Author: Wilson, Brent

Publication Year:

Media Type: Periodical (article)

Summary:

Abstract:

The way we structure arts assessment and the way we specify outcomes and standards have the potential to shape arts education both positively and negatively. Once something gets into the arts educational system, once certain conceptions of the arts and learning in the arts are codified, they remain for a very long time. Consequently, in the , we need to turn a critical eye to our current national formulations of arts education found in the National Standards for Arts Education. We must look closely at the implicit messages - good and bad - the standards send regarding curriculum, instruction, and especially arts assessment. If the national standards contain implicit suggestions for assessment practices that would diminish the value of arts education through distorting artistic inquiry and learning - as I think they do - then we need to think carefully and critically about the consequences of using the national standards as an explicit guide for developing assessment practices.

I introduced this paper with observations about art assessment in Europe. If we wish to establish European-like arts assessment cultures in U.S. schools, we have a long way to go. On the other hand, if we were to avoid pitfalls such as assessing arts standards one by one - if we were to move to linked holistic asssessment strategies such as the one I have described in this paper - we might be able to make arts assessment in the even more coherent and more fully articulated than that generally found in Europe. (p. 3, 9)

CONTENTS
Arts Standards and problems of assessment.
Parts of an unspecified whole.
A specified whole: combining the arts standards into one.
A comprehensive goal for arts education.
Arts educational reform: the discipline-based arts educational initiative.
Varieties of instruction emerging from the discipline-based arts education movement.
A holistic approach to student assessment in the arts.
Assessment as the replication of good instruction.
Assessing collaborative and individual critical interpretation simultaneously.
Interpreting interpretations.
Expectations for artmaking.
Holistic assessment strategies and the assessment of National Standards for Arts Education.
A set of principles to govern assessment in the Arts.

Arts & Intersections:

Categories: Arts Education