Hidden Inequities in Labor-Based Contract Grading
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Current Arguments in Composition Series
The Hidden Inequities in Labor-Based Contract Grading intervenes in the increasingly popular practice of labor-based grading by expanding the scope of this assessment practice to include students who are disabled and multiply marginalized. Through the lens of disability studies, the book critiques the assumption that labor is a neutral measure by which to assess students and explores how labor-based grading contracts put certain groups of students at a disadvantage. Ellen C. Carillo offers engagement-based grading contracts as an alternative that would provide a more equitable assessment model for students of color, those with disabilities, and students who are multiply marginalized.
This short book explores the history of labor-based grading contracts, reviews the scholarship on this assessment tool, highlights the ways in which it normalizes labor as an unbiased tool, and demonstrates how to extend the conversation in new and generative ways both in research and in classrooms. Carillo encourages instructors to reflect on their assessment practices by demonstrating how even assessment methods that are designed through a social-justice lens may unintentionally privilege some students over others.
Ellen C. Carillo is professor of English at the University of Connecticut and the writing program coordinator at its Waterbury Campus. She is the author of Securing a Place for Reading in Composition, A Writer’s Guide to Mindful Reading, Teaching Readers in Post-Truth America, Reading and Writing Instruction in the Twenty-First Century, and the MLA Guide to Digital Literacy, as well as the coeditor of Teaching Critical Reading and Writing in the Era of Fake News and Reading Critically, Writing Well. Her scholarship has appeared in several journals and edited collections.