Assessment

Assessment is an important tool for any teacher in order to gage students' understanding of what is happening in the classroom.  Assessment can be used a step towards evaluation, or a way to gather information that will allow the teacher to see which students understand the basic themes, goals, and requirements of the lesson or not.  An important note made by Beattie in this week's readings from Assessment in Art Education is that assessment should not interrupt one's teaching process, but rather be implemented into the lesson as further support for instruction.  While many art teachers may find it daunting to have to make an assessment strategy, it really is a worthwhile and important tool to help the students and to help improve the lesson for the future if the teacher was the one being unclear.  Two types of assessment discussed in the readings and in our class are formative and summative assessment.  Formative assessment deals with work that is in process, for example a teacher may walk around the room during an activity and get to talk one-on-one with her students about their ideas and what they understand so far.  Another type of formative assessment that Beattie describes is a simple, quick writing activity, called "Half Minute Note Cards," where students write down what they have learned so far and what still needs to be answered.  Any type of writing activity allows students to structure their thoughts and lets them, as well as the teacher, see what is being understood and what is not.  A summative assessment is usually more serious and deals with the final outcome, or the resulting grade, of the lesson.

In either assessment strategy, it is important to make the instructions and expectations very clear to the students from the start, so they know what they are going to be evaluated on.  In my fieldwork, I wrote out an extensive rubric as a summative assessment tool for my lesson plan, and my mentor stressed the importance of writing the rubric in a more student-friendly manner so they understood exactly what was being asked of them.  I therefore re-wrote my rubric in outline form, using bullet points with specific things I would be looking for to support my initial instructions for the lesson.  Assessment strategies are very important to plan ahead and they are a good support system for a lesson, as both an in-progress strategy or a final evaluation that will result in a grade.  These strategies allow both the teacher and students to really see if the lesson was understood.

Critique in the Artroom

Art criticism is an aspect of art school that can seem daunting and unpleasant to students.  Developing successful discussion and critique of student work in the art classroom needs to be facilitated by the teacher.  The readings discuss how important it is for the teacher to guide the students in taking control over the critique and helping them to learn something along the way as well.  Barrett states that it is the role of the teacher to ask the right kinds of questions which allows students to delve deeper in discussing works of art made by their peers.  A structured discussion is critical, especially if students are not sure where to begin or what to say besides claiming if they simply like the art or not.  Nancy House categorized these questions as "points of entry" in the discussion.  They are similar to the way I have tried to structure my "motivation" teacher activity when writing lesson plans.  These guiding questions can lead the discussion in the direction that we as teachers know is going to be important in learning specific information.  Of course, we hope that students will begin with answering these questions but will be able to make inferences of their own that we have not already thought of for them.  Much as we like to have students "make their own decisions" when it comes to art-making, we also strive for them to come up with their own interpretations or explanations of a piece in a critique.
While I wholeheartedly agree with Barrett's advocacy for leading questions, I wonder at the claim that the artist should not include his/her own meaning of his/her own work in a discussion.  I understand that hearing the artist's statement first would defeat the purpose of having students interpret the work, however if at the end of others' comments the artist wishes to reveal his/her initial meaning, I do not see this as being such a negative thing.  I have been in critiques where students correctly understand the artist's intentions and other times do not, however either way I find it interesting to hear what the artist has to say about his/her own work.  Sometimes when viewing contemporary art in galleries or museums I can not appreciate the work as much until I know what the artist intended.  I suppose Barrett is only trying to convey the importance of students interpreting what they see in front of them to stimulate conversation in the artroom.