SocProf reviewed Ungrading by Alfie Kohn
Review of 'Ungrading' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
This is a topic at the forefront of my mind pretty much all the time, so I really had high hopes for this book. It is a series of contributions on the topic, divided into three segments: foundations, practices, and reflections.
Because all the contributors grounded their ungrading on the same research, the foundations section gets repetitive pretty quickly as they all rehash the same ideas. If you're new to this, this might be helpful.
The practices section is where the contributors explain how they actually introduced and implemented their ungrading. Some contributors are in K12, other in higher education. The bulk of the contributions are from people in English or the humanities, although there are a few contributions from STEM and computer science but they are not the majority. Nothing from the social sciences, as far as I can tell.
The reflection section is more navel-gazing-ish that I like …
This is a topic at the forefront of my mind pretty much all the time, so I really had high hopes for this book. It is a series of contributions on the topic, divided into three segments: foundations, practices, and reflections.
Because all the contributors grounded their ungrading on the same research, the foundations section gets repetitive pretty quickly as they all rehash the same ideas. If you're new to this, this might be helpful.
The practices section is where the contributors explain how they actually introduced and implemented their ungrading. Some contributors are in K12, other in higher education. The bulk of the contributions are from people in English or the humanities, although there are a few contributions from STEM and computer science but they are not the majority. Nothing from the social sciences, as far as I can tell.
The reflection section is more navel-gazing-ish that I like (I don't care that one contributor really, really loves her students). A vey useful contribution is by the editor Susan Blum, acknowledging the limitations of both the book and ungrading in general.
This book intrigued me, made me roll my eyes, go "oh come on!", and wonder how all these contributors found the time to ungrade (one contribution explains it: an upper level seminar with 15 students).
If you are like me and you teach a 5/5 load in the social sciences at a community college, there is not much for you there. In addition, the editor acknowledges that ungrading does not improve efficiency and increases the work load. So how did people really do it and how sustainable is it?
And yet, the topic is compelling.