2006 Edition 2 (Issue 144) - Sasmt-savmo.org.za

A s s e s s i n g P r o g r e s s i n M u s i c
T h o r o u g h r e s e a r c h o n t h e a s s e s s m e n t o f
m u s i c p e r f o r m a n c e s , r e v e a l s u n e x p e c t e d
i n s i g h t s . F a r f r o m b e i n g i m p e n e t r a b l e
a n d u n r e l i a b l e , i t m a y b e a p a r a d i g m f o r
s u m m a t i v e a s s e s s m e n t i n o t h e r s u b j e c t s .
Much has been written on assessment in music. For example,
the US publication Assessing the Developing Child
Musician by Tim Brophy (2000), runs to almost 500 pages.
I do not intend to duplicate all that effort here, but to make
some observations about what it might mean to assess
progress in music musically.
The system for assessing music in the national curriculum
for music in England is ‘holistic’ rather than ‘segmented’.
Instead of giving students marks (perhaps out of ten) for
many different aspects of music, and adding them all up to
give a total mark that tells you how good a student is (segmented
assessment), teachers are expected to consider a
student ‘in the round’ (what I would call holistically), and
to consider which of the published ‘level descriptions’ they
match most closely. While I have already questioned some
of the content of the published level descriptions, 1 I think
that this is a musical approach to assessment.
Let us take the example of performance in music. As I
leave a concert, I have a clear notion of the quality of the
performance that I have just heard. If someone asks me to
justify my view, I may start to talk about rhythmic drive,
or interpretation, or sense of ensemble, for example. But I
move from the whole performance to its components. I do
not move from the components to the whole. In particular,
I do not think: the notes were right, the rhythm was
right, the phrasing was coherent, and so on – therefore I
must have enjoyed this performance. And I certainly do
not think something such as:
SKILLS + INTERPRETATION = PERFORMANCE
I recall performances that have overwhelmed me, despite
there being a handful of wrong notes. I remember others
in which the notes have been accurate, and the interpretation
has been legitimate, and yet the overall effect has been
sterile. A performance is much more than a sum of skills
and interpretation.
Segmented marking systems are used routinely in some
other subjects, and may be appropriate in some fields of
music. For example, teachers assessing students’ recall of
Janet Mills
factual information about music, or success in solving a
mathematical problem, typically use such schemes. The
point is that the assessment needs to fit the behaviour being
assessed. A musical performance is not a mathematical
problem.
Mathematical problems are sometimes set to provide a
context for the assessment of qualities such as aspects of
mathematical thought. Here, it makes sense to use a segmented
marking scheme that will tease out the aspects to
be assessed, and to ask students to present their solutions
so that they can be given a mark for each of the aspects
that they have grasped. Otherwise, a student who has been
through the intended thought processes, but has produced
no evidence of this, and who perhaps gives an incorrect
answer because of some trivial computational error at
the end, for example, will not receive appropriate credit.
Musical performances are not like this. There is no need
for musical performance to be set in a context: it provides
its own. The musical performance assessor is fortunate in
being presented with the actual behaviour that he or she
is to assess. It makes no sense to dissect the performance,
give a mark for each of the bits, and then reassemble them
by adding up the marks.
One sometimes hears teachers arguing for segmented assessment
on the grounds that holistic assessment is ‘subjective’.
Of course, all assessment is subjective, in the sense
that human beings determine how it is done. Even the
most detailed mark scheme for a mathematics problem
— perhaps one that justifies exactly what a student has to
write in order to gain each mark — is subjective because
it was designed by a human being. Other human beings
might have set a different problem, or structured the mark
scheme in some other way. That assessment is subjective,
in the sense that human beings are involved in it, is surely
something to be celebrated rather than bewailed. The material
being assessed is, after all, human endeavour.
Subjectively, then, I would argue is not necessarily a problem.
But what of reliability? Are students who are assessed
holistically more likely to be given differing marks by
Suid-Afrikaanse Musiek Onderwyser |144 | November 2006