Moving Beyond
Disciplinary Boundaries:
Transformative
Aspects of Contract Grading and Pedagogy
Stuart Paul Duncan
It does not surprise me that within academia, at least here
at Yale and in my previous experiences that we live in a world defined, to a
large extent, by fairly well set disciplinary boundaries. From my perspective,
graduate students tend to respond to these boundaries in one of three ways: there
are some who prefer to live closer to the liminal spaces between discrete
“subjects”; there are those who like to keep more centrally located, away from
such boundaries; and then there are those who like to take a leap of faith, crossing
the border fully into uncharted territory.
While this may seem oversimplified, and I do admit to a radical
generalization, my experience as a teacher here and at Cornell has led me to personally
experience the Ivory Tower mentality with its series of entrenched and well-marked
disciplinary boundaries. These boundaries are often fiercely guarded and
promoted on grounds not limited to tradition, politics, and gender. My task here
is not to argue the extent of such disciplinary boundaries, their level of
entrenchment, or their validity—although I'm sure you can infer my position on
such matters. Instead, my concern is over how such boundaries promote a content-based
mentality that overwrites broader educational concerns and, more importantly,
how this presents challenges for the Yale Teaching Center.
It is while reflecting on my initial experience at the YTC—both
as a participant and as a facilitator—that these disciplinary boundaries come
to the fore The prevailing mentality reveals an active majoring holding fast to
disciplinary exclusivity; i.e., that “my” subject is special and these broader
pedagogical ideas (active learning, backwards design, etc.) do not directly
address issues within “my” discipline. This resistance is understandable when
one considers that new graduate student teachers have been immersed in their
discipline for several years of coursework, if not longer, harkening back to
their undergraduate years. Such immersion serves to reinforce disciplinary
exclusivity.
There seems to be some unwritten
expectation that as graduate students, we are already fully equipped to teach
or lead a class. Yet, if we had wanted to teach at the pre-college level, many
of us would have had to complete a teaching certificate, backed up by extensive
assistant teaching, or even a master’s degree in education, before being
allowed to lead a class. Perhaps at the university level, because it is assumed
that we are “experts” in our field, this educational training is not necessary.
I would question that, although we may be proto-experts at our fields, we are
not equipped to teach beyond a “content” mentality, a mentality that reinforces
disciplinary discreteness. Without prior teaching experience, or a pedagogical
framework within which to shape our teaching, we become passengers in the
passive act of transmitting disciplinary content, rather than active agents
that enable and shape our student’s learning process.
The YTC’s Fundamentals of Teaching courses,
often not obligatory in many departments, can only scratch the surface of many
of the pedagogical challenges we face as instructors. One of complex challenges
faced by the YTC is aiding new graduate teachers in their transformation from a
content-only subject-defined mentality—instantiated through disciplinary
territoriality—to a broader pedagogical perspective. Such a perspective brings a
deeper understanding of non discipline-specific pedagogy that makes us more effective
teachers.
This is not to say that there isn't
value in the content of our subject areas. Broadening my knowledge of Bach’s cantatas,
Beethoven’s sonatas, Wagner’s operas, and Radiohead’s fascinating metric
idiosyncrasies has provided and will continue to provide a source of
inspiration. Yet, as much as I enjoy teaching what I love, my most profound
teaching experience came not from a successful semester of well-structured
course content, but from the act of grading while teaching at Auburn Correctional
Facility, an all-male maximum security prison in upstate NY.
Grading? Seriously? How can the
topic of grading provide the basis for a more profound teaching experience than
the bread and butter of my training, i.e. music? What was so profound, then,
you may ask? The act of grading is one of several power dynamics that separate
instructor and student, and often acts as a form of a judgment. In a prison
environment, those interred are ultra-sensitized to power dynamics. Being
stripped of their individuality through the clothes they wear and the personal
freedoms that are suppressed, inmates are constantly reminded that others holdpower
over them. It is with this context in mind that I was particularly sensitive
that the act of grading held power over them in the same way that the guards
held power—inhibiting, rather than enabling student learning.
In order to avoid the association of
grades and judgment, or perhaps more clearly, to avoid the association of
grades with my assessment of the student, I decided to try a form of contract
grading. Rather than setting a midterm exam, I met with each student
individually during class time and went over his progress during the semester.
After establishing the goals they have already achieved, we discussed what
their aims were for the rest of the semester in light of my original course
goals. Together, we came up with a tailor-made roadmap that took into account the
needs of a course grade (reflecting the skills and goals deemed necessary for
the course) and the student’s own personal goals. These goals were tiered into
the traditional grading format of As, A-, B+, etc. Then after agreeing
that the various grade-level goals were both fair and achievable, the student signed
the contract the following week. This was the first stage in giving them an
identity and control over their learning process. At the end of the course, I
asked all the students to go over their contracts and grade themselves based on
the contracts that they had signed. All students, except one, graded themselves
exactly as I would have, to within one half-grade.
It wasn't until after the final
class that the power of contract grading hit home when one of the students said
that, for the first time, he had felt like a human being. Holding back my emotions,
I asked him what about the course had helped him to feel this way. He said, “everything
in here is about taking away our identity. Music has helped me to find myself
again, and the ability to take responsibility for my own learning has given me
a power and confidence I thought I would not see before I die.” Though music
no doubt played an important role as the subject content, it was the simple
employment of contract grading that had a profound effect on the student, one
that could have been achieved regardless of subject content.
It is this experience that has led
me to write this blog post. It is not my intention to critique the current
state of academia, with its eclectic nature of subject-boundaries, but to
encourage the benefits of thinking about how
we teach, not what we teach, and more
importantly to highlight how we want our students to leave our courses
transformed. Although a maximum security prison may present an environment
where there is more to gain from employing non-subject specific pedagogical
approaches, all students, regardless of the function of the walls that surround
them, benefit from a course primed to ask how they want their students to think
differently by the end of the semester. It is in this vein that the YTC
programming has the potential to enable both new and experienced instructors to
move beyond the subject-specific content reinforced by disciplinary boundaries
and to infuse their teaching with the hows
rather than the whats.
Hello and
Happy Halloween! My name is Ashley and I
am a 6th year PhD candidate in the Genetics department. I came
across a great video that takes you inside an active learning classroom at the
University of Minnesota and I wanted to share it with you!
