Something I found very helpful in assessing student work was to have them assess themselves. On my practicum I would usually introduce a new project by showing exemplars, talking about the underlying ideas that were involved, going over the self-assessment sheet and giving the students a brainstorming session to generate ideas by sketching that they might like to explore. The self-assessment sheet is the same one that I use to assess the finished work so the students would always know what they were hoping to achieve. The only concern that they had was that I would not listen to their feedback and mark their work without considering the self-assessments. I am guessing from this assumption that their experience of self-assessments had not been wholly positive. I often found that the student self-assessments were right on target with what I would have given them anyway. My interpretation of that was that the majority of students are far more aware of their strengths and weaknesses than they are either willing or able to articulate. My own experience in high school didn’t include self-assessment, though in art school final critiques were more like conversations that students and professors participated in more equally.
I hope in my classroom to have self-assessment be an integral element to having students go meta, think about their thinking, and make their artwork more thoughtful and intentional.
