Author: Stacy Wittstock

Reviewed by Mikenna Sims, University of California, Davis

Carillo, E. C. (2021). The hidden inequities in labor-based contract grading. Logan, UT: Utah State University Press.

Ellen C. Carillo’s (2021) The Hidden Inequities in Labor-Based Contract Grading offers a critique of the assessment model put forth by Asao B. Inoue (2019) in Labor-Based Grading Contracts: Building Equity and Inclusion in the Compassionate Writing Classroom. Carillo opens her introduction by naming Inoue an “invaluable leader in writing studies,” particularly as the field contends with inequitable grading practices (4). Building on the work of Inoue and others, Carillo offers a disabilities studies lens through which she explores the implications of labor-based contract grading among disabled and neurodivergent students, departing from the raciolinguistic lens that has informed much of the existing work on contract grading. Carillo concludes her introduction with a brief history of contract grading situated in Cowan’s (2020) recent review of the literature.

Carillo opens Chapter 1 by outlining a set of assumptions that underscores labor-based contract grading. Specifically, Carillo posits that labor-based contract grading inaccurately assumes that labor is a neutral measure, and that contracts that attempt to quantify student labor reinforce White, middle-class, normative, ableist, and neurotypical conceptions of labor. That is, time to labor is less available to students in certain socioeconomic classes, and the concepts of time and labor function differently for students with disabilities and who are neurodivergent. Carillo additionally calls attention to the coupling of students’ willingness to labor with their ability to labor, which is a central component of Inoue’s (2019) labor-based contract grading model. Carillo further critiques the model’s assumption in Chapter 2 and considers that while students may be willing to engage in the laboring processes of a writing course, their time and ability to do so may vary considerably. She closes the chapter by arguing that labor-based contract grading merely substitutes one standard of assessment for another, and that the normative, laboring body remains at the center of labor-based grading contracts.

In Chapter 3, Carillo highlights students’ significant and growing experiences with anxiety and depression, exacerbated in part by the COVID-19 pandemic. Carillo contends that labor-based contract grading creates a standard of labor that excludes students experiencing heightened states of anxiety and depression and goes on to problematize the contract negotiation process Inoue (2019) proposes as a way for instructors to invite students to define important terms and labor expectations of a course contract. These negotiation processes, Carillo argues, place the responsibility of disclosing and requesting accommodations on disabled and neurodivergent students, and are reactive instead of proactive.

Students’ intersectional identities are central in Chapter 4, throughout which Carillo considers the ways in which multiply-marginalized students are disadvantaged in labor-based assessment ecologies. Further, she argues that labor-based grading contracts can easily revert to instruments that measure the quality of student writing, and that asking students to put more labor into their coursework is codified language that implies students are producing work that is of subpar quality. Carillo praises Kryger & Zimmerman (2020) for their intentionally intersectional approach to labor-based contract grading. She particularly values their attention to denaturalizing White supremacy, nonnormative conceptions of time and effort, as well as their emphasis on flexibility in assessment. Carillo concludes this chapter by highlighting the importance of conversations such as those put forth by Kryger & Zimmerman to “recognize and include the widest possible range of modes of learning and being” (42).

Throughout Chapter 5, Carillo considers the effectiveness of grading contracts across local assessment ecologies. After providing a brief overview of several recent studies on contract grading, she turns her attention to Inoue’s (2012) “Grading contracts: Assessing their effectiveness on different racial formations,” and Inoue’s (2019) Labor-Based Grading Contracts: Building Equity and Inclusion in the Compassionate Writing Classroom. Carillo, upon reexamining the data Inoue provides in these two texts, reasons that the students of color in Inoue’s classes seem to be doing more labor than their White counterparts but are not rewarded for it, suggesting that the philosophy that informs labor-based contract grading may be overestimating the equalizing power of labor and underestimating the importance of intersectionality. Carillo, echoing Cowan (2020), concludes Chapter 5 by issuing a call for large-scale studies that examine the effectiveness of labor-based grading contracts.

Carillo concludes Hidden Inequities by rearticulating that labor-based grading contracts are designed to best serve idealized, able-bodied, and neurotypical students. Carillo proposes engagement-based grading contracts as an alternative method of assessment in which students are offered a broad range of ways to demonstrate engagement in the course. She reasons that engagement-based grading contracts afford students the flexibility and agency of deciding which methods of engagement are most suitable to them at a given time, which works to bridge the gap between student willingness and ability. Carillo additionally suggests that using a translingual lens to assess student writing, and creating individualized student contracts, may better attend to multiply-marginalized and linguistically diverse students. She ends by reminding writing studies scholars that constructing equitable, student-centered assessment methods is a process, and not solely an outcome to be achieved.

