. And I think that’s maybe where a lot of the stress and the angst comes from… that we’ve identified some places that a lot of us think higher education should go or at least a direction or a set of clear directions in which it should head. But we’re not at all certain that that’s actually how it’s gonna play out. And that dissonance between those two things can be unsettling. And I think that, at least from my perspective, that’s where a lot of the kind of stress and anxiety looking forward in higher education is coming from. And we’re obviously coming out, and not even completely out, but sort of coming out of one chapter and into a new chapter and landscape that’s been fundamentally reshaped by COVID, by pandemic pedagogy, and as a sort of immediate context. But of course, all of that unfolding in the larger context of defunding higher education and the sort of slow motion societal collapse that we find ourselves in as well. And I think there’s a lot that’s been laid bare by that. There’s a lot that I think folks sort of knew about intellectually, or were willing to sort of name but now feel much more viscerally and real and immediately, but we’re also really, really tired [LAUGHTER] and stretched thin. What’s the line that Bilbo Baggins says in The Lord of the Rings… “like butter that’s been scraped over too much toast.” [LAUGHTER]

Rebecca: That’s exactly it, right.

Kevin: Right? And I think that’s where a lot of us, if not all of us, are in some way or another. And so of course, just as we know when we talk about student learning and cognition, the less cognitive bandwidth we have available to do these sorts of complex tasks, the harder those things are. And I think on a macro scale in higher ed, I think that’s where we find ourselves too, facing some of our most difficult problems with less bandwidth available to address them than ever before.

Rebecca: Yeah, it’s kind of funny, less bandwidth, but a lot of momentum and a lot of phase two.

Kevin: Right.

Rebecca: It doesn’t always line up.

Kevin: Right? Like the cars going really fast over the cliff, but we can’t steer it. It feels like, and that’s not…

Rebecca: Yeah.

Kevin: …not a comfortable place to sit.

Rebecca: Can you talk a little bit about some of the things that we’ve learned in higher ed during the pandemic?

Kevin: This is a conversation that could, of course, go on forever. But I think one of the things that we learned, that’s central to so much of what we’re trying to figure out now is just how much learning or teaching and learning are social endeavors, are community endeavors. And that’s not to say that they have to be done in the same physical space at the same synchronous time, but that sociality, a sense of community, are vital to any sort of meaningful learning. And of course, we’d learned that mostly in the absence of those thing with the shift to emergency remote instruction and then the ways in which what we were trying to do and COVID either partially or completely shut places down was so attenuated, and for folks who didn’t have a lot of experience in online teaching and for students who didn’t have a lot of experience of being online learners, we lost that community piece, that sociality. It became a series of sort of atomized, fragmented, maybe conversations, but not even really that. I think a lot of what ended up happening was instructors sort of broadcasting things out, like we would send out radio signals in the hopes that some alien civilization would pick up on them, and maybe they’ll land somewhere. And I think that’s how a lot of us felt by a good year or so into this thing. And so I think what we’ve realized now is that, yeah, we lost something really meaningful. We did the best we could speaking broadly. And moving all of higher ed online in about two weeks, that’s not something that we should scoff att. But we also risk permanently embedding some of the things that really frustrated us during that pandemic period, if we’re not attentive to addressing those things now. So I think everything else that we need to, I guess “everything’s” probably too broad a word, but so much else that what we need to address in higher ed springs from that fundamental reality about sociality and community. And in particular, the difficulty of trying to do what it is that we do, either personally, or institutionally, when those things are missing.

John:
We had that initial period where everyone moved to remote instruction for a while. And then even when we came back, it was to classrooms with a lot of distance separating people, and with masks and, in general, a lot of barriers that were not there before. And it’s been quite a bit of a challenge. I think we’ve all tried many things to build community in whatever modality or whatever mix of modalities we’ve happened to be teaching in. What are some strategies that we can use to build communities more effectively in our classes?

Kevin: So I think one of the things that I’m really interested in now, and something I think offers a lot of promise, and I actually talked about this in the talk that I gave when I was with you at Oswego, was the research that we have from the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in the online world, and in particular, the sort of very venerable community of inquiry model, but in particular, the work that’s been done on social presence as a key part of that, so building social presence on the part of both instructors and learners in an online class. And it seems to me that the insights that underlay the idea of social presence for fully remote asynchronous learning, apply very well in pretty much any teaching and learning space we find ourselves in, either online or on-ground, synchronous, hybrid, or asynchronous. And in particular, I’m really indebted to the work of Amiee Whiteside and her colleagues who talk about what are the components that underlay a meaningful social presence, that is, social presence in the sense of to what degree are the people that are in the space recognized by one another as full human beings, not just avatars or not just user names on a discussion board thread? And one of the most important things that underlays this social presence is what Whiteside and her colleagues called interaction intensity. One of the problems that we had in trying to do pandemic pedagogy was like, “Oh, we’ll do discussion boards,” “oh, our students will be ‘communicating.’ they’ll be talking with one another.” But if you’ve ever taught online, you know that it’s very easy for these sorts of discussion board assignments to become very sort of pro forma empty exercises, respond to a classmate, put two comments here, and students resent them almost as much as we resent having to read them [LAUGHTER] as instructors. So those are interactions, but they’re not what Whiteside and her colleagues would say are appropriately intense interactions. That is I’m not expending a whole lot of cognitive or emotional or socially present labor to engage in those sorts of interactions. And so they’re not really accomplishing what they’re supposed to in that we say discussions help build community in a class. Well, not if they’re designed in a way that doesn’t prompt this idea of interaction intensity. So what are the interactions, whether it’s between individual learners, whether it’s between the instructor and students, or whether it’s between students and the particular course material or ideas that you’re addressing? And whatever online or in-person space this is, what are those interactions like and how intense are they? What kind of cognitive labor are we asking students to do? How are we asking students to invest effort, motivation, and the sort of cognitive lifting to do what we would call higher-order tasks of analysis, of synthesis, of creation, as opposed to just sort of rote memorization or regurgitation? And so that’s one example of what I think is a broader thing that we need to be paying attention to is how are we cultivating all across our higher educational spaces, how are we cultivating that type of interaction intensity, that meaningful work to connect and to engage? Because as any faculty member will tell you, other than money, the other two resources that are the most scarce for us are time and energy or emotional energy, and I think the same is true for our students. So if we’re asking our students to contribute both time and emotional labor to a class, we need to make sure that it’s worth it. There needs to be, and I hate to use the capitalist metaphor, but what return on that investment are students getting? Because that’s going to be the calculus by which they allocate energy and prioritization to the various paths that all of their instructors are asking them to do. And so what social presence research and in particular, this emphasis on interaction intensity, has us think about is what are we asking our students to do? How are we asking them to do it? And is it worth it? What is the return for that? In that sense, it’s us making a promise to students that these are meaningful tasks that we’re asking you to engage in, that go toward your accomplishment of the learning goals for this course, and the overall goal of making this course a meaningful space. So we’re not going to waste your time with stuff that isn’t contributing to that. And so I think being really intentional and informed by a scholarship that’s already out there, in many ways, is going to be of enormous assistance to us moving forward.

Rebecca: One thing that I’ve heard a lot of instructors talk about over the past year is this big gap between students who are really achieving and those that just aren’t, they’re not able to, and maybe a lot of that’s tied to mental health and other things, perhaps, but we don’t necessarily know. But a lot of faculty have talked about this, like big gap, like there’s a hole in the middle. What strategies can we think about institutionally and individually as instructors as we move into the fall to make sure that students aren’t just completely left behind or never get to finish their education or barely begin it?

Kevin: So on the personal level, I think anything that we can do to humanize our instruction. And again, no matter what space we’re in, how are we making these spaces human spaces, spaces for actual human beings and not just brains on sticks, so paying attention to what are the affective dimensions of our courses. Are our courses and our learning spaces welcoming spaces, inclusive spaces, the old idea of seeing courses as a barrier or a weed out space, it was never tenable, but it’s clearly untenable now. But one of the things I worry about is, we’re not going, I don’t think, be able to pedagogy our way out of all of this individually. And I worry that the emphasis might be so much on “here are things that you can do in your individual classrooms, which are great and wonderful,” and we need to be doing them. But they’re not going to fix everything, because these are systemic problems. And so systemic problems demand systemic solutions. And so this is where we have to be thinking institutionally, what kind of resources are we allocating to and for students, and it’s going to be everything, I think, from additional academic support, supplemental instruction, emergency grants, food security, all of these things that are going to have to be in place, and a lot of schools are sort of doing or at least making gestures at doing, but we need to be thinking a lot more systematically and strategically about doing those things. And we also need to be advocating in the communities of which our institutions are apart, because we’re not separated from them. We don’t exist in a vacuum. And the barriers that are in front of many of our students are barriers that come from these larger systems of inequity and deprivation that they are coming out of, and then entering our campus spaces already having their experiences shaped by those things. And of course, we know those barriers don’t exist in any sort of equitable way at all. So this is institutional, systematic work. And I worry that in, again, not post COVID, but in this next chapter, are institutional leaders going to be so nervous about their own institutions’ survival, that they’re scared to take on what for some of them might look like social justice oriented type of work? Is that going to be seen as too political or too activist? And are we going to damage our ability to attract funding? Or are we going to get the wrong kind of attention. And I think ethically, that’s a disastrous way to go about it. But I also think practically, that is a non-starter as well. Schools that run scared from these sorts of things in the next couple of years, are schools that I don’t think will survive.

John:
We often talk about humanizing, or creating a more human presence. And we often talk about that in terms of just humanizing the professor. Would it help if we also focus a little bit more on bringing the students’ humanity and their lived experience into the class because maybe one way of bringing students back in is by helping students connect their own lives and their hopes for the future with what you’re doing in their classes. I think everyone advocates that to some extent, but might there be some ways of using that to help reach out to those disengaged students that Rebecca was mentioning?

Kevin: What a radical concept, recognizing students as actual human beings. Crazy talk, right? [LAUGHTER]

Rebecca: I can’t believe we’re even having this conversation.

Kevin: But I think what this underscores is that I just said we’re not going to pedagogy our way out of all of these problems. But having said that, and put in that caveat, I think systematic and intentional attention to our pedagogy ,that is what’s the larger sort of philosophical lenses through which we’re looking to view our work? John, you get right at the heart of that question. How do we see our students? Because our students know what we think of them, even probably better than we know what we think of them, sometimes. What we do, the choices we make, the ways in which we engage or not engage with our students send very clear signals to them. And so I think one of the things that is super important for instructors to be doing in this moment is thinking very intentionally about how am I with my students. And so if we’re going to talk about social presence, in what ways am I present? What does that present look like to others? And can my students trust me? Do my students think that I trust them? What am I saying to my students, and all of the sort of broad ways, textual and otherwise? What am I telling them that I think about them? What am I saying about the reasons that they should be taking this class? What is this class going to do for them? So absolutely, being more attentive to the full and complex nature of the students who are sharing this space with us. I mean, we’ve always known that that is a good pedagogical thing to do. We’ve always known that that helps increase, for example, students’ motivation and interest in a class, which leads to more meaningful learning. But I just think ethically, at this point to0, students are our allies, students want what we want, they want our institutions to successfully fulfill the promises that we’ve made. Students may not define successful in the way that we might define it for them, or that may look different depending on where they are in their particular journey in our institutions. But we want the same outcomes. We want that success. And so recognizing that commonality and inviting students to help do that work with us, as opposed to either passively off to the side or in opposition to us, seems like a much better strategy going forward. And so some of that conversation, I think, in the coming year, you know, maybe there’s a sort of a back to the basics kind of nuts and bolts emphasis on just good effective pedagogical technique for humanizing instruction. When Ken Bain talks about the promising syllabus, boom, there’s a way to frame the sort of formal statement of the class, the first formal context some of our students may have with the class. When we talk about creating a good climate for discussion, collaborative expectation setting, you know, what are we doing for tone setting the first day of class, all of these sorts of bread and butter, nuts and boltsy kind of things are well worth revisiting and thinking about systematically in ways that we might not have been able to do the past couple years quite frankly,

Rebecca: I know one of the things that your talk had me thinking about Kevin is all the ways that we need to humanize all the other spaces on our campus and all the processes that feel like checking this box, go through this door, shove around that corner, go to that office, oh nope, you got to go to that office. Nope, just kidding. It’s this other office. Processes that aren’t streamlined or with the student experience in mind, maybe they work for the administrative shuffle that might have to happen, but not always thinking about the student as the human that needs to experience the process also. So that’s something that I’ve been thinking a lot about is ways that maybe the social presence idea needs to take form in other places outside of the classroom as well,

Kevin: Absolutely. Because if it doesn’t, what students are getting is one space on campus that is attentive to these things. And then a whole bunch of other spaces on campus that are not, and that dissonance is going to be more telling to students than anything else. So yeah, we’re talking culture change, institutional culture change, which again, may seem like a really heavy lift, given everything. But I don’t think it’s so much additional work as it is a way to focus what we’re already doing to make it more intentional and meaningful, like bringing a coherence to the things that we’re doing anyway, or should be doing anyway, I think that’s the way to approach this kind of work. So one suggestion I always offer to folks on campus on the student services side and the administration side: do a communications audit. How are you communicating? Like, what are the literal examples of the reminder emails you send to students to pay their bill, to register, to drop by the drop date… you know, all this administrative stuff that we bombard students with… read those communications with an eye towards tone, with an eye towards that kind of, I hate to use the phrase but the customer service aspect of this? Because oftentimes what we find is that a bulk of the communication that we’re doing with students, that kind of routine, everyday communication is carrying a very impersonal, almost adversarial, stance that feels punitive, as opposed to supportive. And even if we don’t mean it that way, if that’s our regular constant mode of communication with students, then what are we doing? And what are the consequences of that? Yeah, absolutely. All across campus, as I said in the talk, and as I firmly believe all of our campuses are teaching and learning spaces. Our students are always learning no matter where they are. And so the question we should all have whatever unit or office we’re in is, “Well, what are we teaching and how are we teaching it?” And I think answering those questions in an honest and systematic way can go a long way towards doing that sort of culture change work that I have in mind.

John:
At that conference we mentioned earlier, one of the things that came up in discussion is how some of our campus offices are named, which ties into that communication issue. We have a “Registrar’s” office, and we have a “Bursar,” those are not things that make sense to people, unless they’ve already had some experience with college and maybe simply renaming offices in ways that make sense to students and their role in the university could help a little bit [LAUGHTER] with some of those issues.

Kevin: Absolutely. And, you know, we should be able to answer the question, why would a student need to go to this place? Is the answer to that self evident? If I’m a student, why would I want to go to the registrar’s office? If I don’t know the answer to that right off the bat, that’s an institutional problem. So again, whether it’s the name of the office, or the way in which the services that they offer are communicated to students, there’s a lot of work that we can do as institutions to do this better. As you mentioned, John, some students are going to be familiar with those terms, who come from families where they’re not the first in their family to go to college, for example. So a lot of times the way our campus environments, in terms of the actual workflow of doing business, a lot of times the way that our campus environments are laid out rewards cultural capital, and, as a result, exacerbates the already existing inequities that we see.

Rebecca: I think one thing that students often complain about too, is the sheer quantity of communication, and trying to sort through it all, and when they’re already overwhelmed. And you mentioned before about having to make choices of where to prioritize time and effort and energy and emotional labor. And so sometimes it’s not on email, I sometimes feel that way as well.

Kevin: Yeah, I was about to say… absolutely.

Rebecca: So not only the quantity of what goes out, but also maybe more than one way to get that information.

Kevin: The institution that I’m at now, before I take my new position, has moved some of that communication into text messaging that students can opt in, and I think if students are able to opt in or something like that, that’s great. But I think, to your larger point, so many times individual units are communicating with students without any awareness of what other units are doing, too, which leads to all of us getting carpet bombed by emails. And so one way out of that, again, if you’re thinking about doing this sort of communication audit is compare your results. How many times a week are you communicating with students? And in what ways are you doing that? And might there be ways that you could partner up or collaborate across the unit, so you’re not redundant. And I think sometimes what we might find in institutions is that we’re actually communicating to students at cross purposes with one another, or at least tacitly undermining some of the messages that we might be sending to them. But yeah, when we complain that students don’t ever check their email, like I have a Google account where I sign up for something, or I join a fantasy football league, I use that address, because that’s where all the spam goes. And if I open that inbox, I just look at all the stuff that’s there, and I’m like, “Nope, I’m not even going to deal with that.” So if that’s our student’s university email inbox, with all the stuff that they’re just getting bombarded with from various campus units, I imagine that largely the same thought process is occurring there. And that maybe we shouldn’t be surprised that they’re not checking their email, because we’ve made it much more complex and less, I don’t want to say fun, but a much more onerous process for students to wade through that stuff. And again, this may sound like a simple how big of a deal is email really, right. But it’s like the accumulation of all of these things. And I think that we, as faculty and staff felt this over COVID to, like I can’t do one more email right now, in the objective scheme of things. A 30-second reply to an email is not that big of a deal, but I’m looking at it like I gotta roll this boulder all the way up the mountain and I’m not going to do that. So being attentive to that and being mindful about that, even seemingly esoteric point, I think can make a significant difference.

