Listen to the episode by clicking the link to your preferred podcast platform below:
In this episode, I’m discussing ideas for shared leadership and co-construction at the classroom level using concepts from Dr. Asao Inoue’s work, specifically his book, Antiracist Writing Assessment Ecologies.
In particular, we focus on the goal of disrupting hegemonic power (e.g., white, patriarchal) and the specific practice of co-constructing a grading contract with students as one way to achieve that disruption. Why? In his transformative book, Dr. Inoue cites research surrounding three key themes: 1) Grades are inherently flawed. In 1961, researchers French, Carlton, and Diederich conducted a factor analysis study in which 300 papers were given a grade from 1-9 by 53 graders. About one-third of the papers received every single grade (one through nine). In fact, all but 6% of the papers received at least seven different grades, and 100% of the papers had at least five grades. The study concluded that agreement among all the graders could only predict 9.6% of the variance in grades, meaning the system of grading is not reliable, and thus unfair. However, we operate in an educational system that requires these grades to progress forward, so what does creative disruption look like for educators? 2) The standards are often racist. Even when we try to assess more equitably—perhaps using assessment tools like standards-based rubrics—Inoue points out that we are still measuring from a “white racial habitus.” For example, grammar is often assessed based on the standard dominant form of English, which is part of the white racial habitus. Instead of focusing solely on grammar, educators can focus on the clarity of thought and how well learning is communicated. Another area we see this is in the over-emphasis on rationality and logic. In focusing only on finding the “objective truth,” we may miss marginalized perspectives and the heart component of our experiences, which is just as necessary for change and transformation. 3) Students learn better without grades. Kohn’s 1999 study found that students learn more when they are asked to reflect and self-assess their work but aren’t graded. Inoue summarizes the study’s findings, writing that students who are “led to think mostly about how well they are doing—or even worse, how well they are doing compared to everyone else—are less likely to do well” (p. 156). So, the self-reflection is positive, but the constant comparison and focus on their standing compared to other students can be harmful. What? These three concepts are big and may feel unwieldy for educators to approach. Let’s begin with some small action steps to implement this work in our educational environments. Step 1: Interrogate your beliefs about grades Your starting point is to interrogate your beliefs about grades: what should be graded and what shouldn’t. You can also invite the conversation with your students—what do they think is fair or unfair? Together, you can dig deeper to look at the “hidden path to success” that Joe Feldman talks about. These are the privileges and access some students have to resources and institutions that prepare them for higher grades in a way other students don’t get. Step 2: Determine where you can test ideas After you interrogate your beliefs about grades, you can determine where you can test some ideas. What’s in your locus of control? While you may still need to convert to A-F grades for report cards, what can you do before that? What systems are you using internally? Dr. Inoue talks about the seven elements of anti-racist writing assessment ecologies, including defining the purpose in the assessment, knowing the power dynamics inherent in it, and inviting reflection through your processes. Step 3: Invite student co-construction The first two steps are foundational in creating a safe environment that enables us to learn and grow together. We can only invite students into co-construction when they feel safe and valued. Even so, it may feel difficult for students who are not used to this. As educators, though, we can keep working to invite students into co-construction, normalizing the process and showing that you are working together in this. Step 4: Create the contract or rubric When you invite students to co-construct, what do you actually do with them? One starting point is creating a contract or developing a rubric together. It could be looking at a dimension-based rubric or something very flexible that doesn’t just use the standard language. One meaningful idea is to use labor-based components, so students track how many hours of labor they put into the project. It can be a component of the rubric that you’ve all agreed upon together and reflects a different metric than output or performance. Step 5: Normalize reflection & self-assessment as classroom practice To prioritize reflection and self-assessment, embed it into your schedule—every Friday, for example, you set aside time to work on this. Co-create protocols with students for how you’ll reflect and assess, and then use it regularly so it becomes a standard practice. Final Tip We covered a lot of ground in this episode, and this all is a massive undertaking! Be gentle with yourself and focus on trying just one piece to start. To help you more deeply consider and perhaps implement Dr. Anoue’s work, I’m linking a fantastic resource from a workshop from Dr. Anoue: Workshop Handout - Labor-Based Grading Contracts, which also includes examples of dimension-based grading. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 193 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript below. Quotes
