Bonni Stachowiak [00:00:00]:

Today on episode number 534 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast, cultivating hope and action beyond grades with Josh Eyler. Produced by Innovate Learning, maximizing human potential.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:00:21]:

Welcome to this episode of Teaching in Higher Ed. I’m Bonni Stachowiak, and this is the space where we explore the art and science of being more effective at facilitating learning. We also share ways to improve our productivity approaches, so we can have more peace in our lives and be even more present for our students. It is a joy to be joined once again with Josh Eyler for today’s episode. Last episode, we may have left you maybe feeling a little depressed. Who knows? And today, we are here to bring you radical hope, the kind that is joined by action. Josh is the director of the Center For Excellence in Teaching and Learning and the director of the Think Forward Quality Enhancement Plan at the University of Mississippi, where he is also clinical assistant professor of teacher education. Josh previously worked on teaching and learning initiatives at Columbus State University, George Mason University, and Rice University.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:01:31]:

Josh is the author of the book, How Humans Learn, the Science and Stories Behind Effective College Teaching. His book that we are discussing today, Failing Our Future, How Grades Harm Students and What We Can Do About It, is about one of the most urgent issues in education today, grading an alternative assessment. Josh Eyler, welcome back to Teaching in Higher Ed.

Josh Eyler [00:01:56]:

Great to be here again.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:01:58]:

I am glad we get to continue this rich conversation about your book, Failing Our Future, How Grades Harm Students, which was what the last episode 533 was about. But now with 534, we turn toward a more hope filled and more actionable set of strategies with what we can do about it. And so if you are listening to teaching in higher ed for the first time, welcome to a episode full of hope and full of action potential. And, if you wanna learn more about some of the problems associated with grades, then the 533 will be great. I did just wanna read the dedication to your book or or perhaps this is the acknowledgments. I’m not sure which which title it is, but we talked about Carrie Anne, your partner last time, and Lucy, your daughter. And I just wanted to read what you wrote about Carrie Anne in the acknowledgments. It is a rare thing to have the good fortune to spend your life with someone you admire so profoundly, respect so completely, and whose judgment you trust so intuitively.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:03:07]:

It is rarer still that the person to find in your ideas the potential you yourself cannot yet see and to sharpen them considerably with her wisdom. In my marriage to Carrie Anne, I have all of those things and infinitely more due simply to the privilege of traveling the same journey with her. I am a better writer and a better person. Gratitude is not nearly enough, but it is what I have. And I loved hearing you getting to read that. I, I I love that I have written a book, and it’s the first page that my kids always turn to is the dedication. In fact, I’m just gonna read it because it’s related to the first thing we’re gonna talk about. This is not a self aggrandizing thing, but I just love acknowledgments.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:03:54]:

I love dedications. I love what they kinda say so much about the person and their humanity, but this is what they always wanna turn to, to our 2 children, Luke and Hannah, who make me want to be more fully present in life and not miss a bit of all the good stuff that is right in front of me. And the first moment of hope that you have for us in terms of confronting all of the problems with grades is to cultivate curiosity. And that’s so much what my children have helped to do for me and continue to do for me in my life, and what so many amazing educators like you have helped me do over this decade of hosting this podcast. So you’re the you are the only person of all of the books that I have read about teaching in this past decade. You’re the only person who I can quote in an instant. So this is I can I can do it? I can just any day you want you wanna quote from an author. This is it.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:04:49]:

From how hum from how humans learn, in order to learn something, we must first wonder about it. Talk about cultivating curiosity and how we might approach bringing that into our teaching.

Josh Eyler [00:05:03]:

Sure. Definitely. And so it’s fitting that you opened with the acknowledgment to, Carrie Anne, my wife, because one of the, most important journeys that we travel together is that of being parents. And so the the chapter, towards the end of the book in the section on what do we do about it, how do we help solve these problems, one of them is written for parents, and that is where the suggestion to cultivate curiosity comes from, but it’s equally applicable to the classroom. So let’s think about both. In the home, as we work with our kids and and help prepare them for systems that tend to prioritize achievement, performance, and grades over the process of learning, At home, we can really help them cultivate their own interests, really work with them. When they bring us something they’re fascinated by, indulge them in it. Ask them questions about it.

