Instruction and Assessment: Guiding Students on Their Path to Understanding
The arts offer developing minds so much more than an outlet for creativity. They teach people how to think and act like artists. To solve problems creatively, persevere in the face of failure or ambiguity, accept that many questions have more than one answer, and seek to find those answers through authentic exploration of themselves and the world around them. Art education provides people with a lens through which to view the world, an opportunity to think about things with a new perspective, and a venue for personal empowerment and expression. To me, art provides a person who may not know how to express themselves with a voice that can be interpreted and understood in ways they may not have even intended when they spoke.
I aspire to plan lessons that pose an artistic question with the work my students create becoming the response. This inquiry becomes an exploration of concepts and ideas that support the reply, as well as an artistic journey of the hands and mind as the artist follows one of many paths to their personal answer. To assess this journey only by the destination discredits the evolution the idea and the artist has experienced. Therefore, I believe assessment should focus evenly on the process and product of any creative endeavor. In this case instruction is meant to facilitate students in exploring different paths to their answer and choosing the appropriate vehicle to express it.
The goal of instruction is to design lessons with enough opportunity for choice and exploration that students begin to think like artists working in a studio. Rather than waiting for their instructor to pose a question, they develop that question themselves and explore the many routes to understanding. On this path to independent thinking assessment should be tailored to evaluate the student’s understanding of transferable concepts; the big ideas about how artists and designers develop plans, solve problems, and persevere. At the same time assessment needs to evaluate students’ ability to master the content and techniques required to travel the path to understanding. If we see assessment as the road to understanding, the content and technical skills are the map and hiking boots to get there.
Throughout the journey to understanding, it is important to know where our mile markers are in order to stay on the right path. This is where formative evaluations of student’s progress are important. If we were to give our students a path but set them out with no check points, we would not only end up losing a lot of students along the way, but we wouldn’t know where or how to find them. To only assess a students’ understanding at the beginning and the end of a journey leaves no room to see the scaffolded growth your lesson has enabled or to assess what more a student might need to get to their destination. At that point the teacher would be waiting for the student at the end of the journey, tapping their watch wondering where they could be with absolutely no way to track their footprints off the path. Formative assessments allow us to gauge where our students are in the process of reaching our learning objectives and figure out what tools they need to get back on track if they have swayed. If the student has completely surpassed the mile marker with no need for your assistance, there is also a need to reevaluate their progress and the goals you have set for them.
Like any good traveler, it is important to know where you are going to plan the path you use to get there. Therefore, in planning any lesson it is important to start by considering the understandings you want your students to grasp after your instruction. By beginning with the destination in mind, you can plan the activities that shape your instruction to be essential to guiding students towards understanding and develop formative and summative assessments that measure the authentic tasks created to demonstrate attainment of this understanding.
The arts offer developing minds so much more than an outlet for creativity. They teach people how to think and act like artists. To solve problems creatively, persevere in the face of failure or ambiguity, accept that many questions have more than one answer, and seek to find those answers through authentic exploration of themselves and the world around them. Art education provides people with a lens through which to view the world, an opportunity to think about things with a new perspective, and a venue for personal empowerment and expression. To me, art provides a person who may not know how to express themselves with a voice that can be interpreted and understood in ways they may not have even intended when they spoke.
I aspire to plan lessons that pose an artistic question with the work my students create becoming the response. This inquiry becomes an exploration of concepts and ideas that support the reply, as well as an artistic journey of the hands and mind as the artist follows one of many paths to their personal answer. To assess this journey only by the destination discredits the evolution the idea and the artist has experienced. Therefore, I believe assessment should focus evenly on the process and product of any creative endeavor. In this case instruction is meant to facilitate students in exploring different paths to their answer and choosing the appropriate vehicle to express it.
The goal of instruction is to design lessons with enough opportunity for choice and exploration that students begin to think like artists working in a studio. Rather than waiting for their instructor to pose a question, they develop that question themselves and explore the many routes to understanding. On this path to independent thinking assessment should be tailored to evaluate the student’s understanding of transferable concepts; the big ideas about how artists and designers develop plans, solve problems, and persevere. At the same time assessment needs to evaluate students’ ability to master the content and techniques required to travel the path to understanding. If we see assessment as the road to understanding, the content and technical skills are the map and hiking boots to get there.
Throughout the journey to understanding, it is important to know where our mile markers are in order to stay on the right path. This is where formative evaluations of student’s progress are important. If we were to give our students a path but set them out with no check points, we would not only end up losing a lot of students along the way, but we wouldn’t know where or how to find them. To only assess a students’ understanding at the beginning and the end of a journey leaves no room to see the scaffolded growth your lesson has enabled or to assess what more a student might need to get to their destination. At that point the teacher would be waiting for the student at the end of the journey, tapping their watch wondering where they could be with absolutely no way to track their footprints off the path. Formative assessments allow us to gauge where our students are in the process of reaching our learning objectives and figure out what tools they need to get back on track if they have swayed. If the student has completely surpassed the mile marker with no need for your assistance, there is also a need to reevaluate their progress and the goals you have set for them.
Like any good traveler, it is important to know where you are going to plan the path you use to get there. Therefore, in planning any lesson it is important to start by considering the understandings you want your students to grasp after your instruction. By beginning with the destination in mind, you can plan the activities that shape your instruction to be essential to guiding students towards understanding and develop formative and summative assessments that measure the authentic tasks created to demonstrate attainment of this understanding.