Neurodivergence and Alternative Grading, Part 1

Why we're curious about this topic

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

Note: This post begins a three-part series on neurodivergence and alternative grading by

Sarah Silverman

and

Emily Pitts Donahoe

. Each post is co-authored and cross-posted to both Sarah’s newsletter Beyond the Scope and Emily’s newsletter Unmaking the Grade. Please consider subscribing to one or both to receive more posts in this series.

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This collaboration grew out of a casual conversation. Earlier this summer, Sarah mentioned to Emily that she had increasingly been getting questions about how neurodivergent students experience alternative grading. Emily had also noticed the topic coming up in interviews for her book and other conversations about alternative grading.

We compared notes, and admitted that we had a bit of whiplash from the ideas we had heard so far. Some alt-graders believed their methods were especially supportive of neurodivergent students, but for all different reasons. Others questioned whether alternative grading created some barriers for neurodivergent students, especially on the topics of “unclear expectations” and “insufficient structure.” To the extent that neurodivergent students benefit from a high degree of transparency and clarity of expectations, might methods like collaborative grading, which uses an interactive process between student and instructor to determine the course grade, lack this clarity? How do “due dates” factor in? Since so many alt-graders eschew or limit penalties for late work, how might neurodivergent students who rely on external sources of motivation and accountability experience their classes?

Sarah’s stake and interest in this topic is part of her broad interest in neurodiversity in teaching and her experience as an alt-grading instructor who herself is Autistic. In Sarah’s words:

“I have always felt that traditional grading systems are a type of ‘steep steps’ (to use Jay Dolmage’s metaphor) for students in higher education—they are a barrier that excludes, whether by design or inadvertently. Coming into this collaboration with Emily, I had two main reasons that I think alternative grading relates to neurodiversity. The first is that the way that traditional grading often measures student performance can easily slide into ranking students by ability, a precursor to norming and the removal of students who do not fit in. The second, based on some of my own experiences as a neurodivergent student, is that alternative grading usually offers tolerance for error, a principle of universal design in which there are fewer adverse consequences for mistakes or other unintended actions.”

Emily, who is neurotypical, came to the topic with concerns about how her collaborative grading system and the practices she recommends in her in-progress book might be affecting neurodivergent students:

“I find that for many students, the motivation to get good grades is at odds with the motivation to learn; the former tends to impede the latter. By minimizing grades in my classroom, I hope to help students engage with the material more deeply. I also hope to give those who don’t fit the mold of a ‘good student’ a fair chance to succeed in my class and to help every student discover a sense of agency and ownership over their education.

I think many of my grading practices support the success of neurodivergent students. But after reading more about neurodivergence, and learning about others’ experiences with it, I started to wonder if some of those practices were actually barriers to some neurodivergent students’ success. Does the lack of grades remove an important source of structure or motivation? Do some students experience ‘agency’ as overwhelm? What if my attempts to give all students ‘a fair chance to succeed’ actually make success less likely for some neurodivergent students?”

We set out to do some digging and thinking about the existing discourse on alt-grading and neurodivergence. This started with a shared Google document in which Sarah linked any source she could find—blog posts, social media posts, peer-reviewed articles, and even a book—that discussed neurodivergence in relation to alternative grading. We continued with individual close readings of each of these sources, after which we added notes to a shared document. For many of the sources we reviewed, we collaboratively annotated key quotes and sections using Google docs. This proved to be a useful method to fully understand the arguments authors of the sources were making, as well as to understand the way that terms like “ungrading,” “alternative grading,” and “neurodivergent” were being used by the authors.

We then wrote down and discussed some of the conclusions we reached based on our reading and our shared knowledge of alternative grading and neurodivergence in higher ed. In our next post, we’ll share some specifics about what we learned from this process. But for now, here are some big picture takeaways:

“Alternative grading” and “neurodivergence” are capacious categories.

