Who Should Evaluate Students?

National Art Education Association

Who Should Evaluate Students?Author(s): William BradleySource: Art Education, Vol. 22, No. 9 (Dec., 1969), pp. 22-23Published by: National Art Education AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3191328 .

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BY WILLIAM BRADLEY. Such a question may at the outset seem to have an obvious answer. The teacher in charge of the class has traditionally held the responsibility for determining the progress of his students and to arrive at some assessment (hopefully objective) in terms of a grade. This task has always been and continues to be something less than objective. The grade is most often a reflection of the likes and dislikes of the classroom art teacher.

One solution to this problem has been to identify certain behavioral objectives which can be isolated and observed. In art this usually means a study of "principles" and "elements" of design. Each instructor has his own definitions and names for each of these, but usually they fall into two different observable categories, implied and applied aspects of design. The implied aspects include all of those characteristics which are implied as a result of the elements and are generally referred to as "principles." They might include such terms as rhythm, balance, proportion, and the like. The applied aspects include the more tangible items which are actually applied to the surface such as color, line, texture, and value. The applied aspects are generally referred to as "elements."

There are reasons for questioning such a program because a rules orientation in any field does not lead naturally into the real concerns of problem solving. There is a very real breach between the storage tank concept of education whose proponents delight in truisms and accumulated facts such as, "In fourteen hundred and ninety-two Columbus sailed the ocean blue," and the problem solving approach. In a problem solving situation no one needs that kind of information, but the possibilities for posing legitimate problems related to this historical incident are many. It is surely more fruitful for students to discover all of the ramifi-

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cations of the voyage such as how to solve the problems of navigation, the properties and possibilities of salt water, the problems associated with ship construction, and personnel functions as they relate to a group effort, than it is to know that all of this occurred in 1492.

Another example in science relates to the steam en- gine. To know who invented it and when it was invented is extremely limited information, whereas the problem solving methods of exploring the properties of water at different temperatures, the characteristics of expansion of gases, the relative durability of materials, and the design functions which enable mechanical systems to work elicit genuine learning.

In art the analogy is simple. To know dates, to know aspects about art such as the formal principles and elements, is extremely limiting to the student, who could and should be posing the problems of design to himself and seeking out new functions and new definitions for old concepts. The principle involved here is that the teacher doesn't have all of the answers.

Those behaviorists who say that all objectives in the classroom should be quantifiable and observable through change seem to suggest that we do indeed have all of the answers. But good learning has always been, and continues to be, a synthesis of the observable and the unobservable: A synthesis of intellection and emotion. The life-long variables which have prepared the mind and body for a particular moment of anger, joy, sadness, melancholy, or ecstasy are certainly not known and could not be quantifiable.

The student's feelings about things and experiences are important. Opportunity to organize those feelings into tactile, visual, and aural concretions should be preserved at all costs-not as behavioral objectives except as they relate to some general statement of pur- pose. It would be in error to bind all of the subtle



facets of aesthetic education to quantifiable terms of behavior. All observed changes in behavior do not nec- essarily reflect actual behavior change, nor are all behavioral changes observable. To evaluate a student, therefore, on the basis of explicit behavioral objectives seems, to this writer, to be too arbitrary and perhaps uneducational.

The study of design, therefore, is only a small part of the art experience, and those who devote nearly all of their time to the design area are dealing merely with surface perception, compiling facts about art. And, al- though it is much easier to evaluate progress in these areas, the program suffers from intellection and steril- ity. This solution to the concise assessment of student progress only circumvents the more important functions of art which are much more difficult to evaluate. Research into the relative effectiveness of art evaluation has suggested that the student himself is the most qualified person to make a meaningful assessment of his aesthetic progress. He, alone, understands the judgments of organization which have gone into finished products, and he responds to his learning experiences in a highly personal way. To assess his work, therefore, according to a standardized idea of what the expression should be will be largely ineffective in altering aesthetic behavior. The development of independent judgment about one's own work is a more important education concern. Self-evaluation involves the student in personal judgments about the organizational structure and quality of ideas exhibited in his own work, whereas extrinsic or outside evaluation does not. Outside evaluation, even when done on a one-to-one basis affects the student negatively by continually reminding him that his judgments and personal vision are not quite right and need to be adjusted by his superior. In this way, the development or recognition of a personal problem and a personal solution are virtually impossible.