Josh Eyler [00:05:56]:

Answer their questions that they might have about it, or go find answers together or or new pathways together. Let them tell you about the book series or the TV show or the songs that they love and why they love them and what they think about when they read, see, or or listen to those things. Because that and I think I I described it this way in in that chapter. It serves as a kind of suit of armor when they enter into those systems where that kind of learning isn’t prioritized. That if they are able to develop those interests and passions and enthusiasms, that can sustain them in those classrooms, in those grade based systems so that their passion for learning, their enthusiasm for learning isn’t dampened by, by a system that’s focused entirely on rewards. So really thinking and and helping them develop those tools, I think, can act as a defense mechanism against some of the negative messages that grades sent. In the classroom, I think very similarly. Teachers, instructors, educators at all levels can really work with students to find elements of what we are teaching that those students find individually interesting.

Josh Eyler [00:07:09]:

We can help them learn how to ask questions that are meaningful to them, how to really dig in and find ways that the content becomes meaningful to who they are as people, to their future careers, asking big questions. These are all ways to help them use their natural curiosity to become better learners. And, again, this serves as a shield against the pressures of grades that in that, it can help elevate that intrinsic motivation that we talked about in the last episode, and it can also change a student’s perspective on grades from something something that is so big, so enormous that they can’t really move past to something that is simply a hoop to get to the other parts of learning that they really care about. Right? And that seems like a small thing, a small bit of hope, but it’s not a small thing. Right? If you can change your orientation to grades, a student’s orientation and relationship to grades, which is what a lot of these alternative grading models are really designed to do. You open up new worlds, new pathways for them to identify, what they care about with learning and to see the grades as kind of a side thing that has to happen, but that they their attention can really be turned to these things they find valuable.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:08:32]:

Our son has really gotten into recent weeks solving Rubik’s cubes. And this is one of those things I had no idea. I mean, of course, there’s a whole entire world. I didn’t realize there are people who look at the Rubik’s cube and then are blindfolded and solve it. I mean, it’s just so all this to say, this past weekend, it’s so fun when our kids can help infect us with their own curiosity. So my husband was unusually fixated. I guess, because usually, he’s just so engaged and wanting to go on adventures, but he was just he was gonna solve this Rubik’s it it swept him away in a really powerful way. And I’m curious for you what comes to mind of a recent thing where you just got swept away unexpectedly with a whole world that you might not could have had to do with food or games or music or movies or some it’s something where you just found yourself going, there’s a whole world that I’m so curious about all of it, but it feels so new to me.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:09:31]:

You know? Is there anything like that that comes to mind?

Josh Eyler [00:09:34]:

Yeah. Well yeah. I think so. And I think it’s connected in 2 ways to this conversation. So I I’ve always wanted wanted to learn how to play the guitar. And so, actually, after I finished writing the book, what my reward was to get myself to a used guitar and to begin to learn how to play. Although I played the piano a little bit as a kid, it it was a whole different system, a whole different way of thinking about music. So just really getting invested and, again, just genuine interest and wanting to learn and improve And so getting kind of swept away in that, but it really the this goes back to these genuine interests that kids have and that that we have and how pursuing them and having parents and teachers who cultivate those interests can teach kids and students of all ages that the way you actually learn to get better at something is trying it out, messing up, getting some feedback, and doing it again.

Josh Eyler [00:10:32]:

That very few people, like Rubik’s cubes are a great example, Those people aren’t getting graded on their Rubik’s cubes. They they may get feedback from a YouTube video or, you know, maybe your husband after he figured out a particular move to try this. But most people who are good at at doing things got that way over the course of their lives, not by being graded, but by getting some feedback and going through the natural cycle of trying and failing and trying again. So same with the same with me and the guitar. Lots of, lots of failed moments of trying to learn chords. But I do think that that too is an important message to take with them into graded environments. Right? It sends a message that this is just a show. This is just something that you have to do to move through the system.

Josh Eyler [00:11:18]:

It’s not how learning actually works.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:11:21]:

Yes. Thank you for that story. It’s such a good example. I can’t encourage people enough to go be really bad at something and just experience that. And and I can’t imagine, having played the piano myself and having played the guitar, it’s been many, many decades, but those are very different instruments. So I can’t imagine you’re any good at the guitar.

