Six things I think I think about rigor

Updating some thoughts from 2008 about the meaning behind the symbol

Photo by Kind and Curious on Unsplash

Last month, David posted an updated throwback post about “rigor” and what it might mean. The TL;DR¹ of this article is: Rigor is a semantically empty concept that explains nothing and describes nothing, and causes confusion in the meanwhile, so we should all stop using it. I agree, but people in academia are still going to be talking about rigor for a long time, especially as it involves grades and grading. So we should all plan on encountering and engaging with folks on topics of “rigor” for the foreseeable future.

I’ve written about rigor myself at least twice: Once in 2008 at my old blog, and then again here in 2021. An earlier version of David’s article quoted my 2008 post, and I included a parenthetical remark then about whether I still agreed with myself almost 20 years later. I was going to add those new thoughts to David’s more recent article but decided not to. Today in this article, I have those new thoughts to share, in the form of a few things I think that I think about this concept.

Rigor is a proxy for something else

David is exactly right that rigor can mean so many things to different people that it ends up meaning almost nothing. But not quite nothing. The word “rigor” in itself has no fixed meaning, but rather it serves as a symbol or an icon for... something else. And that “something else” tends not to be objective or factual, but something felt, living in the experience of the person using it.

A lot of times that “something else” has something to do with the personal satisfaction of facing a difficult academic experience in the past and surviving — some kind of rite of passage that the person using the term once experienced and based some part of their identity on it. The person looks fondly on the idea of rigor, not as a concept representing something measurable or even observable, but because it represents their own ability to make it through something that was deliberately hard. “Rigor” defines the quality of the work that made it hard, but survivable -- for them. Having made that survival part of who they are, academic rigor becomes something deeply held, and it’s no wonder people can become so militant about it.

Even if that bit of psychoanalysis is wrong, it’s still true that rigor is more of a symbol than a definition. But a symbol of what?

There is no agreement on the meaning behind the symbol

Well, see, that’s the problem: For some, rigor is a symbol of personal virtue. For others, it’s an abstraction of academic quality. For others, it’s a negative symbol that points to trauma. There may be some agreement within groups about the symbolic meaning of rigor but there’s nothing like agreement between the groups. There’s not even agreement about what a lack of rigor might look like.

As a result, we all end up talking past each other. Substantive debates and dialogue between alternative grading believers and skeptics, which should be taking place regularly, never happen because one group feels one way about rigor and the other group feels the other way.

This isn’t healthy. We need to agree on the real issues underlying “rigor” if alternative grading, really any teaching and learning innovation, is to move forward.

There are two real concepts behind rigor

Here’s where this verges into “things I think” rather than things I actually know. In 2008, this is what I wrote about rigor:

For me, “rigor” in the context of intellectual work refers to thoroughness, carefulness, and right understanding of the material being learned. Rigor is to academic work what careful practice and nuanced performance is to musical performance, and what intense and committed play is to athletic performance. When we talk about a “rigorous course” in something, it’s a course that examines details, insists on diligent and scrupulous study and performance, and doesn’t settle for a mild or informal contact with the key ideas.

This was the part that was parenthetically referred to in David’s post. Almost 20 years later, I still think this explanation — more of an analogy — holds up. But it doesn’t address what I think rigor is. Today, interpreting my past understanding through the lens of intervening years of experience, I would say rigor, as it applies to grading, points to two things: High standards, and validity.

High standards means something different than clearly defined standards, a.k.a. Pillar 1 of alternative grading. It’s instead related to what I said above: we are not settling for a mild or informal contact with ideas. We want to see excellence in student work -- period. We hold a high bar for what constitutes acceptable work and we are not going to be satisfied with a “mid” level of quality and call that “mastery”. Something that is rigorous, is tough-minded in that regard and doesn’t settle for anything less than a students’ best work, according to appropriately-scaled professional standards.

Validity was my original replacement for the term “rigor” and it still partially is. It means that when it comes to assessments, and to grading, we have systems in place that truly measure what we intend to measure, even if we are not actually measuring them but observing and giving formative feedback.

Putting these two together: Rigor would mean that we have high expectations, even demands, for quality of student work and thinking -- and we have assessments and grading in place that are resistant to “false positives” where student work that doesn’t meet the standard is passed through. More briefly: Rigor, rightly understood, means having high standards coupled with assessments that give true results.

Seen differently, where rigor fails, one of two things seems to be happening: The standards are low, or the standards are what they are but the evaluation of student work fails to identify substandard work. It could be both.

Alternative grading is very rigorous

Through that lens, I don’t understand the arguments that alternative grading “isn’t rigorous”. What’s not rigorous about it? We are holding clearly defined standards, set at an appropriately high level, then insisting that students demonstrate concrete evidence that demonstrates beyond reasonable doubt that they have met the standard. There is no funny business with points, no false negatives caused by one-and-done assessments, just students producing high-quality work evaluated using professional standards, and those students either produce that work or they don’t. That sounds rigorous to me.

The one possibility for understanding the “alt grading isn’t rigorous” rebuttal is that the rebutter² is operating with wrong information about alternative grading, for example that collaborative grading means that students get to pick the grade they want and this is disconnected from the actual work they do. Or, that in specifications grading, students are graded sheerly on effort. If either of those two things were true, then sure, there’s a serious rigor problem. And if either were true I would not be using alternative grading either, or have written a book about it. That basic misconception is a call for constructive engagement, and I would hope that anybody reading this article would happily wade into a good faith discussion (I will not say “argument”) about it. But sometimes the misconceptions are entrenched, as well as biased by an overly personal attachment to “rigor” which I outlined above — so good luck with that.

Rigor requires support and grading systems can’t do it alone

Finally, if we are going to have a truly rigorous setup in our courses — which again means appropriately high standards with valid assessments — then students need support in reaching the standards and navigating the assessments. You can’t just drop a rope from the ceiling and tell a student to climb it.

A well designed grading system — one that instantiates most if not all of the Four Pillars — will elicit deliberate practice and that will be the foundation for significant student support. It’s necessary — but it’s also not enough. We can’t expect to design the World’s Best Grading System and install it in our syllabi and then the class runs itself. It takes the human touch, the day to day interactive relationship-building work that professional educators do, to make that support stick and take root. Rigor without humanity is just performative toughness. This helps nobody (except the professor who wants to look tough).

On the other hand, a poorly designed grading system, which I would argue includes all traditional points-based grading, has the almost magical ability to shut down student growth single-handedly. It needs no help doing that, in the same way an invasive species doesn’t need fertilizer.

Rigor is important

If we’re going to continue to use the word “rigor” — and I think we’re doomed to do so — we should at least be clear on a common understanding of what it means, and I think high standards + valid assessments is as good of a common language as anything. In fact I think most people, regardless of how they symbolically understand “rigor”, would agree this is the right ballpark. I also think that most of us would agree that those two things are extremely important to have in education and serve students well when they are present (along with the support mentioned above).

In that sense, rigor is actually a sign of care. A professor who doesn’t care about students, doesn’t care about whether they are learning anything deeply or working through the inherent difficulty of growth. Nor would that person take pains to have assessment and grading structures in place to support those students as they go through the learning process.

1. That’s short for “too long, didn’t read” for those not hip to the kids’ lingo these days.

2. Not really a word.