Blog Entry #4 - Overview of Art Education

Reading Assignment: Assessment in Art Education, Beattie 
Chapters 1, 3, 7
Response Questions:
How will you know what your students have learned? What does successful learning look like? What kinds of evidence and feedback do you and your students need and
how can you get it? What different assessment strategies will you utilize in
your unit plan? 

Assessment is "The method or process used for gathering information about people, programs, or objects for the purpose of making an evaluation... [classroom assessment] is an integral component of quality teaching.  Pre-assessing for prior knowledge through instruction, reassessing, reteaching based on assessment findings, and final assessing are all part of sound classroom teaching practices."  

Based off of the information in Chapter 1, I believe the best way to know and understand what your students have learned, to identify successful learning, and to attain evidence and feedback of student learning is by drawing from the Principles of Quality Classroom Art Assessment.  Principles of Assessment I will be sure to implement in my classroom are:

1) Assessment is student-oriented and teacher-directed - Be sure to encourage student participation in the conception and crafting of the assessment tools
2) Assessment supports, rather than interferes with, instruction and course objectives
3) Assessment is multi-layered - No single assessment criterion or strategy will give the art educator the breadth of information he or she needs in order to ascertain a student's artistic progress
4) Assessment is continuous 
5) Assessment is authentic
6) Assessment focuses on both products AND processes
7) Assessment provides opportunities for students to revise and make changes in products and processes
8) Assessment is responsive to different types of knowledge and to expanded notions of intelligence and creativity
9) Assessment is concerned with student's preconceptions and misconceptions - "In order for the art educator to build on students' prior knowledge and mediate appropriate instruction, information needs to be gathered concerning what misconceptions and preconceptions students currently hold.  Such information can be gleaned from pre-assessments, assessments implemented before an art program begins."  
10) Assessments are crafted to ensure fairness for all students
11) Assessment is criterion-referenced and compares students' performances to past performances
12) Assessment is responsive to collaborative and cooperative learning - "In the art-making process, teacher and student both actively participate in decision-making, and students frequently help each other rethink and rework images." 

Chapter 3 discusses different TYPES/STRATEGIES of assessment.  Drawing from my own experience as a student, I would implement a few of the discussed forms of assessment in my classroom, some of which I felt I best learned from as an art student and art-history student.

1) Web questions - I believe it is important for artists to make connections and meaning between topics and ideas.  Webbing and mapping can be successful tools in which students write open-ended responses to a specific topic that allows the student to make connections and the teacher to better see the students' brainwork and learning style.  I believe it also alleviates the pressure of a right or wrong answer and perhaps allows the student to feel less prohibited.  
2) Interpretive Questions - These types of questions require that students explain the meaning or significance of information.  Students are given introductory material followed by a series of questions or tasks based on the material.  This can be presented in the form of block questions.  These are questions that can assess a wide variety of sills in a sequential and cohesive manner.  
3) Essay questions - As much as students generally dislike essays, I believe they are important because they ensure the student fully understands the material.  When a student has to answer a question drawing from their own knowledge without being given pieces of the answer, it means they have to form an answer by drawing connections of what they have already learned and present this knowledge in a well-thought out cohesive format. 
4) Questionnaires and Inventories - I believe that this type of assessment can be successful in assessing art-making processes and techniques.  

Overall, "Assessment initiates change in that it evaluates student progress and points out areas in need of improvement," which makes it a necessary tool for successful classroom learning.