Grading and “ungrading” were twin topics at two packed sessions on Monday. In the morning, Lindsey Hamilton ’05, director of the college’s Center for Inclusive Teaching and Learning, explained the myths and realities of grading. (Hint: grades don’t reflect learning).
In the afternoon, April Hill, the Wagener Family Professor of Equity and Inclusion in STEM, discussed the problematic history of grading in science and math fields, sharing research showing how teachers can unwittingly use grading as a racist tool.
For example, research shows that when a teacher with a fixed mindset about student ability — believing that students have an innate academic ability that “can’t be budged” — they give much lower grades to underrepresented students than to white or Asian students. The grade gap is much less pronounced when growth-mindset teachers, who believe that talent and ability can improve, grade their students.
“Probably all of us would say that we don’t believe in human hierarchy,” said Hill. “But there's a lot of data saying that a legacy of white supremacy plays out in our everyday work, and that includes grading.”
In the morning session, Hamilton took the temperature of the room with a few kickoff questions, including, “What’s the purpose of grades?”
Using the audience-response app Mentimeter, folks shared their answers, which popped up on the monitor behind Hamilton, including “incentivize students” and “measure understanding of a topic” and “let students know when they are on track.”
“Not that we shouldn’t assess learning — we absolutely should,” said Hamilton. “But I’m going to question whether grading achieves that.”
In fact, grading is an ineffective means of assessing learning, said Hamilton. Further, “decades and decades and decades of research collectively shows us that grades don’t actually work as incentives. We use them as a carrot or as a stick, but they don’t work.
“And grades are not good markers of learning and they’re not fair by any definition. And there’s a lot of research to support that.”
One approach to bridge the grade-learning disconnect is concept of “ungrading.” For the purpose of the relatively brief workshop, Hamilton quoted Jesse Stomel, a writing professor, who said that “ungrading means raising an eyebrow at the whole systemic process of grades. It’s not the same as not grading. It merely means, let’s think about it. Let’s look at it.”