Dorn, C. (2003). Models for Assessing Art Performance (MAAP): A K-12 Project. Studies in Art Education, 44(4), 350-370. Retrieved November 19, 2015, from JSTOR.
Keywords: art performance assessment, quantitative behaviours, intuitive standards, teacher professionalism, rubrics
Abstract:
There are uniform standards of assessment in other subject areas but not in arts because of its subjectivity. Cusic (1994) observes that teachers should accept personal interpretation and choice as it’s central to their professionalism, but regulators and reformers fear that this will lower the quality of teaching and would rather mandate teacher compliance, for one, by mandating means for assessment. Through creating rubrics, and attending workshops implementing Goals 2000 standards in 51 Florida classrooms, the results were still irrelevant because of its unreliable sample. However, the questions answered are that well-trained art teachers are able to produce quantifiable and reliable estimates of student performances, and that these quantitative scores are valid with their own intuitive standards. This suggests that teachers need not be expected to teach, nor all students need perform, in the same way. The outcomes of the MAAP project support the need for more school-based research involving collaborations between higher education communities (theory) and art teachers in the field (practice).
Relevance:
How to write and score rubrics: 4 levels, not a checklist, holistic of 4 weeks of work, improvement, quantification of expressive behaviours, notes, sketches, practice efforts, observable evidence of what students know and can do,
Other ways of approaching authenticating assessment: different rubrics, teacher logs, tests, self-evaluation
Quotes:
“Procedural skills, such as practice toward improvement, doing something smoothly and quickly, understanding the direction a practice session should take, controlled improvement or getting the “feel” of something, are equally difficult to discover in a single product.” (357)
“This adjudication process involving art teachers and their students clearly demonstates that art teachers with appropriate training have the ability to evaluate student performances, can govern themselves and set their own intuitive standards for providing valid and reliable estimates of their own students’ performances.” (367)
“These results suggest more importantly that there are viable alternatives to paper-and-pencil tests in art assessment, that teacher bias moved by experience in teaching and their intuitive understandings of art can be a positive force in assessing art products, and that all art teachers need not be expected to teach, nor all students need perform, in the same way.” (367)
Problems:
Florida, U.S. based.
Mentions of disable students and how this affects classroom scores. Shouldn’t teachers be writing an IEP and grading based on it?