Citation:

Inman, Olewski Joyce. “In the Absence of Grades: Dissonance and Desire in Course-Contract Classrooms.” College Composition and Communication, National Council of Teachers of English, 2018, Vol. 69 (4), pp.30-32.

Summary:

Joyce Olewski Inman and Rebecca A. Powell borrow from the pedogogies of Danielewicz, Elbow, Thelin, Shor and Inoue, in order to implement a study into the promising effects of course contract grading. The study, which was taken at an unnamed University, included volunteers from the University’s faculty, graduate instructors, and part-time faculty. These individuals who volunteered were, “interested in teaching in our expanded composition program and in re-thinking their classroom assessment procedures” (32). Inman and Powell collected data from ten sections of expanded composition who used contract grading, and six sections of expanded composition that used traditional grading methods. The authors claimed to be cognizant of Asao Inoue’s argument that grades, “reinforce a norming to a white student’s habitus” (Antiracist 185). Indeed, upon the initial collections of data, the satisfaction responses held significant correlations to the students’ and instructors’ identities (the authors began their data by identifying the student and instructors’ racial and gender demographics).

However, the authors state that the significance of gender and race in relation to a course contract grading were not surprising. Not only were gender and race connections deemed unsurprising, but also the ways in which student’s recognized grades as “identity markers”. The identity markers that distinguish whether or not the student is above average, average, or a failure of the class, are taken away with a course-contract grading system. For the students in the classes that had a course-contract grading system, there was an appreciation for the freedom it brought them, but at the same time, rendered them unable to place themselves on “a spectrum of success” (40). Grades carry conformation and identity in ways that contract grading does not, thus the sudden absence of such a concrete aspect can create anxiety for students.

Overall, after the first semester was complete, there was an agreement between faculty that grades are problematic. It serves as a form of colonialism— to adhere to an old, outdated institutional system that provokes students into wanting and striving for a letter, rather than focusing on their work as a student. It forces an identity on a student, and course-contract grading therefore alters a much-needed alternative. It’s uncomfortable at first for both the students and instructors— however

Quotations:

• “We hoped that removing the emphasis on products and the grades that accompanied those products would allow students the freedom to focus on the works and acts of writers, and we also trusted that course contracts might provide students with a more transparent view of what we value as teachers” (33).
• “Scholars in writing studies and education have investigated the validity and the cultural and social justice implications of grades, and in almost every case they have found grades wanted” (34).
• “To dismiss cultural constructs such as grades, a repeated part of the education system from students’ earliest memories of schools, ignores the affective domain of learning. The affective domain of learning, that of values and emotions, understands grades within the realm of experience and identity” (34).
• “Students are primed by our education system not to assess the quality of their own writing but to use the grades they receive to categorize themselves and to prepare for the emotions that come along with the identity these grades create (e.g, the A student, the teacher’s pet, the average kid, the kid who can’t cut it)” (40).

Reflection:

I found this article to be extremely useful, and chose it based on the fact that I’m still hesitant about the contract grading system we use in our 101 classes. If anything, this article put the non-traditional grading system into perspective and led me through the process of “decolonizing English classrooms”. There is power and clarity with grades. Students expect a letter that they use as a form of identity, not only within the classroom, but the institution as a whole. Likewise, professors and university instructors internalize grades as a way to classify students, grouping them into the excellent, good, average, poor, and fail boxes.

Going forward, I’d like to use pieces of this article to share with my Winter quarter freshmen early on in the quarter. A positive, or at the very least, open-minded approach to the course-contract grading system can potentially shift the dynamic of the classroom. For this quarter, it was probably evident to my students that I didn’t know exactly how to approach this new system of grading, and they used that hesitancy to attack the grading contract with all their might. I initially gave a few half ass responses that went along the lines of, “it levels the playing field for those who excel in English and those who are new at some of these concepts.” However, now, thanks to this article, I feel like I can better answer my students questions and make a clear case for the validity of a contract-grading system.