Performance goes to school! - Tool Tech

ChildArt, Jan-March, 2004 by Robin Clark

Many schools are increasingly exploring the integration of arts curriculum with other subject areas. Flexible thinking, creative thinking, and critical thinking are nurtured by such a curriculum. Gaining and regularly using skills such as these help students reach their full potential in life.

An integrated curriculum requires new ways of evaluating student accomplishments, with student performance the most important indicator that genuine learning has occurred. In "performance assessment", students demonstrate their knowledge on a specific learning task, while teachers can clearly and accurately note the individual student's level of achievement.

Although taking a test can be considered a form of performance assessment (that is, the student is demonstrating his or her knowledge by writing down answers to a test), new, creative and active forms of assessment can make integrated learning more meaningful to students. Students are also capable of helping to evaluate their own performance, and when allowed to do so, they typically become more personally involved and goal-oriented in their work. Instead of merely taking a test, students can demonstrate their knowledge by choosing from any combination of performance strategies such as: team and individual observations; illustrations; demonstrations (showing how to do something); critiques; debriefings; working exhibitions; sketchbooks with written notes; experiments; reports; journals; interviews; surveys; questionnaires; games; musical scores; recitals; dramatic readings; role-playing; presentations; diagrams; graphs; individual or group projects; "study buddy" test-taking; technological applications; and personal portfolios. By becoming involved in the evaluation process, the student is encouraged to take control of his or her own learning.

Parents often ask what they can do to help their children succeed in school. Teachers and parents play a critical role in knowing when to challenge and when to support individual students as they pursue their personal learning goals. To keep motivation high, students who experience setbacks need additional encouragement from teachers, parents, and friends. On the other hand, students who learn very quickly or easily may need additional challenges and/or a more complex problem to solve in order to fight boredom.

In addition to being challenged and encouraged, students should be taught to:

* Focus more on learning how to recognize and identify problems, rather than on correctly answering a set of questions given to them by the teacher Brainstorm, create, and test many different ways of solving problems.

* Adopt an experimental attitude as they approach problems and set aside any fear of failure.

* And finally, students must be given plenty of relevant, specific, and timely feedback on their progress as they try to achieve their personal learning goals.

In addition to the learning benefits, curriculum integration and the use of performance assessment methods may improve students' self-esteem, internal motivation, goal-oriented behaviors, individual initiative, personal responsibility and satisfaction, perseverance, intuitive abilities, and flexible thinking. These characteristics help students recognize their personal potential and find success in both school and life.

Performance assessment strategies, used properly within a creatively integrated curriculum and combined with a variety of other techniques to increase student self-knowledge, confidence and motivation, can help students reach their personal learning goals.