College Composition and Communication Dec 2009 Open Access

A Unilateral Grading Contract to Improve Learning and Teaching

Jane Danielewicz ; Peter Elbow

Abstract

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.

Journal
College Composition and Communication
Published
2009-12-01
DOI
10.58680/ccc20099471
CompPile
Open Access
OA PDF Green
Topics
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Citation context

Cited by in this index (22)

  1. Cowan (2026)
    Nontraditional Grading at the Nexus of Business, Communication, and Composition
    Business and Professional Communication Quarterly
  2. Liang et al. (2026)
    Unacclimatized?: Understanding the potential of labor-based contract grading in…
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  3. Banks et al. (2025)
    Toward a Theory of Consent as Assessment Practice
    College English
  4. Nastal (2024)
    Ungrading in the Ethical Turn as an Assessment Killjoy
    Teaching English in the Two-Year College
  5. Nastal (2024)
    A Sociocognitive Grading Model for First-Year Writing Classes
    Pedagogy
Show all 22 →
  1. Bergen (2024)
    Hostile and Hospitable Programmatic Architectures
    Pedagogy
  2. Lipsey (2024)
    Instructional Note: Making It about XP Instead of Loot: Ungrading and Gameful L…
    Teaching English in the Two-Year College
  3. Schwarz et al. (2024)
    Guest Editors’ Introduction: Disrupting the Alternative Grading Narrative: Reco…
    Teaching English in the Two-Year College
  4. Gomes (2024)
    Localizing Labor-Based Contract Grading for a Community-Engaged UX Course
    Communication Design Quarterly
  5. Wolfe (2024)
    What Educational Psychology Can Teach Us about Providing Feedback to Black Stud…
    College Composition and Communication
  6. West-Puckett et al. (2023)
    Engaging Assessment Counterstories through a Cultural Rhetorics Framework
    College Composition and Communication
  7. Sims (2023)
    Shifting perceptions of socially just writing assessment: Labor-based contract …
    Assessing Writing
  8. Graves (2023)
    Specifications grading to promote student engagement, motivation and learning: …
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  9. Eidum (2022)
    Embracing Disruption: A Framework for Trauma-informed Reflective Pedagogy
    Reflections: A Journal of Community-Engaged Writing and Rhetoric
  10. Feigenbaum (2021)
    Welcome to “Failure Club”
    Pedagogy
  11. Ward (2021)
    An integrated mixed-methods study of contract grading's impact on adolescents' …
    Assessing Writing
  12. Ward (2021)
    Easing stress: Contract grading’s impact on adolescents’ perceptions of workloa…
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  13. Inoue (2019)
    Classroom Writing Assessment as an Antiracist Practice
    Pedagogy
  14. Albracht et al. (2019)
    Interchanges: Response to Joyce Olewski Inman and Rebecca A. Powell’s “In the A…
    College Composition and Communication
  15. Albracht et al. (2019)
    Interchanges: Response to Joyce Olewski Inman and Rebecca A. Powell’s “In the A…
    College Composition and Communication
  16. Consilio et al. (2019)
    Using Mindfulness as Heuristic for Writing Evaluation: Transforming Pedagogy an…
    Across the Disciplines
  17. Stanback (2015)
    The Borderlands of Articulation
    Pedagogy

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