The following was written for Dalton State College’s internal Journal for Academic Excellence, and it serves as a review of two books and an appeal to a compassionate, student-centered approach to teaching that embraces new methods of assessment.
Embracing an Empathetic Pedagogy
Encouraging Radical Hope
Kevin M. Gannon’s Radical Hope: A Teaching Manifesto may be one of the most accessible introductions to critical pedagogy ever written. Gannon attacks the “jaded detachment” (p. 3) that can easily overwhelm even the most enthusiastic faculty by prescribing a focus on praxis, empathy, and equitable teaching. Writing with directness and clarity, Dr. Gannon wastes no time challenging internalized conceptions of teaching, learning, and the role of an educator.
Why shouldn’t we ensure that the education we offer emphasizes not only knowledge but also civic responsibility? Gannon drives home the point that simply “introducing knowledge into the public sphere and then abdicating any role in what happens to it afterward is at best highly problematic; at worst, it’s wildly irresponsible” (p. 16). Reading these arguments closely, one begins to question the role of “rigor” in the classroom: does an inflexible demand for such a thing encourage or impede learning? Before reading this book, I would argue the former. No longer.
The book’s publication shortly before the COVID-19 pandemic made Gannon’s arguments remarkably prescient. We’ve all seen how such a disruptive externality requires that we rethink many of our core assumptions about teaching. “Neutrality” is often a false pretense in the classroom, and our reliance on the legalese and warning statements in our syllabi can be a crutch that prevents us from claiming accountability for our end of the learning bargain. To recognize teaching as the act of radical hope that it should be, we must be intentional about inclusivity, about compassion, and about rejecting the notion of an adversarial relationship between an educator and their student.
Rethinking Grading
And the single biggest step that one can take to embrace such an empathetic pedagogy is to subject the very notion of grading to a critical microscope. When research tells us that grades shift students to extrinsic motivation, become internalized measures of self-worth, and inhibit learning, why would we stick to them as if they had been refined over millennia rather than developed barely over a century ago? Grades are, ostensibly, only good for standardization, and they even fail at that—despite our attempts to mitigate our bias with rubrics and other measures.
While wrestling with how to equitably grade amongst a shift to remote learning during a pandemic, I discovered Jesse Stommel’s writings regarding ungrading. Having previously adopted alternative grading systems—namely specifications grading—I was eager to hear about anything that could reduce my students’ stress and help me enable deeper learning. Over the past two semesters, my expectations have been exceeded.
As it turns out, ungrading is simple: you don’t give grades for any assignment or submission. Instead, you provide qualitative feedback on all work, personalizing your notes for the student and the situation. This dramatically opened up the ways I could approach student feedback, and it changed how students viewed my advice. Rather than feel an instinctive desire to contest areas that I designated for improvement (because students have grown to associate such feedback with grade reductions), students told me they found themselves appreciating my constructive criticism, wanting to go above and beyond the guidelines for assignments that I had put forward. Rather than my grade being the final say on the matter, students took responsibility for when they would let an assignment be finished. The motivation, now intrinsic, lead to a natural desire for learning.
Alas, we must still submit grades. And here is where ungrading made me nervous: midterm and final grades are largely determined by the grade each student self-assigns during special reflection assignments. My first thought was borne of institutionalized distrust: in the age of plagiarism detectors and oppressive proctoring software, there’s no way I can trust students to be honest in their self-assessment. And yet, when it came time to review grades for five classes at the end of the fall semester, not once did I invoke the right I reserved to lower a grade suggested by a student. In fact, I found that many students—perhaps out of an internalized sense of inadequacy fostered by the standard systems of higher ed—were excessively hard on themselves. I ended up raising grades in many cases, and my overall grade distribution wasn’t significantly different than previous semesters.
The final result has been a transformative experience. I can cultivate an atmosphere of trust with my students while encouraging them to take responsibility for their learning. By encouraging them to take that responsibility, I have empowered them to think outside the box and complete assignments and projects in new, exciting ways that I never would have anticipated myself. I am able to relish the concept of a liberal arts education like never before as I help them self-actualize all aspects of who they are. I again feel like a teacher, not a grader.
It’s perfectly understandable to view something like ungrading as a bigger leap than what you would feel is comfortable. Regardless, I believe there is room for all of us to embrace and evangelize the concept of an empathetic pedagogy. Our students should never falter in the belief that we are on their side, that we will stop at nothing to achieve meaningful, transformative learning. By acknowledging and respecting the personhood of and circumstances surrounding our students that fall outside the boundaries of the classroom, we can do far more to enable their future success than a rigid grading system could ever hope to achieve.