by Silke Morin, Culturally Responsive Teaching Faculty Fellow, Biology

Culturally responsive teaching (CRT) necessitates the identification and implementation of practices that help all students be successful (Montenegro & Janowski, 2017). This can be at odds with traditional grading structures, which may be inherently biased, inaccurate, and disempowering (Brown & Robbins, 2023; Feldman, 2019). An example of this is grading students on behaviors such as attendance and meeting deadlines for submitting work. This practice does not measure learning but compliance, and it puts an unnecessary hardship on students who are in school while working, raising children, or caring for a family member. Another example is that of providing students with a single opportunity to demonstrate competency on course material. This practice reinforces a fixed rather than a growth mindset and makes every summative assessment a high-stakes assessment. Success is made to be achievable only at one point in time (“one and done”) rather than allowing students the opportunity to continue learning and improving.

For my CRT Fellowship, I intentionally changed two grading practices in my Fall 2023 Anatomy & Physiology courses (BIOL 2401 and BIOL 2402) with the goal of increasing student success. First, I used flexible timelines. In this respect, I did not penalize for late work so long as students submitted work prior to the test date. Also, if a student missed an exam, they could retake the exam in the testing center within a time window. In this way, if something came up – work, a personal matter, car trouble – students weren’t penalized. Students were assessed solely on biology objectives rather than on punctuality.

The other practice I incorporated was allowing student revision and resting on work for which the student did not demonstrate competency (set at 75%). Regardless of the assessment type (formative assessment as a lab or summative assessment as an exam or project), every student received personalized feedback on their work and had the opportunity to meet one-on-one with me to go over what they missed. At that point, students could revise and resubmit labs. If the assessment was an exam, the students received a test analysis comprised of a summary of the questions by topic and the student’s score on the topic (top panel, Figure 1). Students had to meet with me to discuss the topics on which competency was not met. At that point, students could retest (same topics, different questions). Students were then provided with a follow-up analysis to show them how they fared on the retest (bottom panel, Figure 1). The revision and retest practice underscored that learning was a continuous process and that students could learn from their mistakes and still do well in the course. It also promoted self-efficacy by allowing students to improve performance.

Revising and retesting helped ensure that they grasped the material before moving on. No grade was the final grade or the last chance. Rather, revising and retesting allowed students to continue to learn and demonstrate mastery without undue penalty, which can be demotivating and discouraging. As a student wrote in their course evaluation,

“[Professor Morin] made us feel supported by meeting with us to discuss our exams afterward on where we scored lowest and helped us understand the material better.”

 Another student wrote,

“[Professor Morin’s] teaching is so fluid and she makes it hard to not understand the material and if you still don’t, you get the opportunity to keep retaking the topic until you understand it.”

The grading changes did create some challenges. As an instructor, the biggest challenge that I experienced was the additional work required. I spent a lot of time creating tests with lots of questions so that, in the event of a retest, students didn’t get the exact same questions that they had originally been tested on. Another challenge was the hesitancy of students, particularly in online classes, to meet with me to go over their exams so that they were eligible to retest. If students did not meet competency on a topic but passed the exam overall, often they would not retest.

In general, I found that removing a late penalty and allowing the revising of work and retesting were effective strategies for achieving two of the culturally responsive habits of thinking referenced by Stembridge (2020) – “viewing learning as a journey” and “using data from students’ learning experiences” (p. 65). Importantly, these practices increased student learning and success. Students did better when they had time to reflect and relearn. As a result, I will maintain these practices in the coming semesters, and I will likely incorporate other equity-based practices. In whatever I do, I hope to continue reflecting, evaluating my methods, and focusing on student success.

 

References

Brown, R. D., & Robbins, K. R. (2023). Developing and reconceptualizing an equitable grading system in undergraduate education. The Teacher Educators’ Journal 16(1), 50-70.

Feldman, J. (2019). Grading for equity: What it is, why it matters, and how it can transform schools and classrooms. Corwin.

Montenegro, E., & Jankowski, N. A. (2017). Equity and assessment: Moving towards culturally responsive assessment. (Occasional Paper No. 29). Urbana, IL: University of Illinois and Indiana University, National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment (NILOA).

Stembridge, A. (2020). Culturally responsive education in the classroom: An equity framework for pedagogy. Routledge.

 

About Silke Morin

Silke is a lifelong learner and a trained educator, neuroscientist, and psychotherapist. She is passionate about facilitating personal growth, supporting diversity and equity, and connecting with students and clients from a place of acceptance and authenticity.