A Unilateral Grading Contract to Improve Learning and Teaching

Contract grading has achieved some prominence in our field as a practice associated with critical pedagogy. In this context we describe a hybrid grading contract where students earn a course grade of B based not on our evaluation of their writing quality but solely on their completion of the specified activities. The contract lists activities we've found most reliable in producing B-quality writing over fourteen weeks. Higher grades are awarded to students who produce exemplary portfolios. Thus we freely give students lots of evaluative feedback on their writing, but students can count on a course grade of B if they do all the required activities--no matter our feedback. Our goal in using contracts is to enable teachers and students to give as much attention as possible to writing and as little as possible to grades. (Contains 17 notes.

'I don’t think my sexuality would come into teaching at all': Exploring the borderland discourse of Australian LGBTQ+ pre-service teachers

Experiences of non-heterosexual teachers are relatively understood, but little work focuses explicitly on LGBTQ+, pre-service teachers and none in the Australian context. Alsup’s ([2006]. Teacher identity discourses: Negotiating personal and professional spaces. New York: Routledge.) borderland discourse is used to explore the role of gender and/or sexual identity in developing teacher identities of 12 Australian LGBTQ+ pre-service teachers. Findings show identity management and negotiation practices relating to decisions to hide or disclose identities in school contexts. Creating opportunities for borderland discourses, where tensions between the personal and professional can be deliberately brought to the fore, is presented as key to support the development of all new teachers