Josh Eyler [00:11:40]:

I’m not at all. And and it is humbling, but it also is exciting. And if we can help students find the moment of excitement instead of frustration within, these instances, I think that is where the magic of education happens.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:11:56]:

Yeah. And the the story is such a good example because you’re cultivating your curiosity and feeling what that feels like to sustain you through the failures as opposed to that extrinsic motivation of a grade somehow having that capacity to do what it actually has not demonstrated the ability to do. So I we’re gonna have lots of other ideas in this episode about approaches that you suggest that we might try and bring us that hope. Before we do, I would like to address a concern I think still people might have, and that is kind of this idea, a false idea, by the way. Josh knows this, but for those listening, the false idea that, hey. You know, grade’s been around such a long time. Why would we mess with this, quote, unquote, good thing that we have, and it’s tried and true. And what what is it with you that, you know, this is just recent experimentations? So could you negate that myth that grades have been around such a long time and this any kind of new fresh perspectives on grading are are are not gonna have that kind of sustained power and credibility that grades might?

Josh Eyler [00:13:03]:

Yes. So grades as we know them, a through f system, have only been around since the 18 nineties. The first full letter grade system was developed at Mount Holyoke College in the 18 nineties. Although that time, it was a through e, and they later dropped the e because they were afraid people would think it meant excellent. And, you know, we don’t want people thinking they’re excellent if they’re not according to Mount Holyoke, so they changed it to f, which only has one meaning. Right? So but they’ve only been around since the 18 nineties, and they weren’t really standardized as a system, meaning that lots of school districts and colleges were using them until the 19 forties. So we’re looking at roughly 80 years that letter grades have been in play as a communication device for institutions and for markers of student performance. Grades go the idea of grades go back a lot further.

Josh Eyler [00:13:59]:

Ezra Stiles was president of Yale in the late 1700. He is credited to the extent that anyone wants to be credited with this of bringing a grading system into America. He really popularized the British system that had been in use for a while, which was to give Yale students an annual oral exam and to group them, categorize them into 4 groups, best, second best, the lesser of the good group, and worse. Those were his categories that he put people in. Great. The idea changed over time, but one thing that has not changed since the beginning, I call this grading’s original sin, is that they had they have never been about student learning. They have never been about student growth. From the beginning, they were about ranking, categorizing, sorting, and stigmatizing.

Josh Eyler [00:14:52]:

That was their function, and they have never grades have never lost that inherent quality. They have changed, but they have never lost that. So within this story is where we find hope, and hope is so critical to making change. We have to believe that it is possible to change this huge thing if we are ever going to make any progress on it. And so there have been moments within those 80 years of leather grades, even before them too, where there has been efforts of resistance and reform. And so the 19 tens, for example, there’s a lot of, journal articles written about stemming the tide of these new grading systems that they weren’t reflective of actual learning. So people have known it for a long time, and they tried, but they failed at that time. 6 the sixties early seventies, another period of reform, that’s when we have contract grading born.

Josh Eyler [00:15:50]:

There are other alternative models that people were playing around with. So that was a moment of reform. And we’re in another period of significant grading reform right now, fueled, I believe, by mass communication and social media, really, that people are now able to connect in ways that in previous eras of grading reform, they were not able to. Right? And so no longer are grading reformers in their little corners of their institutions and the world. Now we can talk to each other. And I was an attendee at the virtual grading conference last week, and there were a 1,000 people registered for that conference, and that was just focused on higher ed. And higher ed is arguably later to the party of greater grading reform than the k twelve world. So we’re in the midst of something big, and what we’re starting to see is individuals who have been doing this work now are finding a community and so are stepping forward together rather than just making their own kind of individual steps forward.

Josh Eyler [00:16:54]:

And that’s how you begin to have a movement.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:16:57]:

In the last episode, we were talking about motivation, and you posited that self determination theory is a more effective, more nuanced way of looking at motivation versus solely categorizing intrinsic versus extrinsic. When we start exploring the different ways we might approach grading, do you have how you bring people into it? Because, I mean, I’ve got I’ve got kind of the categories of them, but I’m not sure if I’m gonna start at the most umbrella. Like, you’ve mentioned contract grading. Is that a good place for us to start, or is there something that you like to bring people in as a frame to divide these up in different ways?