John:
We talked a little bit about some of the lessons that we’ve learned and things that we might want to take forward. Are there some things that we learned early in the pandemic, that we might be in danger of forgetting as we move forward into what seems like a return to something resembling, I hate to use the word normalcy, but as we move back to more on-site instruction.

Kevin: I think we’re in danger of losing a number of insights that are really hard won insights that we should not lose, that I think it would be a disaster, in fact, if we’d lost. So one of them, I think, is the discovery very shortly into this sort of shift and the pandemic pedagogy, that flexibility and compassion are much more effective than they have perhaps been given credit for across most quarters of higher ed. And again, that’s not to say that from here on forward, we all sit around in a circle and sing Kumbaya, but rather the idea that you can ask students to do really hard things, you could do what people would call rigorous education, but you can’t do it in a space where students feel that the adverse consequences of taking a risk and not succeeding outweigh the benefits of taking a risk and succeeding. I don’t know if that was the most coherent way… but the risk-reward analysis… if students are in a learning space that they see as rigid, as inflexible, as one that is not compassionate, where’s the motivation to do the really hard stuff, the risk taking that we know underlays successful learning in higher education. And so I worry that there’s this rush to “get back to normal,” back when deadlines were deadlines, and not all this mushy crap. If we just rushed to reimpose all that structure, without attention to the shortcomings of those structures, without sufficient attention to were those structures actually facilitating learning or acting as barriers to learning. I fear that we’ll lose that in the rush to sort of reimpose structure on what many folks have seen as a structure-less environment over the last couple of years. I think that it’s entirely possible the pendulum may swing too far back. I’m also deeply concerned that, on the administrative institutional strategy side, that we will lose sight and lose the urgency of the attentiveness to the humanity and well being of not just students, but faculty and staff, just because things might be getting “back to normal.” That next academic year, things will look at least superficially like they did before COVID, full classes, mostly in person and all that kind of stuff. It will be very easy to say that, “Oh, we made it past all of that and things are good now” …without reckoning with the fact that the faculty and staff are absolutely depleted by the last few years. And you can’t just all of a sudden return, “Oh, let’s do all sorts of new strategic things. And let’s do this. It’s business as usual.” I know university administrators are loath to say “this year, we’re not going to do anything new.” Because that sounds like a surrender. But what I would say is, this year use the year to refocus on sustainability and effective mission-driven work. And you can’t do that if you’re starting to pile all this other stuff on. And yes, it’s easy for me to say because I’m not a provost. And I’m not a president, but provosts and presidents right now who are not attentive to how little capacity the faculty and staff have right now are courting disaster for themselves and for their institution, and I think, ethically, are failing as leaders as well, and so I worry deeply. And in the United States, the way we wrestle with our history is often to pretend bad things never happen. And I feel like that’s in danger of happening here. Like, oh, COVID was awful. And man, pandemic pedagogy sucked, but we made it through. And now we’re just going to soldier on as if it never happened. We don’t want to think about this bad time that we had this negative messy thing. I’m not saying that we have to sit in the misery and despair of a global pandemic. But what I am saying is if we’re not remembering what that was like, and how that has changed people, then we are going to fail the people that we work with, or that work for us in our community. And to me, that’s a real threat right now. And I worry a lot about the sort of what I see is kind of a general refusal to recognize that faculty and staff capacity, which was already attenuated pre-COVID. Let’s not get that twisted. But where we are now is a real dangerous point, and becomes even more dangerous, because there’s this illusion of normalcy, that people are laying back over the situation that’s covering up some really dangerous faultlines right now. And I worry a lot about that. That, to me, I think, is probably the most urgent and dangerous lesson that we are are potentially forgetting.

Rebecca: Yeah. [LAUGHTER]

Kevin: My new position is going to ask me to do a lot of leadership development with my new faculty colleagues. And so I’m dipping back into a lot of the literature on institutional level leadership and governance. And it’s fascinating and interesting, and it’s a new set of problems to solve. But it also, really, I think, just sort of drove home to me again, just how much higher ed leadership sometimes is like capitalism in general, like, if you’re not growing, you’re dying. If we don’t have a 5% growth in the GDP, than our economy is dead. But can you keep growing like that? Is that sustainable? And what are the costs of that? And so this coming year, if institutions are saying, hey, let’s do this new strategic initiative, on top of everything else… like yes, I see how there’s a sort of culture of higher ed leadership that places a real premium on these things, and also a stigma of if you’re not innovating, you’re dying, or you’re withering on the vine, but Cate Denial and Clarissa Sorensen-Unruh, and I think there was one other co-author, wrote a really good piece in The Chronicle, and they call it for the great pause in higher education. That’s anathema, I think, to a lot of institutional leadership, but I think it’s obligatory this year. For example, if you’re in an institution where you’re already trying to recover from an enrollment dip over the last couple of years and your faculty’s burnt out, because you’ve been teaching HyFlex and remote teaching and faculty have been doing that for two years, and many of them have never done it before, so of course, the capacity to continue to do that is depleted even further. If you’re an institution that’s gone through all of those things, and is experiencing now the faculty and staff attrition that those things bring as well and then you decide”, oh, here’s a couple really big ticket strategic items that we’re gonna do for the upcoming academic year,” like, really, is that what you want to do right now, in this moment? Make a major shift to academic programs, or we’re not going to offer three- credit classes, we’re going to do four-credit classes now? Really, that’s what you want to do this coming year, in this moment, that’s a priority. And of course, that example is completely hypothetical, he chuckled. But that’s the sort of decision making process that really worries me, because I just can’t see it ending well, and I can’t see it doing anything but harm in a setting and among a community that cannot handle any more harm.

Rebecca: Yeah, I really appreciate that focus on sustainable work, sustainable systems, sustainable procedures, sustainable everything.

Kevin: Yeah, we’re not going to wellness app our way out of this.

Rebecca:I don’t think a wellness app is going to solve the fact that my daughter has been in 11 quarantines, and I’ve had to figure out how to manage all that. [LAUGHTER] I don’t think that’s gonna work.

Kevin: Mays Imad has written a lot about the collective trauma that we have all undergone as a result of COVID. And I think she’s spot on. And whether it was something that people felt directly or whether it’s the constant disruption, Rebecca, that you’ve been subjected to and your family has been subjected to, or even if it’s just the sort of I have seen all this other trauma unfold in my community, and in my friends, we’re all affected by that and to act as if that hasn’t been a thing, and to say, yes, we need to pay attention to self care this year, self care will be really important, and there are a lot of good wellness apps that you can download for your smartphone or tablet that will help you with this. Like, if that’s all you got, then what are you doing? if that’s what you tell your faculty and just sort of assume that they can pick up the rest from there. And you sit back and say, “Well, I’ve done my duty.” Oh, my gosh, no, not at all. But yet, that’s what’s happened in a lot of places. And that’s what worries me. There’s so much that’s tenuous right now, and so much feels unsettled and raw still. And there’s a sharp edge to so much of the exhaustion, that I worry about irrevocable consequences that come from trying to whistle past the graveyard about all this… which is super optimistic. I know, the guy who wrote a book on hope is talking about the impending collapse of higher education. But again, the things that we say we do in higher education, we’re critical thinkers, we’re sharp people, the capacity to reason our way through these problems. There’s so much capacity in our institutions and leaders of institutions who are not able to draw upon that collective capacity are failing their communities and their institutions. If any place is going to have the tools to work through some of these… Paul Hanstedt calls them the “wicked problems” that we face, right, if any institutions gotta have that, it’s got to be colleges and universities. Will we pick up the tool, though, is the question.

Rebecca: Yeah, the key is, is the collective, bringing the right people to the table and asking folks what they need? And what would help and figuring it out together

John:
…without additional meetings, because that could push some people pass the breaking point, I think.

Kevin: Well, we need to ask what labor are we asking folks to do? Because in order to get through the next year, and in order to redress the problems that we face, there’s some other stuff that’s going to have to go. And so a successful leader, whether it’s a department chair all the way up to a university president are going to be able to answer that question: What is it that we’re going to let go right now to give people the capacity to untie these really complex knots that we’re going to be working on this year,

John:
I’ve seen several podcasts recently, I’m trying to remember the name of the person who was interviewed. One was recently on Hidden Brain, but I’ve seen it on others as well, about the power of subtraction, that we always look at things to add a patch on to fix something which involves doing more and sometimes the most effective solution is to trim out some things or reduce some of the other things that we’re doing that perhaps don’t need to be done in the same way. There may be some ways of simplifying our work and perhaps cutting out some of the things that seem duplicative and focusing on the things that are really essential for the institution and also maybe in our classes, trimming out some of those extra things we keep adding in as we try new techniques. And often we add to the cognitive load facing our students making it sometimes perhaps a bit too challenging as we tried to modify things. We talked to Betsy Barre a while back about that as one of the challenges that a lot of students face during a pandemic, because faculty started learning about evidence-based teaching methods, focusing on retrieval practice lots of low stakes tests, and actually increasing student workloads quite a bit because we’re now requiring students to do the work that we always hoped they did or we always wished that they had done,

Rebecca: dreamed, dreamed… [LAUGHTER]

John:
…imagined they had done.

Kevin: Right.

John:
So yeah, I think that applies in many areas. It may apply in our own classes, it applies to administrators, and I think in our lives in general.

Kevin: Well, that’s another area where some of the scholarship we have about effective online teaching and learning helps us. And here I’m thinking of the work that’s been done on literacy load, how much text do we ask students to read in an online class as opposed to a face-to-face class? And of course, the answer is, if we’re not careful, a hell of a lot more. And of course, what are the effects of that, this increased literacy load? And so what is the broader equivalent of a literacy load? What’s the load that we’re putting on our students right now. again, we have tools that we can use to think about this in a critical way, to address this in a reflective and intentional way. But individually, or class by class isn’t going to cut it again, systemically. What can we subtract? It’s okay to not do all the things. I mean, we’re not doing all the things anyway, we’re just being honest about it. [LAUGHTER] This is what it comes down to.

Rebecca: Yeah, we have to think about our own cognitive load and cognitive lifts as well, not just the cognitive lift of students and the work that they’re doing. There’s work involved with implementing all kinds of things in our classes and stacking them on top of each other and [LAUGHTER] managing that too.

Kevin: Well, and I think that there’s something to that when we look at some of the things that have bedeviled us about student choices and strategies that may not have been effective for students. And this is beyond my expertise. And I don’t know if there’s been research done in it. But my own intuitive sense is, and I’ve experienced this, over the past two and a half years, I’ve been so immersed in the sorts of big ticket really complex things like “Hey, train all your faculty colleagues how to do HyFlex instruction, teach HyFlex courses yourself, do all these things,” that where I dropped the ball was like routine email. I had emails I would just forget to reply. I had a date-sensitive reply for a speaking engagement and I literally forgot to reply. And they were just like, “Well, sorry, we’re not going to bring you to campus anymore. We didn’t hear from you.” And I’m like, “Oh, my God, I totally ghosted this guy.” But I would see the email or occasionally remember, and then my mind was like, “Nope.” And so what happened, I think, was all of my cognitive bandwidth was taken up with so many of these things over here, and then like, basically tried to exist in everything that’s happening in our society, and what could not fit, what I literally had no ability to do, was put things on my Outlook calendar correctly, [LAUGHTER] and reply to routine emails. And I was horrible at it. And I still kind of am, to be honest. And those were not things that were true to that degree before COVID. And so I wonder when we look at students now like, “Why don’t they read the syllabus?” …maybe that’s where that bandwidth depletion is manifesting. I’m sure there’s research on this, I’m sure the psychologists can tell us a lot more than I am sort of incoherently jabbing out right now. But I wonder if going forward that we’re going to be seeing a lot of this, this sort of routine, mundane, seemingly small things, but that add up to a real cumulative weight that can really provide significant barriers in the way of student learning, or in the way of our own effectiveness as teachers and colleagues.

John:
I’ve seen a lot of that myself this year. And if it wasn’t for Google sending me a reminder saying you have not replied to this email from three days ago, or you have sent this and you have not yet received a reply from this person, do you want to send a reminder. If it weren’t for those reminders, I would have missed so much more than I actually did. And that was not generally an issue before the pandemic. And I think part of it is, you mentioned this transition to HyFlex or bichronous or the various modes that we’ve used to connect to students both in the classroom and remotely. It’s a lot more work in many ways doing this. Where do you see that as going? Do you think we will be doing as much of this sort of mixed mode instruction where some students are in person and some students are remote? Or do you think we’ll move back to something a little bit more traditional?

Kevin: That’s the million dollar question right now. And I think that’s something a lot of institutions are wrestling with. I think you have some institutions where you might have administrators who are saying, “Yeah, we’re gonna keep doing HyFlex in certain selected areas, because it’s worked really well. And you have some programs and some disciplines for which that’s an ideal sort of solution. And here, I’m thinking of advanced undergrad and graduate programs in particular. And then you have some places that are like, “Yeah, we’re gonna keep doing these things because students have told us they want to be flexible, but they don’t really know what that looks like and they haven’t communicated that effectively and their faculty is like, “Oh, my God, please don’t ask us to do this.” And I think a lot of institutions are kind of in that space, that there’s this sense that “okay, we’re going to be doing some of this going forward, but we don’t know what that looks like and we don’t know quite how that’s going to happen…” which is, of course, a really stressful place to be for everybody involved, and I think underscores the urgent need for collaboration and communication in ways that we haven’t often done well in institutions even prior to COVID. I think too, as I said in the talk that I gave up at Oswego a couple of weeks ago too, learning has always been hybrid. And I think coming to terms with what that really means, in combination with the expanded set of tools and skills that a lot of us picked up during the last two years, hybridity is going to mean something different going forward than it has up to this point. But that, in some ways, is a difference of scale as opposed to actual nature. I think we have a lot more preparation as instructors for that than we realize. But using that awareness and that preparation and those skills intentionally in an environment that helped us do that, is going to be what’s really important. I think it would be a mistake to say that “Oh, students loved all the convenience of online and hybrid. So we’re going to offer every one of our classes multimodal or HyFlex or if you’re traveling for any reason, just Zoom into class, and we’ll all of us will still use it. Like that’s a mistake. That gets into that territory, where if the only tool you have is a hammer, everything’s a nail. There’s no one size fits all solution. But I think one of the things that we did learn during COVID Is that we did a lot of what I call micro adaption. At my own institution, we were teaching HyFlex, but a lot of our instructors made all sorts of micro adaptions within that modality depending on the nature of their class, who the students were, what the contextual needs were. And I think that those are the things that offer really rich opportunities for us to learn from going forward. But again, what that requires is faculty voice, and not just our full-time faculty, all of our faculty, and in particular, our adjunct and part-time colleagues who are teaching the large-enrollment 100 level courses, who experienced the whole continuum of these things. It’s those voices that have to be at the table when we have these institutional conversations about what does hybridity look like for us, for our institution, for our community, for our faculty, for our students, and for our mission, because that answer is going to be different depending upon the place.

Rebecca: As we wrap up our conversation, I want to ask, what are you hopeful about, Kevin?

Kevin: I am hopeful that we actually are able to untie a lot of these knots. The collective capacity within higher education to solve seemingly intractable problems is there. What I’m hopeful is that we figure out and I say we, especially for those of us who have at least semi-administrative or leadership position, that we are able to figure out how to honor that capacity and to affirm the colleagues who have that capacity and enable them to do the work in ways that are sustainable and not self destructive, which again, is another one of those really complicated knots that it’s hard to untie. But I think the capacity, and the willingness, is there across our higher educational spaces. It’s a matter of doing it in ways, again, that are sustainable and collaborative. Those are things that higher ed has not always done really well. But we have a context now that requires it of us. And I am hopeful that places will rise to that challenge, because I’ve seen what faculty, what staff, and what students have done for the last two and a half years. And it is amazing and resourceful, even if it was messy and chaotic at the same time. And I think out of that comes a set of aptitudes and a greater understanding of the stakes involved to lead to, I think, meaningful solutions that will work and not just in the short term. So it may seem counterintuitive to be hopeful right now, but I actually find myself remarkably hopeful.

John:
As you note in your book, we got into this ultimately, because we are hopeful for the future. We always end with the question. What’s next? [LAUGHTER] …which is kind of what we’ve been talking about.

Kevin: Right.

John:
But what’s next for you?

Kevin: Well, for me personally, it’s moving a whole bunch of crap to Charlotte to start my new job. And I found a storage unit for all the books that seem to have accumulated in my faculty and my teaching center offices over the last 18 years I’ve been at Grandview. So yeah, figuring that out. But I’m at a point in my career where the educational development piece is most of what I do now. I still teach, but I always saw myself as a history professor who does some of this other stuff, too. And that’s shifting now. And so my professional identity and the way in which I’m spending my time and the tasks that I am working on and entrusted with are different than, certainly they were at the beginning of my career, but even in the ways that I sort of thought of myself as a faculty member and a member of an academic community. And so, for me, processing what that means and experiencing that in this new position and feeling what that looks like and trying to make sense of it in a way that resonates still with kind of who I think I am as a teacher, as a historian, as a scholar, as a person. That’s kind of where I am right now. It feels a little unsettling… that transitions, I guess, are never easy, but I find myself in this sort of transitory space that is both fascinating and a little bit frightening.

