Grading Justice

In Grading Justice: Teacher-Activist Approaches to Assessment, new and seasoned teachers are invited to engage with socially-just approaches of assessment, including practices aimed at resisting and undoing grading and assessment altogether, to create more democratic grading practices and policies, foregrounding the transformative potential of communication within their courses. The contributions in this collection encourage readers to consider not only how educators might assess social justice work in and beyond the classroom, but also to imagine what a social justice approach to grading and assessment would mean for intervening into unjust modes of teaching and learning. Educators wishing to explore critical modes of grading and assessment, grounded in social justice, will find this book a timely and relevant pedagogical guide for their teaching and scholarship.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Grieving (Un)Grading (In)Justices

Kristen C. Blinne

1- Rhetoric of Grades: Evaluating Student Work and Its Consequences

David Deifell

2- Mobilizing a Critical Universal Design for Learning Framework for Justice Minded Course Design and Assessment

Mark Congdon Jr. and Allison D. Brenneise

3- Honoring Viviencias: A Borderlands Approach to Higher Education Pedagogy Justice

Leandra H. Hernandez and Sarah De Los Santos Upton

4- Walking the Tightrope: Navigating the Tensions of Teaching and Grading Communication Content Inside and Outside the Discipline

Juliane Mora

5- Student-Activist Mentor Letters as a Form of Social Movement-Building in Communication Activism Pedagogy

David L. Palmer

6- Love Letters Gone Wrong: Complicating the Romantic Ideal of Democratic Processes in the College Classroom

Londie T. Martin and Kristen A. McIntyre

7- Are We Just Grading or Grading Justly?: Adventures with Non-Traditional

Assessment

Kristen C. Blinne

8- “Ungrading” Communication: Awareness Pedagogy as Activist Assessment

Kristen C. Blinne

9- Resisting the Detrimental Effects of Grade Inflation on University Faculty and Students through Critical Communication Pedagogy

David H. Kahl Jr.

10- Rate My Performance, or Just Sing Along: A Critical Look at Student Evaluations of Teaching

Summer Cunningham

11- The Seven Lesson Faculty Member: Outlining Assessment’s Harm to Faculty

C. Kyle Rudick

About the Contributors