Drawing on theoretical and empirical insights from art teachers in Canada and Europe, this edited volume explores the question of how learning in the arts can be effectively and fairly assessed in the context of higher education. The chapters consider a rich variety of assessment practices across music, visual and plastic arts, performing arts, design, fashion, dance and music and illustrate how knowledge, competencies, skills and progress can be viably and fairly assessed. Contextual challenges to assessment are also considered in depth, and particular attention is paid to the challenges of reconciling teaching in the arts, aimed at an intuitive transformation of the student, and assessing learning that takes on its meaning in subjectivity and sensitivity. This text will benefit researchers, academics and educators in higher education with an interest in assessment in the artistic disciplines and in the topic of creativity more broadly. Those specifically interested in educational assessment policy and the visual arts will also benefit from this book.

Art and Design Pedagogy in Higher Education provides a contemporary volume that offers a scholarly perspective on tertiary level art and design education. Providing a theoretical lens to examine studio education, the authors suggest a student-centred model of curriculum that supports the development of creativity. The text offers readers analytical frameworks with which to challenge assumptions about the art and design curriculum in higher education. In this volume, Orr and Shreeve critically interrogate the landscape of art and design higher education, offering illuminating viewpoints on pedagogy and assessment. New scholarship is introduced in three key areas: curriculum: the nature and purpose of the creative curriculum and the concept of a ‘sticky curriculum’ that is actively shaped by lecturers, technicians and students; ambiguity, which the authors claim is at the heart of a creative education; value, asking what and whose ideas, practices and approaches are given value and create value within the curriculum. These insights from the perspective of a creative university subject area also offer new ways of viewing other disciplines, and provide a response to a growing educational interest in cross-curricular creativity. This book offers a coherent theory of art and design teaching and learning that will be of great interest to those working in and studying higher education practice and policy, as well as academics and researchers interested in creative education.

The editors of this volume contend that the current paradigm of standardizing Higher Education through an outcomes-dominated approach can constrain the educational process, where teachers may feel pressured to resort to risk-aversive methods that satisfy the learning-outcomes and assessment agenda. As a result, the ability of teachers and learners to inform, critique and develop their understanding of subjects together may be being lost. This book contains a variety of alternative approaches teachers have used to develop ways of 'humanizing' and deepening the learning process, through drawing on the creative arts and humanities - including cinema, literature, dance, drama and visual art - in a range of disciplines, it is argued by the editors that these 'arts-based inquiry' approaches have opened up possibilities for transformative learning as concerned with whole person development through opportunities to connect the-intuitive, emotional, relational and creative with the analytical and logical ways of knowing.

Co-published with “While assessment may feel to constituents like an activity of accountability simply for accreditors, it is most appropriate to approach assessment as an activity of accountability for students. Assessment results that improve institutional effectiveness, heighten student learning, and better align resources serve to make institutions stronger for the benefit of their students, and those results also serve the institution or program well during the holistic evaluation required through accreditation.” – from the foreword by Heather Perfetti, President of the Middle States Commission on Higher EducationColleges and universities struggle to understand precisely what is being asked for by accreditors, and this book answers that question by sharing examples of success reported by schools specifically recommended by accreditors. This compendium gathers examples of assessment practice in twenty-four higher education institutions: twenty-three in the U.S. and one in Australia. All institutions represented in this book were suggested by their accreditor as having an effective assessment approach in one or more of the following assessment focused areas: assessment in the disciplines, co-curricular, course/program/institutional assessment, equity and inclusion, general education, online learning, program review, scholarship of teaching and learning, student learning, or technology. These examples recommended by accrediting agencies makes this a unique contribution to the assessment literature.The book is organized in four parts. Part One is focused on student learning and assessment and includes ten chapters. The primary focus for Part Two is student learning assessment from a disciplinary perspective and includes four chapters. Part Three has a faculty engagement and assessment focus, and Part Four includes four chapters on institutional effectiveness and assessment, with a focus on strategic planning.This book is a publication of the Association for the Assessment of Learning in Higher Education (AALHE), an organization of practitioners interested in using effective assessment practice to document and improve student learning.

This book provides higher education faculty and administrators a scholarly resource on the most salient aspects and emerging trends in creative learning in higher education today. International contributors explore ways to foster creativity in any student, regardless of academic discipline or demographic characteristics and demonstrate that creativity is a skill all students can and should learn. Chapters analyzes how different countries and cultures implement creative learning, exploring issues of instruction, assessment, and ultimately how these practices are transforming learning. This important book helps higher education professionals understand and cultivate creative learning across disciplines in any college and university setting.