References

Cowan, M. (2020). A legacy of grading contracts for composition. Journal of Writing Assessment, 13(2). Retrieved from https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0j28w67h.

Inoue, A. B. (2012). Grading contracts: Assessing their effectiveness on different racial formations. In A.B. Inoue & M. Poe (Eds.), Race and writing assessment (pp. 79-94). New York, NY: Peter Lang Publishing.

Inoue, A. B. (2019). Labor-based grading contracts: Building equity and inclusion in the compassionate writing classroom. Fort Collins, CO: WAC Clearinghouse. Retrieved from https://wac.colostate.edu/books/perspectives/labor/.

Kryger, K., & Zimmerman, G.X. (2020). Neurodivergence and intersectionality in labor-based grading contracts. Journal of Writing Assessment, 13(2). Retrieved from https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4v65z263.

Reviewed by Cassandra Goff, University of Utah

Gere, A. R., Curzan, A., Hammond, J. W., Hughes, S. Li, R., Moos, A., Smith, K., Van Zanen, K., Wheeler, K. L., and Zanders, C. J. (2021). Communal justicing: Writing assessment, disciplinary infrastructure, and the case for critical language awareness. College Composition and Communication, 72(3), 384-412.

In “Communal Justicing: Writing Assessment, Disciplinary Infrastructure, and the Case for Critical Language Awareness” (2021), Gere, Curzan, Hammond, Hughes, Li, Moos, Sith, Zanen, Wheeler, and Zanders show that the work towards critical language awareness and social justice needs continual improvements from the local to the institutional level. Arguing for a more stringent effort towards improvements for justice on an institutional level, the authors remind the Writing Studies field of their community responsibility for critical language awareness and justicing.

Drawing upon Swain’s definition of ‘languaging’, Gere et al. discuss how “justicing implies a process of conscious, iterative, effort that is not achieved all at once, but rather depends upon the choices we continually make” (p. 385). Communal justicing is the ongoing and collective project of working towards justice. In other words, justicing is the action verb while justice is the noun. The authors constantly re-emphasize that the work for critical language awareness and communal justicing is the responsibility of the whole community. Changes to institutional infrastructure cannot occur without everyone working with the same common goal in mind.

Gere et al. identify that students have a key role within the Writing Studies community as well. “By promoting critical language awareness as a matter of policy, we help to ensure that the writing classroom is a space for teachers and students to participate in communal justicing,” (p. 394). Gere et al. imagine all students form a rhetorical understanding of ‘proper’ and ‘incorrect’ written conventions and language varieties to help them inform and change social hierarchies and implications. 

The authors argue that revising key elements of institutional infrastructures is necessary for promoting critical language awareness and communal justicing within the field overall as well as everyday choices and improvement within composition classrooms. “We take the term ‘communal justicing’ to designate something more than local efforts to revise aspects of assessment that contribute to unjust outcomes for students” (p. 387). Individual local change is not sufficient.

Drawing upon previous scholarship by Duffy, Gilyard, Inoue, Wardle, and others, Gere et al. argue for the field’s common vision to be shaped by communal justicing.  Starting by making improvements towards communal justicing within the field’s past policies and publications, scholars and practitioners within the field of Writing Studies must focus on disciplinary memory of language history, policy, and discrimination “Reimagining our guiding documents so that they advance critical language awareness is one such infrastructural intervention – one such means of justicing,” (p. 386). The authors propose significant revision to the Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing; a guiding document informs curriculum development for Writing Studies instructors in both college and high-school contexts. The focus of Gere et al. revisions to the Framework document prioritizes language, noting the absence of the word itself from the original publication.

Transparency is a necessity in communal justicing work when creating and revising guiding documents within the field. The Framework was produced in 2011 by a collation of authors from the Council of Writing Program Administrators (CWPA), the National Council for Teachers of English (NCTE), and the National Writing Project (NWP). Gere et al. note the Framework “hides the identity of those who consider and determine what is correct, or appropriate” (p. 396) for the formal rules and information guidelines of writing conventions.