TRANSCRIPT 00:00 Welcome to the Time for Teachership podcast. This is episode 193. And in this one we're talking about anti-racist co-constructed assessment ecologies. So I am a little late to the game with Dr Asao Inoue's work and specifically I have been diving into his book Anti-Racist Writing Assessment Ecologies and it is profoundly interesting. So we're going to dive into it, specifically thinking about, you know, through the lens in this leadership series of shared leadership and what that looks like inside of a classroom and what it looks like to co-construct things that are as important as assessments and inviting student voice and co -creation in that Really, really excited about it. And also just to think about this goal that is underlying all the things we talk about on the podcast disrupting the hegemonic power where there's a lot of white, patriarchal, cis-hetero power that exists in classroom dynamics, that is steeped in education. There's the teacher-student dynamic, there's all sorts of power, and so how do we disrupt it and what are the practices as well as kind of keeping that goal in mind? And Dr Inouye's work really does this well and gives us some food for thought. So let's dive in. 01:16 First I want to take a look at the research. So the research that Dr Inouye cites in the book tell us a couple of things, three big ones, and I'll go through each of them. One grades are inherently flawed. Two, the standards we assess on are often racist. And three students learn better without grades. So let's look at the research on each. Grades are inherently flawed. 01:40 So in 1961, researchers French, Carlton and Yedrick, conducted a factor analysis study. So they gave 300 papers a grade. They had 53 graders and each of the 300 papers were given a grade on a scale from one to nine. All the grades are given, all the papers are graded. They take a look About a third of the papers 101 papers received every single grade, Like the same paper got a one, a two, a three, a four all the way through nine. A third of the papers received every single grade. That is bananas. All but 6%. So 94% of the papers received at least seven of the nine grades. So 94% of the papers received at least seven of the nine grades and 100% of the papers had five or more had at least five grades. The study concluded that agreement among the graders could only predict because this was a factored analysis study only predict 9.6% of the variance in grades. So in short, what this means is the system of grading was not reliable, right in this study. And clearly, if it's not reliable, it is not fair, right If the student writes something that someone grades as a nine and someone else grades as a one, someone else grades as a five, right, Like it's just not a system that we should be relying on and we can do things certainly to mitigate that bias, that multiple perspectives that the graders bring in, and we can do some like norming and things like that I think are certainly helpful, but it is something that we have to keep in mind. The process of grading, inherently, is not great, Though we are in a system that requires grades, requires grades for schools and children who are going from elementary to middle school, middle school to high school and high school to college and other spaces where grades are valued. And so, if we are to be working within the system, right, Dr Inouye is writing from the perspective of a college professor, and so I want to think through these things for through a K-12 lens today. 03:42 Next point standards are often very racist, and so when we try to assess even if we're assessing equitably right, we're using the Feldman's work, which I love, using tools like standards-based rubrics right, we are measuring the standards that are still coming from, in Dr Inouye's language, a white racial habitus. And so he specifically writes about the writing class that he teaches and assessing writing. Specifically he writes, quote conventional writing assessment practices rarely, if ever, dismantle the racism in our classrooms and schools because they do not address whiteness and the dominant discourse as hegemonic and students' relationship to it end. Quote One piece of this is grammar, even if it's not in the rubric. But people will assess grammar, they will assess ways of speaking the standard dominant form of English right, which is part of a white racial habitus. When we assess in this way, these other ways of communicating, these other phrases or grammatical schemes are, like, less valid or not valid here. For me, separating out the grammar pieces from is the writing effectively communicating, that is one kind of step in the process. I have seen and been in sessions with teachers who have assessed something where grammar is not even in, like nothing about. Even conventions of written English are part of the rubric and they're still assessing with it. So we have to kind of divorce our minds from like what do we, what are we really doing here, and is the goal? For me, the goal is usually like is it communicated effectively. 05:19 Dr Inouye also writes the cognitive capacity is the ability to think rationally, logically and objectively, with rigor, clarity and consistency, that is valued most. So the idea of being able to be hyper-rational doing, for example, one thing I've really started to unlearn myself is claim evidence reasoning. We teach it and it is good to be able to have a stance and back it up with evidence. Evidence is important and in times fraught with conflict, even with adults in our society, I think it's really important that we learn to seek to understand or that we might have kind of this convoluted route to understanding and it's not always linear. And I think this idea of the head and the heart both being critically important as social scientists, as humans, right when we're teaching things like history class, I personally have realized I don't always want to be in a society or around humans who are only rational and logical, who only think there is an objective truth, Because there's always marginalized perspectives. They're missing a complete component, the heart component of the work we live in, that intellectualizing space and that often inhibits us from feeling discomfort, which is necessary for change and growth and transformation of society and structure. So I do think this idea of the white racial habitus, informs things like grammar, informs things like rationality being supreme above emotionality, divorcing the head from the heart. These are just things that we see in standards and what we prioritize and what we measure. So recognizing that, going into this conversation, I think, is really critical. 