Assessment is a broad term that refers to the process of collecting information on the progress of students' learning. Evaluation involves making a judgement about the degree of merit or worth of the information collected relative to the learning objectives.
Assessment and evaluation of student progress are as essential in dance as in other school subjects. To reinforce to students, parents, administrators, and the general public the importance of arts education in Saskatchewan's Core Curriculum, the program must include a means to assess the real benefits to students which result from their involvement in the program. While the comments which follow relate specifically to the dance program, teachers may also refer to Student Evaluation: A Teacher Handbook (1991) for further information.
The following principles will guide teachers in the development of plans for student assessment in Dance 10, 20 and 30:
Observation
For teachers to become good observers, they must have clear ideas of what they will be looking for. While observation should always be based upon the objectives, recognizing evidence for the achievement of an objective is not always a straightforward or easily described process. The assessment of an individual student's achievement of a foundational objective will depend upon specific criteria, suggested in the curriculum guide and determined by the teacher and the students.
As well as referring to each foundational objective, teachers should also be aware of four categories of student learning during observation: perception, procedures, conceptual understanding, and personal expression. Assessment information collected in these four categories will encompass the development of students' knowledge, processes, skills, abilities, values, and attitudes related to the dance curriculum requirements.
Perception
In order for students to develop their abilities and interests in dance, they must develop their perceptual abilities -- their senses of sight and sound and, most importantly, their kinaesthetic sense.
Perceptual abilities should be evaluated in conjunction with other objectives, as the students' abilities to understand concepts and express themselves using the language of dance is interdependent with their ability to perceive. It is important to include activities that are intended to develop perception even though evidence of perceptional development may be apparent only over an extended period of time.
Procedures
Understanding processes and procedures in dance enables students to create and respond to dance works. In creating dance compositions, successful completion of the product depends on understanding the procedures involved. The teacher can assess a student's understanding of procedures by observing the project in progress and the final product.
The category of procedures also includes development of the ability to respond to various dance presentations. This ability may be assessed through teacher observation and student self-reflection over an extended period of time.
Conceptual Understanding
Conceptual understanding contains a strong knowledge component and can be assessed, for the most part, using easily observable criteria. Assessment of conceptual understanding is focused upon the following:
Personal Expression
The students' conceptual understanding will form a basis for the development of their expressive abilities. However, unlike conceptual understanding which focuses upon specific desirable outcomes, expressive abilities focus on individual responses, creativity, and imagination. They also focus on sensitivity to one's own feelings, contextual features, and personal meanings and interpretations. Teachers need to refer to a range of appropriate criteria that apply to students' dance experiences, such as those described in the Sample Checklist or Rating Scale for Evaluating Creative Processes on p. 77.
Teachers should remember that objectives requiring personal expression can be achieved by students in a variety of ways. Responses by students will and should be idiosyncratic and there will be no one correct response. To assess students' personal expression, teachers must:
Assessing Process and Product
When evaluating, teachers should emphasize the assessment of the students' creative and responsive processes, as well as take into account any culminating product which may result from their dance experiences. Artistic products or final projects, presentations, performances, essays, or research papers will give only a partial view of each student's experiences, understanding, and development in dance. Continuing observation is essential to achieving a complete and balanced assessment and report of the students' overall learning. The teacher should observe students' struggles with creative problem solving, their willingness to try new things, and their application of critical and reflective thinking.
Process
When assessing each student's learning processes in dance, teachers may determine the extent to which students are achieving the learning objectives by observing the following:
Assessment techniques to use when evaluating objectives related to process include: anecdotal records, observation checklists, portfolios, contracts, conferences, individual and group assessments, written assignments, homework, and peer and self-assessments.
Products
When assessing products or presentations in dance the teacher may determine the extent to which students are achieving the learning objectives by observing the following:
Assessment techniques to use when evaluating objectives related to dance products or presentations include: anecdotal records; observation checklists; performance tests; written, oral, and other tests; portfolios; written assignments; homework; individual and group assessments; contracts; conferences; and peer and self-evaluation.
Portfolio Assessment
Students responding to their own and their peers' work is an important part of the creative and evaluative process. Responding can occur during the creative process, where the creations are presented as works-in-progress, as well as at the end of the project. Discussing or workshopping their works-in-progress with others, including students, teachers, parents, guest artists, or work study employers, helps students refine their arts expressions. Refer to Discussing Student Work in Appendix C.
As students will be critiquing and responding to their own work on a regular basis, the portfolios should reflect works-in-progress as well as completed projects. Portfolios may contain notes, comments, questions, notation, sketches, critiques, research, essays, video recordings, student journals, and various examples of the student's work on videotape. They need not include only the student's best work; rough drafts and early versions are excellent vehicles to spark dialogue during teacher-student conferences. By considering portfolios when teaching and assessing, teachers encourage students to develop critical processes and creative processes similar to those used by professional artists. Such practice also motivates students to take responsibility for their own learning.
