Ungrading: Why Rating Students Undermines Learning (and what to do instead) by
The moment is right for critical reflection on what has been assumed to be a core part of schooling. In Ungrading, fifteen educators write about their diverse experiences going gradeless. Some contributors are new to the practice and some have been engaging in it for decades. Some are in humanities and social sciences, some in STEM fields. Some are in higher education, but some are the K-12 pioneers who led the way. Based on rigorous and replicated research, this is the first book to show why and how faculty who wish to focus on learning, rather than sorting or judging, might proceed. It includes honest reflection on what makes ungrading challenging, and testimonials about what makes it transformative. CONTRIBUTORS: Aaron Blackwelder Susan D. Blum Arthur Chiaravalli Gary Chu Cathy N. Davidson Laura Gibbs Christina Katopodis Joy Kirr Alfie Kohn Christopher Riesbeck Starr Sackstein Marcus Schultz-Bergin Clarissa Sorensen-Unruh Jesse Stommel John Warner
Grading for Equity: What It Is, Why It Matters, and How It Can Transform Schools and Classrooms by
With Grading for Equity, Joe Feldman cuts to the core of the conversation, revealing how grading practices that are accurate, bias-resistant, and motivational will improve learning, minimize grade inflation, reduce failure rates, and become a lever for creating stronger teacher-student relationships and more caring classrooms. The book provides a critical historical backdrop, describing how our inherited system of grading was originally set up as a sorting mechanism to provide or deny opportunity, control students, and endorse a "fixed mindset" about students′ academic potential - practices that are still in place a century later.
Radical Hope: A Teaching Manifesto by
Higher education has seen better days. Harsh budget cuts, the precarious nature of employment in college teaching, and political hostility to the entire enterprise of education have made for an increasingly fraught landscape. Radical Hope is an ambitious response to this state of affairs, at once political and practical--the work of an activist, teacher, and public intellectual grappling with some of the most pressing topics at the intersection of higher education and social justice. Kevin Gannon asks that the contemporary university's manifold problems be approached as opportunities for critical engagement, arguing that, when done effectively, teaching is by definition emancipatory and hopeful. Considering individual pedagogical practice, the students who are the primary audience and beneficiaries of teaching, and the institutions and systems within which teaching occurs, Radical Hope surveys the field, tackling everything from impostor syndrome to cell phones in class to allegations of a campus "free speech crisis." Throughout, Gannon translates ideals into tangible strategies and practices (including key takeaways at the conclusion of each chapter), with the goal of reclaiming teachers' essential role in the discourse of higher education.
It's Not about Grit: Trauma, Inequity, and the Power of Transformational Teaching by
2018 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Gold Award in Education 2019 PROSE Award in Education Finalist Speaking out against decades of injustice and challenging deficit perceptions of young learners and their families, It's Not About Grit pulls back the veil, revealing the social systems that marginalize and stigmatize mostly poor, urban students of color and their communities. At the same time, author Steven Goodman, founding executive director of NYC's highly acclaimed Educational Video Center (EVC) for nearly 35 years, shows the tremendous intelligence, resilience, and sense of agency of these students. Through the students' in-school and out-of-school experiences, enhanced with a curriculum guide and award-winning video clips from EVC, Goodman encourages educators to make a difference and demonstrates how to create a safe and inclusive school climate where their teaching responds to students' culture, race, gender, sexual orientation, language, housing status, and ability. Teachers will use this book to develop a pedagogy of transformative teaching. Book Features: Draws on the author's many years of practice with struggling learners who may be experiencing the trauma of poverty, violence, or family separation. Uses a unique blend of students' personal stories, classroom experience, and social and political policy to inform the teaching of marginalized students. Provides a comprehensive review of the issues that students bring to the classroom, including health and housing, police and juvenile justice, immigration, gender and identity, and foster care. Links to original clips from student-produced video documentaries and a curriculum guide to spark discussions in college courses, professional development workshops, and high school classes: www.tcpress.com/goodman-video-clips.
Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope by
Ten years ago, bell hooks astonished readers with Teachingto Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. Now comes Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope- a powerful, visionary work that will enrich our teaching and our lives. Combining critical thinking about education with autobiographical narratives, hooks invites readers to extend the discourse of race, gender, class and nationality beyond the classroom into everyday situations of learning. bell hooks writes candidly about her own experiences. Teaching, she explains, can happen anywhere, any time - not just in college classrooms but in churches, in bookstores, in homes where people get together to share ideas that affect their daily lives. In Teaching Communitybell hooks seeks to theorize from the place of the positive, looking at what works. Writing about struggles to end racism and white supremacy, she makes the useful point that "No one is born a racist. Everyone makes a choice." Teaching Communitytells us how we can choose to end racism and create a beloved community. hooks looks at many issues-among them, spirituality in the classroom, white people looking to end racism, and erotic relationships between professors and students. Spirit, struggle, service, love, the ideals of shared knowledge and shared learning - these values motivate progressive social change. Teachers of vision know that democratic education can never be confined to a classroom. Teaching - so often undervalued in our society -- can be a joyous and inclusive activity. bell hooks shows the way. "When teachers teach with love, combining care, commitment, knowledge, responsibility, respect, and trust, we are often able to enter the classroom and go straight to the heart of the matter, which is knowing what to do on any given day to create the best climate for learning."
We Want to Do More Than Survive: Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of Educational Freedom by
Winner of the 2020 Society of Professors of Education Outstanding Book Award Drawing on personal stories, research, and historical events, an esteemed educator offers a vision of educational justice inspired by the rebellious spirit and methods of abolitionists. Drawing on her life's work of teaching and researching in urban schools, Bettina Love persuasively argues that educators must teach students about racial violence, oppression, and how to make sustainable change in their communities through radical civic initiatives and movements. She argues that the US educational system is maintained by and profits from the suffering of children of color. Instead of trying to repair a flawed system, educational reformers offer survival tactics in the forms of test-taking skills, acronyms, grit labs, and character education, which Love calls the educational survival complex. To dismantle the educational survival complex and to achieve educational freedom--not merely reform--teachers, parents, and community leaders must approach education with the imagination, determination, boldness, and urgency of an abolitionist. Following in the tradition of activists like Ella Baker, Bayard Rustin, and Fannie Lou Hamer, We Want to Do More Than Survive introduces an alternative to traditional modes of educational reform and expands our ideas of civic engagement and intersectional justice.
Promoting Inclusive Classroom Dynamics in Higher Education: A Research-Based Pedagogical Guide for Faculty by
This powerful, practical resource helps faculty create an inclusive dynamic in their classrooms, so that all students are set up to succeed. Grounded in research and theory (including educational psychology, scholarship of teaching and learning, intergroup dialogue, and social justice theory), this book provides practical solutions to help faculty create an inclusive learning environment in which all students can thrive. Each chapter focuses on palpable ideas and adaptive strategies to use right away when teaching. Thefirst chapter consider professors' intersecting personal and social identities and their expectations for themselves and their students. Chapter 2 considers students' backgrounds, including class, race, disability, and gender, and focuses on what students bring to the classroom, exploring their basic psychological needs of autonomy, competence, and belonging; their approaches to learning; and their self-doubts and uncertainties. Chapter 3 draws on universally-designed learning in combination with educational design rooted in social justice and multiculturalism todescribe ways to design spaces in which students flourish academically. Two chapters focus on classroom dynamics. Chapter 4 primarily focuses on preparationfor having difficult conversations in the classroom, considering how instructors can create a shared understanding between themselves and their students. Chapter 5 focuses on in-the-moment strategies to both createand managediscomfort about sensitive and controversial topics while supporting students of various social identities (such as gender, race, disability). In the closing chapter, the author integrates all the elements in the preceding chapters, and also presents more general college-wide programs to help faculty develop and improve their teaching.