07:05 The third piece students learn better without grades. So Cohn in 1999 did a study that found that students learn more when they are asked to reflect and self-assess on their work, but they are not graded. So Dr Inouye summarizes this study's findings in his book, writing that students who are quote led to think mostly about how well they are doing or, even worse, how well they are doing compared to everyone else, are less likely to do well, end quote. So this idea of how well am I doing? Where am I in the ranking? How's everyone like? Am I normal, right, Like this constant comparison which, given social media and just the culture that kids are raised in, is already hyper present in their awarenesses and engagement with the world. I think this is probably the study. Study was done pre-social media, as it is now 1999. So just imagine, right 25 years later, how more kind of intense that might actually be in a study. I'm not familiar with more recent research, but I bet it's out there. 08:08 So again, when students are given space to reflect and self-assess, great, that's actually really good. But the grade component and that comparative or like getting some sort of like label placed on where they're doing, how well they're doing, that's actually not helpful. That's really important, kind of going into this, that we want to distinguish feedback versus grades. Right Assessment can be many things it can be feedback, it can be grades. We truly benefit from the feedback and the self-reflection and all those practices, not from the grade itself. And I get that we might need to report it somewhere. But how can we internally, within classrooms, within our interactions with students, do the former and not the latter? 08:52 Okay, so now let's talk a little bit about what this actually looks like. The first thing we can do is interrogate your beliefs about grades what should be graded and what shouldn't. Another piece here is determine you know what your students believe about grades. So interrogate both yours and invite the conversation about what your students believe. What is fair, what is not fair. Joe Feldman's work on clarity, not having that hidden path to success that some students who are typical A students might be, partly how they've learned, but they've also had access to institutions or preparation in some way that enables them to be successful, whereas other students don't, right? So, again, thinking through the lens of equity, we really need to do some unlearning. 09:36 Dr Inouye talks about how quote tensions in the assessment ecology a product of its politics often come from an uncritical use of a dominant discourse in judging and assessing student writing. He goes on to talk about how, when we co-create with students and then we can actually see that as like participating in the counter-hegemonic by co-creating with students, by pushing back on maybe what we traditionally think should be graded, we actually can disrupt the hegemony present in classrooms. I think that's a pretty cool idea. There's a lot of things, though, again, that we might have to let go of in order to arrive there. The next part is where can you test ideas, Figure out where you might be able to do a little testing, a little piloting. Figure out what's in your locus of control so you still may need to convert A through F to report cards, to report out Totally understandable and like what do you do, though, to get that right? What is the conversion? But like what's the system you use internally? And I think part of that is figuring out right, like Dr Inouye writes about the seven elements of anti-racist writing, assessment, ecologies, and so he talks about one being power, right and so needing us to interrogate it a little bit of what I talked about in the first bullet point here and then next is like the parts, right, the parts of the system, the artifacts, the codes, the judgments made by people. 10:59 So a portfolio, for example, is kind of like a part. That's a part that we grade, and when we have the grade as a part, it's going to change students' attitudes, right, it's going to change how students respond to a particular assignment and it's going to change the whole nature of things, right, and so if we can't get away from grades, how do we get close enough to away from grades that we're centralizing the feedback over the grade itself? The third element of the ecology is purpose. What is the purpose of being here, of writing, of assessing? We're not doing this for a grade, we're doing this because assessment is actually really what's going to help you grow. Fourth is people, and all people have different powers. So, again, you can see some of these intersecting. Power and people are two different elements, Processes. So, again, like inviting reflection, awesome, and we want to make sure that that reflection process is not informed or dominated by kind of that white racial habit. 12:01 As you talked about products, so here he talks about direct and indirect consequences. So direct product would be like the score, the grade, the decision, the way that the teacher or the peer gives you feedback. And then indirect is a result of the direct thing. So you get feedback that talked about how you should change your grammar, and so now your focus is on superficial editing, right? You got a D grade, and so now you think you're not a great student and that's going to inform your future performance and your identity is like I'm not a writer, I'm not a good student, right? So we have products that are direct and indirect as the result of the direct. 12:39 And then, finally, the seventh element is place, and so this is rhetorical and material conditions and the production of judgment. So this might be a discussion board because that's where the judgment or the assessment or the feedback precisely is taking place. It might be a rubric. This is a material condition, it's a thing that we interact with to offer that feedback, whether you're a teacher, whether you're a student it might be student to student writing groups, that feedback, whether you're a teacher, whether you're a student it might be student to student writing groups Place is where we can make the hegemonic visible in Dobrin's words and so we are able to kind of name the thing in the space. And again, all of these elements interact with each other. So how people are interacting with these material conditions, the rubric within the writing group, how power is conveyed there, like all of those pieces, are really important and of course, to do this well right, we really need to be thoughtful about the community involved. 