Ungrading and Pedagogic Ontology: A Love Letter
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how our teacherly being—our pedagogic ontology—shifts when we ungrade. I’ve been thinking about this particularly as it pertains to Ballet Pedagogy in Higher Ed, but it’s relevant to any subject matter or any teaching-and-learning environment where Ungrading by any name is happening.
I’ve also been thinking about the ways Ungrading is informed in my pedagogy by the writings of bell hooks and Thich Nhat Hanh, who both wrote significantly on Love before their recent transitions. As I tweeted just a few days ago, “#Ungrading is part of a love ethic.” For me, Ungrading touches both Nhat Hanh’s “Understanding is love’s other name,” and hooks’ “There can be no love without justice.”
If Ungrading, Understanding, and Justice were the three circles of a Venn diagram, Love would be at the center.
As most who’ve been working with ungraded paradigms are already aware, Ungrading enables pedagogic expansion wherever and however it’s implemented. What we know is that when we diminish or eliminate the emphasis on grades, everything else in teaching and learning feels just a bit more human-centered, and Understanding, Justice, and Love become more easily accessible.
I’ve been reflecting in this light on some of the ways my pedagogic ontology has changed as a result of my work to go further with ungraded practices over the last several years. How am I different now than I was before?
I’ve stopped tracking students’ progress so I can be more present in the moment.
I follow tangents as they emerge. “Covering” predetermined content-to-be-graded becomes less necessary (and less interesting) than following the trajectories we generate together.
I wonder aloud as a curious participant in the experience. Because students are in control of their ultimate outcomes, I ask questions in earnest without fearing that they’ll lose respect for me if I don’t have all the answers.
I’m more honest in my feedback to students because I’m not filtering it to only align with or support a grade. I offer more complexity.
I focus on bringing relevance and meaning to the work, rather than on how I’m going to assess it. I rely on students as partners in this process.
I’m more philosophically consistent in my pedagogy (and my rationale for working as an educator) because I’m actively trying to subvert a system that reinforces existing inequities and harms students’ wellbeing.
I’m flexible and make changes more easily in response to anything within or beyond our control that might affect our work (There’s a pandemic on? You don’t say…). I make time when we need more.
I aim to prioritize humanity over (and through) policy. I try my best to demonstrate compassion to students (and myself) without hesitating.
I ask students for help and advisement when I don’t know how to proceed. We co-create the work.
I maintain integrity and consistency around who I am and who I present to the world. I avoid the uncomfortable “teacher persona” and other psychological strategies that are often used to manipulate students and validate institutional hegemony.
I acknowledge, as I reflect on the many reasons I appreciate Ungrading for shaping my work, that its implications differ for each of us depending on our identities, the students’ identities, the subject matter of the course, and the degree to which we are able to push the boundaries of academic freedom without fear of institutional retribution. Biases of every kind necessarily affect how we implement Ungrading practices; the racism, sexism, heterosexism, gender inequity, ageism, and ableism that shape our lives also shape our pedagogic choices as we negotiate our vulnerabilities in the classroom. Postman and Weingartner keenly observe, “all you ever have to work with, as a teacher, are the perceptions of learners at a particular time” (97). The fluctuations in student perceptions, in tandem with the risks we take when we release the grade as our sole mechanism of control in the classroom, make Ungrading both exhilarating and terrifying. It feels safer to some than others because our contexts for it are as individual as we are.
In her wisdom, bell hooks tells us, “the practice of love offers no place of safety.” Given all the trepidation around Ungrading, I find its challenges most worthwhile when I look at it as part of a love ethic—as part of a generous acknowledgment of humanity in an education sphere that is rapidly dissociating itself from anything human. A little more than a month before the second anniversary of “The Great Pivot,” these reflections feel like a love letter in a too-often-loveless time.
Photo by Lucas George Wendt on Unsplash