I am continually fascinated by the amount of journalism about education issues that excludes citations to research on whatever topic is being addressed or educators’ perspectives. Here’s a recent article by Jason Tanz on Wired.com entitled “Standardized tests suck. But the fix is more data, not less.” Unfortunately, it is lacking in terms of citing research on assessment or including quotes from or perspectives of educators. Interesting timing for music educators given that the 5th International Symposium on Assessment in Music Education recently took place. Some of the themes addressed in the article could be of interest to music educators, particularly in terms of the types of data that we generate or analyze in relation to assessment, teaching, and learning. Contributing your perspectives might help people understand more of what takes place in classrooms and how music educators use “data.”
On a related note, some students and I recently discussed the density of data we can make meaning of when engaging in project-based learning approaches in music education settings. I video recorded several minutes of students engaging in projects and then we reviewed the video and discussed what they observed, what they thought they (or hypothetical students in a similar situation) might be learning, how they might connect what occurred to varied curricula, how they might employ formative and summative assessments in this context among other related issues, how they might use video recording in music education settings, what constitutes “data” in relation to teaching and learning and the polices that educators are mandated to address, what aspects of growth and learning are not addressed in the types of “data” that “count” according to such policies, and how they might share the types of engagement and learning that occurs in their programs with the local community. We dealt with a lot of data and engaged in assessment for learning.
Feel free to head on over to the Wired article and provide a music educator’s perspective in the comments section. Perhaps in the next article some educators with classroom experience will be included to discuss the many ways we generate, collect, and address data for teaching and learning on a daily basis. Here are some of the ways I’ve discussed assessment on this blog. Here are some resources for addressing assessment in music education, particularly in project-based learning scenarios.