Art is subjective and is one of its best qualities. It is also one of the worst when you are an educator and you have the amazing task of judging someone’s ability in art. You always have that one student who asks, “Why can Jackson Pollock throw paint on a canvas, call it a day and be famous, but when I scribble on my paper I’m told I’m just fooling around with supplies?” It is a solid point. Although, scholars will tell you that Pollock claims he planned every paint splatter, even in his drunken state. So how can art educators assess student work when there’s a legitimate questioning of craftsmanship?
One project that always tells me if a student is a creative problem solver is weaving. Would you believe that teaching weaving to students is one of the most difficult things? I would take teaching cutting with scissors (which I teach to my kindergartners every year) over weaving. There is a huge divide in each class. Either the students get it, or they don’t. You can demonstrate every single way possible until you are blue in the face and some students will still struggle. What’s great about weaving is it tells a story, and I do not let my students restart once they begin. As you look through the work some students have great tension throughout and never miss a beat. Some students have a couple mishaps and wobble about the weaving. Then you have the students who struggled; their piece barely hanging together until the very last row. That’s when you see they finally understood the process. While their piece certainly won’t win art awards, those students are the champions. Their weaved story tells about their struggle and how they overcame.
Craftsmanship doesn’t always dictate learning. Sure, we want all the pieces of art that the students made that week to look spectacular in the hallway but sometimes that leads to students creating “cookie-cutter” artwork. Everything is the same and there is no heart, or learning, in the work. We have to assess based on the individual student. The work of Grant Wiggins resonated with me on the topic of this delicate manner.
As an educator, I assess creative problem solving during my lessons by breaking it down into three categories: Technical Skills, Objectives Met, and Creativity. I also believe that this structure can translate to other subject areas besides art. I have to know if my students have a grasp on the technical skills I am required to teach. This part of the assessment is purely to check if I need to revisit ideas and concepts to my student. I have some students who are very neat and orderly. It reflects in their artwork. I can tell they have control over the medium and they are aware of their movement. I also have students who are haphazard in their movement. They are messy. I like to say that they, “really get into their art.” Their artwork also reflects this nature and I have to respect that. Their line work might not be as clean as others might, but that does not mean they do not have control over the medium. Although my projects are partially open-ended, there is still an overarching goal. The goal(s) vary in each project and the students are made aware of what they are to achieve. It sounds restricting, but limiting some aspects of a project gives students a framework to build upon. Grant Wiggins presents this idea in his 2013 blog post On assessing for creativity: yes you can and yes you should, “when the student has clarity about the Goal of the task, their Role, the specific Audience, the specific Setting, the Performance particulars, and the Standards and criteria against which they will be judged, they can be far more effective – and creative! – than without such information.” You are not starting from scratch, which is often scary for students. This leads to my third category of Creativity. How did the student approach the project? Did they add their special flare? Perhaps a student added elements to the work, or they approached the medium in a different way than usual. I am looking for how a student made this work their own. As Grant Wiggins states, “we recognize creative thinking immediately when we see it” (Wiggins, 2012). He does a fantastic job of creating a very detailed rubric for assessing creativity. Take a look at it here.
I work in an elementary school, and it is difficult to have 30+ students create the same work yet have them look completely different. I think this is my best example of a project that demonstrates the same set of instructions given to each student, and providing the same mediums (pencil, chalk, oil pastel and tempera paint). We studied the artist Sandra Silbertzweig and took inspiration. The results are, in my opinion, phenomenal.
References:
Wiggins, G. (2012, February 3). On assessing for creativity: yes you can, and yes you should. [Web log comment]. Retrieved from http://grantwiggins.wordpress.com/2012/02/03/on-assessing-for-creativity-yes-you-can-and-yes-you-should/
Teaching in the Art Room 