The term “ungrading” has at least three different meanings, and it’s not always clear which of those meanings is the intended one in any given piece of writing. While the term “alternative grading” has a more widely-agreed-upon definition, it’s still pretty vague: an “alternative grader” might employ any number of practices, some of which can look very different. Using standards-based grading in an introductory math course is not really the same as using collaborative grading in an advanced creative writing seminar. The primary thing these approaches have in common is that they don’t look like “traditional” grading. We could easily imagine a particular student thriving in one of these environments and struggling in another.

The same thing applies to “neurodivergence.” The term is used differently by different writers, and sometimes acts as a stand-in for a particular group of neurodivergent learners. Generally speaking, neurodivergence is an umbrella concept that refers to cognitive styles that differ from societal norms. Autism, ADHD, dyslexia, Tourette’s, and several other mental disabilities are commonly understood as forms of neurodivergence, and mental health conditions are sometimes also included. Neurodivergence is not a medical diagnosis but a sociological concept. Thus, students and faculty may be neurodivergent even without a specific diagnosis if their way of thinking, communicating, or behaving differs significantly from the norms of a given context. When writers discuss their experiences with alternative grading and neurodivergent students, they might know a bit about these students, their needs, and even their specific neurotype, but they also may not.

So, what we mean when we say “alternative grading” “works” or “doesn’t work” for “neurodivergent students” is highly dependent on the contextual meaning of those terms. It’s difficult to make broad claims about the efficacy of alternative grading or the experiences of neurodivergent students—much less the relationship between the two.

Despite the capaciousness of these terms, we still think “neurodivergence” and “alternative grading” are useful categories. For one thing, both are of growing interest in higher education. Additionally, there is enough overlap in the characteristics encompassed by each term that some generalizations may be possible. In fact, we do come to some broad conclusions about how alternative grading may support or fail to support neurodivergent students below and in subsequent posts.

However, we urge instructors to keep the many meanings of “alternative grading” and “neurodivergence” in mind when discussing these topics and to be as specific as possible when making claims about the relationship between them.

There isn’t yet much research on neurodivergent students’ actual experiences of alternative grading.

Research on both alternative grading methods and the experiences of neurodivergent students in higher ed is still in early stages, at least compared to some other topics in the scholarship of teaching and learning. We haven’t been able to find any published large scale studies that look at neurodivergent students’ experiences of alternative grading. Much of what has been written on this topic draws on anecdotes and personal experience—particularly the authors’ own experiences of neurodivergence as a student, teacher, and human being. These personal experiences are a valuable source of information, but instructors might be less familiar with how to apply them to their teaching than more formal SOTL or learning science studies.

Personal anecdote is especially difficult to apply when thinking about neurodivergent students because of the fact that the category “neurodivergent” doesn’t describe a single set of needs, strengths, or challenges. A student with one diagnosis may have a very different set of needs from a student with another, and even students with the same diagnosis or identify may have differing needs. In short, if you’ve met one neurodivergent student, you’ve met one neurodivergent student.

Based on our own reading and personal experiences, we have some ideas about what aspects of alternative grading might benefit or harm neurodivergent students with specific strengths and challenges. But we need more research on how these students actually experience alternatively graded classes.

We think alternative grading can and does work for many neurodivergent students—but there are some cautions worth taking seriously.

Based on what we’ve read about this topic so far, and our own experiences as teachers and learners, we think that many features of many alternative grading systems do support learning for many neurodivergent students. After all, as Sarah suggested above, traditional grading does tend to present “steep steps” for students, and alternative grading can help increase accessibility. But there are some practices common to alternatively graded classes that may present barriers for some neurodivergent students if not carefully managed. For example, as we will discuss in our next post, flexibility with pace and due dates should probably be accompanied by significant executive functioning support and forms of extrinsic motivation. While we believe alternative grading may increase inclusion, we should explore and implement it in ways that are neurodiversity-informed.

In our next and second post in this series, we’ll get into some close readings and analyses of several different perspectives that engage the topics of neurodivergence and alternative grading, showing more specifically what some of the benefits of alternative grading may be for neurodivergent students as well as some of the caveats for implementation. In a third and final post, we will discuss some questions that remain and where we hope research on neurodivergence and alternative grading will go next. We hope you will continue to join us on this journey!