Gere et al. subtly nod towards the need for everyone within the Writing Studies field, not only a few assigned individuals, to prioritize critical language awareness and communal justicing. They mention many of the conversations within NCTE and the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) that focus on social justice and critical language awareness “have been initiated and led by antiracist educators of color, as well as interest and advocacy groups…” (p, 389). The necessary choices and continuous work of communal justicing is not the responsibility of people of color alone; it’s the responsibility of the entire Writing Studies community.  

The authors remind those within the Writing Studies field that communal justicing work is not in the past; it is work that must be continuously prioritized now and improved upon in the future. Drawing upon Smitherman, Gere et al. “the purpose of communal justicing is… to make these improvement efforts so habitual within the field that it becomes difficult to imagine disciplinary participation without them,” (p. 402). Their call to those within the Writing Studies field to continually choose to make efforts towards critical language awareness and communal justicing is strengthened when the authors reaffirm knowledge that inaction does not change or challenge the systematic powers and privileges at play.

In referencing NCTE and CCCC primarily within “Communal Justicing: Writing Assessment, Disciplinary Infrastructure, and the Case for Critical Language Awareness”, Gere et al. miss the opportunity to evaluate the Two-Year College English Association’s (TYCA) role towards critical language awareness and communal justicing work within the Writing Studies field. This text leaves room to consider how community colleges are already and continuously working towards communal justicing with, sometimes extremely, varying student populations.

Throughout the various contexts of the Writing Studies field, Gere et al. mention how even though multimodality is becoming increasingly popular within composition classrooms, language-based texts are the standard for assessment ideologies. This juxtaposition calls for the Writing Studies field to evaluate the role of multimodality within the work of communal justicing, especially in relation to assessment.

References

Committee on Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) Language Statement (1974). Students’ right to their own language. Conference on College Composition and Communication, 25(3), 1-32.

Council of Writing Program Administrators (2014). WPA outcomes statement for first-year composition. Version 3.0. http://wpacouncil.org/aws/CWPA/pt/sd/news_article/243055/_PARENT/layout_details/false

Council of Writing Program Administrators (2011). Framework for success in postsecondary writing. National Council of Teachers of English, and National Writing Project. http://wpacouncil.org/aws/CWPA/asset_manager/get_file/350201.

Duffy, J. (2019). Provocations of virtue: rhetoric, ethics, and the teaching of writing. Utah State University.

Gilyard, K. (2000) “Literacy, identity, imagination, flight.” Conference on College Composition and Communication, 52(2), 267-272.

Inoue, A. (2015). Antiracist writing assessment ecologies: teaching and assessing writing for a socially just future. WAC Clearinghouse.

National Council of Teachers of English and International Reading Association (2019). Standards for the assessment of reading and writing. https://ncte.org/resources/standards/standards-for-the-assessment-of-reading-and-writing-revised-edition-2009/.

Wardle, E., Adler-Kassner, L., Alexander, J., Elliot, N., Hammond, J.W., Poe, M., Rhodes, J., Womack, A.M. (2019). Recognizing the limits of threshold concept theory. In L. Adler-Kassner and E. Wardle (Eds.), (Re)Considering What We Know: Learning Thresholds in Writing, Composition, Rhetoric, and Literacy (pp. 15-35). Utah State University Press.

Reviewed by Madeline Crozier, The University of Tennessee, Knoxville

Crusan, D. (2021). Writing assessment literacy. In H. Mohebbi & C. Coombe (Eds.), Research questions in language education and applied linguistics: A reference guide (pp. 431-435). Springer Texts in Education. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79143-8

In any composition classroom, writing assessment facilitates student learning, literacy acquisition, and writing development. Effective writing assessment is necessary for meaningful teaching and learning. However, teacher preparation programs and writing pedagogy education curricula may lack a focus on assessment, leaving instructors without enough experience, preparation, or training to assess student writing in the classroom. This is the practical and theoretical problem that drives Deborah Crusan’s emphasis on writing assessment literacy (WAL) in her contribution to the comprehensive collection Research Questions in Language Education and Applied Linguistics: A Reference Guide, an academic tome edited by Hassan Mohebbi and Christine Coombe (2021). In her five-page reference entry—one among 152 research topics in the reference guide—Crusan concisely introduces the WAL framework, identifies relevant research questions, and suggests additional resources. This brief, accessible resource, along with many useful additions to the collection, offers a starting point for assessment researchers, scholars, and practitioners to begin lines of inquiry into WAL development. Taken altogether, the collection provides a rare resource for scholars seeking exigencies for meaningful writing research, and Crusan’s addition highlights the crucial, yet often overlooked, impact of WAL on writing assessment.

