Assessment Day 1

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Assessment Day 1

• Introduction to Music Education
• Fall 2007
• Dr. Miksza

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Consequences of weakly formulated assessment
strategies in music education

• But anyone reviewing a student's report card or
  transcript has a right to assume that a grade of
  A indicates a high level of knowledge and skill
  in the subject matter. It is dishonest and
  fraudulent to assign an A grade merely to
  indicate that a student has attended class,
  behaved acceptably, or given the appearance of
  trying hard. Using these criteria for grading is
  sharply at odds with the practices of teachers in
  other disciplines and is easily seen as evidence
  that music lacks curricular substance. One result
  has been that college admissions officials often
  pay no attention to high school grades in music
  courses (Lehman, 1997).

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Slippery terms related to assessment

• Assessment
• general term to describe the overall process of
  making analytical judgments
• Test
• a task or series of tasks used to obtain
  systematic observations presumed to be
  representative of educational or psychological
  traits or attributes
• Measurement
• process that assigns numbers and attributes to
  characteristics of persons, objects, or events
  according to specific formulations or rules
• Evaluation
• the process through which a value judgment or
  decision is made from a variety of observations
  and from the background and training of the
  evaluator
• Grading
• reporting results of evaluations to students,
  parents, and community

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Broad categories of tests

• Criterion-referenced test
• an attempt to measure some specified domain of
  knowledge or individuals level of mastery within
  a specified domain
• Standardized/Norm-Referenced
• an attempt to measure individual differences or
  compare individuals to others

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Common methods of informal and formal assessment
or testing

• Informal
• Teacher-guided Listening, diagnosis, verbal
  feedback (positive/negative), jotting down notes
• Student-guided Self-evaluation, peer-evaluation
• Formal
• Teacher-made tests constructed by teachers for
  use in their own classrooms
• Verbal
• True/False, matching, completion, multiple choice
• Essay/Open-ended
• Performance
• Rating scales
• Rubrick
• Checklists

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Standardized tests in music education

• Constructed by specialists working with
  curriculum experts and teachers, most often used
  in research, less often used in classrooms
• Aptitude
• Seashore (1919), Gordon (1965, 1979, 1982, 1989)
• Achievement
• Colwell (1968), Gordon (1970), NAEP Music
  Assessment (1997)
• Performance
• Watkins-Farnum (1954)
• Preference
• Gordon (1984) Instrumental Timbre Preference
• Aptitude vs. Achievement
• Capacity or inherent ability to succeed or
  progress that predicts future accomplishments vs.
  Degree of understanding or ability regardless of
  cause

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Broad categories of evaluation

• Pre-Testing
• for placement or diagnostic purposes
• Formative evaluation
• takes place during instruction by letting the
  teacher or evaluator know if students are meeting
  instructional objectives
• Summative evaluation
• occurs at the end of a program and indicates the
  level of achievement across the program and
  whether the program is satisfactory and should or
  should not be continued for next years students

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What are we testing?

• Thinking carefully about grading forces us to
  think carefully about our objectives, and it
  provides a basis for improving our instruction
  (Lehman, 1997).

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What are we testing?

• Objectives relevant to
• The Cognitive Domain (Blooms Taxonomy, 1956)
• Knowledge
• Comprehension
• Application
• Analysis
• Synthesis
• Evaluation

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Cognitive Domain

• Knowledge
• Students will be able to recall the definition of
  key signature
• Comprehension
• Students will be able to define key signature in
  their own words
• Application
• Students will be able to write a short melody in
  the key of D major
• Analysis
• Students will be able to analyze a musical
  excerpt and determine the key based on the
  accidentals present
• Synthesis
• Students will be able to transpose a major melody
  into the relative minor key
• Evaluation
• Students will be able to critique Schuberts use
  of 3rd relations as a choice of modulation

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What are we testing?