John:
As is true of so much we’ve experienced in the last few years. [LAUGHTER] We wish you luck there.

Kevin: Thank you.

John:
…and it sounds like a wonderful position.

Kevin: Well, I’m excited to start it and it is going to be a wonderful position and I’m thrilled to be a part of a community. The folks that I’ve met there have been wonderful to me so far, so it’s going to be great once I get this damn move done.

John:
…and Charlotte is a wonderful place to live

Rebecca: Well thank you so much for sharing your thoughts, Kevin. It’s nice to talk to you again.

Kevin: Well thanks for having me back on. It’s great to be with the both of you.

[MUSIC]

John:
If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast service. To continue the conversation, join us on our Tea for Teaching Facebook page.

Rebecca: You can find show notes, transcripts and other materials on teaforteaching.com. Music by Michael Gary Brewer.

[MUSIC]

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245. Higher Ed’s Next Chapter – tea for teaching

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During the past two years, faculty have experimented with new teaching modalities and new teaching techniques as we adapted to the COVID pandemic. In this episode, Kevin Gannon joins us to reflect on what we have learned during these experiences and what we are in danger of forgetting. Kevin is a hi…

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I've copied and pasted this old post from my Canvas Community blog in order to reference it here.
In my first posts in this series I gave an overview of my rejection of punitive "bad" grades and also my rejection of so-called "good" grades. In this post, I will provide an overview of my solution to these problems, where I give my students feedback about their work, but they do the grading.

I sometimes call this approach "all-feedback-no-grading" because, from my perspective, that is how it works: I give lots of feedback, but I never put a grade on anything. Students decide what grade they will get, not assignment by assignment but through their overall work in the class.

Again, this is just an overview, and I'll get more specific in later posts. Meanwhile, please feel free to ask questions, and that will help me know what to address in those future posts! I've been using this system for so long now (over 15 years) that it is totally familiar to me, and it's sometimes hard to gauge just what is self-explanatory and what actually needs explaining.

Microassignments

I use microassignments in my classes. I made up the term microassignment to convey the idea that there are no big, high-stakes assignments of any kind. Some of these little assignments take just 10 or 15 minutes to complete; others might take as much as an hour, but not more than an hour - unless, of course, the student gets excited and wants to spend more time; sometimes they do, especially when they are working on their class project.

I advise students to budget a total of 5-6 hours to spend on my class each week; how they schedule that time is totally up to them. Because the assignments are small, students can work on them in short snatches of time, or they can sit down and complete several assignments in a longer study session; it's all up to them. I love teaching online for just that reason: I am glad to take advantage of any time the students can find for this class.

Success is the sum of small efforts,

repeated day in and day out.

Gradebook Declarations

As students complete each microassignment, they record the completed assignment in the Gradebook using a "Gradebook Declaration," which is actually just a true-false quiz. The quiz contains a checklist of all the requirements for the assignment to be complete, which is more or less detailed depending on how complex the assignment is.

I include the checklist text in the assignment instructions, as you can see here: Week 1: Storybook Favorites

The Declaration checklists are also a good reminder to them about exactly what they need to have done for the assignment to be complete. Students answer "true" to indicate the assignment is complete and, presto, the points go into the Gradebook.

There is no partial credit; students get credit for completed assignments only. If they start an assignment, but do not have time to finish it, they can finish it the next week; everything rolls forward that way, so no work is lost.

The students do all this grade-work themselves. As they complete each and every assignment, they do a Gradebook Declaration. They find it a little strange at first, but they quickly get used to it. Admittedly, getting the students to slow down and read the Declaration sometimes takes a little work on my part at first; a few students start out treating the checklists as a kind of terms-of-service which they agree to without reading, but when I follow up with them about that, there are no further problems. Because every assignment leaves a digital trail at their blog or at their website, there is clear accountability. They know that; I know that. During the Orientation week, I watch all the blog posts carefully to make sure students understand how the system works.

Student Choice

There are many assignments students can choose to complete each week. Take a look here for a typical week:
Week 3: Myth-Folklore and Indian Epics.
(I have the same assignments in both classes; it's just the content that is different.)

As you can see there, each week has six "core" assignments which provide a week-long workflow: two reading assignments, a storytelling assignment based on the reading, blog commenting on other students' stories, a semester-long project, plus feedback on other students' projects. Most students complete most of the core assignments. Those assignments add up to a total of 30 points each week.

In addition there are eight "extra" assignments, and those add up to 20 points each week. Students can use those to make up any of the core assignments they missed. They can do extra assignments if they want to do more of something (more reading, more commenting, more technology, etc.). Students can also use the extra assignments as a way to accumulate points if they want/need to finish the class early. It's all good.

So, there are 50 possible points each week, but there is no expectation that students would do all that work. The idea is that they CHOOSE what assignments to do. They can focus on the core assignments and only on the core if they want, or they can mix in extra assignments. They can also work ahead if they want. It's all up to them.

Class Progress

As the points accumulate week by week, students can see if they are on target to reach their desired grade. Some of my students want/need to get an A. Some of them just need to pass the class with a C to graduate. Some of them can even take a D and have the class count for graduation; I always tell them to check with their advisor about that, though, because Ds do not always work for Gen. Ed. credit or for financial aid. Here's the chart they can use to track their progress: Progress Chart

My own goal is just that every student should pass the class. As far as I am concerned, this is a P/NP class. Whether a student wants to get an A or B or C makes literally no difference to me, and I do not know until I check the Gradebook at the end of the semester who is getting what grade; I only monitor the Gradebook for students who are in danger of not passing the class. More about my DIY data analytics here:
Microassignments and Data Analytics

Yes, It Works!

Yes, this is all kind of weird... but the students really like it. Here is every comment students have made about grading in my end-of-semester evaluations since we went digital back in 2010: Grading: What Students Say

I've been using this system, largely unchanged, since I started teaching online in 2002. The reason I haven't changed it much is exactly because of that student feedback: it works. Students like it. Students REALLY like it. And they like it for the reasons that are important to me: they feel in control of their grade, they are not stressed, it encourages them to be creative and learn a lot.

When I introduce this admittedly strange grading system to the students in their very first assignment for the semester, I include a link to those student comments. I can go on (and on and on) about the advantages of this system, but the most powerful words come from the students themselves! Here's how I introduce all this on the first day of class:
Designing Your Course

Thoughts from a Brand-New Student...

And since some of my students have started already for Spring 2019 (flexible schedule also means starting early if they want), I will share this screenshot of a blog post that popped up literally just a few minutes ago. I think this says it all; one of the Orientation Week assignments is for the students to let me know if this all makes sense and what they think. Here's what one of the students is thinking right now, at this moment. And it sounds good to me! This student understands not just how the course works but why it is set up this way, and I am excited to see what she will do with the reading and writing as she moves on to Week 2, and I'll see how that goes right there in her blog.

And maybe that should be the subject for my next post: how blogging and other visible student work is an important part of the shift from grading to feedback! More on that tomorrow. :-)

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I've copied and pasted this old post from my Canvas Community blog in order to reference it here. In my first posts in this series I gave an overview of my rejection of punitive "bad" grades and also my rejection of so-called "good" grades.

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Introduction

When you feel included and engaged, do you do a better job? Do you think teams in which people work well together produce much better results? Have you noticed the best ideas often come from unexpected sources? Do you want to work at the top of your intelligence and give the same opportunity to others?

If YES, we have found this is the kind of organization and community that people want to be part of. AND, Liberating Structures help make it happen.

So why is it that so many organizations of all stripes are filled with disengaged workers, dysfunctional groups and wasted ideas?

While there will always be some justification for blaming leaders (or professors and administrators in education), the more compelling and useful explanation is not that people involved are bad, stupid or incompetent, but rather that the practices they have all learned are neither adapted to today's realities nor designed to achieve the ideals listed above.

Unwittingly, the conventional structures used to organize how people routinely work together stifle inclusion and engagement.

Conventional structures are either too inhibiting (presentations, status reports and managed discussions) or too loose and disorganized (open discussions and brainstorms) to creatively engage people in shaping their own future. They frequently generate feelings of frustration and/or exclusion and fail to provide space for good ideas to emerge and germinate. This means that huge amounts of time and money are spent working the wrong way. More time and money are then spent trying to fix the unintended consequences.

Liberating Structures start with something so simple and essential as not to seem worth doing and end with something so powerful and profound that it hardly seems possible.

This website offers an alternative way to approach and design how people work together. It provides a menu of thirty-three Liberating Structures to replace or complement conventional practices.

Liberating Structures used routinely make it possible to build the kind of organization that everybody wants. They are designed to include everyone in shaping next steps.

Liberating Structures introduce tiny shifts in the way we meet, plan, decide and relate to one another. They put the innovative power once reserved for experts only in hands of everyone.

This alternative approach is both practical and feasible because Liberating Structures are quite simple and easy to learn. They can be used by everyone at every level, from the executive suite to the grassroots. No lengthy training courses or special talents are required. Mastery is simply a matter of practice. LS routinely unleash a vast reserve of contributions and latent innovations waiting to be discovered.

Every person interested in leading change-in schools, hospitals, foundations, agencies, and businesses-can use Liberating Structures to generate innovation and great results.

Liberating Structures are easy-to-learn microstructures that enhance relational coordination and trust. They quickly foster lively participation in groups of any size, making it possible to truly include and unleash everyone. Liberating Structures are a disruptive innovation that can replace more controlling or constraining approaches.

Click on any Liberating Structure below.

Leaders know that they would greatly increase productivity and innovation if only they could get everyone fully engaged. The challenge is how. Liberating Structures are novel, practical and no-nonsense methods to help you accomplish this goal with groups of any size.

Liberating Structures spark inventiveness by minimally structuring the way we interact while liberating content or subject matter. Very simple constraints unleash creative adaptability, generating better than expected results. Individual brilliance and collective wisdom are unbridled. Such a dramatic shift cannot be THAT simple, engaging, and powerful but it is. Read Getting Started if you are ready to liberate yourself.

By design, Liberating Structures distribute control so that participants can shape direction themselves as the action unfolds.

Learning Events

Immersion workshops are a great way to get started. Like a foreign language immersion course that temporarily relocates you away from a familiar culture, a LS immersion experience is a very effective way to learn. There are no presentations, facilitated discussions, status reports, brainstorming sessions, or open discussions. Only Liberating Strucutres arepracticed. Organizing a workshop for people in your working group can accelerate "fluency."

Check out News and Events for more immersion workshops and LS User Group meetings. Subscribe to LS News & get access to archives here.

Liberating Structures are immeasurably practical. Our world is increasingly complex, interdependent, and culturally diverse. Many of our most pressing challenges cut across geographic, cultural, and technical boundaries. Simple methods that help us work together productively are central to making progress.

Helpful Analogies
Like Wikipedia, LS create simple rules to guide and liberate everyone's contributions. Wikipedia's must-dos and must-not dos specify how anyone can write articles, edit content, reach consensus about the facts, and share with attribution. This structure makes it possible for a diverse community to generate and sustain accurate content that compares favorably with professionally edited encyclopedias. Like Wikipedia, LS is a disruptive innovation in regard to how we engage people in organizations.

Like improv jazz, LS sparks freedom that arises from shared understanding of simple rules. Great jazz comes from playing creatively within the context of melodic and harmonic structure. Like water in a river, LS takes the shape of the banks that it touches: adapting a similar pattern at every scale and in each local setting.

Below: watch this inspired video by Professor Arvind Singhal talking about liberating education and the role of changemakers. UnScripTED: Liberating Structures

Read this practical article "Tiny Tweaks That Help You Use LS" by Barry Overeem.

Simple Ways to Engage Everyone on Zoom: Learn Several Liberating Structures in 30 minutes from Media Changemakers on Vimeo.
Unscripted #2 Liberating Structures with Dr. Arvind Singhal from Media Changemakers on Vimeo.
Lisa Gill is a fabulous writer and top drawer interviewer. Her Leadersmorphosis series dives deeply into self organizing @ work. Put your ear to this interivew she conducts with Henri and Keith.

Below, enjoy scenes from the LCJP Restorative Justice Summit. Liberating Structures were used to organize a three day event full of learning, designed to advance the Restorative Justice movement. Restorative Justice (RJ) aims to create communities in which people feel safe by carefully structuring opportunities for offenders to make amends and victims to regain their personal power. Restorative Justice practitioners found Liberating Structures to be highly structured, liberating better than expected results.

2012 CO RJ Summit Video from LCJP on Vimeo.

LS were used to design the Transformation of Nursing summit. Coalitions from all 50 states and DC came together to advance the cause.

For the United Nations ITC-ILO, Henri and Keith offered a Liberating Structures immersion workshop and follow-up consulting sessions. (The Centre is in Turin Italy.) The focus was how to organize for promoting decent work and sustainable development by not over-helping but rather facilitating networked self-organization.

Ten Principles

While the individual LS microstructures are powerful separately, they function as an interrelated set which can transform an entire organization. The LS repertoire is inspired by ten liberating principles.

When we decide we belong together, LS principles help to guide behavior and leadership actions. Detailed descriptions here.

The Surprising Power of Liberating Structures book! Preview and buy on Amazon. The color paperback ($49.95 USD), black&white ($19.95 USD) and e-book are now available on the Amazon website. Amazon offers deep discounts and free shipping to some customers.

The development team at Holisticon is happy to announce that the Liberating Structures App is now available in the Google Play and Apple App Stores. A deep bow to their creative genius. Happy downloading!

Audio: A very playful Brave New Work podcast with Aaron Dignan and Rodney Evans. On Liberating Structures with Lorenz Sell of Sutra and Keith. Lorenz asks the deepest questions about collective intelligence, generativity, and complexity science. (50 minutes) Coaching Zone Podcast with Keith and Dr. Krister Lowe. The focus is on how leaders and teams can develop more productive habits with LS. [45 minutes] Radio Interview with Meisha Rouser, organizational psychologist. The focus is on groups working at the top of their intelligence and imagination. And a third podcast interview with Amiel Handelsman that dips into specific LS microstructures and their use by groups to generate innovative cultures. [60 minutes].

Check out Falling Off the Horse while faciliating & leading with Liberating Structures. This article by Keith McCandless describes a personal path forward. It includes what is possible to stop doing when LS is integrated into your practice.

LS are inspired by complexity science. Listen to this entertaining RadioLab program on Emergence to learn about some of the underlying concept of complexity science.

LS User Groups (inventing and enlivening a new way to organize) Open Letter from a Grateful Student to All Educators
Rhapsody for Strings!

Below: early LS users and co-developers in Latin America, Europe, Canada and the USA.

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https://www.jessicazeller.net/blog/ungrading-and-pedagogic-ontology-a-love-letter

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I've been thinking a lot lately about how our teacherly being-our pedagogic ontology-shifts when we ungrade. I've been thinking about this particularly as it pertains to Ballet Pedagogy in Higher Ed, but it's relevant to any subject matter or any teaching-and-learning environment where Ungrading by any name is happening.

I've also been thinking about the ways Ungrading is informed in my pedagogy by the writings of bell hooks and Thich Nhat Hanh , who both wrote significantly on Love before their recent transitions. As I tweeted just a few days ago, "#Ungrading is part of a love ethic ." For me, Ungrading touches both Nhat Hanh's "Understanding is love's other name," and hooks' "There can be no love without justice."

If Ungrading, Understanding, and Justice were the three circles of a Venn diagram, Love would be at the center.

As most who've been working with ungraded paradigms are already aware, Ungrading enables pedagogic expansion wherever and however it's implemented. What we know is that when we diminish or eliminate the emphasis on grades, everything else in teaching and learning feels just a bit more human-centered, and Understanding, Justice, and Love become more easily accessible.

I've been reflecting in this light on some of the ways my pedagogic ontology has changed as a result of my work to go further with ungraded practices over the last several years. How am I different now than I was before?

I've stopped tracking students' progress so I can be more present in the moment.

I follow tangents as they emerge. "Covering" predetermined content-to-be-graded becomes less necessary (and less interesting) than following the trajectories we generate together.

I wonder aloud as a curious participant in the experience. Because students are in control of their ultimate outcomes, I ask questions in earnest without fearing that they'll lose respect for me if I don't have all the answers.

I'm more honest in my feedback to students because I'm not filtering it to only align with or support a grade. I offer more complexity.

I focus on bringing relevance and meaning to the work, rather than on how I'm going to assess it. I rely on students as partners in this process.

I'm more philosophically consistent in my pedagogy (and my rationale for working as an educator) because I'm actively trying to subvert a system that reinforces existing inequities and harms students' wellbeing.

I'm flexible and make changes more easily in response to anything within or beyond our control that might affect our work (There's a pandemic on? You don't say...). I make time when we need more.

I aim to prioritize humanity over (and through) policy. I try my best to demonstrate compassion to students (and myself) without hesitating.

I ask students for help and advisement when I don't know how to proceed. We co-create the work.

I maintain integrity and consistency around who I am and who I present to the world. I avoid the uncomfortable "teacher persona" and other psychological strategies that are often used to manipulate students and validate institutional hegemony.

