{"title":"Grading and Ungrading in Democratic Dialogic Classes Situated in a Conventional Higher Education Institution.","authors":"Eugene Matusov","doi":"10.1007/s12124-025-09903-w","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This article explores the contentious role of grading and ungrading in democratic dialogic education within conventional higher education. It critiques summative assessment for undermining genuine education by prioritizing compliance over inquiry, fostering distrust, and penalizing mistakes vital for educational growth. While institutionally mandated grading persists, the author introduces flexible pedagogical regimes accommodating diverse learner needs, including options for ungrading. These approaches prioritize student autonomy, emphasizing self-education rather than educational paternalism and credentialism. Challenges include cultural resistance, institutional constraints, and \"school toxification.\" Despite obstacles, the author advocates for transformative practices that honor students' rights to self-education and preserve the integrity of democratic pedagogy.</p>","PeriodicalId":50356,"journal":{"name":"Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science","volume":"59 2","pages":"37"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1000,"publicationDate":"2025-03-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11947029/pdf/","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science","FirstCategoryId":"102","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s12124-025-09903-w","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q4","JCRName":"PSYCHOLOGY, BIOLOGICAL","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
This article explores the contentious role of grading and ungrading in democratic dialogic education within conventional higher education. It critiques summative assessment for undermining genuine education by prioritizing compliance over inquiry, fostering distrust, and penalizing mistakes vital for educational growth. While institutionally mandated grading persists, the author introduces flexible pedagogical regimes accommodating diverse learner needs, including options for ungrading. These approaches prioritize student autonomy, emphasizing self-education rather than educational paternalism and credentialism. Challenges include cultural resistance, institutional constraints, and "school toxification." Despite obstacles, the author advocates for transformative practices that honor students' rights to self-education and preserve the integrity of democratic pedagogy.
期刊介绍:
IPBS: Integrative Psychological & Behavioral Science is an international interdisciplinary journal dedicated to the advancement of basic knowledge in the social and behavioral sciences. IPBS covers such topics as cultural nature of human conduct and its evolutionary history, anthropology, ethology, communication processes between people, and within-- as well as between-- societies. A special focus will be given to integration of perspectives of the social and biological sciences through theoretical models of epigenesis. It contains articles pertaining to theoretical integration of ideas, epistemology of social and biological sciences, and original empirical research articles of general scientific value. History of the social sciences is covered by IPBS in cases relevant for further development of theoretical perspectives and empirical elaborations within the social and biological sciences. IPBS has the goal of integrating knowledge from different areas into a new synthesis of universal social science—overcoming the post-modernist fragmentation of ideas of recent decades.