Re: the season of sorting

Julia Mame Matuga (jmatuga who-is-at indiana.edu)
Mon, 28 Dec 1998 13:31:01 -0500 (EST)

Jay,

As a former K-12 art teacher (painting, ceramics, & drawing) I found your
comments interesting on a number of levels. While an undergraduate
education major, assessment practices in the arts was barely touched upon.
While creativity was given lip service, elementary art teachers (for the
most part) evaluate how well young children follow directions and
demonstrate acquired/required skills. Not too different from other more
"academically relevant" paradigms. Historically, the arts have had to
fight for their positions in the schools. Assessment procedures have been
adopted to ensure accountability, to ensure a precarious position in the
elementary curriculum. However, assessment at the middle and secondary
levels (in my experience and opinion) have been compromised by the fact
that students are not required to take art (or in some cases are required
to take only one class for graduation requirements). As a middle or
secondary art teacher, when your position is based upon your enrollment
numbers and attraching students to your program, your assessment practices
are severely compromised.

The arts have utilized performance and portfolio assessment practices far
longer than any other paradigm. While an art teacher I relied upon both
of these methods for assessment. Defining clear individual goals for both
my students and myself, explaining my grading criteria, and being
consistent in my grading of said criteria have worked for me as an art
teacher and as a teacher educator. To address your question of how an art
teacher grades "radically new techniques, critiques, and their
incorporation into new products", I would say that the first step is to
actually create a learning environment in which these concepts
(creativity, critical thinking, etc.) are modeled, encouraged, and valued
by the teacher and students. I have thought about this point a lot as a
teacher educator for it is extremely problematic. Because creativity is
highly valued, most of my undergraduate students would like to foster and
encourage student creativity in their classroom. However, when designing
evaluative tools, many of my students tend to rely upon "traditional"
criteria for assessment. I try to illustrate for my students that their
student potentials, their goals as an educator, practices within the
classroom, and evaluation methods and criteria have to 'mesh' well (for
want of another word). I am beginning to believe that our personalities,
values, and beliefs as individuals are inherently tied to this as well.

The second step is to ensure that students understand the "disciplinary
continuity". In a way, the truly personal creative endeavors of our
students stem from their understanding and reflections of this
disciplinary continuity and reacting against it or extending it in a new
direction. I feel that the most important concept that we can illustrate
for our students is the importance of understanding this continuity. In
the arts, the continuity is that continuous revolution that you mentioned.
Students enter the art room under the assumption that "anything goes". I
have witnessed peers doing some pretty bizarre things in the name of
"art". It is a challenge, as a teacher of the arts, to address this and
share with students our own understanding of the socio-historical
underpinnings of these continuous revolutions in the hope that they create
some meaning and new understanding from their interactions with them. I
do not believe that this is so very different from my teaching pre-service
educators the fundamentals of educational psychology (or any other
paradigm).

-Julie

Julia M. Matuga
Dept. of Counseling and Educational Psychology School of Education, 4021B
Indiana University, Bloomington

"The theoretician's prayer: 'Dear Lord, forgive me the sin
of arrogance, and Lord, by arrogance I mean the following...."

--Leon Lederman