ungrading
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Grade Inflation is a Symptom, Not the Disease (Part 2): The Specter of Grade Compression
In this subseries on the wicked problem of assessment, I am exploring the tensions between supporting the learning of every student and sorting students by levels of distinction and merit. I argued previously that: 1. Although the education system (and broader society) is more invested in sorting students, many teachers (like myself) are more invested Continue reading
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Grade Inflation is a Symptom, not the Disease (Part 1): The Sorting and Supporting Functions of Education
Amid my ongoing series on the wicked problem of assessment, I am devoting several posts to the latest controversy (scandal? moral panic?) about “grade inflation” in higher ed.(Seriously, we are talking about podcast titles like “Has Harvard Gone Soft”?). This issue is obviously assessment-coded, but its sensitivity to current events merits its own subseries. Before Continue reading
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Assessment is a Wicked Problem (Part Five): Performance Zones and Exploration Zones
As someone who has enjoyed psychologist Adam Grant’s writing on themes including epistemological humility and the benefits of generosity over selfishness, I was taken aback by his New York Times opinion piece “No, You Don’t Get an A for Effort.” In this essay, Grant resorts to tired kids these days complaints like, “In the past, Continue reading
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Assessment is a Wicked Problem (Part 1)
I have a love-hate relationship with the enterprise of learning assessment. By assessment, I mean both the formative, “checking in to see how someone is doing at a given moment” assessments and the summative, “this is how you did and what that says about what you learned” assessments that get recorded in gradebooks and eventually Continue reading
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Student Engagement is Crucial. But Can We Measure It, and Should We Even Try?
I have a colleague who directs our university’s journalism program. She loves attending editorial meetings of the campus newspaper, where the students’ eagerness to find compelling stories and to receive feedback on their writing is palpable. Seeing students this excited to engage the process, to improve their skills, to work toward a collective goal … Continue reading
Teaching Inquiry 