Possibly unpopular opinion. I don't think inconsistency is a problem in most situations. Learning happens in that place of uncertainty and some externally perceived inconsistencies are really just mechanisms to enhance equity. (thread-ish)

Inconsistencies that arise from favoritism are bad though. Like giving jobs or opportunities to your friends or awards to the well known name on the list. They tend to give accolades to those who are already privileged in some way.

Dealing with inconsistency through standardization, and more rules, and strict criteria, is also bad. Standardization also tends to privileged the already privileged.

Rigidifying assignments happens all the time in academic writing, especially at the undergraduate level. It comes in the form of giving every student the same paper to write. Or providing highly prescriptive, fill-in-the-blank like content, or rubrics with very specific criteria

It is detrimental in undergraduate writing because it discourages curiosity, creativity, and imagination. And what instructors get to read are boring papers written by bored students.

Why would one ever want to do that to themselves? Well -- 2 possible reasons:

1. Their own anxiety. If every student is writing the same thing on the same structure, it will be easy for me to figure out who deserves and A and who deserves a lower grade.

My response to that: Nonsense. You can allow choice and flexibility and still judge quality because you're well educated and you are an astute reader.

Even if you're not an expert about what the student writes about content wise, your a discerning individual who knows when you're reading something engaging and you've learned something vs. when something is off and the writing lacks clarity.

2. Standardization is valued in hegemonic & neoliberal higher education systems. So there is a good chance if you want to create rigid assignments you'll be patted on the back and rewarded for doing a good job for attending to student competencies in a specific and measurable way

But here is the catch: You students will resent the rigidity, you'll quell creativity, and they'll still complain about your lack of consistency in grading, because standardization further disadvantages minority students, 1st gen students, and students from lower SES backgrounds

Students in those groups I mentioned in my previous tweet have far less socials support for the constant adaptability required in higher education when they have to shift from rigid context to another rigid context.

The point being that teacher preferences for writing will forever and a day continue to be subjective. I'm not sure that's a solvable problem. What I do know (and what my own research has show) is standardizing things makes it worse.

Do I dare try to define at-risk? Here is an interesting thing about the term "at-risk". When I was research student retention in nursing, pre ~2010 "at-risk" was defined exclusively as academic risk. After 2010 it meant minority students.

There are so many terms. At risk. minority. disadvantaged. educationally underprepared (we are getting into the euphemisms now), non-traditional (which perhaps might be the most othering of all).

Anyways, I've strayed from one research study results to another project all together. They connect through the obvious impact of the privileged vs. the non privileged and the inequity between those groups.

So I won't formally close this thread but I'm interested in thoughts. And I may have more.

And they just called the US election so ....