Josh Eyler [00:17:38]:

Yes. Sure. Definitely. So I think the first so a lot of this work I mean, maybe it sounds a little bit off topic, but a a lot of the work of reform and grading, especially at the individual level, at least from my perspective, is psychological. There’s a lot that individual instructors can carry with them from their own educational experiences, their own perceptions of of what their colleagues expect of them, their their own thoughts about the standards of their discipline. There’s a lot that we bring to the idea of grading that we don’t actually actually think about very often. And so I think the most important first steps are to think about what kinds of grading models we currently use, how do they align with our values with respect to education, To what degree are they connected with our past educational experiences? To what degree are they connected with the ways we think our colleagues expect of us, especially for teaching, like, the first half of a 2 course sequence, that kind of thing? And to larger ideas about our relationships with students and also kind of traditional notions of what education is meant to accomplish. So I think a lot of that work has to happen before we can even introduce the idea or the menu of possibilities in terms of alternative grading strategies.

Josh Eyler [00:19:00]:

Once we begin to kind of hone in on what do we actually value as and how can our grading models better reflect those values, then I can say, here are a range of of things that people are experimenting with, standards based grading or contract grading or collaborative grading, and how they might be tied to your values, your context in your institution, who you are, what’s possible for you, and what may be most beneficial for your students, given your discipline or your the level of the course or the size of the course. Right? And so thinking through some of those, I was at the pod, the Professional and Organizational Development and Higher Ed Conference a few years ago. Folks from University of Virginia Center gave a great presentation on all the different decision points that you might make when you’re designed to be a more equitable grader, and they calculate. They did the math. Michael Palmer’s the director. He’s a chemist. And so he did this brilliant mathematical taxonomy. Almost 16,000,000 different possible decision making combinations that go into this.

Josh Eyler [00:20:10]:

And so it’s not really about any kind of orthodoxy in terms of adopting a model in a way. It’s about what can you take from a different possibilities that align most with your own goals for your students. And so those are the doorways that I think we can open and then say, here’s a road map for a particular kind of approach.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:20:35]:

Boy, it’s so helpful to have you say that, and I know that that you discussed that so eloquently in the book as well. Just that I think it feels a little bit freeing, because, especially, you and I have engaged, you know, over many years with such wonderful people in a community having these important discussions. And one thing that kinda I I remember as watching it and cringing a little bit was anytime someone might have the idea that there’s one way to do things or that, you know, the ungrading movement, there is just one way, and then I felt like people were, like, piranhas attacking the people who might and I don’t believe that that there is only one way to do that, but I also don’t believe that it’s going to be helpful as people were experimenting with these, trying things out, being some of the more early adopters to that I don’t know. I maybe I just was I wanted us to be a little bit kinder in our engagement and the and those things. So that’s really helpful just to say, let’s start with these practices. What are your values? And then wanting to expand our imagination about what the possibilities might be. And you talked about contract grading a couple times. I’ll just read from the book.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:21:41]:

It’s called contract grading because early versions asked students to commit to an assessment plan they wanted to pursue by signing a statement or the syllabus or some other document, almost like a contract. This practice is no longer widely used, but the name remains. And the one that I’m the most familiar with is more of a labor based type of a model, and I see that a lot with writing faculty wanting to see the connection between writing as thinking, thinking as writing. Although I’d I’m sure it shows up in other contexts as well. What what do you have to say about wanting to expand our imagination for what might be possible and what values contract grading may align well with our different approaches of it?

Josh Eyler [00:22:27]:

Right. So when I talk to groups about these different grading models, I always say that there are gonna be gives and takes with each of these. Right? If you adopt one model, it means that you are also you’re also indicating that other things will be less of a priority for you. Right? And so contract grading is a good example of this. The other thing and I’ll I’ll I’ll explain that in a second. But the second thing is each of these models have a particular psychological hurdle that you have to leap over in order to really embrace working with that particular model. And each of them has it. And, it’s okay if some of those hurdles are unscalable for you because there are other models that might align better with you.

Josh Eyler [00:23:12]:

So the one for contract rating is that and this is the give and take part as well, that in order to really adopt at least a traditional contract rating approach in which you have all the possible activities and assignments students would do. And to get an a, they have to complete, I’m just making up this number, 17 at a satisfactory level. A b would be 15, a c would be 13, etcetera. Right? So in order to adopt that, you have to believe and have designed those assignments and activities in such a way that by completing them at a satisfactory level, students will have met the learning goal for that assignment. You had to really firmly believe that that is possible in order to buy into that system. Some people knock that out of the park and do a great job with it and love that approach. I think labor base is similar in that it’s not as much about checking the boxes as it is about how much time you are documenting, putting in to the work. But some people, that model does not align necessarily with how they see the learning interaction taking place.

