Abolish Standardization!
a note: Dr. Savery, I tried about 17 times to play this week's topic video by Scott Kinkoph's about PearDeck & EduCanon formative assessment technologies... and it froze every time. Sooo, I'm just going to read and watch all the other stuff and write a general reflection on Assessments, okay? Good.
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| Red Vineyard at Arles, Pushkin Museum in Moscow |
Did Van Gogh - arguably one of the greatest artists in history - ever have to fill in bubbles with a Number 2 pencil and get put into "percentiles" of comparisons with his peers? Well, no - he also died alone, depressed, and having sold only one painting in his entire life... Still, all of his remaining 900+ paintings sold and many have become some of the most famous, most coveted works of art the world has ever seen! And what, really, is success? Is it monetary gain? Fame and recognition? Must those things occur during one's lifetime? Oh, now you have this art lover perching precariously at the edge of a rabbit-hole we don't have the time to go down...
The point I'm trying to make is that so many things are not measurable. Creative individuals often struggle with the typical, standardized assessment models. I've been observing a middle school art teacher for my Ed. Psych class. She gave me copies of the Akron Public Schools' Eighth Grade Fine Arts DAP. Several parts are pretty benign - applying vocabulary, identifying "focal points". OK, fair enough. Then comes a page with 4 small black and white thumbnails of famous art works:
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| Clockwise from top left: A) Pablo Picasso, Mother and Child, 1921 B) Bernardo Martorrell, Saint George Killing the Dragon, 1438 C) Georgia O'Keefe, Sky Above Clouds IV, 1965 D) Constantine Brancusi, Leda, 1920 |
Ok, a good variety. Sculpture, realism, abstraction, narrative... Now, according to the 8th grade DAP, which one "Has the ability to capture the spirit and essence of life?" A, B, C, or D. Oh - or C and D? What? I've had almost 15 years of art education and I'm not sure how to answer this. It all depends on what you consider the "spirit and essence of life" I suppose. How about "Which one has solidity of forms in the painting"? Ok,so not the sculpture... I'm all for interpreting art - but apparently there must be a "right answer" here otherwise how do they grade it?
Blech. Assessment. I am not even a teacher officially yet but I can already tell you that Assessment is most likely going to be my least favorite part of teaching. Why, you ask...? Because art is largely subjective... and most formal "Assessments" are not. The words "Standardized Test" makes me shiver in my clay-dust covered, paint-splattered shoes. Yes, it is important to take stock of student's progress - where they started, how they got to where they eventually end up at the conclusion of their project or class experience. The problem is that you can not "standardize" art! Great art movements are based on rejecting the current standards of their time and approaching things differently!
The teacher's face in the third panel pretty much sums it up for me. I once saw a snarky coffee mug that read "Why are teachers told to differentiate their instruction but to standardize their tests?" The thing I never liked about standardized tests was that , besides the grade, you never received any feedback. If I get a 78% on a math test but never see the graded test itself, I have no idea what I did wrong. How can I work on my shortcomings? That's not OK.
So in the creative subjects, do teacher grade on? What do we assess? Talent? Effort? Time? Following Directions? What if a painting took Johnny two weeks to complete with a lot of diligent hard work... and that same assignment took Suzy two hours? But Suzy's is better. It is technically better, the design is stronger and the composition more complete. Who gets the better grade. Is is product or process that matters most? Time or talent?
You can't change your natural talent. You can change your attitude, your effort, your mindset. You could dedicate every waking hour to learning to paint with watercolors but if you have no natural gift for art, your work will most likely never live up to your hopeful expectations. I will never be a ballet dancer. I don't have the figure, the grace, the flexibility, or the tutu. I especially don't have the talent. I can watch dance, I enjoy dance. But I will never be a ballet dancer.
Art is about creativity and free thinking. It is about self expression and using different parts of your brain. It is about getting your hands messy and opening your eyes to the beauty around you (or the problems, if protest/critical art is your thing! No judgement!) For some art is therapy. For others it is self expression. For others it is an elective you take because you think it will be an easy "A".
Can I be honest here and get a little hippy-dippy for a moment? I just want to teach art - I don't want to grade it! But, sadly, to be a teacher in the American education system most likely means I must evaluate and measure the success of my student's effort. Although I do like Alfie Kohn's summary of case studies regarding grades:
"As for the researchers, Collectively, they make it clear that students who are graded tend to differ from those who aren’t in three basic ways. They’re more likely to lose interest in the learning itself. They’re more likely to prefer the easiest possible task. And they’re more likely to think in a superficial fashion as well as to forget what they were taught."
Ok, so there was my rant and indignant art-teacher rhetoric on the subject of assessment. I will admit that there has to be some way to assess learning in the creative fields - the land of "there is no right or wrong answer" If it comes down to definition,here's a handy little chart from Edudemic.
But I suppose I don't object as much to the idea of Formative Assessments. In-process evidence of learning. It could be as simple as stopping a student who is laboring over a drawing and not making any good progress (perhaps even over-working it and mucking it up) and having them stand a good 5 or 6 feet away (the distance from which people usually look at art) and really examine their piece. Things look different when you're not right on top of them! Short reflective writings could be helpful. For an undergrad Independent Study in painting I was required to keep a journal every day that I painted. What went well, what went wrong, what I plan on doing next, what I was thinking of, where I drew my inspiration... I probably wouldn't go that far with middle or even high school students, but I could see the merit in writing a short mid-project reflection or (gasp!) assessment.
OK, I'm sold. Sort of. I will wave my protest signs against standardized learning until the bitter end. But I am open to embracing ways of assessing individual progress and evidence of learning. I think those could actually be helpful rather than daunting for students. And, as a teacher, I am here to help my students learn. And create :)
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