I acknowledge, as I reflect on the many reasons I appreciate Ungrading for shaping my work, that its implications differ for each of us depending on our identities, the students' identities, the subject matter of the course, and the degree to which we are able to push the boundaries of academic freedom without fear of institutional retribution. Biases of every kind necessarily affect how we implement Ungrading practices; the racism, sexism, heterosexism, gender inequity, ageism, and ableism that shape our lives also shape our pedagogic choices as we negotiate our vulnerabilities in the classroom. Postman and Weingartner keenly observe, "all you ever have to work with, as a teacher, are the perceptions of learners at a particular time" (97). The fluctuations in these perceptions, in tandem with the risks we take when we release the grade as our sole mechanism of control in the classroom, are why Ungrading is both exhilarating and terrifying. It feels safer to some than others because our contexts for it are as individual as we are.

In her wisdom, bell hooks tells us, "the practice of love offers no place of safety." Given all the trepidation around Ungrading, I find its challenges most worthwhile when I look at it as part of a love ethic-as part of a generous acknowledgment of humanity in an education sphere that is rapidly dissociating itself from anything human. A little more than a month before the second anniversary of "The Great Pivot," these reflections feel like a love letter in a too-often-loveless time.

Photo by Lucas George Wendt on Unsplash

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Ungrading and Pedagogic Ontology: A Love Letter - Jessica Zeller

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I've been thinking a lot lately about how our teacherly being-our pedagogic ontology-shifts when we ungrade. I've been thinking about this particularly as it pertains to Ballet Pedagogy in Higher Ed, but it's relevant to any subject matter or any teaching-and-learning environment where Ungrading by any name is happening.

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MethodSpace readers will recognize Dr. Sharon Ravitch, who served as a Mentor in Residence in March 2020 and has contributed significant posts, including ones on Flux Pedagogy. This post is the third in a series.

Hiba Barek, University of Western Ontario

Immaculate Namukasa, University of Western Ontario

Sharon M. Ravitch, University of Pennsylvania

Education is, in its very essence, an act of care (Acevedo, 2020; Barek, 2020; Gay, 2018; Mortari, 2016; Noddings, 2003). The concept of care in education is not new (Acevedo, 2020). Ancient philosophers (e.g., Socrates, Plato, Aristotle) and contemporary scholars (e.g., Gilligan, Gay, Noddings) aver that education is meant to positively impact students' lives which implies caring for the wellbeing of others (Mortari, 2016). Plato frames education as a moral endeavor in which educators exhibit deep care for student wellbeing with the fundamental role of supporting students to actualize their potential. The critical pedagogies of Paulo Freire, John Dewey, and other seminal scholars reveal "an underlying ethic of care" though their pedagogies are not framed explicitly as care pedagogies (Monchinski, 2010). The concept of care as an educative ethic was articulated only in the second half of the 20 th century by Nel Noddings (1984).

Care is enacted across educational institutions in a diverse range of ways, illuminating that understandings of what supports students and their learning differ widely between communities and cultures in ways deeply affected by sociopolitical forces. Economic and political rivalries born of capitalism have created a competitive, transactional culture that teaches us to strive for maximum efficiency and not "waste time" on the relational, fostering a schooling culture of hyper-individualism. It is vital to reinterpret education and recalibrate schooling through humanizing perspectives of care (Gay, 2018; Montari, 2016; Noddings, 1992), especially in times of precarity such as now. During the COVID-19 pandemic, efforts to re-humanize education are being re- centered in education. For example, in the professional development of instructors at our universities, conversations about innovating teaching at the start of the pandemic have evolved into a focus on care in classrooms and pedagogical encounters. This has led to care pedagogies such as Trauma-Informed and Healing-Centered Pedagogy (Ginwright, 2018), Culturally Responsive Teaching (Gay, 2018), and Flux Pedagogy (Ravitch, 2020a).

In this collaborative piece written across two countries in pandemic, we introduce the concepts of pedagogy of care and the ethics of care (Noddings, 1984, 2003) that underlie care pedagogies. We highlight the primacy of action in pedagogies of care, and describe pedagogies of care in higher education during the COVID-19 pandemic as a way to reimagine and build forward.
What is a Pedagogy of Care?
A pedagogy of care is a pedagogical perspective, an approach to teaching based on an ethic of care as both a moral imperative and pedagogical necessity (Gay, 2018). Ethics of care theory offers constructs for understanding the nature of teacher-student relationships (Barek, 2020; Noddings, 1992). Noddings (1992, 2003) identifies reciprocity in caring relationships in educational settings as the ultimate condition for learning and positive change. Scholars such as Noddings (2003), Freire (2005), Gay (2018) and hooks (1994) conceptualize teaching as an embodied practice of care. According to these scholars of pedagogy, care is not an easy, straightforward, unidimensional practice and, further, it necessitates action. A pedagogy of care emphasizes mutual respect and engenders authentic dialogue that attends to preconceived assumptions, enacts compassion, affirmation, and investment in transformative action (Noddings, 1984) and reciprocal transformation (Nakkula & Ravitch, 1998). Pedagogies of radical compassion and self-care such as Flux Pedagogy (Ravitch, 2020a; 2021) align with pedagogies of care and extend them into this moment of trauma-personal, familial, communal, intergenerational. Ethics of care and radical self-care frameworks are complementary and interdependent; together they create the conditions to foreground care in teaching, learning, and leading from pre-school through graduate school.
Ethics of Care in Education
Ethics of care theory is a framework for developing caring teacher-student relationships that support student achievement and wellbeing (Barek, 2020). Building on the work of Carol Gilligan (1982), a care theory pioneer in psychology, Noddings (1984) applies the construct of care to education. In schools, an ethic of care emphasizes reciprocal relationships between teachers and students based on mutual respect, authentic dialogue, and investment in knowledge for action (Barek, 2020; Noddings, 1984) with a shift from a focus on educators to foregrounding students (Noddings, 1984, 2003). Teachers who enact an ethic of care: 1) sustain care for student welfare, 2) work closely with and actively support students, 3) are responsive to students' social and emotional needs, 4) design and enact student-centered curriculum and assessment.

Noddings (2003) and Gay (2018) distinguish between caring for (authentic caring) and caring about (aesthetic caring). According to Noddings (1984), caring about or aesthetic caring is: 1) characterized by some distance; 2) directed to the public realm; and 3) characterized by empathy as foundational to people's sense of justice and an ethic of care. Caring for or authentic caring combines empathy with purposeful action that responds to the needs of the cared-for (Barek, 2020; Noddings, 1984, 2003). Table 1 offers a snapshot of Noddings' (1992) four approaches to enacting care in educational settings: modeling, dialogue, practice, and confirmation.
Ethics of Care: Four Educational Modes

Modeling

Exemplifies care for students

Dialogue

Establishes dialogue attentive to assumptions and based on listening, genuine respect, and critical thinking

Practice

Enacts mutual authentic care in interactions with students, students and teachers

Confirmation

Encourages and celebrates students' strengths, helps students to construct agentic identities

Source:Adapted from Noddings (1992)
Ethics of Care and Radical Self-Care Frameworks
Ravitch (2020a, 2021) identifies radical compassion and radical self-care as necessary for ethical educational leadership and pedagogy. Ravitch foregrounds the urgent need for educators to combine an ethic of care and radical self-care in times of precarity such as now. This is timely and generative since critiques of Noddings' ethic of care include that it ascribes little importance to educator self-care except as a means to support learners (e.g., Engster, 2004; Tilleczek, 2014). Moreover, the notion of self-care itself has been mis/equated with selfishness. This is problematic since self-care is vital to personal wellbeing and professional excellence and sustainability.

Ravitch (2020a) avers that educators must centralize radical compassion and radical self-care to improve mental health and wellbeing, which includes examining and re-conceptualizing beliefs and biases relating to social identities and power. This creates the condition for educators to foment and support positive change-through intentional self-reflection, collaboration, and equitable communication that attends to power, identity, agency, and equity. Ravitch (2021) frames educator self-care as vital to educational justice and humanization rather than as selfishness. Similarly, Tilleczek (2014) states that "far from being self-interested at the expense of others, the care of the self is bound to the care of others, and to criticize it in opposition to selflessness is to misunderstand the deeply relational nature of the Socratic ethics of care" (p. 1).

In line with Ravitch (2021) and Tilleczek (2014), Nicol and Yee (2017) assert that self-care comprises a form of political resistance:

Our scholarship, teaching, and activism are part of a larger collective struggle for social justice for those who are marginalized, silenced, and disempowered. We know that we cannot sustain ourselves if we are physically exhausted, emotionally drained, and spiritually dead. Therefore, when embarking on our careers...we made commitments to each other to resist sacrificing our health and fulfillment as holistic beings and to "not let this job kill us. (p. 135)

Combining ethics of care (Noddings, 1992) and radical compassion and self-care frameworks (Ravitch, 2020a) addresses the need for teacher and leader self-care and centralizes learners from a standpoint that seeks to foster care as a building block to educational and social transformation.

Care, compassion, and empathy are sometimes used interchangeably, yet care for students involves active intervention in educational settings. Recently, critics of empathy (e.g., Bloom, 2017; Prinz, 2011) argue that empathy is susceptible to "morally troubling biases and motivational shortcomings" (Read, 2021, p. 460). We understand this thinking as an artifact of White Western rationality, built on binaries and reductive concepts of both empathy and education. Noddings (2003) and Gay (2018) identify action as necessary for cultivating ethical care in schools. Ravitch (2021) illuminates how radical compassion and radical self-care can actionize intersectional theory to drive educational transformation for equity.
Pedagogies of Care in Higher Education
Care in higher education teaching and learning has received little attention (Walker & Gleaves, 2016). Anderson et al. (2020) aver that "care is arguably implicit in much published literature on effective teaching in higher education" (p. 3) and point to a recent increase in scholarly interest in care. White (2017) compares Western and non-Western perspectives on compassion and care in education, concluding that while the latter is positive, Western perspective is negative, seeing it as detracting from academics. The recent emergence of care in higher education discourse can be understood as a recovery of compassion in teacher-student relationships and its contribution to positive educational experiences and learning outcomes (Robinson, 2018).

In Canada and the United States, university students are increasingly racially, ethnically, culturally, socially, economically, and linguistically diverse. Pedagogies of care are of particular importance in higher education given that institutional and structural oppression work in diffusion effect for traditionally marginalized students (Ravitch, 2020a). There is urgent need for transformative pedagogies (Lopez & Olan, 2018) enacted by agentic and racially literate instructors (Priestley, Biesta, & Robinson, 2015; Ravitch, 2021) who are responsive to learners, create caring relationships that promote learner wellbeing, and are compassionately responsive to instructional and learning challenges imposed by the pandemic (and then beyond). Through efforts at reciprocal transformation, educators concurrently humanize ourselves and our students.

In response to educational disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, humanizing pedagogies (Ravitch, 2020a), specifically care pedagogies, have been centralized in higher education.We have collectively reimagined learning spaces during these precarious times. The pandemic has taught us that the consequences of global crises disproportionately affect historically marginalized students. Focus on teacher-student relationships has intensified since face-to-face interactions previously taken for granted are interrupted in order to alleviate pandemic impact on learners. Emergent frameworks include pedagogies of care (Noddings, 1992), Flux Pedagogy (Ravitch, 2020a), Trauma-Informed Healing-Centered Pedagogy (Ginwright, 2018; Ravitch, 2020b), and Culturally Responsive Teaching (Gay, 2018).
Flux Pedagogy
Flux Pedagogy (Ravitch, 2020a) foregrounds responsiveness to students' holistic needs. This framework supports educators in learning to design and enact humanizing and transformative pedagogy responsive to emergent needs. Flux Pedagogy refers to the integration of relational and critical pedagogy frameworks into a transformative teaching approach in times of radical flux. It is constructivist, student-centered, relational, and reflexive; a humanizing pedagogy that examines the goals and processes of education with a goal of mutual growth and transformation; and, a framework for "balancing radical compassion for students...with high-yet-humanely-calibrated expectations for learning" (Ravitch, 2020a, p. 1). The key dimensions of Flux Pedagogy are: Inquiry Stance; Trauma-Informed Healing-CenteredPedagogy; Radical Compassion and Radical Self Care; Responsive and Humanizing Pedagogy; Critical Pedagogy; Racial Literacy; and Brave Space Pedagogy.
Trauma-Informed Healing-Centered Pedagogy
A central dimension of Flux Pedagogy is trauma-informed pedagogy, which requires knowledge of trauma and a commitment to informed action (Stephens, 2020) including understanding how trauma-including identity-based trauma- impacts student development, behavior, relationships, presentation of self, learning, and academic achievement. Ravitch (2020b) introduces trauma-informed healing-centered pedagogy based on Dr. Shawn Ginwright's (2018) healing-centered engagement framework, which critiques traditional trauma-informed pedagogy as disaffirming to students of color, offering in its place a culturally responsive, assets-based approach to trauma. Pak and Ravitch (2021) assert that trauma-informed pedagogy,

Foregrounds understanding trauma - personal, communal, and generational - and its social and emotional reverberations, cultivating a learning environment comfortable to those who've experienced trauma, and recognizing the resilience and resources of individuals and communities who have experienced or are experiencing trauma (p. 18).

Core values that guide a trauma-informed pedagogy include "safety, trustworthiness, choice, collaboration, and empowerment" (Fallot & Harris, 2009, p. 3). Like Ravitch (2020b), Stephens (2020) links trauma-informed pedagogy and care, explaining that a trauma-informed approach necessitates a shift from confrontation to care in higher education. Importantly, educators' mis/understandings of trauma impact their "pedagogical effectiveness and ability to nurture the best learning in their students" (Stephens, 2020, p. 1).
Culturally Responsive Teaching
During the pandemic, equity issues such as access to technology and tutoring support came to the forefront of education. Smith (2020) suggests that Culturally Responsive Teachingpedagogies (Gay, 2018; Ladson-Billings, 1995) counter inequity and support the resilience and resources of individuals and communities disproportionally affected by structural oppression (Ravitch, 2020a). Gay (2018) contends that caring teachers "expect (highly), relate (genuinely), and facilitate (relentlessly)" (p. 57). Gay (2018) introduces the concept of Culturally Responsive Caring as fundamental to an education system focused on caring for student wellbeing. Caring about relates to attitude, while caring for relates to practice and action. These are interrelated. Gay (2018), states "while caring about conveys feelings of concern for one's state of being, caring for is active engagement in doing something to positively affect it. Thus, it encompasses a combination of concern, compassion, commitment, responsibility, and action" (p. 58).

Educators need to be culturally responsive and thus, teacher education and faculty professional development must teach how this is enacted in classrooms from pre-school through graduate school. Otherwise, students, teachers, and faculty from historically marginalized groups will continue to feel unwelcomed, underrepresented, alienated, and overburdened when responding to their own and their students' marginalization. Teacher education and faculty professional development must improve practice and pedagogy; challenge assumptions; and become pedagogically responsive to deeply segmented institutional oppression based on structural racism and the relentless microaggressions it nurtures in higher education spaces.
Concluding Inquiry: What does COVID-19 make possible for care in education?
The COVID-19 pandemic and the educational disturbances it engenders have opened our eyes to the harmfulness of unjust traditional pedagogical practices and the possibilities for ethical and equitable schooling; they remind us what matters most: relationships, care, and compassion. As a result, care for others--particularly students--and care for self, as dimensions of humanizing pedagogy, are currently foregrounded in educational discourse. This emergent understanding must be actionized and internalized, not forgotten, as we return to routines.
References
Acevedo, B. (2020). Pedagogy of Care in Times of Crisis - ARU.

Anderson, V., Rabello, R., Wass, R., Golding, C., Rangi, A., Eteuati, E., Bristowe, Z., Waller, A. (2020). Good teaching as care in higher education. Higher Education, 79(1), 1-19.

Barek, H. (2020). Exploring the experiences of high school Syrian refugee students with interrupted formal education and their teachers in ELD classrooms. Electronic Thesis & Dissertation Repository. 7532.

Bloom, P. (2017) Against empathy: The case for rational compassion. Random House.

Engster, D. (2004). Care ethics and natural law theory: Toward an institutional political theory of caring. The Journal of Politics, 66(1), 113-135.

Fallot, R. D., & Harris, M. (2009). Creating Cultures of Trauma-Informed Care (CCTIC): A self-assessment and planning protocol.

Freire, P. (2005). Teachers as cultural workers: Letters to those who dare teach. Westview.

Gay, G. (2018). Culturally Responsive Teaching: Theory, research, and practice (3 rd Ed.). Teachers College Press.

Gilligan, C. (1982). In a different voice: Psychological theory and women's development. Harvard University Press.

Ginwright, S. (2018). The future of healing: Shifting from Trauma-Informed Care to Healing-Centered Engagement. Medium.

hooks, b. (1994). Teaching to transgress: Education as the practice of freedom. Routledge.

Ladson-Billings, G. (1995). Toward a Theory of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy. American Educational Research Journal, 32(3), 465-491.

Lopez, A. E., & Olan, E. L. (2018). Transformative pedagogies for teacher education: Moving towards critical praxis in an era of change. Information Age Publishing.