As Crusan (2021) explains, WAL refers to a construct that helps explain how writing instructors’ assessment knowledge and beliefs inform their assessment practices. Some of the skills and knowledge encompassed by WAL include “the ability of teachers to create effective assignments and their accompanying scoring tools, to understand the reasons for assessing their students’ writing, . . . and to carry on their assessment duties ethically and conscientiously” (p. 431). Crusan (2021) underscores that WAL guides instructors to make informed decisions about their assessment practices. Because assessment impacts student learning in significant ways, instructors need to be adequately trained to deliver effective and ethical writing assessment. Crusan (2021) notably highlights the “good assessment practices” of “fairness, accountability, and transparency” (p. 431) as necessary for classroom writing assessment and further suggests that instructors need to know how to create “effective, ethical rubrics” (p. 432). Although several decades of writing assessment scholarship has developed theories and best practices for effective writing assessment, this research does not always appear in teacher training programs or shape writing assessment practice. The ongoing divide between research, theory, and practice accounts for this misalignment and motivates more research to explore how instructors develop WAL to enhance writing assessment for teachers and, subsequently, their students. Crusan (2021) aptly navigates these dichotomies to demonstrate how researchers can bridge the gap between assessment theory and practice through the study of WAL development.

After defining WAL and situating the construct as a response to this research gap, Crusan (2021) provides ten research questions to guide studies of WAL development (p. 432). These questions are extremely useful for researchers and scholars who want to contribute to the field’s knowledge about writing assessment and teacher training. For instance, one of the research questions is, “What is the impact of teaching experience on writing assessment knowledge, beliefs, and practices?” (Crusan, 2021, p. 433). This question directs researchers to understand how different amounts and types of teaching experience shape instructors’ beliefs and knowledge about writing assessment. The question could generate a greater understanding about what types of experiences and training can best support instructors as they develop WAL. Another particularly useful research question is, “How can teaching be enhanced through writing assessment literacy?” (Crusan, 2021, p. 433). A research question like this understands that WAL does not only impact the instructors who deliver assessment but the students who receive assessment. This question points to the potential of understanding how instructors’ WAL shapes their assessment practices which subsequently impact their students. Crusan (2021), a leading researcher on second language writing assessment, writing teacher education, and WAL, conclusively argues the need for more research on this topic. She centers many of the questions around the experiences of second language writing teachers, but the research questions are adaptable to a range of contexts and institutions. By presenting ten unique avenues for inquiry, Crusan (2021) firmly establishes the importance of studying WAL.

The reference concludes with two pages of suggested resources for scholars who want to explore some of the most prevalent WAL research studies to date. Crusan (2021) recommends five resources, all written since 2015, with annotations that summarize the key points of each article. These articles include Crusan and colleagues’ 2016 study in which they surveyed 702 writing instructors to build a knowledge base for how instructors develop WAL. The additional resources connect some of the related terminology used to refer to WAL, such as language assessment literacy and teacher assessment literacy. The sources also explore WAL development for instructors across K-12 and higher education contexts in both U.S. and international educational settings. Ultimately, Crusan’s reference firmly establishes WAL as an imperative framework for writing program administrators, teacher trainers, and educators to understand. With Crusan’s reference entry as a resource, researchers can begin multifaceted inquiries into WAL and develop the field’s understanding of the importance and value of writing assessment in the composition classroom.

Reviewed by Michelle Tram Nguyen, Bowling Green State University

Blum, S. D. (Ed.) (2020). Ungrading: Why rating students undermines learning (and what to do instead). West Virginia University Press.

For those educators whose lives are defined by the mission of building a more genuine, effective, and meaningful teaching and learning practice, you will find yourselves deeply resonating with the journeys shared by the fifteen dedicated teachers contributing to Ungrading: Why Rating Students Undermines Learning (and What to Do Instead). These teachers in many ways troubled with the consequences of and reasons for grades, rating, ranking, and sorting. They, therefore, strive to develop various alternative assessment approaches and methods and implement them in different teaching contexts as part of a collective effort to bring back what they believe is the true focus of education—the “real learning of real individual learners,” not the grades or grading (p. xxii).

