Design Based Assessments Blog 3


Why is art so hard?

Figure 1. Grade 6/7 Bansky reproduction set pieces for Day-In The Life
design collaboration with grade 6/7 students and Carl White (2016)
         Art and creative work is an incredibly contentious and hard thing for people who consider themselves non-artists to assess, teach and engage with. Whenever art is brought up most often educators are quick to point out “oh I am not an artist, I can’t do that.” Although I heard this in class on Wednesday, I often hear these statements from educators and it always makes me ponder. These statements seem to come from a place of fear or inadequacy, where teachers are actually afraid of engaging with art. There is this strange mythos around art and creativity in that some people have it or they don’t. Most people see art and creativity as a “magical gift bestowed only by the gods” (Bayles & Orland, 2014, p. 3). What is interesting is that art has to be made by ordinary people, because if it wasn’t it wouldn’t be a human endeavour, creating art is truly about the human experience (Bayles & Orland, 2014).
When educators are given abstract curriculum outcomes, or various styles of learning in activity such as design-based, constructivist and so on, they create similar evaluations of abstract skills and concepts all of the time. For example: when analyzing group work educators look to engagement, contribution, the overall final product and other formative and summative assessments throughout. As teachers are given art or creative based learning activities one of the main hold-ups is that they as educators are not creative or art-filled enough to engage with art, therefore they cannot assess it or use it in their classes. 
Reading the Smith (2017) article was not really that surprising when it comes to assessing and creating rubrics for creative practice. There really is very little difference in the creation of these rubrics from any other core curricular rubric. One of the main differences is that educators have more freedom to create objectives that are based on what the students are creating. The pitfalls of assessment are the same in any formative assessment, “state of mind, emotional state, other responsibilities, even grading on a specific day versus another, can have an effect on the fair and accurate assessment of a student’s material (Tierney, 2013). Yet art and creativity seem to bring up extra baggage. 
Wednesday’s presentation was meant to challenge our learning teams by keeping our descriptions vague and the description of evaluating art as abstract as possible. We wanted discourse and discussion on how art is assessed to hopefully lead to assessing other creativity in their own practice. It seemed challenging for the groups to get over the fact that it was art and not a core curricular subject. It is hard to work in vagueness. 
I am looking forward to observing reactions as our teams experience seeing the art in the gallery. When creating art or creative works it can go so far beyond what an educator sets as the learning outcomes or goals of a project. Students can create so much more than what is expected in our own minds, as long as we give them the opportunity to pursue creative ideas of their own.
Educators are incredibly creative people and demonstrate that throughout their day of teaching and learning. Everything from original lesson plans, how they create engaging presentations, creatively writing observational notes, interesting parent communications, creation of long term plans, maneuvering learning objectives to help their students and so much more! Teaching really is an art form.

Bayles & Orland (2014). Art & Fear, Observations on the perils (and rewards) of art-making. The Image Continuum, Santa Cruz, CA. 
Smith, J. (2016). Assessing Creativity: Creating a Rubric to Effectively Evaluate Mediated Digital Portfolios. Journalism & Mass Communication Educator, 72(1) 24–36. DOI: 10.1177/1077695816648866 

Tierney, J. (2013, January). Why teachers secretly hate grading papers. The Atlantic. Retrieved from http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/01/why-teachers-secretly-hategrading-papers/266931/

Comments

  1. GlendaJuly 18, 2019 at 3:58 PM

    Great post and observations Riley. I agree with you that our resistance to engage our creative side (whatever that may look like) often stems from a sense of inadequacy. Perhaps if more of us (and I include myself in this) participated in activities involving art and creativity, we would recognize that it is about the process and not merely being judged on the final product. I found the rubric activity you had us participate in very, very challenging. My world revolves around outcome-based assessments and I have been somewhat negligent in focusing on the process of learning and the human experience (but I’m working on that!). While I see great value in using rubrics as an assessment tool, I would (and did in the activity) struggle to use it to assess art. Art is such a personal process and experience that I would find it difficult to anticipate and capture the creative ways in which the student’s learning would be expressed. I don’t think two students would be the same.
    So, my ah-ha moment is that I should probably be approaching all learning situations with this same curiosity. What will the student come up with? It may not be what I expected, but it will be their very own learning. What could be better than that?

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