Monchinski, T. (2010). Critical pedagogies and an Ethic of Care. Counterpoints, 382, 85-135.

Mortari, L. (2016). For a Pedagogy of Care. Philosophy Study, 6(8), 455-463.

Nakkula, M. J. & Ravitch, S. M. (1998). Matters of interpretation: Reciprocal transformation in therapeutic and developmental relationships with youth. Jossey-Bass.

Nicol, D. J., & Yee, J. A. (2017). "Reclaiming our time": Women of Color faculty and radical self-care in the Academy. Feminist Teacher, 27(2-3), 133-156.

Noddings, N. (1984). Caring: A feminine approach to ethics & moral education. University of California Press.

Noddings, N. (1992). The challenge to care in schools: An alternative approach to education Teachers College Press.

Noddings, N. (2003). Happiness and education. Cambridge University Press.

Pak, K. & Ravitch, S. M. (2021). Critical Leadership Praxis for educational and social change. Teachers College Press.

Priestley, M., Biesta, G., & Robinson, S. (2015). Teacher agency: What is it and why does it matter? In R. Kneyber & J. Evers (Ed.), Flip the system: Changing education form the bottom up (pp. 1-11). Routledge.

Prinz, J. (2011). Against empathy. The Southern Journal of Philosophy, 49(1), 214-233.

Ravitch, S. M. (2020a). Flux Pedagogy: Transforming teaching and leading during Coronavirus.

Perspectives on Urban Education, 17(4), 18-32.

Ravitch, S. M. (2020b). Moving to Healing-Centered Engagement: Reimagining Trauma-Informed Leadership. TraumaVenture.

Ravitch, S. M. (2021, February 16). Pedagogies of care in higher education. Conversations on pedagogies in teacher and higher education - Community of Practice (CoP).

Read, H. (2021). Empathy & common ground. Ethical theory & moral practice, 24(2), 459-473.

Robinson, S. (2018). The Pedagogy of Compassion at the heart of higher education. Journal of Global Responsibility; Bingley, 9(1), 130-134.

Smith, J. M. (2020). Practice what you preach: Culturally Responsive Pedagogy during COVID-19. Issues in Teacher Education, 29(1-2), 23-34.

Stephens, D. W. (2020). Trauma-Informed Pedagogy for the religious and theological higher education classroom. Religions, 11(9), 449.

Tilleczek, W. (2014). The connection of the care for self and other in Plato's Laches. Pseudo-Dionysius, 16(1).

Walker, C., & Gleaves, A. (2016). Constructing the caring higher education teacher: A theoretical framework. Teaching & Teacher Education, 54, 65-76.

White, R. (2017). Compassion in philosophy and education. In P. Gibbs (Ed.), The pedagogy of compassion at the heart of higher education (pp. 19-31). Springer.

Relevant MethodSpace Posts

MethodSpace readers will recognize Dr. Sharon Ravitch, who served as a Mentor in Residence in March 2020 and has contributed significant posts, including ones on Flux Pedagogy. This post is the third in a series.

Hiba Barek, University of Western Ontario

Immaculate Namukasa, University of Western Ontario

Sharon M. Ravitch, University of Pennsylvania

Education is, in its very essence, an act of care (Acevedo, 2020; Barek, 2020; Gay, 2018; Mortari, 2016; Noddings, 2003). The concept of care in education is not new (Acevedo, 2020). Ancient philosophers (e.g., Socrates, Plato, Aristotle) and contemporary scholars (e.g., Gilligan, Gay, Noddings) aver that education is meant to positively impact students' lives which implies caring for the wellbeing of others (Mortari, 2016). Plato frames education as a moral endeavor in which educators exhibit deep care for student wellbeing with the fundamental role of supporting students to actualize their potential. The critical pedagogies of Paulo Freire, John Dewey, and other seminal scholars reveal "an underlying ethic of care" though their pedagogies are not framed explicitly as care pedagogies (Monchinski, 2010). The concept of care as an educative ethic was articulated only in the second half of the 20 th century by Nel Noddings (1984).

Care is enacted across educational institutions in a diverse range of ways, illuminating that understandings of what supports students and their learning differ widely between communities and cultures in ways deeply affected by sociopolitical forces. Economic and political rivalries born of capitalism have created a competitive, transactional culture that teaches us to strive for maximum efficiency and not "waste time" on the relational, fostering a schooling culture of hyper-individualism. It is vital to reinterpret education and recalibrate schooling through humanizing perspectives of care (Gay, 2018; Montari, 2016; Noddings, 1992), especially in times of precarity such as now. During the COVID-19 pandemic, efforts to re-humanize education are being re- centered in education. For example, in the professional development of instructors at our universities, conversations about innovating teaching at the start of the pandemic have evolved into a focus on care in classrooms and pedagogical encounters. This has led to care pedagogies such as Trauma-Informed and Healing-Centered Pedagogy (Ginwright, 2018), Culturally Responsive Teaching (Gay, 2018), and Flux Pedagogy (Ravitch, 2020a).

In this collaborative piece written across two countries in pandemic, we introduce the concepts of pedagogy of care and the ethics of care (Noddings, 1984, 2003) that underlie care pedagogies. We highlight the primacy of action in pedagogies of care, and describe pedagogies of care in higher education during the COVID-19 pandemic as a way to reimagine and build forward.
What is a Pedagogy of Care?
A pedagogy of care is a pedagogical perspective, an approach to teaching based on an ethic of care as both a moral imperative and pedagogical necessity (Gay, 2018). Ethics of care theory offers constructs for understanding the nature of teacher-student relationships (Barek, 2020; Noddings, 1992). Noddings (1992, 2003) identifies reciprocity in caring relationships in educational settings as the ultimate condition for learning and positive change. Scholars such as Noddings (2003), Freire (2005), Gay (2018) and hooks (1994) conceptualize teaching as an embodied practice of care. According to these scholars of pedagogy, care is not an easy, straightforward, unidimensional practice and, further, it necessitates action. A pedagogy of care emphasizes mutual respect and engenders authentic dialogue that attends to preconceived assumptions, enacts compassion, affirmation, and investment in transformative action (Noddings, 1984) and reciprocal transformation (Nakkula & Ravitch, 1998). Pedagogies of radical compassion and self-care such as Flux Pedagogy (Ravitch, 2020a; 2021) align with pedagogies of care and extend them into this moment of trauma-personal, familial, communal, intergenerational. Ethics of care and radical self-care frameworks are complementary and interdependent; together they create the conditions to foreground care in teaching, learning, and leading from pre-school through graduate school.
Ethics of Care in Education
Ethics of care theory is a framework for developing caring teacher-student relationships that support student achievement and wellbeing (Barek, 2020). Building on the work of Carol Gilligan (1982), a care theory pioneer in psychology, Noddings (1984) applies the construct of care to education. In schools, an ethic of care emphasizes reciprocal relationships between teachers and students based on mutual respect, authentic dialogue, and investment in knowledge for action (Barek, 2020; Noddings, 1984) with a shift from a focus on educators to foregrounding students (Noddings, 1984, 2003). Teachers who enact an ethic of care: 1) sustain care for student welfare, 2) work closely with and actively support students, 3) are responsive to students' social and emotional needs, 4) design and enact student-centered curriculum and assessment.

Noddings (2003) and Gay (2018) distinguish between caring for (authentic caring) and caring about (aesthetic caring). According to Noddings (1984), caring about or aesthetic caring is: 1) characterized by some distance; 2) directed to the public realm; and 3) characterized by empathy as foundational to people's sense of justice and an ethic of care. Caring for or authentic caring combines empathy with purposeful action that responds to the needs of the cared-for (Barek, 2020; Noddings, 1984, 2003). Table 1 offers a snapshot of Noddings' (1992) four approaches to enacting care in educational settings: modeling, dialogue, practice, and confirmation.
Ethics of Care: Four Educational Modes

Modeling

Exemplifies care for students

Dialogue

Establishes dialogue attentive to assumptions and based on listening, genuine respect, and critical thinking

Practice

Enacts mutual authentic care in interactions with students, students and teachers

Confirmation

Encourages and celebrates students' strengths, helps students to construct agentic identities

Source:Adapted from Noddings (1992)
Ethics of Care and Radical Self-Care Frameworks
Ravitch (2020a, 2021) identifies radical compassion and radical self-care as necessary for ethical educational leadership and pedagogy. Ravitch foregrounds the urgent need for educators to combine an ethic of care and radical self-care in times of precarity such as now. This is timely and generative since critiques of Noddings' ethic of care include that it ascribes little importance to educator self-care except as a means to support learners (e.g., Engster, 2004; Tilleczek, 2014). Moreover, the notion of self-care itself has been mis/equated with selfishness. This is problematic since self-care is vital to personal wellbeing and professional excellence and sustainability.

Ravitch (2020a) avers that educators must centralize radical compassion and radical self-care to improve mental health and wellbeing, which includes examining and re-conceptualizing beliefs and biases relating to social identities and power. This creates the condition for educators to foment and support positive change-through intentional self-reflection, collaboration, and equitable communication that attends to power, identity, agency, and equity. Ravitch (2021) frames educator self-care as vital to educational justice and humanization rather than as selfishness. Similarly, Tilleczek (2014) states that "far from being self-interested at the expense of others, the care of the self is bound to the care of others, and to criticize it in opposition to selflessness is to misunderstand the deeply relational nature of the Socratic ethics of care" (p. 1).

In line with Ravitch (2021) and Tilleczek (2014), Nicol and Yee (2017) assert that self-care comprises a form of political resistance:

Our scholarship, teaching, and activism are part of a larger collective struggle for social justice for those who are marginalized, silenced, and disempowered. We know that we cannot sustain ourselves if we are physically exhausted, emotionally drained, and spiritually dead. Therefore, when embarking on our careers...we made commitments to each other to resist sacrificing our health and fulfillment as holistic beings and to "not let this job kill us. (p. 135)

Combining ethics of care (Noddings, 1992) and radical compassion and self-care frameworks (Ravitch, 2020a) addresses the need for teacher and leader self-care and centralizes learners from a standpoint that seeks to foster care as a building block to educational and social transformation.

Care, compassion, and empathy are sometimes used interchangeably, yet care for students involves active intervention in educational settings. Recently, critics of empathy (e.g., Bloom, 2017; Prinz, 2011) argue that empathy is susceptible to "morally troubling biases and motivational shortcomings" (Read, 2021, p. 460). We understand this thinking as an artifact of White Western rationality, built on binaries and reductive concepts of both empathy and education. Noddings (2003) and Gay (2018) identify action as necessary for cultivating ethical care in schools. Ravitch (2021) illuminates how radical compassion and radical self-care can actionize intersectional theory to drive educational transformation for equity.
Pedagogies of Care in Higher Education
Care in higher education teaching and learning has received little attention (Walker & Gleaves, 2016). Anderson et al. (2020) aver that "care is arguably implicit in much published literature on effective teaching in higher education" (p. 3) and point to a recent increase in scholarly interest in care. White (2017) compares Western and non-Western perspectives on compassion and care in education, concluding that while the latter is positive, Western perspective is negative, seeing it as detracting from academics. The recent emergence of care in higher education discourse can be understood as a recovery of compassion in teacher-student relationships and its contribution to positive educational experiences and learning outcomes (Robinson, 2018).

In Canada and the United States, university students are increasingly racially, ethnically, culturally, socially, economically, and linguistically diverse. Pedagogies of care are of particular importance in higher education given that institutional and structural oppression work in diffusion effect for traditionally marginalized students (Ravitch, 2020a). There is urgent need for transformative pedagogies (Lopez & Olan, 2018) enacted by agentic and racially literate instructors (Priestley, Biesta, & Robinson, 2015; Ravitch, 2021) who are responsive to learners, create caring relationships that promote learner wellbeing, and are compassionately responsive to instructional and learning challenges imposed by the pandemic (and then beyond). Through efforts at reciprocal transformation, educators concurrently humanize ourselves and our students.

In response to educational disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, humanizing pedagogies (Ravitch, 2020a), specifically care pedagogies, have been centralized in higher education.We have collectively reimagined learning spaces during these precarious times. The pandemic has taught us that the consequences of global crises disproportionately affect historically marginalized students. Focus on teacher-student relationships has intensified since face-to-face interactions previously taken for granted are interrupted in order to alleviate pandemic impact on learners. Emergent frameworks include pedagogies of care (Noddings, 1992), Flux Pedagogy (Ravitch, 2020a), Trauma-Informed Healing-Centered Pedagogy (Ginwright, 2018; Ravitch, 2020b), and Culturally Responsive Teaching (Gay, 2018).
Flux Pedagogy
Flux Pedagogy (Ravitch, 2020a) foregrounds responsiveness to students' holistic needs. This framework supports educators in learning to design and enact humanizing and transformative pedagogy responsive to emergent needs. Flux Pedagogy refers to the integration of relational and critical pedagogy frameworks into a transformative teaching approach in times of radical flux. It is constructivist, student-centered, relational, and reflexive; a humanizing pedagogy that examines the goals and processes of education with a goal of mutual growth and transformation; and, a framework for "balancing radical compassion for students...with high-yet-humanely-calibrated expectations for learning" (Ravitch, 2020a, p. 1). The key dimensions of Flux Pedagogy are: Inquiry Stance; Trauma-Informed Healing-CenteredPedagogy; Radical Compassion and Radical Self Care; Responsive and Humanizing Pedagogy; Critical Pedagogy; Racial Literacy; and Brave Space Pedagogy.
Trauma-Informed Healing-Centered Pedagogy
A central dimension of Flux Pedagogy is trauma-informed pedagogy, which requires knowledge of trauma and a commitment to informed action (Stephens, 2020) including understanding how trauma-including identity-based trauma- impacts student development, behavior, relationships, presentation of self, learning, and academic achievement. Ravitch (2020b) introduces trauma-informed healing-centered pedagogy based on Dr. Shawn Ginwright's (2018) healing-centered engagement framework, which critiques traditional trauma-informed pedagogy as disaffirming to students of color, offering in its place a culturally responsive, assets-based approach to trauma. Pak and Ravitch (2021) assert that trauma-informed pedagogy,

Foregrounds understanding trauma - personal, communal, and generational - and its social and emotional reverberations, cultivating a learning environment comfortable to those who've experienced trauma, and recognizing the resilience and resources of individuals and communities who have experienced or are experiencing trauma (p. 18).

Core values that guide a trauma-informed pedagogy include "safety, trustworthiness, choice, collaboration, and empowerment" (Fallot & Harris, 2009, p. 3). Like Ravitch (2020b), Stephens (2020) links trauma-informed pedagogy and care, explaining that a trauma-informed approach necessitates a shift from confrontation to care in higher education. Importantly, educators' mis/understandings of trauma impact their "pedagogical effectiveness and ability to nurture the best learning in their students" (Stephens, 2020, p. 1).
Culturally Responsive Teaching
During the pandemic, equity issues such as access to technology and tutoring support came to the forefront of education. Smith (2020) suggests that Culturally Responsive Teachingpedagogies (Gay, 2018; Ladson-Billings, 1995) counter inequity and support the resilience and resources of individuals and communities disproportionally affected by structural oppression (Ravitch, 2020a). Gay (2018) contends that caring teachers "expect (highly), relate (genuinely), and facilitate (relentlessly)" (p. 57). Gay (2018) introduces the concept of Culturally Responsive Caring as fundamental to an education system focused on caring for student wellbeing. Caring about relates to attitude, while caring for relates to practice and action. These are interrelated. Gay (2018), states "while caring about conveys feelings of concern for one's state of being, caring for is active engagement in doing something to positively affect it. Thus, it encompasses a combination of concern, compassion, commitment, responsibility, and action" (p. 58).

Educators need to be culturally responsive and thus, teacher education and faculty professional development must teach how this is enacted in classrooms from pre-school through graduate school. Otherwise, students, teachers, and faculty from historically marginalized groups will continue to feel unwelcomed, underrepresented, alienated, and overburdened when responding to their own and their students' marginalization. Teacher education and faculty professional development must improve practice and pedagogy; challenge assumptions; and become pedagogically responsive to deeply segmented institutional oppression based on structural racism and the relentless microaggressions it nurtures in higher education spaces.
Concluding Inquiry: What does COVID-19 make possible for care in education?
The COVID-19 pandemic and the educational disturbances it engenders have opened our eyes to the harmfulness of unjust traditional pedagogical practices and the possibilities for ethical and equitable schooling; they remind us what matters most: relationships, care, and compassion. As a result, care for others--particularly students--and care for self, as dimensions of humanizing pedagogy, are currently foregrounded in educational discourse. This emergent understanding must be actionized and internalized, not forgotten, as we return to routines.
References
Acevedo, B. (2020). Pedagogy of Care in Times of Crisis - ARU.

Anderson, V., Rabello, R., Wass, R., Golding, C., Rangi, A., Eteuati, E., Bristowe, Z., Waller, A. (2020). Good teaching as care in higher education. Higher Education, 79(1), 1-19.

Barek, H. (2020). Exploring the experiences of high school Syrian refugee students with interrupted formal education and their teachers in ELD classrooms. Electronic Thesis & Dissertation Repository. 7532.