With thirteen chapters organized into three parts: foundations and models, practices, and reflections, the book does a great job of providing the readers with not only a strong rationale for going gradeless but also solid conceptual frameworks and concrete pedagogical suggestions for classroom action. The second section of the book—the practices—is no doubt the highlight of the collection. It offers authentic and vivid descriptions of what has been done in the class, what the practitioners learned along the way, and especially how the students reacted to many new ways of assessing and evaluating their work. In this section, the authors share their experiments with many approaches and methods of practicing ungrading in the classroom. Jesse Stommel, a college professor teaching humanities, is concerned with the reality in which grading emphasizes efficiency over the needs of individual learners, particularly learners from historically marginalized communities. He, instead, decided to let his students grade their work and find ways to engage them in meaningful conversations on authentic assessment, learning process, and formative feedback. His goal is to create more opportunities for learning, rather than punishing or limiting possibilities for success. Aaron Blackwelder, an experienced writing instructor in a secondary school, believes that assigning grades discourages students from the learning itself. He purposefully eliminated points and letters from the assessment practice and re-designed his instruction with project-based, problem-based, and inquiry-based learning. After employing such pedagogical practices, Blackwelder found that his students had greater satisfaction and ownership of their learning.

Additionally, Starr Sackstein, a teacher with decades of ungrading experiences, calls for a shift in the use of assessment language. For instance, a change from “getting good grades” to “achieving proficiency or mastery” (p. 75) could help reduce the side effects and unintended consequences of merely assigning a score. Such changes in the assessment approach, according to Sackstein, also help to put the emphasis back on assessing the learning progress and the understanding, rather than a temporary product. Gary Chu, in the discussion on “The Point-less Classroom: A Math Teacher’s Ironic Choice in Not Calculating Grades,” shares his experience of using the learning-assessment-feedback cycle, instead of the traditional points and grades, to offer individualized descriptive feedback and allowing students to demonstrate their understanding in multiple ways. Christopher Riesbeck, a teacher who works with college students in programming courses, advocates for a critique-driven assessment model that emphasizes effort, progress, and accomplishment. Some contributing authors (such as Susan D. Blum, Arthur Chiaravalli, and Laura Gibbs) suggest the use of “all-feedback-no-grades,” self-reflection, self-assessment, and conferencing. Other practitioners (such as Christina Katopodis and Cathy N. Davidson, Clarissa Sorensen-Unruh) share their experimentation with contract-grading, learning journal and portfolio assessment, and badging methods. Despite notable differences in approaches and methods, what these pioneers of the ungrading practices have in common is the desire to build a stronger bond of trust with their students, to give the power and agency back to the learners, and to create opportunities for substantive communication that fosters learning and growth.

In the last section of the book, the authors especially invite the audience to engage with them in their honest and earnest conversations on the failures, objections, risks, and possibilities that ungrading affords. They point out the fact that the current practice of teaching and learning operates within a structure that heavily relies on quantitative measures. And because of that very reason, they believe “challenging the conventional system does require a revolution and daily action” (p. 219). One of the huge challenges for implementing ungrading, as the authors recognize, is to get the buy-in from students, parents, and institutional administrations. To overcome such obstacles, teachers will need to devote considerable time and effort to communicate openly and richly with students and stakeholders about their assessment approach and how it could enhance intrinsic learning motivation and promote a more humane form of education. The authors also note that more research studies are needed to examine and assess the feasibility and efficacy of various ungrading approaches and methods, particularly in large-size classrooms and STEM education.

While the book makes clear that it does not address all possible considerations and questions surrounding grading and ungrading, the pioneering work these educators have done sparks insights and important ideas for teachers across areas of studies and teaching levels to reconsider all aspects of their pedagogical practices. Rhetoric and writing studies is a particularly relevant discipline to utilize the benefits of an ungrading approach. Going gradeless or de-centering grades and grading in the classroom, as the authors shared from their experimentation and experiences, can create a space for building a more equitable classroom. It also helps us fully focus on doing the “actual work” of teaching and learning—the work of building trust and relationships with students, meeting the needs of each individual learner, and providing as many opportunities as possible for taking risks and learning. As Aaron Blackwelder, one of the contributing authors, asserts: “Ultimately, I wanted my students to see learning as a process of ongoing trial and error rather than as a judgement of who they are. If my students did not fail, they did not learn” (p. 47).