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Abstract
This article examines pedagogical shifts in art history teaching that have developed as a response to the implementation of a standards-based assessment regime. The specific characteristics of art history standards-based assessment in the context of New Zealand secondary schools are explained to demonstrate how an exacting form of assessment has led teachers to transform their practices to target precise assessment outcomes. The article also examines the complexities of facilitating effective learning for a skills-focused assessment programme alongside an existing and demanding art history content prescription, and discusses how assessment has, unintentionally, created shifts in the knowledge expectations of both students and teachers. Learning activities are included to illustrate how a high level of precision in alignment between assessment and pedagogy has the potential to enhance understanding in relation to standards-based achievement.
Notes
1. Level 2 art history Achievement Standards were revised in 2004, Level 3 standards were revised in 2005, with further minor revisions to Level 3 in 2006.
2. Peter Rawlins et al. comment that standards-based assessment is ‘difficult to define. The term has been used in numerous ways to mean different things’ (2005, 107).
3. See: New Zealand Qualifications Authority, National Qualifications Framework, http://www.nzqa.govt.nz/studying-in-new-zealand/nzqf/history-of-nzqf/nzqf-timeline-1980s-2008/.
4. Unit Standards contain performance criteria but, unlike Achievement Standards, a candidate either achieves the standard or does not. There are no differentiating grades of achievement such as ‘Achievement’, ‘Merit’ or ‘Excellence’ written into the criteria.
5. For each year level, 80 credits are required to gain a National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA). The credits are aggregated over all subjects, providing flexibility for students to achieve the total across their subjects and standards, and flexibility to choose not to enter or sit the examination for some standards. Typically, a student would be enrolling in Achievement Standards which total between 100 and 144 credits per year.
6. Commonly, art history in New Zealand is taught as a stand-alone subject, not part of a practical visual arts course, and has only been available at Year 12 and Year 13. However, from 2011 Level 1 art history is being introduced for Year 11 (students aged 15–16 years), enabling students to build up their art history skills over a three-year, rather than two-year, time frame. It is likely that visual arts classes will initially be the main users of the Level 1 standards.
7. This 2008 matrix has now been replaced with a 2011 version, which can be found at: http://legacy.tki.org.nz/e/community/ncea/matrices2011.php.
8. Internal assessment comprised 20% of the final grade under the former Bursary examination (Year 13) and 100% under the former Sixth Form Certificate (Year 12).
9. The size of cohort is calculated in terms of the entire Year 13 group of students sitting art history in any one year, rather than upon the basis of the numbers who choose to sit Scholarship.
10. The descriptor for the lowest level in the Scholarship Standard is: ‘The student will demonstrate broad knowledge and understanding of the demands of the discipline by showing skills of critical response to works of art and their contexts [and] clear communication.’
