55 - Alternative Grading as a Healing Process Part 1 of 2: Exploring the Harmful Wordviews that Undergird the Letter Grading System, an Interview with Dr. Jeff Anderson

In this, our first two-part episode on The Grading Podcast, Sharona and Bosley speak with Dr. Jeff Anderson, a community college math professor who has been thinking and writing about alternative assessment practices since at least March 2021. This interview was so interesting and nuanced we just couldn't fit it into a single hour! Join us for a in-depth personal and professional journey about the impact grades had personally on Jeff and how he utilizes his lived experience to work towards a more just educational system and changes to our grading practices.

Links

Please note - any books linked here are likely Amazon Associates links. Clicking on them and purchasing through them helps support the show. Thanks for your support!

• What is Good Mathematics? Terence Tao
• The Harmful Worldviews that Undergird the Letter Grading System, blog post by Dr. Jeff Anderson
• A Century of Grading Research: Meaning and Value in the Most Common Education Measure, Brookhart, et. al
• The Happiness Lab: Making the Grade, podcast episode
• Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibram Kendi
• Punished by Rewards by Alfie Kohn
• The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market by Naomi Oreskes
• Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel Pink

Resources

The Grading Conference - an annual, online conference exploring Alternative Grading in Higher Education & K-12.

Some great resources to educate yourself about Alternative Grading:

• The Grading for Growth Blog
• The Grading Conference
• The Intentional Academia Blog

Recommended Books on Alternative Grading (Please note - any books linked here are likely Amazon Associates links. Purchasing through them helps support the show. Thanks for your support!):

• Grading for Growth, by Robert Talbert and David Clark
• Specifications Grading, by Linda Nilsen
• Undoing the Grade, by Jesse Stommel
• Grading for Equity, by Joe Feldman

The Grading Podcast publishes every week on Tuesday at 4 AM Pacific time, so be sure to subscribe and get notified of each new episode. You can follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram - @thegradingpod. To leave us a comment, please go to our website: www.thegradingpod.com and leave a comment on this episode's page.

If you would like to be considered to be a guest on this show, please reach out using the Contact Us form on our website, www.thegradingpod.com.

All content of this podcast and website are solely the opinions of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily represent the views of California State University Los Angeles or the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Music

Country Rock performed by Lite Saturation

Country Rock by Lite Saturation is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.