“Freedom to Dig for the Truth”: Understanding Risk-Taking and Agency in Ungraded Social Justice–Oriented Teacher Education (Poster 8)

• In Event: AERA Poster Session Sunday 11:40 a.m.
  In Poster Session: Division K Section 5 Poster Session: Teacher and Teacher Educator Learning

Abstract

In recent educational discourse, traditional grading systems have increasingly faced critiques for their limitations in assessing holistic student learning experiences (Gorichanaz, 2022 Meinking & Hall, 2022). Consequently, in higher education contexts, a shift toward a holistic approach to learning and assessment has gained attention, represented by the pedagogical movement termed “ungrading” (Kohn, 2011; Blum & Kohn, 2020).Despite its potential, there's limited study of ungrading within teacher education contexts. This paper aims to explore how eight student teachers experienced the affordances of ungraded multimodal portfolios to take risks and develop agency in a social justice-oriented teacher education program. This study's exploration of multimodal portfolios in an ungraded course aims to provide insights into fostering critical and socially-just teacher education practices.

Authors

• Pooja Dharamshi, Simon Fraser University

• Anita Sidhu, Simon Fraser University

• Amrit Kaur Cojocaru, Simon Fraser University

• Shaghayegh Bahrami, Simon Fraser University