Assessment in the visual art field is something that I think all art educators struggle with, but are afraid to tackle. With what criteria should art teachers be assessing their students? Neatness? Creativity? Sure...as long-standing standards of Discipline Based Art Education continue to overwhelm your curriculum, neatness and creativity are going to be staples of your assessment strategy. But I argue, (as an art educator who no longer prescribes to DBAE, but more in line with a 'visual culture' curriculum) what is "Neat", and what is "Creative"? A student who is naturally 'gifted' in the visual arts will have no problem having high assessment scores in both of these criteria. However a student who possesses very little 'skill' in the visual arts is probably going to struggle with these two criteria...more so with creativity which can be sub-labeled as individual thinking. So how do we as art educators make fair assessments without punishing students who struggle with their art making abilities, and without punishing students who need to be pushed to higher-level thinking because of their strength?
Imagine if ALL seventh grade students were told they needed to take algebra, and thus told that they would all be graded equally on the content they were given, regardless of their past math experience and knowledge. Now, I understand that math is a heavy opposite to art because with math there's little to no 'wiggle room' for creativity. But, that's not important to the analogy. What I'm trying to point out is that students are grouped together and placed in a variety of math courses to better their individual education. Whether it is remedial math, basic math, or algebra, all seventh grade students take a math course based on their skill in that particular subject. It would be next to impossible to do this for a subject such as "art" (which is unfortunately still seen in many eyes as a way to give 'real' educators their district required daily planning time). Can you imagine "remedial art"??? However, this is the struggle we deal with. How can we fairly assess our students without showing favoritism for those with a strength, and punishment for those who don't. Is it possible to eliminate 'neatness' and 'creativity' from the assessment strategy. And if it is, what do we replace it with?
-dug!
(Next Week: Part 2: Use of Art Materials and Effort)
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