Josh Eyler [00:24:17]:

So they move to something like standards based grading or collaborative grading, some combination of of a bunch of different ones that help to address some of the questions that they have and make them feel more comfortable with it. So that’s really my when I do this work more broadly, my goal is really help people find the answers that work best for them. And sometimes that begins with just a small first step. What, you know, you’ve outlined your goals, you’ve outlined your values. What’s one thing that you can do to take a step in this particular direction? Which helps it feel smaller than upturning and overturning everything that they’ve been doing prior to that point.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:24:59]:

One approach that I have found with my values and in the context in which I teach is relatively easy to just carve out one time even during a term or a semester, would be the standards based. So what if just one time you had a set of standards and it was either you met those standards or you didn’t, try that out. Could you try it two times? Could it be if it’s a larger project that you feel either you feel or the department where you are feels very strongly that has to have a grade assigned? Could the steps leading to it where they receive feedback, could that just be an either the group or the individual did or didn’t do it? So that feels really easy to do on a small level. I’m curious about if you also experience that, if that’s your work with faculty, that that tends to be a kind of easy one to experiment with on even just a one off basis, and if there are others that you might want to expand our imagination of, hey. Just one time try this small thing.

Josh Eyler [00:25:58]:

Yes. Absolutely. So I think there are 3 kinds of small steps you can take, and that’s one of them. Right? Take the model and condense it to 1 just one iteration of it. Try it out in one assignment. Another small first step is to take a component of the course. So a lot of people who are kind of intrigued by collaborative grading or ungrading, but don’t know they can jump 2 feet into the pool just yet, I often encourage them to think about shifting the way they assess participation. There are some great tools out there for thinking about participation as skill building.

Josh Eyler [00:26:33]:

So Alana Gillis is someone whose work has really helped me think about this, and she recommends having students identify 3 participation based goals and then self assessing every few weeks and then having building that into a larger self evaluation at the end of the semester. So that’s another small step that’s, course component rather than an assignment with a model. But, yeah, there are lots of different ways I think people can inch toward something and to see the possibilities before I’m moving forward from there. And that’s a good experimental way to do this, I think.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:27:08]:

Yeah. You said there were 3 small steps. Take the model and try it out on one assignment. Second 1, take a component of the course. You gave an example of assessing participation. That just one element of perhaps what adds up to be a broader goal. What’s the 3rd small step we could take?

Josh Eyler [00:27:25]:

3rd, you know, I often think people when they’re thinking of a system that doesn’t put grades on assignments, we often encourage them to just try what it would be like to only give feedback on a particular assignment. Make it a small assignment and then make it something that that if it goes awry, you you know, you don’t have to course correct too much. But the idea of only giving feedback is a piece of all of these standards based grading, contract grading, all of it. And so the feedback component, I think that’s often another another thing that we recommend. Like, just try that out for one thing.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:28:03]:

As we start to shift our conversation into some of the more systemic approaches, I’m going to go with a guilty pleasure of reading from one of my favorite all time authors, and that’s Anne Lamott, who you quote in the book. In this case, you’re quoting from Anne Lamott’s book, Bird by Bird, some instructions on writing and life. 33 years ago, my older brother, who was 10 years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he’d had 3 months to write, which was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother’s shoulder, and said, bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird. I tell the story again because it usually makes a dent in the tremendous sense of being overwhelmed that my students experience. Sometimes it actually gives them hope.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:29:12]:

And hope, as Chesterton said, is the power of being cheerful in circumstances that we know to be desperate. I think this quote could bring us into conversation about hope even more broadly speaking. But before I do, to me, it also brings up one of the limitations, and perhaps it’s only in my own imagination, Josh, around my own considerations of using more labor based assessment methodologies, considering the continued emergence of AI. When we were speaking in the last episode about the ways in which traditional grading approaches might incentivize people to cheat. I feel like creating something that very strictly looks at labor. And I remember talking to Asau for the podcast way back when. He’s a big advocate for labor based. And then when I think about putting that to practice in my classes, I just think I’m literally just setting the table for them.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:30:13]:

