Meinking, Kristina, and Eric E. Hall. 2022. “Letting Go of Grades: Creating an Environment of Autonomy and aFocus on Learning for High Achieving Students.” Teaching & Learning Inquiry 10.https://doi.org/10.20343/teachlearninqu

Meinking, Kristina, and Eric E. Hall. 2022. “Letting Go of Grades: Creating an Environment of Autonomy and aFocus on Learning for High Achieving Students.” Teaching & Learning Inquiry 10.https://doi.org/10.20343/teachlearninqu.10.214permission to use their work from the semester as well as their feedback for analysis. At our institution,some high-achieving students take part in a cohorted honors program; each student in our course waspart of this honors program. In the broader context of the honors program, students take twointerdisciplinary or multidisciplinary courses in their second year to help them think about how toresearch and communicate about significant, meaningful questions. These courses help to prepare themfor their final two years of study during which they will propose and write a thesis. In addition to thehigh-achieving nature of the student population, four elements of the course are important to identifybefore we discuss our findings: (1) that the course, “Beauty and the Brain,” was interdisciplinary(neuroscience and classical studies); (2) that we took a co-creation in teaching and learning frame forthe course (see below and Bovill, 2020 for greater discussion of the topic); (3) that we used learningcharters, as described below; and (4) that students created end of course portfolios to demonstrate theirachievement of personal and course goals.Honors students, as a high-achieving group, are both like and unlike their non-cohorted peers.One study found that there were no differences in intelligence or persistence between honors and non-honors students, but there were differences in the areas of desire to learn, drive to excel, and creativity.The study authors suggest that important differences need to be taken into consideration when teachingthis group of students (Scager et al. 2012). Honors students have also been found to have higher levelsof perfectionism (Cross et al. 2018), as well as conscientiousness and openness to experience (Long andLange 2002). Collectively, these differences could be related to ways in which high achieving studentslearn. The pedagogies employed in the course draw from a strong foundation of literature on thebenefits of student-centered learning, among which we saw reduction in stress and the development oflifelong learning strategies to be most important to this particular course (Bradford, Mowder, and Bohte2016; Overby 2011; Singh 2011). In addition, we had explored other ways of understanding and framingmore precisely the nature of student agency in our course. A recent essay by Bovill (2020) briefly surveysthe landscape of pedagogies linked to or described as the democratic classroom and students-as-partners. She then suggests that a range of similar activities and approaches might best be characterizedas “co-creation in teaching and learning” (3), a phrase intended to capture the situation of an entire classcollaboratively making decisions about content, assignments, and assessments in a specific course. (Seealso Bergmark and Westman 2015; Bovill 2014; 2020; Deeley 2014; Huxham et al. 2015; Lubicz-Nawrocka 2018) Although we as instructors made a series of decisions about the structure andframework of the course (e.g., the three movements, the ungrading, the portfolios); students filled inthose spaces. For example, they determined guidelines and criteria for assignments, how to form peerteams and lead two distinct types of class sessions, and much of the content. For this reason andparticularly due to the degree to which students made curricular and assessment decisions in the class,we would include this course under the umbrella of co-creation in teaching and learning.Most significantly, a shift away from conventional models of grading marked a defining featureof the course. Although we were still required to assign final grades for the course per university policy,students received no other numerical or letter grades for the entirety of the semester; rather, studentsreceived ample oral and written feedback both from peers and from the instructors. We elected not togive any quizzes or tests; pre-class tasks instead included an iterative and dialogic learning charter(described below), regular reading, two peer-led collaborations (i.e., leading all or portions of class),frequent reflection and engagement in metacognitive work, and a final course portfolio. A few wordsabout the learning c

PART A: According to Khan, how are students affected when mastery is not the goal?A. They believe they are unintelligent and eventually drop out of school.B. They struggle to keep up with the class and their learning development slows.C. They lose faith in the education system and fail to go on to higher education.D. They develop better study habits in order to keep up with the curriculum.

Which of the following patterns is a recent result of our society’s operation of large, bureaucratic schools?A.empowering students to learn on their ownB.“teaching to the test”C.flexible expectations of student progress based on individual performanceD.a focus on the personal needs of individual student

3. Studying hard under g_ _ _ _ _ _ _ or support of the teacher is the key to academic success.

A middle school teacher grades an examination on a curve, which will likely: a. make sure students study harder for the next examination. b. reduce the students’ sense of industry. c. discourage students from cheating. d. create a sense of healthy competition.