occurs when deciding if the insight is valuable and worth pursuing. During the fourth phase of the creative process, individuals must decide if their insights are novel and make sense. In other words, they must analyze the insights to determine if they’re truly worth pursuing. If the insight continues to excite and motivate the individual to go forward, then the hard work of turning the creation into a reality begins. Some creativity researchers, such as Harvard University’s Teresa M. Amabile (1983), cite motivation as the key factor in the creative process. Regardless of the ingenuity, novelty, or originality of an idea, artwork, or scientific invention, if the creator is unmotivated, the work will never become a reality.
5. Elaboration is translating the insight into its final work and constantly nuancing or revising. Throughout the creativity literature, many who have created products that literally changed their domains or disciplines state the necessity of hard work and revision. Yet at the same time, they also state that it doesn’t seem like work at all but seems more like play. Additionally, the opinions of others, great awards, and fame mean very little in the end. It’s the process of creating that drives them forward toward continuous growth and improvement. (pp. 5–6)
The five phases are crucial to changing mindsets toward an evidence-based grading model—mainly because the change involves not only the way teachers grade students but also the way students and families approach evidence-based grading as part of the learning process of continuous growth. They must be prepared for this shift and understand its purpose and value. Likewise, they will go through a period of wondering if it is working or not—and how. From that point, as we’ve found, many students and families gain greater insight into how to approach learning as a discussion about skills and not points and percentages or grades.
As we work through this discussion, we strive to share the thinking, debate, and reflections of teacher teams that work to make this shift; likewise, we will share how they engage in important conversations with students and families regarding the shift and its value toward building a clearer, more coherent, and more unified understanding of learning growth.
As you read, consider why each phase fosters greater collaboration between teachers, and how it promotes thoughtful, new conversations with students and families about learning. More specifically, we hope to provide you with a pathway to implementing evidence-based grading—a change we think is significant as schools work to address student growth and learning.
The Structure of This Book
This book outlines one curriculum team’s journey to implement evidence-based grading and features a powerful model of professional learning. Team members will navigate challenges, pitfalls, and successes as they engage in each phase of the professional learning process. Along the way, they collaborate, debate ideas, and work to build consensus as they reach toward a new approach to grading grounded in better teaching and learning practices.
In each chapter, we explain a phase, demonstrate change through our team members’ points of view, and identify key strategies to support change during the phase. As you’ll see, each phase fosters powerful discussions about teaching and student learning.
It’s important to note that this is only one way of separating these phases of progression. They are recursive and often overlapping. No one phase is better than another. Professionals always gain insight and go back to prepare, think, or evaluate. Individual educators and teams of educators will move in and among these phases of the creative process—they will revisit, question, react to, and think about them at different times. This allows professionals to reflect, learn, develop new ideas, and build on those ideas.
Chapter 1 examines the preparation phase, comparing evidence-based grading with past grading systems. During this phase, team members are educated about why the shift to evidence-based grading is significant, how and why it is different from past practices, and how it will develop authentic conversations about learning. The team asks questions and begins to grapple with student reflection as a powerful learning experience. Most important, team members will begin to create a shared understanding of what evidence-based grading can do for student achievement in their own subject areas.
Chapters 2 and 3 are about the incubation and insight phases. At these points, the team is really thinking about how to scale learning targets and communicate expectations. The team debates about past grading practices that make sense and question the amount of time the shift might take. The team also wonders about the worth of such a big change, but as insights emerge, the team realizes the value of an evidence-based learning model. Team members are able to see direct relationships between teaching and learning, and they begin to generate collaborative agreements that support student success.
In chapter 4, the team enters the evaluation phase. During this phase, the team examines how well the change is working and critiques its implementation of an evidence-based grading model. Team members evaluate the way students communicate about learning and the clarity and coherence an evidence-based grading model brings to curricular, instructional, and assessment practices. Likewise, they evaluate how well students and parents understand the value of the change—which is equally crucial to its successes. By the end of this journey, the team takes responsibility for further revision and continuous improvement. Through each phase, you will notice team members reflecting on teaching and learning, realizing they need to develop growth-minded students who make learning visible.
Finally, in chapter 5, team members arrive at the elaboration phase with a clear connection between their work and a newfound purpose and a commitment to student learning. With fully developed experiences implementing evidence-based grading, the team works to implement more reflective learning strategies—pushing all students to greater levels of achievement. The team members also emphasize effective feedback and instruction that create a perpetually dynamic learning process. The team embraces change through more accurate reflection practices, revisions to instruction, and instruction-aligned assessment. Ultimately, the team’s patterns of teaching merge to unify its shared curriculum, instruction, and assessment into a singular process with a mindset for continuous improvement.
Taking the time to work through these phases of professional development sustains a culture of innovation and continuous improvement—an engaging collaborative discussion where curriculum, instruction, and assessment work together as one. After you implement evidence-based grading practices, we are confident that you will create smarter conversations about teaching and learning that will have lasting effects on students.
Chapter 1
Preparation
A shift to evidence-based grading is the logical next step for teams that are committed to the work of proficiency-based assessment. Evidence-based grading and proficiency-based assessment work hand in hand. An evidence-based grading model supports the type of discussion and dialogue that proficiency-based assessments enable. In fact, we feel that the shift to evidence-based grading is the natural outgrowth of proficiency-based assessment. However, as we know from experience, a shift to evidence-based grading is a very different challenge for a school to manage, as it upends decades of how we’ve traditionally communicated about student abilities. Likewise, a shift to evidence-based grading demands that all stakeholders in students’ education are clear on this grading model’s value and understand its purpose. This demand requires clarity and preparation.
As we consider working with schools and teams that plan to move toward an evidence-based grading model, we recognize that this change confronts past grading practices and undoes