• Objectives relevant to
• The Psychomotor Domain (Simpson, 1972)
• Perception
• Set
• Guided Response
• Mechanism
• Complex Overt Response
• Adaptation
• Origination

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Psychomotor Domain

• Perception
• Students will be able to raise recorders to
  playing position when teachers hands are up
• Set
• Students will be able to execute a proper
  recorder breathe when the teacher indicates a
  preparatory beat
• Guided Response
• Students will be able to play through the
  scripted B, A, G, warm-up when imitating the
  teacher
• Mechanism
• Students will be able to play the pattern of
  tonguing exercises on the B, A, G, warm-up when
  directed
• Complex Overt Response
• Students will be able to perform Twinkle,
  Twinkle.. on their recorders from memory
• Adaptation
• Students will be able to perform Twinkle,
  Twinkle... on their recorders while adding a
  dynamic variation of their choosing
• Origination
• Students will be able to improvise a short melody
  on their recorder in the key of C

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What are we testing?

• Objectives relevant to
• The Affective Domain (Krathwohl, 1964)
• Receiving
• Responding
• Valuing
• Organization
• Characterization

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Affective Domain

• Receiving
• The students will be able to listen to the
  teacher and their fellow students with respect
  when discussing interpretational choices
• Responding
• The students will contribute an interpretational
  choice in class when prompted by the teacher
• Valuing
• The students will be able to negotiate the
  appropriate articulation approach among their
  section-mates when asked to do so by the teacher
• Organization
• The students will show they value musical
  experiences by creating the appropriate amount of
  time in their schedules for small ensemble
  rehearsal before and/or after school
• Characterization/Internalization
• The student will consistently behave
  independently and conscientiously as a
  professional musician would in ensemble rehearsals

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Criteria for good evaluations

• Objective
• independent observers should be able to agree on
  an evaluation, it is not influenced by any one
  individuals biases, or subjective preferences
• Continuous
• students/parents/community should receive regular
  and continuous feedback about progress in
  learning, not just once per semester or marking
  period when grades are due. That way information
  can be applied towards adjustments in
  learning/study/practice habits
• Reliable
• grading should be consistent across students and
  across evaluators
• Valid
• the assessment should reflect what it purports
  to, you should be assessing what you say you are
  assessing. For example, saying you are
  determining grades based on student learning and
  then figuring 80 of a students grade on
  attendance.

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What are grades used for?

• Selection
• grades grant entry into a group or activity
• Remediation
• grades to identify students having trouble
• Feedback
• providing specific knowledge of strengths and
  weaknesses to students, parents, community
• Motivation and guidance
• grades may serve as extrinsic sources of
  motivation in that they can be a positive or
  negative reinforcer
• Evaluation of teaching effectiveness
• Evaluation of program effectiveness

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Ways to grade dishonestly

• Grading by abdication
• Too busy to grade
• Grading by the carrots and clubs system
• Excessively rewarding trivial behaviors and
  punishing trivial errors
• Grading by default
• Devoting least amount of time possible (one grade
  per semester)
• Grading by overgrading
• Grading every little thing the students do
• Grading by rule changing
• Say youll grade on one criteria and then use
  another
• Grading by psychic subjectivity
• Grading students through own personal perceptions
  with no objective criteria
• Grading by impossible standards
• No one in the group is bright enough for an A
  (rather than providing excellent instruction)

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Parent Concerns

• They may claim that their children are being
  penalized because they lack talent. This
  viewpoint reflects one of the most serious
  misconceptions music teachers face the myth that
  achievement in music is the result of talent
  rather than effort. In fact, all students can
  learn music. Talent IS important to reaching the
  most advanced levels, but, given reasonable
  effort and opportunity, every student can learn
  the musical skills and knowledge we teach.
  Parents do not immediately excuse a child's lack
  of achievement in math or science by claiming
  that it is due to a lack of talent, nor do they
  expect a grade of A on the basis of attendance or
  effort, and they should not do so in music
  (Lehman, 1997).

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Guidelines from Lehman (1997)

• 1. Assessment should be standards-based and
  should reflect the music skills and knowledge
  that are most important for students to learn.
• 2. Assessment should support, enhance, and
  reinforce learning.
• 3. Assessment should be reliable.
• 4. Assessment should be valid.
• 5. Assessment should be authentic.
• 6. The process of assessment should be open to
  review by interested parties.