Emic:
I am Alison Bennett, a graduate student and high school art teacher in the Kansas City area. From the perspective of assessments and curriculum, my early educational experiences were very similar to those of my current students. Unit introductions, practice, papers, homework, group work, review, test. A continuous cycle of preparing you for a written exam. The lack of border hoping subjects, application to real world situations, and making of connections overall continues to lack heavily today in most classrooms. Now my interest doesn't solely lie in curriculum, in fact, I'm very interested in how to better assess students. How can we replace the current Art I Foundations written common standard assessments that are used across districts to compare schools?
Now this may seem a little backwards…why start with assessment if curriculum is the problem? The assessment, unfortunately, determines how you teach, what you expose your students to, and what you spend time practicing in class. If you can zero into the most important concepts to assess then you have objectives already laid out for curriculum. I have never created curriculum before, but it seems like a logical starting point.
Etic:
As an outsider, I would see a curriculum that seems to work, but could be improved. I would see students practicing processes, reflection, ideation, critique, and techniques but then being tested with pencil/paper in a traditional testing layout. I would notice the difference between the richness of diversity among their unit works compared to the identical products of the assessment. I would be able to observe students practicing skills and reviewing information in order to preform well on the style of assessment given. It wouldn't seem to make sense to go from a creative cultivating environment for 90% of studio time to a paper and pencil written exam…it doesn't showcase process, technique, ideation, reflection, perseverance, risk taking, or research. It's simply a vocabulary test. Now is this what art is about?
I clearly am extremely bias and could not use my "outsider" views as fact. It would take a good 5+ outsiders points of view to begin getting an idea of what others think and view. Any less and it would be difficult to be definitive about overlaps or lack of. A variety of disciplines would be best…perhaps other arts teachers (theatre, choir, band), other studio style teachers (FACS, home and fashion), and of course some core (english, math, science, history). Administrative points of view would be interesting as well...
I am Alison Bennett, a graduate student and high school art teacher in the Kansas City area. From the perspective of assessments and curriculum, my early educational experiences were very similar to those of my current students. Unit introductions, practice, papers, homework, group work, review, test. A continuous cycle of preparing you for a written exam. The lack of border hoping subjects, application to real world situations, and making of connections overall continues to lack heavily today in most classrooms. Now my interest doesn't solely lie in curriculum, in fact, I'm very interested in how to better assess students. How can we replace the current Art I Foundations written common standard assessments that are used across districts to compare schools?
Now this may seem a little backwards…why start with assessment if curriculum is the problem? The assessment, unfortunately, determines how you teach, what you expose your students to, and what you spend time practicing in class. If you can zero into the most important concepts to assess then you have objectives already laid out for curriculum. I have never created curriculum before, but it seems like a logical starting point.
Etic:
As an outsider, I would see a curriculum that seems to work, but could be improved. I would see students practicing processes, reflection, ideation, critique, and techniques but then being tested with pencil/paper in a traditional testing layout. I would notice the difference between the richness of diversity among their unit works compared to the identical products of the assessment. I would be able to observe students practicing skills and reviewing information in order to preform well on the style of assessment given. It wouldn't seem to make sense to go from a creative cultivating environment for 90% of studio time to a paper and pencil written exam…it doesn't showcase process, technique, ideation, reflection, perseverance, risk taking, or research. It's simply a vocabulary test. Now is this what art is about?
I clearly am extremely bias and could not use my "outsider" views as fact. It would take a good 5+ outsiders points of view to begin getting an idea of what others think and view. Any less and it would be difficult to be definitive about overlaps or lack of. A variety of disciplines would be best…perhaps other arts teachers (theatre, choir, band), other studio style teachers (FACS, home and fashion), and of course some core (english, math, science, history). Administrative points of view would be interesting as well...
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