Bloom, P. (2017) Against empathy: The case for rational compassion. Random House.

Engster, D. (2004). Care ethics and natural law theory: Toward an institutional political theory of caring. The Journal of Politics, 66(1), 113-135.

Fallot, R. D., & Harris, M. (2009). Creating Cultures of Trauma-Informed Care (CCTIC): A self-assessment and planning protocol.

Freire, P. (2005). Teachers as cultural workers: Letters to those who dare teach. Westview.

Gay, G. (2018). Culturally Responsive Teaching: Theory, research, and practice (3 rd Ed.). Teachers College Press.

Gilligan, C. (1982). In a different voice: Psychological theory and women's development. Harvard University Press.

Ginwright, S. (2018). The future of healing: Shifting from Trauma-Informed Care to Healing-Centered Engagement. Medium.

hooks, b. (1994). Teaching to transgress: Education as the practice of freedom. Routledge.

Ladson-Billings, G. (1995). Toward a Theory of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy. American Educational Research Journal, 32(3), 465-491.

Lopez, A. E., & Olan, E. L. (2018). Transformative pedagogies for teacher education: Moving towards critical praxis in an era of change. Information Age Publishing.

Monchinski, T. (2010). Critical pedagogies and an Ethic of Care. Counterpoints, 382, 85-135.

Mortari, L. (2016). For a Pedagogy of Care. Philosophy Study, 6(8), 455-463.

Nakkula, M. J. & Ravitch, S. M. (1998). Matters of interpretation: Reciprocal transformation in therapeutic and developmental relationships with youth. Jossey-Bass.

Nicol, D. J., & Yee, J. A. (2017). "Reclaiming our time": Women of Color faculty and radical self-care in the Academy. Feminist Teacher, 27(2-3), 133-156.

Noddings, N. (1984). Caring: A feminine approach to ethics & moral education. University of California Press.

Noddings, N. (1992). The challenge to care in schools: An alternative approach to education Teachers College Press.

Noddings, N. (2003). Happiness and education. Cambridge University Press.

Pak, K. & Ravitch, S. M. (2021). Critical Leadership Praxis for educational and social change. Teachers College Press.

Priestley, M., Biesta, G., & Robinson, S. (2015). Teacher agency: What is it and why does it matter? In R. Kneyber & J. Evers (Ed.), Flip the system: Changing education form the bottom up (pp. 1-11). Routledge.

Prinz, J. (2011). Against empathy. The Southern Journal of Philosophy, 49(1), 214-233.

Ravitch, S. M. (2020a). Flux Pedagogy: Transforming teaching and leading during Coronavirus.

Perspectives on Urban Education, 17(4), 18-32.

Ravitch, S. M. (2020b). Moving to Healing-Centered Engagement: Reimagining Trauma-Informed Leadership. TraumaVenture.

Ravitch, S. M. (2021, February 16). Pedagogies of care in higher education. Conversations on pedagogies in teacher and higher education - Community of Practice (CoP).

Read, H. (2021). Empathy & common ground. Ethical theory & moral practice, 24(2), 459-473.

Robinson, S. (2018). The Pedagogy of Compassion at the heart of higher education. Journal of Global Responsibility; Bingley, 9(1), 130-134.

Smith, J. M. (2020). Practice what you preach: Culturally Responsive Pedagogy during COVID-19. Issues in Teacher Education, 29(1-2), 23-34.

Stephens, D. W. (2020). Trauma-Informed Pedagogy for the religious and theological higher education classroom. Religions, 11(9), 449.

Tilleczek, W. (2014). The connection of the care for self and other in Plato's Laches. Pseudo-Dionysius, 16(1).

Walker, C., & Gleaves, A. (2016). Constructing the caring higher education teacher: A theoretical framework. Teaching & Teacher Education, 54, 65-76.

White, R. (2017). Compassion in philosophy and education. In P. Gibbs (Ed.), The pedagogy of compassion at the heart of higher education (pp. 19-31). Springer.

Relevant MethodSpace Posts

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Pedagogies of Care in Precarity - Methodspace

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MethodSpace readers will recognize Dr. Sharon Ravitch, who served as a Mentor in Residence in March 2020 and has contributed significant posts, including ones on Flux Pedagogy. This post is the third in a series. Hiba Barek, University of Western Ontario Immaculate Namukasa, University of Western Ontario Sharon M.

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The #Ungrading HUB is a Discord server where you will find an engaging community of fellow ungraders with whom you can share or consume resources, ask and answer questions, and build connections that may be helpful in your ungrading journey. The ungrading network is the most generous and compassionate one you'll ever join.

Here's the invite link to #Ungrading HUB: https://discord.gg/d2tdMtKQbp . Hope you find it useful!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The #Ungrading HUB is a Discord server where you will find an engaging community of fellow ungraders with whom you can share or consume resources, ask and answer questions, and build connections that may be helpful in your ungrading journey. The ungrading network is the most generous and compassionate one you'll ever join.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Enjoy a conversation with Dr. Bryan Dewsbury about an approach to inclusive instruction that goes beneath the mechanics of your courses. We don't talk about what your syllabus looks like, how you engage students in your learning environments, or how you assess students. Instead we discuss an approach to inclusive instruction that first and foremost focusses on the criticality of developing an enriched and enhanced understanding of your students. The ideas we discuss in this episode have the power to change your relationship with your students allowing you to develop an inclusive classroom that enriches the personal development of all your students. In this episode, we do not discuss what your students need to learn, we do not discuss what your students need to be able to do. We talk about issues that address the question "Who do you want your students to be".
References

Dewsbury, B.M. and C. Braeme. 2019. Inclusive Teaching. CBE-LSE Vol 18(2)

Dewsbury, B.M. 2019. Deep Teaching - A conceptual model for inclusive approaches to higher education STEM pedagogy. Cultural Studies in Science Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11422-018-9891-z

Recommended Readings Other Resources

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Beyond the Exclusive-Inclusive Paradigm: Who do you want your students to be? - Teaching for Student Success

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Enjoy a conversation with Dr. Bryan Dewsbury about an approach to inclusive instruction that goes beneath the mechanics of your courses. We don't talk about what your syllabus looks like, how you engage students in your learning environments, or how you assess students. Instead we discuss an approa

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Bryan M. Dewsbury,

Holly J. Swanson,

Serena Moseman-Valtierra,

Joshua Caulkins

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Abstract

We assessed the impacts of the implementation of inclusive and active pedagogical approaches in an introductory biology sequence at a large, public research university in the northeast United States. We compared academic performance between these sections with other sections of the same course where didactic approaches were used over a five-year period. We also compared this five-year period (2014-2018) with the previous five years of the same courses. Additionally, we also tracked the academic performance of the students from the sections where active learning and inclusive teaching were used, as well as the more conventionally taught (lecture-based) sections in future, mandatory biology courses. We found that the inclusively taught section of the first semester of introductory biology increased the odds of students earning higher grades in that particular section. The active learning section in the second semester narrowed the ethnic performance gap when compared to similar sections, both historically and those run concurrently. Finally, students who matriculated into the inclusively taught section of biology in the first semester followed by the active learning section in the second semester of introductory biology performed better in 200-level biology courses than students who had zero semesters of either active or inclusive pedagogy in their introductory year. Our results suggest that active and inclusive pedagogies hold great promise for improving academic performance when compared to didactic approaches, however, questions remain on the most appropriate ways for capturing the impact of inclusive approaches. Implications for institutional approaches and policy are also discussed.

Citation: Dewsbury BM, Swanson HJ, Moseman-Valtierra S, Caulkins J (2022) Inclusive and active pedagogies reduce academic outcome gaps and improve long-term performance. PLoS ONE 17(6): e0268620. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0268620

Editor: Kristin Vickers, Ryerson University, CANADA

Received: December 7, 2020; Accepted: May 4, 2022; Published: June 15, 2022

Copyright: © 2022 Dewsbury et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Data Availability: Data has been uploaded as supplementary material.

Funding: This work was graciously supported by the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture, Hatch Formula project 1011285. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript."

Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Introduction

In the last two decades STEM instruction has undergone a radical transformation in higher education. A STEM classroom experience, once assumed to be didactic, unidirectional and instructor-centered, is being reinvented on many campuses to be more student-centered and aligned with contemporary understandings of how humans learn [ 1]. The drivers of this change came from multiple directions. One was the plethora of federal reports calling for major upgrades in the way STEM pedagogy was administered [ 2, 3], in part as a need to address a workforce that was increasingly requiring more and more STEM professionals. Another was the greater attention being paid to the academic performance gaps between white students and students from historically disenfranchised identities [ 4]. Addressing the academic gap issue required a pedagogy that transcended blindly implementing physically active strategies and was truly inclusive of students' voices and identities.

There is a large body of evidence suggesting that both active learning and inclusive practices (collectively referred to here as 'learning-centered pedagogies') can effectively improve academic outcomes [ 5- 8]. However, these approaches have not necessarily penetrated STEM classrooms to the degree that its proponents expected [ 9]. There are many potential reasons why this may be the case.

First, researchers and practitioners have struggled to clearly define what active or inclusive teaching is in clearly identifiable ways [ 10]. Active learning for example may run the gamut from a few formative questions used during an interrupted lecture [ 11] to a fully flipped model where no lecturing is taking place whatsoever [ 12, 13 but see 7]. With such a sliding scale of student engagement, clearly measuring the impact of the 'active' component of the pedagogy becomes difficult. Inclusive teaching has been more clearly delineated in the K12 literature [e.g. 14] but is only recently being fully unpacked and operationalized in the higher education classroom [ 15]. Epistemological uncertainty results in practitioners having a hard time knowing and deciding what method or suite of methods are appropriate for their context [ 16]. This is further exacerbated by the material supporting those texts themselves being overrepresented by dominant identities [ 16]. Second, as Dewsbury [ 17] argues, the contexts of the courses where the pedagogies are being applied matter. Adoption of learning-centered pedagogical techniques without appropriate consideration of context may lead to little positive or even harmful outcomes. Third, many aspects of learning-centered pedagogies require existing practitioners to subvert their current understanding of teaching, and learn new skills, sometimes in entirely new disciplinary areas. The infrastructure required to support this type of reform and sustain it may not necessarily be available at all institutions, thus limiting what practitioners are able to adopt and sustainably support. Fourth, the critical mass of STEM classrooms in higher education is still mostly didactic lecturing [ 18]. Many students matriculate into college likely assuming that this passive model is standard fare for STEM instruction. Practitioners who ask their students to actively engage in the learning process during class time sometimes face resistance, especially if the students do not fully comprehend the value of that engagement [ 19, 20]. Where this resistance manifests into negative course evaluations, the potential impact on the practitioners' professional review and reward structure can cause them to shy away from future attempts of these practices. The third and fourth reasons in particular necessitate a professional structure that appropriately rewards and supports the cultivation of these practices. While some progress has been made on de-emphasizing singular evaluative components (e.g. SETS; [ 18]) more attention needs to be paid to creating holistic support for these practices.

The complexities and situation-specific factors associated with higher education STEM pedagogy makes the measurement of classroom interventions difficult. Studies measuring one-time interventions or reporting on small temporal scales present challenges for those interested in adoption but must translate findings for entirely new contexts. In this manuscript we report the results of the implementation of learning-centered pedagogies in two introductory biology sequenced courses (taught one after the other) at a large, public research university in the northeastern United States. We use learning-centered as an encompassing term to capture approaches that break from the conventional passive teaching approach where a single lecturer imparts information unidirectionally for the majority of the classroom time. The conventional classroom is also accompanied with a small number of high stakes assessments, with few other opportunities to demonstrate content proficiency. In the active classroom (the second semester course) the instructor used a suite of evidence-based methods (including the use of small-groups, interrupted lectures and in-class problem solving) to ensure that students were full participants in their learning process. The inclusive teaching course (the first semester Biology) in this study follows the Deep Teaching framework outlined in Dewsbury [ 21] and Dewsbury and Brame [ 22], where specific pedagogical approaches and strategies are enacted as a function of carefully cultivated relationships and continuous dialogue with the students. While an inclusive classroom incorporates several active learning methods, the dialogic relationship is the key driver of the classroom experience. We were interested in how five years (2014-2018) of utilizing these approaches impacted 1) academic outcomes between ethnicities within the courses where learning-centered pedagogies were used, 2) academic outcomes compared to didactically taught sections at the same time, 3) academic outcomes compared to the previous five years of instruction (also lecture-based) of the same courses, and 4) future academic performance of students who, after the introductory biology level matriculate into upper division biology courses. We also contextualize our findings within the institution where the study took place and discuss several nuances of the praxis of inclusive and active approaches.

Materials and methods

Institutional context

The study was conducted at a large, public research university in the northeast United States and approved by the institution's Institutional Review Board (#858301) from their Office of Integrity which is housed in the Office for Sponsored Research. Informed consent was waived by the IRB as this involved the gathering of archived data. Data was anonymized and coded with a numeric identifier so that the identities of the individual students were unknown to the researchers. The institution is predominantly white, with approximately 23% of the undergraduate population identifying as PEERS (Persons excluded because of ethnicity or race, [ 23]). Principles of Biology is a high-enrollment two-semester survey course that is offered from the Department of Biological Sciences. The first semester (Principles of Biology I) is taken by biology majors as well as several other STEM majors for whom the course serves as a prerequisite for other courses. The second semester is taken by biology majors only. Majors and those requiring the prerequisite are usually unevenly spaced between the four sections of the first semester. The first semester surveys the fundamentals of cells and molecules, molecular biology, populations genetics and anatomy and physiology. Students needing the second semester of Principles of Biology must earn a C or above in order to matriculate into that course (Principles of Biology II). Principles of Biology II focuses on evolutionary biology, plants and animal ecology. There are two sections of this second-semester course. Most students take the two-semester sequence during the Fall and then Spring semesters. The learning outcomes for both courses are generally similar between sections, but each instructor is allowed to operationalize those learning outcomes apropos to their personal pedagogical style. However, the institution also offers these courses as a Spring to Fall sequence. We focused on the Fall to Spring sequence in this study.

Prior to 2014, there were only three, simultaneously taught sections of the Principles of Biology I taught by different instructors, all of which were taught using a didactic, lecture-based style. While there were small differences between instructors' styles, in general, all heavily relied on multi-slide PowerPoint presentations, with little to no formative assessments embedded in the pedagogy. Summative assessments happened four to five times per semester and were usually the only mechanism for students to earn credit toward the final course grade. Principles of Biology II was also mostly taught using a primarily lecture approach until the 2014/2015 academic year. In 2014, a new instructor was hired, and a new section of Principles of Biology I was offered. The new instructor (first author Dewsbury) piloted what Dewsbury [ 21] refers to as 'Deep Teaching', an inclusive approach centered around the dialogic relationship between instructor and student. In this approach, an elaborate, ongoing process is enacted to fully understand the psychosocial contexts of the students who are entering the classroom each semester the course is offered. Decisions around active-learning strategies, support structures, and all other curricula nuances are driven by how this understanding unfolds and evolves. For example, even seemingly simple decisions such as the length of videos watched in the flipped classroom model is impacted by the instructor's knowledge of the work hours the students keep. While this approach necessitates the use of several active learning approaches, the centrality of the student voice in driving the process separates it as a fully inclusive practice. The three other sections of Principles of Biology I continued using a lecture-based approach. Of the two sections of Principles of Biology II, one transformed their section to incorporate several active learning approaches beginning in 2013. Students were placed into small groups where several activities were used to engage them in the learning process, provide multiple opportunities for formative assessment, and in general move the classroom away from passive approaches to learning. While the practices used were refined over time, we characterize this classroom as active and not inclusive largely because it did not follow the specifications pertaining to dialogue outlined in the Dewsbury [ 21] framework.

The truly inclusive classroom begins with recognizing how the instructor, and their social positioning play a key role in cultivating an inclusive environment. This self-awareness includes revisiting their own pathways through the profession, degree of knowledge about social structures and an understanding of their role in education beyond subject-area expertise. This step requires at the very least an understanding of the unconscious biases we all have, as shaped by our personal social histories, and recognizing the ways in which those biases may play out in classroom dynamics. The inclusive practitioner commits to self-education, particularly in areas of social structures about which they were previously unaware in order to interrogate their own ideologies, and to better understand the social contexts from which students arrive into the classroom [e.g. 24]. Cultivating this macro understanding of social context is then followed by specific approaches to get to know the students more personally. For example, the inclusive classroom uses a reflection assignment called 'I believe', using the exact prompt from the National Public Radio (NPR) weekly program ( http://thisibelieve.org). These reflection essays provide a window into the soul of the students, and after sharing their own essay, the dialogic relationship between instructor and student begins. Reflection essays also provide key clues into students' mindset, economic and identity contingencies and general beliefs about their personal strengths. This is informative, since it lets the instructor know that instructional practices that promote growth mindsets, confidence and increased task value, are crucial before content specific strategies are enacted. Another specific approach enacted in response to a better understanding of the students is the course's assessment structure. The course provides several opportunities for students to demonstrate proficiency including group assignments and pre-class assignments. More importantly the summative assessments (four) are each only worth 15% of the final grade. This is a significant enough percentage such that the performances on the individual summative assessments are mathematically consequential for the final grade. However, it is low enough that if there are initial struggles there are sufficient opportunities available for a pathway back for success in the course. This is particularly important in the early stages since early struggles may be more indicative of identity contingencies, college transition struggles or other social factors, none of which speak to the student's actual ability to do biology. Therefore, an inclusive assessment structure does not penalize students for social factors over which they have little control and provides the instructor an opportunity to mitigate those factors and help the students find their academic feet.