13:39 Step three what I would say after you've interrogated your own beliefs and determined where you might be able to test out some ideas, maybe playing with one of those elements of the ecology might be able to test out some ideas. Maybe playing with one of those elements of the ecology we want to make sure that we have laid the foundation that invites a perception of safety, that enables us to grow and learn and make mistakes and be uncomfortable, and that values feedback. So I think all of those things are kind of foundational to inviting co-construction. I also want to say that students may find it difficult to co-construct because they are not used to co-constructing. It is hard for students to come in and tell you what they want, partly because the older they are, the more they've been kind of indoctrinated into. This is how we do school. Just tell me, or I know how it works. We're not going to do this other thing. I don't. I've lost my kind of creative spark because school has taken it from me right and all of its rigidity of the system. 14:36 But also that when we invite student co-construction there's a power dynamic there and this is one of Feldman's responses to Inouye's work is that when you invite that co-construction, you can't ignore the power dynamics that are at play here and the societal pieces that we have just been consistently told like this is academic English, right, this is the way that things are graded, this is like this is the way, and so it's really hard to disrupt that and I think we do our best to. But I do believe in that invitation of co-construction with students and so a couple of things that you might be able to play with here in terms of you know what you actually move forward with, in terms of like a thing to do. So, once you've invited student co-construction, I think step four is really gonna be what do you do now? What are the things you like put some things into play, create the contract or developing the rubric together. Whatever it is that you are creating, like create the product, and that could be, for example, dimension-based rubrics. It's something that I really gravitate to as, I think, a beautiful blend of what Feldman talks about and what Inouye talks about, because, yes, you're still kind of speaking to the standard at large, but it is way more flexible, and I really like that. So that flexibility piece is critical, I think, to being able to not bring in all of the pieces that we bring in when we use the specific standard language. So that's one piece that's really really cool. And then another, I think, that labor-based component of a grade where Dr Noy grades his students based on how many hours of labor they put in and then they track that. That's a really cool piece to play with. And so perhaps, using that as like one line of the rubric, I know when we, when I was a teacher, we often had like a percentage like 85% were academic standards and like 15% were like process standards or we call them work habits. But I think about like the way in which we labor. We could be like labor based standards or something, and maybe that is co constructed with students to determine, like, what the language is. So I think that could be super cool. 16:58 And then finally, a last practice, once you've kind of created the contract whatever the kind of material product is step five is really thinking about the ways that you embed and normalize reflection and self-assessment into your classroom practice. So put it right in the schedule right, Every Friday is student self-reflection. We are going to use this protocol for peer feedback. So we're going to have all of the students use peer review, for example, where they look at the rubric and they annotate the rubric so that they could give feedback on a fellow student's piece of work very specifically and precisely related to how they'll get the assessed grade from the teacher. They're just kind of normalizing use of all of these pieces so that it's not we invite student co-construction and then we do nothing with it. Right, we actually co-create something that is a kind of living document or rubric or whatever it is contract in the class and then we use it regularly, Like every week. There's a protocol that involves us using it and self-reflecting and maybe not even giving grades right, Maybe just using that rubric. That like narrative feedback, qualitative feedback from peers and teachers and self feedback from peers and teachers and self, and then the grade comes later. 18:12 Right Now, this was a massive kind of episode with lots of research and lots of heavy kind of unlearning and big ideas. I want to say it is a massive undertaking and I just encourage you to kind of try one piece, one little piece to start, and I will link in the show notes a beautiful kind of summary of Dr Inouye's work. After listening to a podcast, I was led to someone's website that had this on there and it is so incredibly helpful. You can grab that at lindsaybethlyonscom. Slash blog slash 193. 00:35 / 18:48
If you enjoyed this episode, check out my YouTube channel where you can learn about more tips and resources like this one below:
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
For transcripts of episodes (and the option to search for terms in transcripts), click here!
Time for Teachership is now a proud member of the...
AuthorLindsay Lyons (she/her) is an educational justice coach who works with teachers and school leaders to inspire educational innovation for racial and gender justice, design curricula grounded in student voice, and build capacity for shared leadership. Lindsay taught in NYC public schools, holds a PhD in Leadership and Change, and is the founder of the educational blog and podcast, Time for Teachership. Archives
March 2025
Categories |
RSS Feed