You’re working 4 jobs. You got 5 classes. You just had a family member die, and I’m gonna say, no, it’s 5 hours a week, 10 hours, whatever amount of time, I would try to make it more equal by expecting everyone, including the historically a students, if you know what I’m saying. It just doesn’t fit in my mind and then add on top of that, the temptation to unwisely utilize large language models to generate some of that labor labor, I just go, oh my gosh. So when we think about the bird by board and this beautiful illustration that Anne has about really creation, because to me, it’s so much more than just writing. Writing is a form of creation, but whether you’re playing the guitar, Josh, or whatever it is we’re trying to do bird by bird, but the systems and structures and the pressures. Anyway, so I I yes. We’re gonna talk about hope, but any commentary on my fumbling around it, even the idea of labor, I love the principle behind it.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:31:15]:

I love the values. Practically speaking, I’m not really able to see how I could institute that without policing, and I don’t wanna be policing and without giving the illusion that people are putting labor in that they’re in fact just not putting in.

Josh Eyler [00:31:31]:

Okay. Couple of things. This is so important. So what you just said was kind of illustrating the give and take of the the grading decisions that we make when we adopt new models. And so if the calculation that is being made is does having the amount of labor, is that more important to me, or is what is produced more important to me? Right? And I think the people who are full steam ahead with labor based grading really are invested in that idea of labor. But it might not be the right calculation for you and for your courses. And so that’s, I think, part of what’s finding the right the right model or combination of approaches. But, also, I the bigger issue that you’re really, I I think, getting to is that AI is exposing many of these issues, like, right out in the broad sunlight that we tend to sweep under the rug.

Josh Eyler [00:32:26]:

And what is at the heart of this example that you’re giving is the same thing that we were connecting to traditional grading kind of writ large in that it’s not about really the letters or the numbers or the model. It’s about the work being meaningful to the students. Right? And so at the point where the amount of labor ceases to become meaningful to the students’ goals, we have to shift to something that will enhance the meaningfulness of the work. So it may be that in that calculation, we might say, I, as the individual instructor, now think that what I want to do is shift from labor to develop having a menu of what I know to be meaningful assignments and asking them to do a certain number of those at a satisfactory level. Right? And so AI is exposing those problems and causing us, I think, or leading us to shift some of our previous calculations and priorities with grading. But the bird by bird, yes. I think what you just had a beautiful illustration there of how an individual instructor can feel in the face of all of these things that are always swirling around us. Right? And how it can be hard to take a bird by bird approach when you have all these pressures.

Josh Eyler [00:33:45]:

And so I think that’s really important to think about. The bird by bird metaphor is also really helpful for me to think about how those same instructors, when coming together as a community, can enact change at the systemic level. Right? To think about taking it one bird at a time, not trying to eliminate grades across higher ed, all in one go, but making little incremental bits of change that will add up over time. Right? And so Anne Lamott’s words there, which I’ve I’ve long really have been sort of a mantra for me, really helped me visualize how to make change possible and how to shrink it down so that other people might be convinced that it’s possible as well.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:34:35]:

Oh, and that was so helpful. And and I’m thinking about the the analogy that was coming to my mind was that I’m trying to make a soup, but it it’s the soup that doesn’t quite have a a purpose yet. I mean, I’m just mixing in a bunch of flavors in my mind. I’m I don’t I don’t end up don’t end end up inflicting that on my students, fortunately, and I’m so grateful for conversations like the one we’re having right now because it it does tie so much to those systemic changes. I think that part of our role is to be trying things out, although starting on a small scale so we’re not just radically you know, that could that could have a really negative effect on student learning where we did try just to bite off far more than is appropriate for our context and our current knowledge level of what’s possible and how to facilitate this, but then also just to wrestle with it together and to have these conversations that can lead then to those more systemic changes. Toward the end, when you really bring us toward the more systemic hope, you introduce a blueprint for change, and this is not someone who I was familiar with before. My doctorate is an organizational leadership, so I’ve taken many classes on organizational change. This was a new one to me.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:35:47]:

So this is Thomas Guskey, and you write that he spent his career studying attempts at grade reform. And in a recent article, he outlined some of the most important elements for helping sustainable change to take root. And I’ll just read the 4 and then invite you to reflect on them with us. So Thomas Guskey invites us to begin with transparency, to take things in order, to describe why before what, and to anticipate and address opposition. What do you take away from his advice about facilitating change around something as important as grade reform?