Portfolio Conferences
Individual portfolio review sessions should be held as part of continuing assessment practices throughout the course. Portfolio conferences may be used in many ways and are a good focus for discussion between and among the following: teacher and student; student and peer; teacher and parent/guardian; teacher, student, and parent/guardian; or an interdisciplinary teaching team which may sometimes include visiting artists or work study employers. Some schools are now making a common practice of maintaining student portfolios over a number of semesters or years. This practice allows students, teachers, and parents/guardians to see compiled direct evidence of real growth, which can be a source of satisfaction and pride.
| Teacher Note
Artistic products or presentations should not be evaluated in isolation, but must always be evaluated in conjunction with the students' creative problem-solving process, their intentions, their previous work that year, and the foundational and learning objectives as outlined by the teacher. This curriculum recognizes that challenging oneself personally and exploring new ideas and ways of working are essential factors in development. This way of working presents a risk to the students in that the final product or presentation may not turn out as well as it might have if they had "played it safe" and worked in a more repetitive or familiar way. Students may be reluctant to challenge themselves or take risks with their work if they know that all their work will eventually be on display or presented to others publicly. As much of their daily work in dance will be process oriented and of a problem - solving nature, it should be made clear to students that all of their work will not result in a public presentation. Should a teacher or the students themselves desire on occasion to show some of their work to others, it is essential to involve the students in the selection and decision-making process. It is very important for both teacher and students to understand that, while students must be encouraged to take pride in their dance products, the creative problem-solving process is equal in importance to the resulting product. |
Recordkeeping
Reports to students and parents must be based upon real evidence. In order to build up a comprehensive record of growth, teachers will have to rely upon a wide variety of assessment techniques and, to a great extent, upon accurate observation and recordkeeping. In addition to the assessment techniques suggested in this curriculum, Chapter Four in Student Evaluation: A Teacher Handbook outlines a variety of general assessment techniques that teachers may wish to include in their student assessment practices.
Teachers should supplement their observation-based records with students' journal writing and other written or oral descriptions of their processes of decision making and problem solving related to specific tasks. Because journal entries are often of a personal nature, students and teacher should establish guidelines for their use in the dance class and in student assessment. In dance, student portfolios of work and work-in-progress should be maintained on video. Written tasks and projects such as essays and critiques should also be included.
A practical tool for observation-based recordkeeping is a checklist. Teachers should devise individualized checklists for their modules and lessons based upon the objectives and specific criteria developed from the task at hand. The number of criteria on any type of form should be kept to two or three at the most for any one observation. Teachers' skill at observing and knowing what they are looking for will increase as they become more familiar with the curriculum. Initially, teachers may choose to record observations of no more than five students during the course of a lesson.
Checklists similar to the samples on the following pages should make it easier for the teacher to record information while still being attentive to other students and the co-ordination of the lesson-in-progress. Teachers should always provide themselves with a means of noting progress by any student, which may or may not relate to specific criteria on their forms. They can either design spaces for open-ended comments on their forms or keep note paper handy for this purpose.
Teachers will need to:
Student Profiles
It is important to develop a composite profile of each student's progress for each reporting period that will provide concrete information to students and parents. Report cards and parent-teacher interviews provide excellent opportunities to increase parents' awareness of the substantive content of the Dance 10, 20, 30 program and of the benefits that students derive from their involvement in it.
Students and their parents will want to know the objectives and criteria upon which an evaluation was made. Observation forms and other pertinent material should be maintained whenever possible for reference and discussion. This is particularly valuable when reporting student progress that was not assessed through more familiar methods such as written tests or essays.
The main purpose of evaluation, of course, is to improve student learning. The time-consuming task of reporting student progress can often overshadow this objective, hence the necessity of designing the most efficient and time-saving recordkeeping forms prior to teaching the module of study.
Grading and Reporting
It is the responsibility of the school division, school principal, and teaching staff to establish student evaluation and reporting procedures consistent with the philosophy, goals, and objectives of the curriculum.
Evaluation and grading criteria should be derived from the foundational objectives and the learning objectives which they encompass. It is important that teachers make clear to students, in advance, the purpose of the assessments and whether they will be used as part of a final grade or summative comment. Students need to know what is being evaluated as well as how it is evaluated. Evaluation criteria should be discussed with students throughout the year, before, during, and after each module of study, so that students may be active participants in their own evaluation process. In fact, the students themselves may help to set the assessment and evaluation criteria when they understand the objectives.
Reporting student progress may take the form of descriptive reports and/or a final grade. When translating assessment data into marks or summative comments, teachers should ensure that each of the foundational objectives has been assessed over the course of the year. At times during the year, teachers may place more emphasis or weight on certain foundational objectives depending upon the particular activity, project, or classroom experience in which the students have been involved. The final mark or summative comments should reflect a balance among the foundational objectives, and the year's experiences should also reflect a balance among the three components of the curriculum.
The complexity of individual student development in dance, as in many other subjects, cannot easily be represented by one single symbol and teachers may decide to supplement grades with descriptive comments. Whatever reporting method is used, the teacher and the report card must indicate clearly to both students and parents that Dance 10, 20, 30 is developing important understandings, abilities, and attitudes.