In this study, we are making a historical comparison between sections that used different pedagogical approaches. As a result, we are unfortunately unable to account for any differences between instructor styles (however small) of the lecture sections and/or the way in which assessments were administered in those sections. However, tracking all students to the 200-level classes allowed for a direct comparison of their academic proficiency regardless of the history of their instruction.

Statistical methods

For this quasi-experimental study, data was obtained from the Office for Institutional Research and included Principles of Biology I final course grades and course section number, high school grade point average (HSGPA), combined SAT scores (SAT), first generation status (FG), and ethnicity (underrepresented minorities, URM) for students enrolled during fall semesters from 2009-2018. Any subsequent biology final course grades were also collected for these students, including Principles of Biology II. During 2009-2018, SAT exams changed formats; for comparison purposes, conversions were made to the newest version's combined score according to concordance tables found on the College Board website [ 25]. Analyses of variance (ANOVAs) were run in SAS, version 9.4, followed by Tukey-HSD post-hoc comparisons and used to evaluate possible performance gaps in Principles of Biology I and future course outcomes. However, due to a non-normal distribution for final course grades in Principles of Biology II, a non-parametric Kruskal-Wallis test was used followed by DSCF post-hoc comparisons of pairwise Wilcoxon ranked-sum differences. To compare academic outcomes between the treatment section of Principles of Biology I and the didactic sections, an ordinal regression model was run using SPSS, version 26, with final course grade as the dependent variable. The model included student-level descriptive predictors, URM and FG status, student-level measures of academic preparedness, HSGPA and SAT, and treatment. Correlations were determined to identify any collinearity and possible overfitting of the model. Intercorrelation coefficients (ICCs) and a vector of fixed effects were also calculated to evaluate the impact of clustering in the data. Due to large ICCs, a complex sample was designed in SPSS with clusters created for the year the data was collected and for course section. The ordinal regression was then conducted using this complex sample design.

Results

Overall, learning-centered pedagogies appeared to have varied effects on students' academic performance. Results reported here are informed by Wassertein and colleagues' [ 26] guidance on how probability values and confidence intervals should be interpreted and described. This article (and several others in a special issue of American Statistician) addresses the overuse and misuse of the term significance and over-reliance on p-values as indicators of treatment effects. Our reporting here attempts to partially comply with their advocacy of greater data transparency and a more comprehensive presentation of our quantitative findings. Therefore, we still report statistical significance test results (p-values) and describe overall trends seen in our data.

Academic performance gaps between ethnicities in learning-centered pedagogy classrooms

One-way ANOVAs were conducted to determine the appropriateness of combining sections for subsequent analyses at the student level. Based on academic preparedness measures, the treatment section was possibly at an academic disadvantage; SAT: F(1, 4295) = 2.66, p <1.03, and HSGPA: F(1, 4169) = 13.06, p < .0001 where the mean HSGPA for the lecture sections was 3.44 (SD = 0.50) and 3.36 (SD = 0.46) for the treatment section. Academic performance was measured by final grade earned in the course, which was converted to the GPA points that corresponded to the letter grade. In accordance with the institution's policies, A was equal to 4.0 GPA points, A- = 3.7, B+ = 3.3, B = 3.0, B- = 2.7, C+ = 2.3, C = 2.0, C- = 1.7, D = 1.0 and F = 0 points. Over the 2014-2018 five-year period, White and Asian students earned the highest median GPA points in the inclusively taught section of Principles of Biology I (F(3, 565) = 10.61, p < .0001; Fig 1, Panel B). Both earned, on average, almost the equivalent of a B grade, though the range of grades earned by Asian students was much smaller than those of White students. There were also far fewer Asian-identified students who enrolled in this course than students from any other self-reported identity. Students identifying as Black or Hispanic in Principles of Biology I averaged a C over the five years in the section where inclusive approaches were used. The interquartile range of grades of Hispanic students were slightly larger than those of Black students, and both these groups' interquartile ranges were much larger than those of White and Asian students. Median grade GPA values in the Principles of Biology II course where active learning was used ( Fig 1, Panel D) ranged between 3.0 (White students) to 2.2 (Hispanic students) [χ ² (3, N = 249) = 7.099, p = 0.069]. The interquartile ranges for Black and Hispanic students were less than those of White and Asian students. Both Black and Hispanic student groups' interquartile range included grades below the passing grade (C) for the course.

Panel A: Analysis of variance detected achievement gaps in Principles of Biology I between 2009-2013 (F(3, 4423) = 62.75, p < .0001, R ² = 0.041, 95%CI [0.030, 0.052]). (Demographic group sizes, n = 198 Asian, 269 Black, 421 Hispanic, and 3702 White) Panel B: ANOVA detected medium differences in final grades for the first introductory biology course during 2014-2018 between ethnicities for the lecture-styled sections (F(3, 3398) = 70.88, p < .0001, R ² = 0.059, 95% CI [0.044, 0.074], Cohen's d = 0.68 (White and Black students), 0.57 (White and Hispanic students)) and the inclusive section (F(3, 565) = 10.61, p < .0001, R ² = 0.053, 95% CI [0.017, 0.089], Cohen's d = 0.58 and 0.55 respectively). (Demographic group sizes for lecture sections, n = 172 Asian, 217 Black, 426 Hispanic, and 2,705 White; Demographic group sizes for inclusive treatment, n = 17 Asian, 42 Black, 70 Hispanic, and 427 White). Panel C: A Kruskal-Wallis Test detected achievement gaps in Principles of Biology II between 2009-2013 (χ ² (3, N = 1889) = 76.513, p < .0001, Cramer's V = 0.116). (Demographic group sizes, n = 80 Asian, 94 Black, 188 Hispanic, and 1527 White) Panel D: In the second course in the introductory biology sequence, Kruskal-Wallis Tests detected small differences between grades as a function of student ethnicity in the lecture sections (χ ² (3, N = 832) = 9.924, p = 0.019, Cramer's V = 0.063) but not in the active learning section (χ ² (3, N = 249) = 7.099, p = 0.069, Cramer's V = 0.097). (Demographic group sizes for lecture sections, n = 37 Asian, 42 Black, 84 Hispanic, and 576 White; Demographic group sizes for active sections, n = 7 Asian, 10 Black, 16 Hispanic, and 216 White).

Academic performance in learning-centered pedagogy classrooms versus lecture-based approaches

Correlations between variables were calculated to ensure a lack of collinearity and overfitting of our model. The strongest correlation was detected between course section and treatment, r = 0.655, which is to be expected based on the dummy coding of treatment based on course section. The next strongest correlations were between final course grade and SAT score (r = 0.508) and high school GPA (0.480). An intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) was calculated of each of the models independent variables with the outcome variable, final grade. Approximately 44% of the variation observed in the data is found between sections therefore, a complex sampling protocol was created in SPSS to account for clustering of data by year and section.

Overall, the odds for students enrolled in the inclusive section to earn one grade interval higher (ie. B to a B+) are 2.287 (95% CI [1.566, 3.340]) times when compared to the lecture sections when all other variables are held constant ( Table 1). There were academic performance gaps in lecture-based classrooms in Principles of Biology I between 2014 to 2018 (F(3, 3398) = 70.88, p < .0001, Fig 1, Panel B). Black students' interquartile range of grade values on average were in the failing range during this entire period while the interquartile range of the white students was entirely within the passing range. This was the largest difference between any two ethnicities (MD = 0.870, 95%CI [0.632, 1.108]). The interquartile range was largest for Hispanic students during this period. White students scored higher than students of other ethnicities in the lecture-based section of Principles of Biology II (Χ ² (3, N = 832) = 9.924, p = 0.019, Fig 1, Panel D). They had higher median values and a smaller interquartile range when compared to other ethnicities. With the exception of Hispanic students, each ethnicity earned lower academic grades in this section than their counterparts where active learning approaches were used.

When first-generation status was removed from the analysis, sample size increased to 3927 students. When clustered by year and section, the treatment yielded a smaller odds ratio, 1.727 (95%CI [1.059, 2.818]). Additional analyses can be seen in the supplemental tables ( S1 File).

Comparison to preceding five years (2009-2013)

In Principles of Biology I, the performance of different ethnic groups followed a mostly similar pattern taught in the five years preceding 2014. White students in general earned the highest grades while Black students earned the lowest (F(3, 4423) = 62.75, p < .0001, Fig 1, Panel A).

Academic performances of students in Principles of Biology II of the 5 years preceding 2014 were very similar to the 2014-2018 period ( Fig 1, Panel C). In both cases Black students averaged a failing grade for the class over the entire time period, while the other ethnic groups averaged between a C and a B during the same period. The grades of Black, Asian, and Hispanic students ranged the entirety of A to an F during both periods, but that grade range was similar for whites during the 2009-2013 period. In the active learning section of Principles of Biology II, the 2014-2018 period saw a closing of the academic performance gap between Black students and White students as well as Black students and Hispanic students that existed during the 2009-2013 period. There was also a closing of the gap between Asian students and White and Hispanic students. The only group whose average grade decreased during the 2014-2018 period was Hispanic students, but their median grade was still at a C, the passing grade for the course.

Subsequent academic performance

The impact of utilizing learning-centered pedagogies was also seen in how students performed in the first set of upper division courses they took after the Principles of Biology I and II series. Students who matriculated into 200-level classes from the Principles of Biology I and II series from the 2009-2013 ( Fig 2, Panel A) had similar academic outcomes to students who took both the inclusive teaching section of Principles of Biology I and the active learning section of Principles of Biology II. These students also scored the highest median grades in 200-level courses compared to the other amounts of exposure to learning-centered pedagogies. This was followed by students who took lecture-based sections of Principles of Biology I followed by the active-only section of Principles of Biology II. Students who took the inclusive-only section of Principles of Biology I followed by the lecture-based section of Principles of Biology II scored third lowest, and students who had no exposure to neither learning-centered pedagogy earned the lowest grades.

Although data suggests there may be a small difference between the group who took the active and inclusive section both semesters (N = 23, M = 3.030, SD = 0.657) and the group who took them neither semester (N = 128, M = 2.541, SD = 0.907), F(1, 149) = 6.12, p = 0.015, R ² = 0.039, 95% CI [-0.021, 0.099].

Conclusions

Our exploration of five years of learning-centered pedagogies in an introductory biology course sequence yielded several lessons pertaining to how we consider general performance, as well as disaggregated performance in introductory STEM courses. Overall, we submit that the findings from the analysis of quantitative academic outcomes posits more questions than they answer. We lay these out below, in the context of existing literature pertaining to the social contexts of learning.

Academic performance and outcome gaps in introductory STEM courses

Our data suggest that the academic performance of students in the inclusively taught section of Principles of Biology I resulted in better performance of students in this section overall as they were more likely to get an A or B and least likely to earn a DFW grade. With the exception of black students in the lecture sections during the 2014-2018 period, outcomes patterns were overall similar to those in the time period before this pedagogy was introduced. In those sections Black students averaged a failing grade. This suggests that the key difference driving the improved overall performance was the improved outcomes for Black students. In the second semester of this introductory course however, the active learning section reduced the major differences in the performance of Black and Asian students when compared to both previous iterations of this section, and the lecture-based section taught during the same semester.

The implementation of the inclusive approach was in response to the nagging academic performance gaps between different ethnic groups. The persistence of these patterns potentially speaks to the possibility that there are non-cognitive factors impacting the academic experience for different individuals and groups in different ways. Quantitative explorations such as this study sometimes implicitly assume that regardless of the student's starting point, in-class instruction will singly drive all students to academic proficiency. The literature on the social context of education suggests that we should reconsider that argument. It is well-documented that metrics such as SAT score and HSGPA correlate strongly with socioeconomic indicators of privilege [ 27- 29]. Additionally, the transition to college for many students, especially those from historically disenfranchised identities may be exceptionally difficult due to issues pertaining to social belonging and reduced social capital [ 30]. If SAT and HSGPA predict success in an introductory biology course, then, it is unclear if that prediction is an indication of actual preparedness or that of an unknown non-cognitive social factor. Our data bears this out somewhat. If inclusive approaches (Principles of Biology I, section 4) reduce the predictive power of these variables, particularly for Black students, they may enact the very thing inclusive spaces are meant for-making negative socioeconomic indicators less relevant. While the impacts of this were reflected in content gains for black students' academic outcomes data do not fully capture the impact in terms of sense of belonging and affirmed identities. The relationship between inclusive approaches and the cultivation of these constructs should be an immediate area of research exploration.

In a similar vein, the narrowing of the achievement gap in the second semester of the introductory biology sequence is potentially a reflection of a more equal academic starting point for students successfully entering the course. One can hypothesize that students acclimated to the learning-centered pedagogical class experience at that point are less likely to be impacted by the negative externalities associated with the college transition process.

Overall, our data indicates that students benefit from the combination of the two courses taught using learning-centered pedagogies. This is important since STEM instruction is still largely didactic, and, as discussed previously, some hesitation still exists for the adoption of these methods. In this light, two concerns typically raised by practitioners include 1) the potential negative effects of content reduction to allow time for more activities [ 31] and 2) the perception that inclusive approaches are considered 'over coddling' of students [ 32]. We do not have space in this manuscript to fully address these concerns, but the fact that students from learning-centered pedagogy classrooms perform equally well or better in upper division courses should allay fears of negative impacts associated with content reduction.

How the academic experience is measured

Though our findings indicate that Deep Teaching can engender success in upper division classes, new questions, separate from the primarily academic measures discussed in this manuscript should be considered. Some reflection is necessary on what constitutes success in an educational experience, the components of that experience, and how the process is assessed. More specifically, inclusive teaching as discussed in this manuscript is built on the Freirean concept of dialogue [ 33], and the more recent theory of emerging adulthood [ 34]. At their core, both speak to inclusively minded practitioners facilitating meaning-making as a key component of the developmentally appropriate process of identity exploration. Some studies have shown a link between the affirmation of STEM identity and academic performance [ 32], but in this context, we are referring to meaning-making as an end unto itself. If current pedagogical assessment and research questions solely focus on content gains, how then is this meaning-making, a critical component of inclusion, captured as an effect of inclusive practice? Our point here is not to be dismissive of the importance of content mastery. But as we shift our paradigms to considering inclusive approaches as an expectation, the ways in which we assess the academic experience likely must expand or change.

As a crucial entry point into the STEM pathway, introductory biology can serve as an encouraging open door or an unwelcome sieve. Our exploration of 5 years of implementing learning-centered pedagogies meant to welcome suggests that much success can be gained from these approaches. However, our work also underscores that there is still much unknown about engendering success for students in the first critical semesters, and that new and more diverse metrics are needed to fully capture the impact of inclusive practices.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the students of introductory biology whose dedication to the course provided us with the opportunity to make it a better experience. Thanks to the anonymous reviewers whose feedback helped improve this manuscript.

References

1. 2. American Association for the Advancement of Science. "Vision and change in undergraduate biology education: A call to action." Washington, DC (2011).

2. 3. National Research Council. BIO2010: Transforming undergraduate education for future research biologists. National Academies Press, 2003.

3. 4. Gonzalez Heather B., and Jeffrey J. Kuenzi. "Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education: A primer." Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, Library of Congress, 2012.

4. 6. Schmid Megan E., et al. "Promoting student academic achievement through faculty development about inclusive teaching." Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning 48.5 (2016): 16-25.

5. 9. Brownell Sara E., and Kimberly D. Tanner. "Barriers to faculty pedagogical change: Lack of training, time, incentives, and... tensions with professional identity?." CBE-Life Sciences Education 11.4 (2012): 339-346. pmid:23222828

6. 11. Jenkins Alan. "Active learning in structured lectures." Teaching large classes in higher education: How to maintain quality with reduced resources (1992): 63-77.

7. 12. Bishop Jacob Lowell, and Matthew A. Verleger. "The flipped classroom: A survey of the research." ASEE national conference proceedings, Atlanta, GA. Vol. 30. No. 9. 2013.

8. 17. Dewsbury Bryan M. "Context determines strategies for 'activating' the inclusive classroom." Journal of microbiology & biology education 18.3 (2017). pmid:29854055

9. 27. Zwick Rebecca. "Is the SAT a "wealth test"? The link between educational achievement and socioeconomic status." Rethinking the SAT. Routledge, 2013. 225-238.

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Inclusive and active pedagogies reduce academic outcome gaps and improve long-term performance

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We assessed the impacts of the implementation of inclusive and active pedagogical approaches in an introductory biology sequence at a large, public research university in the northeast United States. We compared academic performance between these sections with other sections of the same course where didactic approaches were used over a five-year period.

