Assessment: an integral part of teaching and learning Assessment is an integral part of teaching and learning in visual arts education. It contributes to a teaching-learning- assessing continuum that provides the teacher with valuable information on the child's development in art and on the effective n ess of the teaching programme .
Assessment in the visual ar ts takes place as the child engages in the creative process of making art, when a piece of art work is completed and while making a personal response to art works. This approach to assessment enables the teacher to ensure that the whole spectrum o visual arts education is reflected in the child's learning and in his/her teaching.
Assessment helps to ensure that the programme is appropriate to the needs of the individual child. It helps to identify learning potential and problems and enables the teacher to choose appropriate teaching strategies. It also provides the teacher with a sound basis for recording and reporting on the child's development in art.
Although much of what can be achieved in visual arts education is observable, assessment should not be confined to skills and techniques. It should also identify the understandings, the attitudes and levels of commitment and the responses the child develops in the process of making art and of developing critical and aesthetic awareness.
Roles of assessment: why assess?
Assessment can serve different purposes. Continuous assessment that takes place during the course of visual arts activities gives the teacher information on the child's level of involvement, on his/her stage and rate of development and on immediate learning needs. This formative type of assessment helps the teacher to plan the next step in the child's learning and may suggest modifications to aspects of the visual arts programme. Problems may be diagnosed in visual expression, but this should be seen as one indicator of the child's whole development and should be combined with other indicators for a complete assessment.
Assessment is summative when used to give a periodic overview of the child's development in the visual arts. This form of assessment can be useful to the child, to parents, to teachers and to other professionals.
The visual arts programme should be reviewed regularly to check that it meets the developmental needs of the individual child and to enable the teacher to plan accordingly. Evaluative assessment can identify effective approaches to teaching and the use of resources and can facilitate the maintenance of a broad and balanced developmental curriculum.
Assessment in the visual arts: what should be assessed?
The visual arts curriculum is designed to enable the child to make art and to understand and respond to art works through the content and structure of the strands and strand units. Assessment should be based on a range of visual arts activities that have been completed over a period of time, including those learning experiences that involve integration with other subjects.
It should be concerned with
- the child's ability to make art
- the child's ability to look with understanding at and respond to art works
- the quality of the child's engagement with art.
All three are interrelated and are assessed on the basis of
- perceptual awareness
- expressive abilities and skills
- critical and aesthetic awareness
- disposition towards art activities.
Assessing perceptual awareness
This is concerned with the child's ability to
- explore and analyse the elements of line, shape, form, colour and tone, texture, pattern and rhythm and spatial organisation, and how they combine in the natural and built environments
- express understanding of these elements visually and in discussion.
Perceptual awareness could be observed, for example, in the child's ability to notice shape, texture and contours and how they combine in an attractive shell or perhaps in a piece of sculpture.
Assessing expressive abilities and skills
This is concerned with the child's ability to
- express with originality, ideas, feelings and experiences through a range of visual arts media
- make skilled and imaginative use of materials and tools appropriate to his/her stage of development
- respond to a stimulus, develop an idea and make changes to the way he/she wants to express it visually.
These expressive abilities and skills would be observed in the quality of line, shape, colour, texture or pattern achieved in a particular task and in the child's commitment and level of personal involvement in achieving these qualities.
Assessing critical and aesthetic awareness
This is concerned with the child's ability to
- view art works with openness and increasing sensitivity
- be curious, to question what he/she sees and to value the judgements of others
- recognise categories of art works and to use his/her discriminatory powers in making judgements about them
- understand and respond to the visual ideas (for example ideas about beauty, friendship, and power) expressed in art works
- be affected by art works.
While acknowledging that the most significant response to an art work is internal, the teacher needs to know how the child responds to an art work and if and how it influences his/her work. Subsequent changes in the child's own work that are not mere copying could possibly be interpreted as the result of that response.
Assessing disposition towards art activities
This is concerned with the child's ability to
- take a positive approach to and become personally involved in the creative process
- take risks in making and responding to art works so that his/her work is always personal and inventive.
The development of capability and adaptability is an important aspect of the child's development in art and is influenced by his/her disposition or attitude towards art activities.
These aspects of development in art are interrelated, and assessment should comprise a balance of all four.
Assessment tools: how to assess
A range of assessment tools would be necessary to fulfil the roles of assessment as outlined above. Some combination of the following would be appropriate for assessment in the visual arts:
teacher observation
teacher-designed tasks
work samples, portfolios and projects
curriculum profiles.
