The Harms of Grading in Higher Education: Comparative Institutional Ethnographies of University Assessment Cultures (Routledge Research in Higher Education)

This book examines the impacts of grading in higher education through comparative institutional ethnographies of two universities with radically different approaches to assessment. The Harms of Grading reports the results of institutional ethnographies at University of the Bay, which has an assessment culture that emphasizes harsh grading and difficult exams, and Forest College, which does not give grades and emphasizes student self-assessment.Through the voices and perspectives of students and faculty, it explores the many harmful impacts of grading, such as the devastating effects grading has on learning and on student-teacher relationships, the culture of competition that grading creates, and the climate of stress created by high-stakes exams and “weeder” courses.The book introduces an innovative theoretical framework termed the “Grade Frame”-a series of misguided but ingrained beliefs about grading that provide the rationale for current assessment practices.Using Forest College's g