Josh Eyler [00:36:28]:

Well and, Thomas Guskey’s work has really been influential in shaping my ideas about the book. And he, in particular, has studied k twelve school districts who have tried to change kind of systemically, globally their grading models. Right? Usually, the standards based grading, but it could be other things as well. And what he has studied is those initiatives that have succeeded and those that have not. I have some examples in the book as well of school districts that tried and succeeded and tried and failed. And so that blueprint is really useful for thinking about how you develop change initiatives of all kinds that can be not only successful, but sustainable as well. And that’s the key because the last thing you want and this has been in the news recently with some key initiatives. So this isn’t grade related, but the institutions that went test optional during COVID and have now regressed.

Josh Eyler [00:37:28]:

Right? The last thing you want is change that lasts only 3 to 5 years, like a flash in the pan. What you want is that’s just successful, but not sustainable. Right? What you want is both successful and sustainable over the long term. So his blueprint is really useful for that. I set I think 2 really important parts of the 4 that you read describing the why before the what. That is absolutely critical, and I just feel like I spend most of my time in talking, and and talking with institutions about grades about this. Right? The why. Why would you wanna do this in the first place? And some of the issues that we talked about in the last episode, issues of academics and motivation and things like that, people are used to that argument.

Josh Eyler [00:38:14]:

And so they’ve already developed their counterarguments for that. But when you start to get into the effects on students as people, the inequities that grades exacerbate, the mental health issues that grades exacerbate, those are not arguments that are often brought into this debate. And so those are lies that people in higher education really care about. And once you begin to connect the dots between what seems just like an academic debate, grades, to these larger issues that collectively we all care a lot about, you start to see the why really developing. And then once you have that, then you can talk about the what. What kinds of changes could we make? What’s possible? How do we do it? But the why needs to come first. So that to me, although it’s listed as 3rd, it’s absolutely critical. The other thing, anticipate and address opposition.

Josh Eyler [00:39:10]:

I was at the AAC and U’s Gen Ed Pedagogy and Assessment Conference in April, and I saw a wonderful session from folks from Michigan Tech University. And they, they called this process, a pre mortem, which I thought was fascinating. Right? Thinking about all the ways an initiative might fail ahead of time, and then trying to address them while you were putting together the initiative. Right? And so that’s what Guskey’s talking about here. Where is the opposition to the reform initiative, and how can you address that opposition? And the tough part about this is it it’s gonna be so varied. Like, people are going to be opposed. The people who are opposed are going to be opposed for very different reasons. And so finding ways, both rhetorically and strategically, to address those opposing views and those roadblocks as they come up, I think, is absolutely crucial to make this change happen.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:40:09]:

This is the time in which we each get to share our recommendations. I have 2. 1 is I didn’t warn Josh, this is a hard thing for me to talk about. People who have listened for a while may have gleaned little bits of my story. I lost, about a year and a half ago, a dear aunt, and we talked about her on an episode with my mom. She passed away from Alzheimer’s, and there’s just the hereditary elements and kind of that fear that other family members could be affected. And I I do tend to live in the future. It’s something that is a strength, but certainly when the volume gets turned up becomes a weakness because you can’t really enjoy today if you’re living for the fear of that that future.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:40:56]:

And I so often think about whether it’s about parenting or whether it’s about being a caregiver for family members or our friends. I I will joke and say, there’s no manual for this. There’s no manual. Who wrote the manual? And I wanna recognize as I learn more about trauma informed teaching, this is an area of psychology I don’t have a lot of research on, but I start to realize for myself just the trauma, like, of, going to my aunt’s house and essentially, like, how do you go to someone’s house that they’ve lived in their whole adult life?

Josh Eyler [00:41:30]:

Right.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:41:30]:

And how do you trick them to get into a car and take them to a strange place that if they had had their entire mental abilities would not have wanted to go, but you’re tricking them as if they were a child because they don’t know where where you’re taking them. And that as I think back to those just the her getting lost a block from her house. So all this to say, it’s hard for me to talk about this because obviously it’s there’s some emotion around it. And there both isn’t a book for these things because we’re experiencing just the this this trauma. It’s so different for each one of us. You know, families look so different for us. Caregiving looks so different for us and all that. But every once in a while, when you come across something that feels as close to a guide book as you’re going to get, feel like I gotta shout it from the rooftop.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:42:21]:

