Education Commons^™

A Unilateral Grading Contract To Improve Learning And Teaching, Peter Elbow

English Department Faculty Publication Series

Contract grading has achieved some prominence in our field as a practice associated with critical pedagogy. In this context, we describe a hybrid grading contract where students earn a course grade of B based not on our evaluation of their writing quality but solely on their completion of the specified activities. The contract lists activities we’ve found most reliable in producing B-quality writing over fourteen weeks. Higher grades are awarded to students who produce exemplary portfolios. Thus we freely give students lots of evaluative feedback on their writing, but students can count on a course grade of B if they …

Ranking, Evaluating, Liking: Sorting Out Three Forms Of Judgment., Peter Elbow

English Department Faculty Publication Series

Ranking: a one dimensional quantitative judgment--as with grading. A one dimensional quantitative score can never be an accurate reflection of the quality of a multidimensional product (like writing and many other human products).

Evaluation: a multidimensional judgment--using words or providing a multidimensional grid. Judging allows for more trustworthy assessment of writing and many other products.

Liking. This section explores the benefits that come when teachers actually learn to *like* student work--and indeed to like students--and how one can learn to like work even if one judges it to be not very good.

The Uses Of Binary Thinking, Peter Elbow

English Department Faculty Publication Series

When thinkers encounter a contradiction they have traditionally tended to take one of three courses: to try to figure out which side is right; to figure out which side should be seen as hierarchially dominant; or to figure out or how to use a dialectic process synthesize them into a higher concept. In this essay I argue for the value of trying to learn to affirm both sides in all their contrariness.