The Formative and Summative Assessments in Art Education

Formative Evaluation

     According to Clements and Wachowiak, authors of Emphasis Art, formative assessment happens during the art creation process.  Formative assessment isn't just a teachers input and influence but also the development of the students own thoughts they form while making their art piece.
     Garrison and Ehringhaus, from the NMSA publication Formative and Summative Assessments in the Classroom, have another take on how to conduct formative assessment.  Garrison and Ehringhaus suggest to look at formative assessment as practice.  Not only does practice allow a student to grasp what is new to them but also allows teachers to give themselves a formative assessment.  Is the instruction I am giving helping my students progress towards their summative assessment?
     A few formative assessment examples from Garrison and Ehringhaus:

• Observations -go beyond walking around the room to see if students are on task or need clarification.  Observations assist teachers in gathering evidence of student learning to inform instructional planning.  Use these observations for feedback to give students about their learning.
• Questioning Strategiess -embed these into the lesson plan.  Asking better questions allows an opportunity for deeper thinking and provides insight and depth of understanding.   This also helps student ask better questions and is a part of a students formative assessment.
• Student Record Keeping -the process of students keeping ongoing records of their own work not only engages students, it helps them go beyond the grade and see where they started and see the progress they are making toward the learning goal.

     Something else that was brought to my attention by Lisa Pulsifer, an eHow contributor, was how to implement formative assessment.  Her suggestion was:

• Define learning objectives in both short-and long-term.  This should include specific benchmarks so the students will easily be able to understand what steps it will take to reach their final goals.

Summative Evaluation


     "Summative Evaluation is used to diagnose, to revise curricula, and to determine if objectives have been met" says Clements and Wachowiak.  Summative is just that-a summing up.  Keeping that mind, Clements and Wachowiak suggest that summative assessments are most effective at the end of the academic year, or when portfolios are finalized.  Some effective ways to go about conducting summative assessments according to Garrison and Ehringhaus:

• State Assessments
• District benchmark or interim assessments
• End-of-unit or chapter tests
• End-of-term or semester exams

     Also, a way to conduct a summative evaluation of not only what the students learned, but how effective your teaching was is though a questionnaire.  Develop a questionnaire to have the students fill out.  Some examples from Clements and Wachowiak of questions are as follows:

• Did you learn any new words or art ideas this year? What?
• What did you learn this year about how to make art?
• How is art different from other subjects?
• How could the teacher make art class better and be better to the students?
• When you are older, how will you use anything you did in art this year?
• Why do you think students should study art?

     The last way and something that has come up across the board as an effective way to go about summative assessment was using a Rubric.  To quote Clements and Wachowiak, "Rubrics provide standards and expectations they can use to evaluate their performance while completing the assignment".