So I have a podcast I wanted to recommend, a podcast episode. It’s on the podcast called how how to. So the how to podcast had an episode, how to help a loved one with dementia. And I listened to it, of course, quite after the experience with my aunt. But as I get fearful about other family members potentially going down a similar road, it was just so helpful to hear it’s a dialogue between somebody who has some expertise caring for people with dementia and someone who has their own unique story, their own trauma, and they’re processing about in this case, it’s earlier on. So this is a woman named Mara. Her mom just received her diagnosis, and Mara is wondering what is next for their family. She turned to our host, Courtney Martin, for guidance.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:43:07]:

Since Courtney is going through the same thing with her father, it’s a beautiful conversation. There are no easy answers, no easy prescriptions, but I felt so understood. I felt so much more of, no. You’re not gonna have easy answers, and, no, it is gonna feel sometimes like every day is unsettling on your feet, but you do start to build networks of knowledge and people who you know and and and you know can just listen to you share a a experience. And so I I wanna really recommend that. Second thing I wanna recommend, I think, is probably obvious to listeners because we just had 2 episodes on it. I wanna recommend Josh’s book, Failing Our Future, How Grades Harm Students and What We Can Do About It. Josh, it brought me so much hope, and I love that we’re ending on the idea of hope with action because that’s part of why it’s so hopeful for me.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:43:59]:

You you don’t pull any punches. It is very much a confrontational book in the overwhelming evidence that there is a problem with grades, and then you equip us with possible paths to take action. It’s just a gorgeous, incredible, beautiful, important, necessary book. And now I get to pass it to you for whatever you wanna recommend.

Josh Eyler [00:44:20]:

Thank you so much for that, Bonni. That that your your recommendations always mean a lot, and and I I very much appreciate that. And I also appreciate you sharing your story. I’m I’m very sorry. My father has Alzheimer’s as well, and so I know how painful it can be. So thank you for sharing that recommendation. So in the last episode, I recommended books about the problems with the system. In this one, I wanna recommend some things that, again, help us solve some of these problems.

Josh Eyler [00:44:48]:

And the first one is more like a bucket of of resources, although it’s grounded. It’s anchored by 1, and that’s Bettina Love’s book, Punished for Dreaming, about how educational systems have really conspired against African American students to really set up obstacles. So it’s a great book, but, also, the reason I’m using it is because what I want to note is that there are there are groups within our country, African Americans, indigenous people, who the idea of working against the educational system is not a new thing. They have been developing strategies and tools and methods and alternative models for a very long time. So Bettina Love’s work on abolitionist pedagogy, the book fugitive pedagogy by Jarvis Gibbons about the the early African American education post civil war and how they were, putting a a whole other structure in place to combat the systemic oppression in the schools. There’s great resources now about indigenous educational practices. Again, they subverting the system in order to create new possibilities for students. And so I can’t recommend those kinds of resources enough for this work.

Josh Eyler [00:46:06]:

It’s not it’s not new to push back against the system, and we can learn from those efforts. So that’s one. Other scholars who I think are really thinking a lot about grade reform, Matt Townsley, who’s at the University of Northern Iowa, he writes a lot about, grading reform in k 12. His work is amazing. David Clark and Robert Halbert, their book, Grading for growth. Everyone probably knows that one, but it is a great blueprint for how to do this work. And finally, my own colleague here at the University of Mississippi, Emily Donahoe, has a great substack newsletter on making the grade. It’s really powerful.

Josh Eyler [00:46:44]:

It’s both practical and philosophical at the same time. It’s really great. So those are mine, and I think we just we do this work together. That’s the most important thing.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:46:53]:

Oh, absolutely. Thank you so much for these couple of conversations and all of the ones over this past decade. I’m so grateful for you. Thanks for joining me today.

Josh Eyler [00:47:02]:

Thank you, Bonni. It’s been a pleasure.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:47:06]:

Thanks once again to Josh Eyler for joining me for this second part of the episode about grades. And today’s episode was produced by me, Bonni Stachowiak. It was edited by the ever talented Andrew Kroeger. Podcast production support was provided by the amazing Sierra Priest. If you’ve been listening for a while and have yet to sign up for our weekly emails, head over to teaching in higher ed dot com slash subscribe. You’ll receive the most recent episodes show notes as well as some other resources that don’t show up in the regular show notes. I thank you so much for listening and for being a part of the teaching and higher ed community, and we’ll see you next time on teaching in higher ed.

Teaching in Higher Ed transcripts are created using a combination of an automated transcription service and human beings. This text likely will not represent the precise, word-for-word conversation that was had. The accuracy of the transcripts will vary. The authoritative record of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcasts is contained in the audio file.