Spring 2022, Curriculum Design and Assessment Reflection

This spring semester of 2022 I covered curriculum design and assessment strategies as well as a research class in the OSU grad program for Art Education. The purpose of the course was to learn overarching themes of quality curriculum design and best practices to use in my own teaching, as well as a variety of assessment practices to collect high quality data to better inform how I teach my classes. Overall, I think the most useful thing that was covered in this class was twofold: first, getting a handle on all the things that need to be understood for a quality curriculum to exist, and second, the variety of methods for formative and summative assessment that can be utilized in the classroom. I learned that there is still more that I need to do in terms of practice for my curriculum design. This is in part because the curriculum, as decided by the school district, has been shifting for the past several years. Finding these quality points in my curriculum design like essential questions and related topics will help point the assignments in direction that will allow the student products to be cohesive and not disjointed, or of low concept. The varied approaches to formative and summative assessment have been very helpful in diversifying the methods I use when trying to collect student data to both satisfy district policy needs, and better understand the students in my classroom.

I am still struggling with a few concepts which will need further study. Data is the foremost in my mind. I understand the value of grading portfolios and using a rubric, and learned this semester better practices to create a rubric that more effectively assesses student learning. My confusion is in the way this multifaceted rubric collects a variety of datapoints, but is condensed into a single numerical point that is included in the gradebook. It seems like much is lost; like the gradebook is a blackhole where the information of a student’s progress is condensed into something so small that further study is not permitted. Is this a situation in which the documentation outside the gradebook must be retained, or does it merely live in the mind of the teacher until forgotten? Some informal assessments are done on the fly, and prove more valuable to understanding a student and their progress, but are never documented. How do you translate “performs better when allowed to use pen and ink” or “lacks interest when subject matter is animals” into a numerical data point in a gradebook?

In my own classroom, I think that some of my best assessment practices so far have been working with the act of critiquing artwork. The critique is used both as a formative and summative assessment, and has been recorded in the gradebook or left ungraded as a collaborative practice for students to engage in. Some examples include working with in-process critiques for students to gain insight from their peers into their current process and where it can go from there. TAG (Tell, Ask, Give) critiques on a post-it note have proven helpful for both the writer of the critique to think about art-making terminology and practice, and for the artist to get feedback. These can be assessed on a checklist to simplify the process. Summative assessment practices like a written artist statement have proven very effective for gaining insight into student learning. A specific assessment I ask students to complete is to choose from a list of questions that they can answer about their own artwork following the four steps of art criticism (describe, analyze, interpret, evaluate). This encourages student choice and personal expression in their final product. These practices can be graded on a rubric to assess the nuances of their written statements. I know that more of this type of work can be done in the future, and I look forward to pursuing it. I intend to include more practices that involve student collaboration in their learning to encourage group work, as much of their future jobs (either in or out of the arts) will involve this skill.

Annotated Bibliography:

This does not include all things researched, but is a short list of the most significant readings from this spring 2022 semester.

Beattie, D. K. (1997). Assessment in Art Education. Davis Publications.

Chapter 4 through 6 of Assessment in Art Education by Beattie is a very detailed analysis of processes and techniques for assessment in an art education classroom. This writing lists a variety of techniques from critiques to rubrics to checklists, and so on. Each method described includes a detailed explanation of how it can be used, what language could apply to the method, and how students may interact with it. Examples are provided for most of the processes as well. This chapter would prove very useful in an art education setting by providing varieties of methods to break up a monotony of process in the classroom, as well as providing options to choose to incorporate into a regular classroom process to build familiar classroom structures. Chapter 5 and 6 of Assessment in Art Education by Beattie covers both formative and summative assessment practices, and a long list of techniques associated with each type of assessment. This was especially helpful in finding methods that would be of use to varying types of lessons, timeframes, and criteria of assignments.

Darts, D. (2006). “Art education for a change: Contemporary issues and the visual arts” Art Education, p. 6-12.

This article begins with a demonstration of performance art created at an 8th grade convocation that calls attention to bullying and hate speech, and introduces a group of students and staff that will stand against it. This group continues through the school year to create artworks and experiences that deal with creating social change in their school. The rest of this article talks about Darts’s practice in his classroom to create a curriculum that is more meaningful to the student population by addressing contemporary issues through their work. Through the process of working with this type of curriculum Darts came to a point in which 2/3 of the work done was planned by the students themselves in the classroom. To avoid chaos, criteria are set and group/team building exercises are arranged in addition to the research and presentation materials that each student who writes a lesson must complete. While the outcome did not always land where intended, by allowing the students to take an active part in their education the course can become one of the most rewarding to both teach and learn in. Art is often relegated to the sidelines in a school setting, and the focus on specifically art for art’s sake curriculum pushes it further down it’s own oubliette that nobody will interact with in any meaningful way. Pushing for curriculum that has meaning to the students and community will keep arts education as a meaningful subject and topic in the lives of the community.

Gude, O. (2000). Investigating the culture of curriculum, In Real-World Readings in Art Education: Things Your Professor Never Told You, Dennis E. Fehr, Kris Fehr, and Karen Keifer-Boyd (Eds.), New York, NY: Palmer Press.

In this article Olivia Gude explains an experience with her Foundations of Art Education class in which they cited what they believed was most exciting and important to vital issues in contemporary culture and life, and a separate exercise in which they must decide on the important core content for a high school art class curriculum. The two lists had very little overlap. Further in this article she explains that as art teachers, we should always write our curriculum so that it allows students the opportunity to engage with the arts in ways that will lead to lifelong appreciate or participation. As art educators we should evaluate our curriculum ruthlessly to ensure that what is taught reflects the values we believe should be inherent in the program and our culture, and would be worthwhile for our students.

Wiggins (n.d.). Portfolio as Evidence. Chapter 8 from, Applications and Implications.

Wiggins provides a variety of uses and criteria for a portfolio as a form of assessment evidence in the visual art classroom. A quality portfolio should showcase the student’s best work, though this can be chosen by the teacher or the student. A portfolio can demonstrate student growth through quality of work, progress over time, or demonstrate student interests. A portfolio could also be used to archive student work, or create a collection of pieces to reflect on different job applications. Typically the portfolios would need criteria for success decided by the teacher who will be assessing, and provided to the student prior to the collection of the artwork. Wiggins also explains something used in his locale; the anthology. An anthology is composed of three different types of work; tasks, prompts, and tests and quizzes. The use of an anthology I find may provide a solid grounding for a type of assessment that would cover the full spectrum of content in an art classroom.

Wiggins. (n.d). Scoring Rubrics. Chapter 7 from, Applications and Implications.

In this chapter Wiggins explains the pitfalls and peaks of working with rubrics in addition to the methods of creating an exemplary rubric for use in a classroom. Rubrics contain scales, descriptors, indicators, criteria, and standards. Indicators are not infallible; they are helpful, but could be missed while a criteria may be met in an assignment. Criteria are inferred from a goal, and standards are selected to represent excellence in performance. Absolute standards are established through specific work samples that help anchor a rubric to an excellent standard. The absolute standards must be qualified to arrive at standards that deal with developmental realities. Expectations would constitute a norm-referenced patterns of an individual or group. A “Students could exceed these norms and expectations but still not perform up to a standard” (Wiggins, p. 156). A pitfall in rubrics is that if done poorly with a vague holistic method, varying degrees of performance could result in the same grade. Students also tend to think that performance is following recipes or steps of a process, and that is the indicator of quality. This leads to a higher level of mimicry. As more work samples are collected, a rubric can be adjusted and improved to contain specific descriptors that cover all levels of performance that could be demonstrated in a rubric.