If a legitimate yardstick could be developed which would show a qualitative change in personal judment and a change in flexibility as reflected in such things as preferences and attitudes it would probably show that self-evaluation was undoubtedly related. To date, three general methods of student self-evaluation have been effectively used: the check list, photographic feedback, and verbalization techniques. All three have been used both during and after the activity. The consensus of research opinion is that these techniques are most effective when applied during the early stages of an art activity. It is generally believed that during the first part of a creative act nearly all organizational judgments are made and that any critical evaluation carried out during this time will be most effective in altering aesthetic behavior. Indeed there is some evidence to suggest that subjecting some students to an end-product evaluation can be harmful.

The check list provides the art student with a few categories of more or less observable aspects of his work and allows him to grade himself on a graduated scale from poor to good. Sometimes the check list is used by a student to make judgments about other students' work as well as his own. The relative efficacy of this procedure has not been established.

The photographic feedback procedure is primarily a laboratory research tool and is probably not directly

usable in the classroom at present. The procedure be- ing used is to automatically photograph student progress at intervals and then show the student the sequen- tial results of his work. This procedure has been empirically established as an effective means of provid- ing for self-evaluation among students with particular personality characteristics.

The verbal evaluation techniques appear to have the same effect upon certain students. When these students are asked to discuss alternative solutions to an aesthetic problem before they make a final product commitment, the student apparently calls more of his organizational faculties to bear on the problem and operates at a higher aesthetic level than when other kinds of evaluation of his work are used.

In the classroom, verbal self-evaluation is relatively simple to carry out. Students can be paired so that a good dialogue discussion can take place. But such an evaluation must be carried out during the earliest stages of the art activity. When evaluation in the art classroom is carried out at the end of an activity, it is probably not as effective. Discussions of the students' works of art after they have been completed serve a function different from the development of aesthetic organizational ability.

Some educators disagree with the idea of interrupt- ing the art experience for any reason including evaluation. But all of the evidence on effectiveness is to the contrary. The interruption of the art activity for pur- poseful evaluation is apparently a superior method for influencing aesthetic change.

Current indicators suggest that the student should be given the tools and the opportunity to evaluate his own progress. The procedures by which a student assesses his own progress are important. The three methods of intrinsic self-evaluation discussed in this paper have been empirically established as effective, but more research effort needs to be done.

Aside from research, however, individual classroom teachers have an equal responsibility to explore any evaluation procedure that might seem to have some possibility. He should join the researcher in testing new ideas, remaining aloof from the pitfalls of satis- faction and avoiding the educators' malady of "know- ing" too much, too often.

William Bradley is an associate professor of art education at The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania.

The reader may wish to evaluate, for himself, the evidence upon which this article is based. He is referred to the following: 1 Frank Barron. "Some Personality Correlates of Independence

of Judgment," Journal of Personality, Vol. 21, September, 1953. 2 Kenneth Beittel. Effect of Self Reflective Training In Art On

The Capacity for Creative Action, Coop. Research Project Number 1874, U.S. Office of Education, University Park, Penn- sylvania, 1964.

3 Kenneth Beittel. "Manipulation of Learning Set and Feedback In The Teaching of Drawing," Studies In Art Education, Fall, 1968.

4 William Bradley. "A Preliminary Study Of The Effect of Ver- balization And Personality Orientation On Art Quality," Studies In Art Education, Winter, 1968.

5 William Bradley. "Intrinsic Verbal Feedback And Its Relation- ship To Aesthetic Preference," Studies In Art Education, Win- ter, 1969.

6 B. R. Bugelski. The Psychology Of Learning. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1956. 7 L. S. Kubie. Neurotic Distortion of the Creative Process. Law-

rence, Kansas: University of Kansas Press, 1958.

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Who Should Evaluate Students?