Sarah E. Silverman

Below is my title and abstract for the Grading Conference, which is taking place online from June 13th to 15th. I recommend registering if you can!

Title: Lessons in Ungrading from Disability Studies

Slides: (link)

Handout with resources: (link)

Abstract: Those who practice ungrading (assessing students in ways that challenge the traditional practices of ranking and numerically scoring students) have many motivations: resistance to the competition between students that traditional grading encourages, skepticism that grades correlate to actual learning, concern about the mental health implications of punitive grading, etc. In this talk, I introduce and apply another motivation for ungrading that is derived from my experience researching and teaching disability studies. I draw a link between a key moment in the social construction of disability and contemporary grading: the concurrent emergence of statistics and eugenics in the late 19th century as sciences for measuring and ranking human beings, with the latter “science” dedicating to marking deviant individuals for removal. When I practice ungrading in my disability studies classes (and others) it is in a hope to respond to and reject the ways those impulses have made their way deep into our educational system. This talk offers an introduction to the history of eugenics, some hypothesized relationships with punitive grading and ranking methods used in education, and a tour through a critical disability studies syllabus in which I implement ungrading as part of a larger goal of questioning “normality” throughout the class.