Teacher observation
This is the form of assessment most commonly used by the teacher. It involves constant reflection on and reappraisal of teaching practices. The teacher assesses the child's progress as he/she observes, questions and monitors the child's ability to develop concepts and skills, to handle materials and tools, and to make a personal response to the visual environment and to art works. This informal mode of assessment would focus on
- the child's ability to respond in a variety of ways to visual arts tasks
- the child's developing perceptual awareness (for example the extent to which he/she can evaluate objectively, his/her own work and the work of others)
- the child's commitment and level of personal involvement with the task in hand.
Teacher-designed tasks
This form of assessment is more structured than teacher observation. It would involve planning an art activity designed specifically to indicate the child's ability to handle particular concepts and skills. It would include setting tasks to which the child would have to find solutions in different media. The task might be theme-based, such as an interpretation of an aspect of the natural world (for example hairy animals, colourful fish) or of an urban environment (for example the playground, a shopping centre), and the child would, if circumstances allow, choose the medium through which he/she would interpret the theme. As well as providing an opportunity to assess the child's ability to work independently, it would enable the teacher to observe the child in the social activity of art and to see how individual groups co-operate. The value of the group endeavour, both in the process of arriving at solutions to the task and in the final product, would also be a focus for assessment.
The aspects of development to be assessed and the level of achievement to be expected would be appropriate to the child's stage of development in art and would include the child's ability to
- communicate concerns and experiences in a personal way, through a variety of visual arts media
- work co-operatively, productively and enjoyably with others.
Work samples, portfolios and projects
A portfolio would comprise a representative sample of the child's work and would be updated periodically. Work samples could include work in progress as well as completed work so as to record the range and depth of the child's achievement in art during that time. For example, as well as samples of drawings, paintings and prints, the portfolio could also contain photographic or electronic records of achievements in threedimensional work and of theme-based work carried out in a variety of media. The child's own record of his/her progress should also be included, as well as that of the teacher.
The collaborative nature of project work can help to develop self-esteem and can indicate abilities and dispositions that might otherwise remain unnoticed. Project work could include:
- planning and creating a wall frieze using a variety of media
- creating a series of theme-based woven wall-hangings
- building a structure for a set of clay figures designed to interpret a moment in a fictional or historical story
- creating a large-scale papier mâché model for a festival or other occasion.
Criteria for assessment would be employed as in teacher observation and teacher-designed tasks. The portfolio could be reviewed with the child to encourage self-assessment and to help clarify objectives. A sense of ownership would be encouraged by involving the child in the selection of work samples and by encouraging him/her to keep a personal record of progress. This form of assessment provides an accessible overview of progress in art for the teacher, for the child and for parents. There should be an agreed understanding among staff members about its purpose and how best to manage it.
Curriculum profiles
The teacher's continuous observation of the child's development in art could be structured more formally as a curriculum profile. This profile would comprise short descriptive statements about the child's achievement in art. Levels of achievement would be linked to curricular objectives and would be measured against a set of indicators scaled in order of complexity. Evaluation would be based on teacher observation of the child at work, on information gleaned from teacher-designed tasks and from work samples, portfolios and projects. This form of assessment would provide information for the teacher and for parents on the child's achievement and learning needs. It would also be of use in planning a programme to meet those needs.
A balanced approach to assessment
The primary aim of assessment in the visual arts is to enhance the child's learning, and it should therefore not impinge significantly on teaching and learning time. School policy should indicate a manageable approach to assessment and should ensure that staff members can, through discussion, arrive at a balanced form of assessment that is valid and reliable, is commonly understood and is uniform throughout the school.
Recording and communicating
The range of assessment tools used will collectively provide a comprehensive system of assessing and recording each child's development in art. A common understanding of pupil progress and of criteria for assessment may be reached through discussion and the sharing of expertise among staff members. Information on the child's progress will be shared with parents, teachers and other professionals and will be invaluable in planning his/her future learning needs.
Pupil profile card
A pupil profile card would contain a comprehensive profile of the child's progress. Development in all strands of the visual arts curriculum would form one aspect of his/her progress and would be recorded from information gleaned by the teacher from the various forms of assessment.
Information technology offers possibilities for recording, storing and transferring pupil profile cards in a manageable way.