Two purposes of this compendium are: (1) to recommend to researchers and funders of research promising lines of inquiry and study suggested by recent, strong studies of the academic and social effects of learning in the arts; and (2) to provide designers of arts education curriculum and instruction with insights found in the research that suggest strategies for deepening the arts learning experiences and are required to achieve the academic and social effects. The compendium is divided into six sections: (1) "Dance" (Summaries: Teaching Cognitive Skill through Dance; The Effects of Creative Dance Instruction on Creative and Critical Thinking of Seventh Grade Female Students in Seoul, Korea; Effects of a Movement Poetry Program on Creativity of Children with Behavioral Disorders; Assessment of High School Students' Creative Thinking Skills; The Impact of Whirlwind's Basic Reading through Dance Programs on First Grade Students' Basic Reading Skills; Art and Community; Motor Imagery and Athletic Expertise; Essay: Informing and Reforming Dance Education Research (K. Bradley)); (2) "Drama" (Summaries: Informing and Reforming Dance Education Research; The Effects of Creative Drama on the Social and Oral Language Skills of Children with Learning Disabilities; The Effectiveness of Creative Drama as an Instructional Strategy To Enhance the Reading Comprehension Skills of Fifth-Grade Remedial Readers; Role of Imaginative Play in Cognitive Development; A Naturalistic Study of the Relationship between Literacy Development and Dramatic Play in Five-Year-Old Children; An Exploration in the Writing of Original Scripts by Inner-City High School Drama Students; A Poetic/Dramatic Approach To Facilitate Oral Communication; Children's Story Comprehension as a Result of Storytelling and Story Dramatization; The Impact of Whirlwind's Reading Comprehension through Drama Program on 4th Grade Students' Reading Skills and Standardized Test Scores; The Effects of Thematic-Fantasy Play Training on the Development of Children's Story Comprehension; Symbolic Functioning and Children's Early Writing; Identifying Casual Elements in the Thematic-Fantasy Play Paradigm; The Effect of Dramatic Play on Children's Generation of Cohesive Text; Strengthening Verbal Skills through the Use of Classroom Drama; 'Stand and Unfold Yourself' A Monograph on the Shakespeare and Company Research Study; Nadie Papers No. 1, Drama, Language and Learning. Reports of the Drama and Language Research Project, Speech and Drama Center, Education Department of Tasmania; The Effects of Role Playing on Written Persuasion; 'You Can't Be Grandma: You're a Boy'; The Flight of Reading; Essay: Research on Drama and Theater in Education (J. Catterall)); (3) "Multi-Arts" (Summaries: Using Art Processes To Enhance Academic Self-Regulation; Learning in and through the Arts; Involvement in the Arts and Success in Secondary School; Involvement in the Arts and Human Development; Chicago Arts Partnerships in Education (CAPE); The Role of the Fine and Performing Arts in High School Dropout Prevention; Arts Education in Secondary Schools; Living the Arts through Language and Learning; Do Extracurricular Activities Protect against Early School Dropout?; Does Studying the Arts Engender Creative Thinking?; The Arts and Education Reform; Placing A+ in a National Context; The A+ Schools Program; The Arts in the Basic Curriculum Project; Mute Those Claims; Why the Arts Matter in Education Or Just What Do Children Learn When They Create an Opera?; SAT Scores of Students Who Study the Arts; Essay: Promising Signs of Positive Effects: Lessons from the Multi-Arts Studies (R. Horowitz; J. Webb-Dempsey)); (4) "Music" (Summaries: Effects of an Integrated Reading and Music Instructional Approach on Fifth-Grade Students' Reading Achievement, Reading Attitude, Music Achievement, and Music Attitude; The Effect of Early Music Training on Child Cognitive Development; Can Music Be Used To Teach Reading?; The Effects of Three Years of Piano Instruction on Children's Cognitive Development; Enhanced Learning of Proportional Math through Music Training and Spatial-Temporal Training; The Effects of Background Music on Studying; Learning To Make Music Enhances Spatial Reasoning; Listening to Music Enhances Spatial-Temporal Reasoning; An Investigation of the Effects of Music on Two Emotionally Disturbed Students' Writing Motivations and Writing Skills; The Effects of Musical Performance, Rational Emotive Therapy and Vicarious Experience on the Self-Efficacy and Self-Esteem of Juvenile Delinquents and Disadvantaged Children; The Effect of the Incorporation of Music Learning into the Second-Language Classroom on the Mutual Reinforcement of Music and Language; Music Training Causes Long-Term Enhancement of Preschool Children's Spatial-Temporal Reasoning; Classroom Keyboard Instruction Improves Kindergarten Children's Spatial-Temporal Performance; A Meta-Analysis on the Effects of Music as Reinforcement for Education/Therapy Objectives; Music and Mathematics; Essay: An Overview of Research on Music and Learning (L. Scripp)); (5) "Visual Arts" (Summaries: Instruction in Visual Art; The Arts, Language, and Knowing; Investigating the Educational Impact and Potential of the Museum of Modern Art's Visual Thinking Curriculum; Reading Is Seeing; Essay: Reflections on Visual Arts Education Studies (T. L. Baker)); and (6) "Overview" (Essay: The Arts and the Transfer of Learning (J. S. Catterall)). (BT)

Throughout higher education assessment is changing, driven by increased class size, changing curricula and the need to support students better. At the same time assessment regulations and external quality assurance demands are constraining assessment options, driven by worries about standards, reliability and plagiarism. Innovative Assessment in Higher Education explores the difficulty of changing assessment in sometimes unhelpful contexts. Topics discussed include: problems with traditional assessment methods rationales behind different kinds of innovation in assessment complex assessment contexts in which teachers attempt to innovate innovation in assessment within a range of academic settings theoretical and empirical support for innovations within higher education. More than a ‘how to do it’ manual, this book offers a unique mix of useful pragmatism and scholarship. A vital resource for higher education teachers and their educational advisors, it provides a fundamental analysis of the role and purpose of assessment and how change can be managed without compromising standards.