Authors: Gita DasBender, Nate Mickelson, and Leah Souffrant
Contract grading has a long history in higher education. With roots in humanistic psychology (Combs, 1976), the approach has seen a renaissance in recent years in the field of writing studies as grading contracts have been used to
- lessen writing anxiety (Consilio & Kennedy, 2019)
- encourage agency and metacognition (Inman & Powell, 2018; Albracht et al., 2018)
- mitigate systemic injustice, including the negative effects of conventional grading (Inoue, 2015 and 2019).
Practitioners theorize that contracts promote these beneficial effects by prioritizing the work (or labor) students do ahead of judgments about the quality of their writing in determining course grades. By intervening in and disrupting these judgments, contract grading approaches provide a supportive classroom environment that encourages self-initiated student learning and intellectual risk-taking, and offers a just, transparent and humane approach to grading.
Our Research Study
Since spring 2020, NYU’s Expository Writing Program (EWP) has been engaged in a study of labor-based contract grading. Designed by members of EWP’s Diversity & Inclusion and Curriculum & Assessment committees and approved by NYU’s IRB, the study has involved 23 EWP faculty using contract grading and more than 800 students to date. The study was supported by a small grant from NYU’s Office of Global Inclusion and through an NYU Arts and Sciences Teaching Innovation Award. We introduced the study and core principles of contract grading in our Spring 2022 TeachTalk, “Making Grading Better for Everyone: Contract Grading, Learning, and Inclusion.” Materials are available here. We invite you to join us for a pedagogy workshop, “Designing and Implementing Grading Contracts Across Disciplines,” on Weds, Nov 16, 2-3:15pm. Register here!
Our findings thus far show consistent, statistically significant, positive differences in students’ experiences of contract grading. In the fall 2021 and spring 2022 semesters, students in sections using grading contracts reported:
- Greater understanding of the type and amount of effort required to complete assignments
- Lower levels of anxiety or stress related to assignments and grades
- Higher levels of satisfaction with grading as compared to their peers in sections using conventional grading approaches
- Agreement or strong agreement that they felt supported as writers and that the grades they received for their writing course were fair
Implications for Student Learning
We have observed that labor-based contract grading helps students develop positive attitudes toward the writing process and high levels of self-efficacy and confidence regarding their ability to succeed in the course. Writing in the absence of assignment grades seems to have motivated many students to challenge themselves more than they expected to. However, these positive effects are not universal. For example, a small number of students have reported experiences of “dissonance” and frustration due to the absence of assignment grades. Their narratives of struggling with contract grading echo experiences documented by other researchers, including Inman and Powell (2018) and Medina and Walker (2019). Students’ complex responses to contract grading are helping us recognize conventional grading as a “norm” to which we and our students have become habituated. They remind us of Sara Ahmed’s (2012) call to action in On Being Included: “When you don’t quite inhabit the norms, or you aim to transform them, you notice them as you come up against them” (p. 175). Even as we come up against the norms of conventional grading, we remain cognizant of Sherri Craig’s (2021) recent warning that contract grading is an insufficient means for undoing the unjust structures embedded in higher education. We look forward to learning more about students’ experiences of grades and learning as we continue our research.
How to Experiment with Contract Grading: From Principles to Practice
Principle #1: Grading contracts emphasize growth through achievement of learning goals by decoupling learning from grades.
Practice:
- Identify course goals and learning outcomes in your course. What is most essential for students to learn? What student behaviors do you value?
Principle # 2: Grading contracts promote an inclusive, transparent, and humane assessment mindset
Practice:
- Evaluate your current assessment approach in light of course goals and outcomes
- Consider how students’ prior knowledge and skills can be valued and rewarded even as they develop new knowledge and skills in your course
Principle #3: Grading contracts serve as opportunity structures by offering options for grades students can aim for with confidence.
Practice:
- Establish a “B” baseline, or the work a student would need to do to achieve your essential course goals and expectations
- Define bonus options (or opt-in activities) that would allow a student to exceed those essential goals and earn grades above the baseline “B”
- Establish clear criteria for these bonus options or opt-in activities
Principle #4: Grading contracts foster a confident, self-efficacious writerly habitus.
Practice:
- Provide focused, constructive feedback on assignments, exams, quizzes or other projects instead of grades
- Encourage peer support, interaction, and exchange of ideas as a means of building self-confidence and personal growth
- Seek student feedback on their learning and growth in the absence of grades
References
Ahmed, S. (2012). On being included: Racism and diversity in institutional life. Durham, NC: Duke UP.
Combs, A. W. (1976). A contract method of evaluation. In Degrading the Grading Myths: A Primer of Alternatives to Grades and Marks, edited by S. B. Simon. Washington D.C.: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
Consilio, J. & Kennedy, S. M. (2019). Using mindfulness as a heuristic for writing evaluation: Transforming pedagogy and quality of experience. Across the Disciplines, 1, 28–49.
Craig, S. (2021). Your contact grading ain’t it. Writing Program Administration, 44(3), 145.
Inman, J. O., & Powell, R. A. (2018). In the absence of grades: Dissonance and desire in course-contract classrooms. College Composition and Communication, 70(1), 30-56.
Inoue, A. (2015). Antiracist Writing Assessment Ecologies. Fort Collins, CO: The WAC Clearinghouse.
Inoue, A. (2019). Labor-based grading contracts: Building equity and inclusion in the compassionate writing classroom. WAC Clearinghouse. https://wac.colostate.edu/books/perspectives/labor/
Medina, C. & Walker, K. (2018). Validating the consequence of a social justice pedagogy: Explicit values in course-based grading contracts. In Key Theoretical Frameworks: Teaching Technical Communication in the Twenty-First Century, edited by Michelle F. Eble and Angela M. Haas. Logan, UT: Utah State UP, 46-67.
Gita DasBender, PhD is a Clinical Associate Professor, Leah Souffrant, MFA, PhD is a Clinical Associate Professor, and Nate Mickelson, PhD is a Clinical Associate Professor. All three teach in Expository Writing Program.