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Some of you might be in the following situation: You've learned a lot about alternative grading. You've become convinced that moving toward grading practices that involve one or more of the Four Pillars is a good idea. And you're not just convinced that alternative grading is a good idea in theory, but that it's a doable idea in practice and is something that you can see yourself using. So you're ready for the next steps: To commit to changing how you grade, starting as soon as possible, perhaps even this Fall (which is getting closer every day); and planning the details of how you will do it.

If this is you, then congratulations: You're making a choice that will help your students, and also help you. But before you start planning your syllabus, you should also know that there are some preliminaries that need your attention.

If you're traveling to a new country, you won't get the most out of the experience unless you've first done some research on the culture, language, and geography of the place. Likewise, to have an experience with alternative grading (or any teaching innovation) that is as successful and satisfying as possible, it helps to start by learning the lay of the land, by asking some important questions about your situation, before diving into the details. In this post, we'll describe some of these questions and how they fit into your planning process. Think of this as "Step 0" in the process of implementing alternative grading. They may not be questions about grading, but they surface information that will affect your process and philosophy of evaluating student work.

The framework for these questions is called , because they center on five questions that, well, start with the letter "W": who, what, when, where, and why. You'll use them to gather information about the entire context of your teaching as you think about how you will help students grow.

Who?

Teaching is predicated on human relationships, so it's appropriate to start with the humans involved, specifically:

Who are YOU? Don't leave yourself out! You are one of the most important stakeholders in the course. And you are not a grading machine: You are a human being with a multifaceted life and a responsibility to make choices about how you set up your course that are compatible with your entire life. So: What's your work situation? Are you tenured, tenure-track but pre-tenure, contingent, or something else? What's your rank and status? What is your experience level with the course, with these students, with your professional surroundings? Do you have a professional support network or a group of trusted colleagues to whom you can go for help or commiseration? And what about life outside work? Do you have family or personal responsibilities that need your attention? Do you get enough rest and exercise? Are you energized? Are you in a space where you feel confident to try something new at work without it spilling over into your personal life? If (when) things go wrong, how confident are you in your ability to make it work out alright in the end?

What?

We also want to know about the course itself, such as:

What is the course about? What are the main points the course tries to convey, or the main body of knowledge the course teaches? What, generally speaking, are students supposed to learn by taking the course? (Note: Later on, the answer to that question will morph into your Clearly Defined Standards.) Beyond that, what is the storyline of the course? Who/what are the main protagonists and antagonists? What is the plot? How do the "characters" develop over time?

What level of creative control do you have? Do you have complete creative control, or are you operating under structural or systemic constraints? For example, are the learning objectives given to you by the department or some other third party? Is there a common final exam that has to count for a certain amount of the course grade? Is your course part of a coordinated collection of sections? Or part of an un-coordinated group of sections with implicit expectations of consistency? In other words - How much freedom to you have to mess around with the grading system in this course, and to what extent do you need to meet external requirements or expectation in grading? (See " Who are the other stakeholders in your class?" above.)

Please note: A clear view of constraints often turns into a temptation to give up. When you want to do ungrading but realize, for example, that you have to have a common final exam that counts for 25% of the course grade, a part of your brain will say I can't do this. The same is true for any constraint, such as large class sizes or a 4-4 teaching load. You have to listen to those concerns, but don't give up hope! As the saying goes, creativity loves constraints. Constraints aren't a "no" to your plans; they are just a call for creative thinking. Have a look at some of our case studies (for example here, here, here) and plug in to a supportive community of practice for inspiration.

When?

The timing of a class is a huge factor in how you choose to evaluate student work. (For example, see my recent post about doing specifications grading in a six-week long summer class.) You'll want to get some possibly uncomfortable clarity on questions such as:

Let me expand on this item a little, in a way that will make some of you unhappy. Right now, it's the middle of June. If I wanted to roll out a new grading system this Fall, the start of the semester is about 80 days, or about 11 weeks, away. That seems like the far future right now, but realize two things: First, this time will move by impossibly quickly, as it always does in the summer. Second, while classes may start in 80 days, you will need to have a prototype of the grading system a lot earlier than that - maybe 30 days earlier, to give you a month to test it, live with it, and make final changes. So now we're down to 50 days, or about 7 weeks, which is a lot closer than we think. So you have to maintain awareness of the calendar, and plan accordingly.

If you've read my origin story, you'll probably realize that this is not the advice that I myself followed when I first started with specifications grading. Back in 2014, I went from zero knowledge to a full implementation in less than four weeks. So why be so neurotic about planning? Well, if you recall the entire origin story, you'll remember that my first attempt was, to put it mildly, not the greatest - primarily because I didn't bother to test my system, run different scenarios, or get any kind of feedback on what I was planning. Everyone would have benefitted from me starting earlier and working in a more meticulous way. Look, I know that academics aren't well known for their outstanding time and project management skills. But this is one area where I insist that you have to go against the absent-minded professor trend. Start early and take your time. You and your students will thank you later.

Back to the questions:

What's the schedule for course meetings? Does your course have synchronous meetings? If so, then what days of the week are they, what time of the day are they, and how long does each one last? And given the times and frequencies of course meetings, when will you evaluate and grade student work? A class that meets Tuesday/Thursday has a different profile for when you sit down to evaluate student work than does a Monday/Wednesday/Friday class, or a class that only meets on Tuesday nights. And if your class is asynchronous, this also changes the answer of when you will schedule the time for grading and your pace of returning feedback to students.

Where?

I don't think we talk enough about how the space that a class occupies - physical, virtual, or a combination - affects how student work takes place and is evaluated. But as I've written elsewhere, space is just as much a part of the student educational experience as technology and pedagogy:

What is the modality of the course? Is it in-person, synchronous online, asynchronous online, hybrid, hyflex? If there are significant online components to the course, this may change the kinds of assessments you choose to give (especially if you or your stakeholders have concerns about academic dishonesty in online settings) and therefore the kinds and amounts of grading you do, and how those assessments factor into the course grade. The same is true if some or all of the course is conducted in person.

Why?

We probably should have asked this group of questions first, because being clear on the underlying "Why" of doing anything significant, grading or otherwise, is essential to get the most out of the experience.

Why do students typically take the course? (This is related to the Who? question.) Is it required for everyone? For anyone? Is it a general education class, an introductory course in the major, an advanced course in the major, a completely free elective? Is it a course intended for pre-service teachers, for students heading to graduate school, or something else? Is it a course that people take because they like a challenge, or because they need an easy "A", or something else?

Why are you teaching the course? What are your goals for this course? What do you hope to accomplish by teaching it, and especially by using an alternative grading system in it? Did you choose to teach this course, or was it assigned to you by someone else? Is it a course that you enjoy teaching, one that you don't enjoy teaching but are teaching it anyway, or one that you don't mind teaching but aren't really enthusiastic about it? Have you taught it before, or not? 1 If you have taught it before, what are your intentions: To evolve the course into something better (starting with the grading system), to pitch in and help because the department needed someone to teach it, or something else? If you haven't taught the course before, why are you doing it now: To expand your portfolio of courses taught, to reach a student population you haven't worked with before, to challenge yourself, or something else? And, importantly, are you absolutely sure you have the bandwidth to both learn a new course and implement a non-standard grading system in it? Again: What are your goals, and what do you hope to accomplish?

Suggestion: Take your answers to the Why questions and put them on a 3x5 index card that you keep with you and your teaching materials, then pull it out from time to time, especially when things aren't going well in the course, to remind yourself and reconnect with your ultimate goals.

If you can address even half of these questions, including most of the Why questions, then you are definitely on a solid footing to begin to think about how to grade differently in the course.

This takes some time and effort, obviously. You might consider taking an entire day in the next 2-3 weeks to clear your calendar, get away from your normal context, and spend at least a morning with a pen, a notebook, and a beverage of choice, in uninterrupted focus time just exploring and answering these questions. Keep your responses handy, because as you start to work on the technical details of your course and your adventure into alternative grading, those responses will keep you grounded and moving in the right direction.
What questions did I leave out? What questions do you have about the questions you read about? Let us know in the comments.

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What to do before you do alternative grading

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Some of you might be in the following situation: You've learned a lot about alternative grading. You've become convinced that moving toward grading practices that involve one or more of the Four Pillars is a good idea.

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Examines how the teaching of experimentation in biology can be implemented in universities

Includes case studies that illustrate key scientific competencies for life science education

Contains teacher guides and examples of assignments and assessments of value for student preparation

About this book

This book is a guide for educators on how to develop and evaluate evidence-based strategies for teaching biological experimentation to thereby improve existing and develop new curricula. It unveils the flawed assumptions made at the classroom, department, and institutional level about what students are learning and what help they might need to develop competence in biological experimentation.

Specific case studies illustrate a comprehensive list of key scientific competencies that unpack what it means to be a competent experimental life scientist. It includes explicit evidence-based guidelines for educators regarding the teaching, learning, and assessment of biological research competencies. The book also provides practical teacher guides and exemplars of assignments and assessments. It contains a complete analysis of the variety of tools developed thus far to assess learning in this domain.

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About the editors

Dr. Nancy Pelaez is a Professor Emerita of Biology who founded the Biology Education Area as one of six research focus area in the Department of Biological Sciences at Purdue University. She holds a B.S. in Biology summa cum laude from Tulane University, a k-12 California teaching credential in both Life Science and Physical Science from Mills College, and a Ph.D. in Physiology and Biophysics from Indiana University School of Medicine as a Howard Hughes Medical Institute fellow. With more than 45 refereed publications in the field, Pelaez, who was elected Chair of Section Q (Education) for the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), has been honored with the American Physiological Society Guyton Educator of the Year Award, a Fulbright Award to Vienna, Austria, and as AAAS Fellow.

Dr. Stephanie M. Gardner is an Associate Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Purdue University. She earned her doctorate in Physiology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and conducted her postdoctoral training in Neuroscience at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. As a Visiting Assistant Professor at Dickinson College and Purdue University, her research interests shifted toward biology education. Her research group examines how students and faculty engage in science practices including mechanistic reasoning and creating visualizations to understand and communicate data and experimental concepts. Dr. Gardner leads professional development workshops around inclusive and innovative instruction for faculty and graduate students. She is the co-director of the CURE - Purdue faculty development program to increase access to research for more and diverse undergraduate students. She has served on several biology education research journal editorial boards including as a monitoring editor at CBE-Life Sciences Education since 2018.

Dr. Trevor R. Anderson is a biochemistry education researcher and Professor Emeritus of Chemistry in the Divisions of Chemical Education and Biochemistry in the Department of Chemistry at Purdue University. He was also a Senior Research Associate in the School of Life Science, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. He published in the areas of biochemistry student reasoning and visualization and has been invited to convene and present numerous plenary and keynote talks and workshops to the international scientific community. Central to his faculty development activities has been his workshops on scholarship, his design of curriculum change models, and his authorship of the Bridging-the-Gap series in Biochemistry & Molecular Biology Education ( BAMBEd), aimed at encouraging scholarship in teaching and learning through the application of educational research to teaching practice. For 22 years, he served on the Education Committee of the International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (IUBMB) and the editorial board of BAMBEd.

Bibliographic Information

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Trends in Teaching Experimentation in the Life Sciences

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Advertisement Examines how the teaching of experimentation in biology can be implemented in universities Includes case studies that illustrate key scientific competencies for life science education Contains teacher guides and examples of assignments and assessments of value for student preparation This book is a guide for educators on how to develop and evaluate evidence-based strategies for teaching biological experimentation to thereby improve existing and develop new curricula.

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▶ Episode #2-#Unschooling and disrupting oppressive systems w/ Susan Blum & Josh Eyler (1/26/22)

▶ Episode #3-Ask-Me-Anything! w/ Jesse Stommel (2/16/22)

▶ Episode #4-All-Feedback-No-Grades Approach w/ Laura Gibbs (3/23/22)

▶ Episode #5-A Pedagogy of Kindness w/ Cate Denial (4/20/22)

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▶ Episode #1-Reflecting on our ungrading practice (12/8/21)

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https://growthmindsetmemes.blogspot.com/search/label/Collection%3A%20Self-Efficacy

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Observe others: the task is possible!

This quote is inspired by a passage from Chapter 2 of Laura Ritchie's book, Fostering Self-Efficacy in Higher Education Students (2015).

Ritchie writes: "Vicarious learning can be effective when introducing completely new material or when rebuilding students are less than successful experiences. [...] Watching others can communicate a sense that the task is possible."

Observe others: the task is possible!

I'm confident that I can go high.

This quote is inspired by a passage from Chapter 2 of Laura Ritchie's book, Fostering Self-Efficacy in Higher Education Students (2015).

Ritchie writes: "People who have high levels of self-efficacy also tend to exhibit a range of positive qualities. They are more likely to choose more challenging tasks, undertake strategic thinking, work harder, exhibit resilience, and attain higher outcomes. [...] Failure is less of a deterrent, and they use resources creatively and seek possible solutions before giving up. Overall they persist longer and achieve more."

I'm confident that I can go high.

English: First, I make a plan.

This quote is inspired by a passage from Chapter 4 of Laura Ritchie's book, Fostering Self-Efficacy in Higher Education Students (2015).

Ritchie writes: "Zimmerman also differentiates naive and experienced learners, and stresses that less experienced learners tend to react to learning instead of preparing effectively through forethought. In the forethought stage, students use their existing knowledge and experience to form self-efficacy beliefs, making judgments about their capabilities for the tasks ahead."

First, I make a plan.

English: I don't let the past bring me down.

This quote is inspired by a passage from Chapter 4 of Laura Ritchie's book, Fostering Self-Efficacy in Higher Education Students (2015).

Ritchie writes: "Past experiences also influence a student's beliefs when approaching new projects, with positive experiences effectively building self-efficacy beliefs and negative experiences bringing them down."

I don't let the past bring me down.

I'm ready for a challenge.

This quote is inspired by a passage from Chapter 2 of Laura Ritchie's book, Fostering Self-Efficacy in Higher Education Students (2015).

Ritchie writes:  "People who have high levels of self-efficacy also tend to exhibit a range of positive qualities. They are more likely to choose more challenging tasks, undertake strategic thinking, work harder, exhibit resilience, and attain higher outcomes. [...] Failure is less of a deterrent, and they use resources creatively and seek possible solutions before giving up. Overall they persist longer and achieve more."

I'm ready for a challenge.

I watch with deliberate attention.

This quote is inspired by a passage from Chapter 4 of Laura Ritchie's book, Fostering Self-Efficacy in Higher Education Students (2015).

Ritchie writes: "If student-observers watch with deliberate and focused attention, they can also form links with other areas of their knowledge and experience. Making a mental record of events, having in-class or online discussions, and written descriptions or notes all assist the student to review, reflect on, and access processes within the specific scenario demonstrated to them."

I watch with deliberate attention.

(The image is from cheezburger.)

My peers can be my teachers.

This quote is inspired by a passage from Chapter 4 of Laura Ritchie's book, Fostering Self-Efficacy in Higher Education Students (2015).

Ritchie writes: "Overall this experience will strengthen the self-efficacy of the able students who act as models, and where collaborative working and discussion take place, it can also boost the self-efficacy of the struggling students as they relate to and learn from their peers."

My peers can be my teachers.

Yes, I can!

This cat is in honor of Laura Ritchie's great essay: Yes I Can: Self-efficacy. And you can see more self-efficacy cats here: #YesICan Cats.

Just one great quote among many: "Self-belief is at the core, but is not enough. It is backed up with skills and the practical accomplishments that demonstrate the reality that actually, yes, you can do something."

Yes, I can!

Learning requires initial experimentation.

This quote is inspired by a passage from Chapter 4 of Laura Ritchie's book, Fostering Self-Efficacy in Higher Education Students (2015).

Ritchie writes: "Learning requires initial experimentation, and depending on how complicated the task is there may be layers of learning and small activities needed before the student can reproduce the modeled behavior with confidence and security."

Learning requires initial experimentation.

Consider what you are capable of.

This quote is inspired by a passage from Chapter 2 of Laura Ritchie's book, Fostering Self-Efficacy in Higher Education Students (2015).

Ritchie writes: "Making judgments about self-efficacy for learning requires the student to consider their capabilities for acquiring new skills [...] Self-efficacy for performing involves beliefs about executing a task successfully by using skills that have already been learned."

Consider what you are capable of.

English. I shape the technology; it does not shape me.

This quote is inspired by a passage from Chapter 1 of Laura Ritchie's book, Fostering Self-Efficacy in Higher Education Students (2015).

Ritchie writes: "By taking responsibility, having purpose, and believing in their actions, students ultimately will be in a position to shape the technologies they use, instead of allowing technology to shape them. Without this outlook, the empowerment of having information at students' fingertips is false, as they are not being empowered to creatively use their own agency."

I shape the technology; it does not shape me.

English. Commit to a goal.

This quote is inspired by a passage from Chapter 2 of Laura Ritchie's book, Fostering Self-Efficacy in Higher Education Students (2015).

Ritchie writes:  "Committing to a goal is partly determined by self-efficacy, and the actions that follow are also sustained by these beleifs and lead to achievements, which are the basis for future judgments about self-efficacy."

Commit to a goal.

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Home to all the growth mindset cats, with a focus on feedback.