Notes+on+Assessment+Readings

Notes on Readings about Assessment
//Italics// indicate text or ideas from the books

[|Assessment in Art Education] by Donna Kay Beattie

Notes, questions and answers
//"Assessment blends seamlessly with the teaching process for the purpose of learning."'// I agree with this statement concerning formative assessment in my own practice. I am unsure how to apply it to summative assessments. In my teaching, summative assessment has been performed by the teacher, apart from the students, and the only feedback the students receive is afterward. How can I change this to make it seamlessly blend with the teaching process? How can I make summative assessment more valuable and useful for my students?

//"Assessment is not cumbersome or overwhelming."// To me, it is now. How can I change it so it is not or at least less overwhelming?

//How does one assess creative behaviors?// Is this what I should be assessing? And how does this relate to how artists report that they assess their own work, mostly based on the criterion of originality?

//Traditionally, the student was assessed as an artist in the creative process. New demands are that complex cognitive processes are assessed.// What does that really mean? Is there some overlap there?

[|Assessing Expressive Learning] by Dorn, Madeja, & Sabol

Notes, questions and answers
//Why do art teachers assess?// What is my school asking from me when they ask me to assign grades to students (S or N, or a percentage grade)? Do they want to know about student performance related to state standards? Student performance as norm-referenced or standard-referenced? What do the grades mean to the students? What do they mean to the teachers?

My own assessment training: My role models used teacher judgment and norm-referencing to determine grades on art products. In college, we learned about rubrics in art ed classes, but they were approached in a checklist manner (quantity or presence, not quality).

//Authentic assessment focuses on the ability to use relevant knowledge, skills and processes for solving open-ended problems during meaningful tasks and provides opportunities for students to integrate many types of learning.// How often is this what I really do? How open-ended are my problems in general?

50% of teachers thought portfolios are the best way to assess. Why? What do they show us that a single work cannot? Is this a practical solution for my program?

I have learned that my attitude about assessment varies with the grade levels I teach. My attitude at the K, 1 &2 levels is more Lowenfeldian: students' experiences are more process-oriented and less product-oriented. What type of assessment works best for processes? I think checklists. Did the students do a,b and c in order? Does the work show an understanding of x, y and z?

For the higher grades (3-6), I use a more DBAE approach with summative tasks having analytic rubrics.

//Criteria for evaluation: students use one set at school and one set at home. They differ. Top three criteria: at school; how well I used the elements of art, my skill with art materials, and if I followed the art teacher's directions: home; my skill with art materials, if I did everything the way I wanted it done, and neatness.// The one criteria present in both is skill with art materials. This seems to be a constant, as it logically perhaps should be. How can one feel competent to express oneself without the proper skills? (This criteria ranked rather high for professional artists as well.) The other two related criteria were (1) followed art teacher's directions and (2) if I did it the way I wanted it done. (Perhaps this should alter the way I design tasks to give students more leeway in designing their own specific tasks.)