Talking about learning: the role of student-teacher dialogue in increasing authenticity and validity in assessment of student learning in secondary school drama

Abstract

The intention of this work is to argue that if assessment in secondary school drama classes is to achieve any reasonable measure of authenticity and validity, student self-assessment and student/teacher dialogue must be a vital part of that assessment. The first four chapters comprise an overview covering five major concept areas: the current trends in assessment towards standardization and quantification and the problems inherent in those methods; the uniqueness of learning in the arts; definition of the various types of learning that occur during students' practice of drama and the difficulties of assessing them; an overview and analysis of recent practice in drama assessment; and a proposal for using self- and dialogic assessment including a literature review addressing the problems to be solved m utilizing those means for assessment. The fifth chapter details and defends the methodology by which the data were collected and analyzed. The data were collected through Action Research using my classroom as laboratory and my students as subjects. Data were collected through four separate methods detailed in Chapter Five. Chapter Six examines and analyzes the data. The chapter offers evidence of the various types of learning operationalized in Chapter Three, examines the language of self-assessment and the growth of students' self-assessment skills, and finally describes the effect of student/teacher and student/student dialogue in guiding and optimizing that self-assessment. In the concluding chapter, I suggest that the practice of self- and dialogic assessment may be useful in increasing the validity and authenticity of assessment across the curriculum and propose some areas in which further research concerning the use of self-assessment and dialogue could be useful.