Promoting Equity with Anti-Racist

AssessmentsAngela Clark-Oates, PhD

Assistant Professor

Writing Program Coordinator

• Group Activity: Think Pair Share

• Background and Context

• Conceptual Framework for Teaching and Administration

• Theory-Informed Reflection

• Theoretical Framework

• Localizing Theory through Professional Learning

• Brown Bag Seminars

• Directed Self-Placement

• Labor-Based Grading Contracts

• Book Club

• What is the most salient value you

convey to students through your

writing assessment?

Think Pair Share

Poll

Background and Context

A Path Toward Anti-Racist Writing Assessment

Teacher Scholar: A Commitment to Becoming

”We must learn to ask new and different questions and to find

more and better ways to listen to the multidimensional voices

that are speaking from within and across many of the line that

might divide us as language users—by social and political

hierarchies, geography, material circumstances, ideologies,

time and space, and the like” (Royster & Kirsch, 2012, p. 4)

Conceptual Framework: Praxis Oriented

Action

Reflection

Theory

• Teaching as intellectual labor

• Inquiry as Stance (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009)

• Commitment to “Continually

Becoming Literate” (Inoue, 2009)

Theory Informed Reflection

A Path Toward Anti-Racist Writing Assessment

Theoretical Framework: AntiRacist Writing

Assessment Ecologies • “Provides for the complexity and holistic nature of assessment

systems, the interconnectedness of all people and things,

which includes environments, without denying or eliding

linguistic, cultural, or racial diversity, and the politics inherent

in all uneven social formations” (Inoue, 2015, p. 77)

• “Builds on equity and inclusion while also engaging students in

the politics of language” (Inoue, 2019, p. 4).

• “Question[s] critically the structures and assumptions that

make up the reading and judging of all students and teachers

in the classroom” (Inoue, 2015, p. 80)

From Theory Informed Reflection to

Localizing Theory through Action

A Path Toward Anti-Racist Writing Assessment

Theory Informed Reflection

• How do we construct critical faculty agency in our writing program?

– “Instructors’ increased agency, intentionality, and agility is proportional to their willingness to investigate their own epistemologies and tacitly held values” (Flash, 2016, p. 230)

• How will we use professional learning as agency to change our practices?

– “Teaching that responds to human diversity and aims for cognitive flexibility requires a wide range of teaching strategies that are activated by sophisticated judgments grounded in disciplined experimentation, insightful interpretation of (often ambiguous) events, and continuous reflection.” (Darling Hammond & Snyder, 2000)

Localizing Theory: Professional Learning

• Brown Bag Series

– Directed Self-

Placement Panel

– Grading

Contracts

– Writing Portfolios

Brown Bag: Directed Self-Placement Panel

Reflective Action: Revision to DSP

Reflective Action: Revision to DSP

Reflective Action: Revision to DSP

How can DSP contribute to making

the CSUs more socially just?

From Toth, “Directed Self-Placement at ‘Democracy’s Open Door,’ in Writing Assessement, Social Justice, and the Advancement of Opportunity, edited by Mya Poe, Asao Inoue, and Norbert Elliot

Anonymous Poll

Brown Bag: Grading Contracts

• Pedagogical Intersection of Various Interest

• Shared Accountability

• Collaborative Success

• Addresses the Diverse Needs of Students Across All

Spectrums

Reflective Action: Grading Contracts in a

Graduate Seminar

• Inquiry-Based Approach

• Community of Learners

• Empirical Research

• Research for Change

• Differentiated Mentorship

Reflective Action: Grading Contract as Pedagogy

• Collaborate on Assessment

Criteria

• Keep Labor Logs

• Engage in Revise and Resubmit

Process

• Encourage Self-Assessment

Reflective Action: Student Feedback

• “I like the collaborative environment”

• I think all of the writing assignments were scaffolded well

• “I found the assignment feedback to be extremely valuable”

• “I felt overwhelmed by the number of assignments, but felt

better knowing the way I was being graded”

What would you need to make contract

grading work in your own classes?

What would students, you, and the

institution need?

Please share in the Open Chat pod

Localizing Theory: Professional Learning

How is your practice informed by theory

and scholarship? How do you make time

to read and reflect?

To join the discussion, “raise your hand” using the icon at the

top of your screen. When called on, please click on the mic

icon and begin speaking.

Localizing Theory: Professional Learning

• Programmatic

PLC focused on

equity and

shared expertise

– Action research

– Collaborative

Course Design

Localizing Theory: GWAR Portfolio Pilot

Localizing Theory: Programmatic Assessment

Q & A

Resources

Center for Urban Education. Equity mindedness. Retrieved from

https://cue.usc.edu/about/equity/equity-mindedness/

Cochran-Smith & Lytle. Inquiry as stance: Practitioner Research for the Next

Generation. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.

hooks, bell. (1994). Teaching to Transgress. New York, NY: Routledge.

Inoue, A. (2009). Self-assessment as programmatic center: The first year writing

program and its assessment at California State University, Fresno. Composition

Forum, 20, Retrieved from

http://compositionforum.com/issue/20/calstatefresno.php

Inoue, A. (2015). Antiracist writing assessment ecologies. Retrieved from

https://wac.colostate.edu/books/inoue/ecologies.pdf

Inoue, A. (2019). Labor-based grading contracts: Building equity and inclusion in the

compassionate writing classroom. Retrieved from

https://wac.colostate.edu/books/perspectives/labor/

Paris, D. (2017). Equity by design: On Educating Culturally Sustaining Teachers. Midwest and Plain Equity Assistance Center. Retrieved from https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED580793.pdf

Poe, M. Reframing race in teaching writing across the curriculum. Across the Disciplines: A Journal of Language, Learning and Academic Writing. Retrieved from https://wac.colostate.edu/docs/atd/race/poe.pdf

Poe, M., Inoue, A., & Elliot, N. (2018). Introduction: The end of isolation. In M. Poe, A. Inoue, & N. Elliot (Eds), Writing Assessment, Social Justice, and the Advance of Opportunity (3-38). Louisville, CO: University Press of Colorado.

Stachowiak, B. (2018, June 14). Antiracist writing assessment ecologies with Asao Inoue @Teaching in Higher Ed Podcast. Retrieved from https://teachinginhighered.com/podcast/antiracist-writing-assessment-ecologies/

Toth, C. (2018). Directed self-placement at ‘democracy’s open door’: Writing placement and social justice in community college. In M. Poe, A. Inoue, & N. Elliot (Eds), Writing Assessment, Social Justice, and the Advance of Opportunity (137-170). Louisville, CO: University Press of Colorado.

How can DSP contribute to making the CSUs more socially just?

From Toth, “Directed Self-Placement at ‘Democracy’s Open Door,’ in Writing Assessement, Social Justice, and the Advancement of Opportunity, edited by Mya Poe, Asao Inoue, and Norbert Elliot

Webcast Anonymous Poll Results:

• It makes curriculum visible to students

• DSP avoids culturally biased placement tests

• It empowers

• It’s student centered and equitable

• Student-specific

• Gives students agency