Galileo’s Lute: Assessment through Authentic Performance Tasks

in Secondary Music Appreciation Courses

What Will They Know, Understand, and Be Able to Do When They Leave My Classroom?

Richard R. Bunbury, Ph.D.

Gallileo Gallilei, Marcus Vitruvius and Leonardo da Vinci persist as models of humanistic ideals by virtue of their forward-thinking creativity in art and science that that spill over far beyond any discrete discipline. Can schools be a fertile ground for “growing” such minds through conventional teaching? The constellation of creative skills needed for the complexities of the 21st-century environments can best be approached by imagining the tools students will possess at the end of the course, rather than by defining courses by content. Key to the process is creating student tasks that authentically teach and assess fundamental understandings.

Traditional approach As “content-oriented teaching” A prescribed set of material is “covered”

Teachers most often think about courses in terms of their content, as a prescribed set of the material to be covered. Despite the fact that the course may have an interesting array of instructional strategies, the fundamental questions and issues that undergird historic and artistic forces may go unattended. Students can be misled to think that the learning is the activity instead of seeing that the learning comes from being asked to consider the meaning of the activity.

Newer Approaches

It is increasingly the norm in surveys of the Western canon, to explore musical material, within a social, sociological, cultural, political, philosophical, religious, and economic matrix.

Most importantly, it is the over-arching themes and their interactions that more fully construct meaning in a humanistic context.

Religious/Philosophical

Cultural Norms Self & Society

Politics/Governance

Economic Forces

Musical style/Aesthetics

Teaching Music of the Western Canon

Matrix: Constructing Meaning

Traditional “Content” Approach

Weaknesses: Students are

unable to transfer concepts

Students exhibit low retention rates

What is Authentic Assessment ? Students perform real-world tasks

demonstrating meaningful and relevant application of essential understandings, knowledge, and skills.

How Can It Be Measured?

Authentic assessment attempts to take the measure of a student’s real work over time and to embed that assessment in a powerful but familiar intellectual context, comprehensible to the student.

At the Core of Authentic Assessment

Humans construct meaning by appropriating, processing and synthesizing experience.

Assessments go beyond requiring students to replicate or paraphrase text.

Students demonstrate that they have fruitfully constructed fully-modeled meaning, as a result of their own agency.

Authentic tasks serve as assessment tools, and as vehicles for substantive learning.

Relevancy Successful and profound learning depends on

promoting relevant real–world knowledge, skills, and understanding that engender interesting and motivating challenges for the students.

Principal Source: McTighe J., Wiggins, G. Understanding by Design, Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 2005.

Why UbD? Teaching for in-depth

understanding Supported by body of

educational thought Consistent with

constructivist theories

Assessment

Instruction

Curriculum

A Contiunuum

Authentic Tasks

Students construct their own responses, rather than to select from ones presented.

Replicate challenges faced in the real world.

Three Stages of the UbD Approach

Stage 1: Identify desired results Stage 2: Determine acceptable evidence

(assessment) Stage 3: Plan learning experiences and

(instruction)

Sample of a Unit from a Secondary Curriculum

“Connections: Humanity and Music”

Christine Jones, BU MM ‘08

Stage 1 : Identify Desired Results

National Standards: 8. Understanding

relationships between music, the other arts, and disciplines outside the arts.

9. Understanding music in relation to history and culture.

To develop the ability to begin viewing human musical activity through various theoretical lenses

To consider various paradigms regarding music’s function

Stage 1 : Identify Desired Results (cont.)

Understandings: Frame understandings

around “big ideas,” or core concepts

“Students will understand that…”

All human societies produce music

The capacity may stem from our evolutionary heritage as a means of social bonding

Can be viewed through several theoretical lenses

Stage 1 : Identify Desired Results (cont.)

Essential Questions: Based on

fundamental, over-arching ideas stated in the standard or course goal

Provocative questions will foster interested inquiry

Do all human societies produce music?

Have humans evolved with a specific capacity to create music?

What evolutionary purpose might it have served?

What are the various ways in which said capacity reveals itself?

How might it relate to modern humans?

Stage 1 : Identify Desired Results (cont.)

Skills: “Students will

demonstrate the ability to…”

What key skills will students acquire?

Explain how and why the capacity for humans to create music may have its origins as an evolutionary adaptation for human bonding.

Observe musical activities in the environment and consider their social function.

Stage 1 : Identify Desired Results (cont.)

Knowledge: “What important knowledge

will students acquire? Students will know…” What key data, vocabulary,

simple concepts, terms, definitions, and symbols will students be able to recall or recognize?

That all human cultures have music.

Archaeological evidence reveals music-making in ancient human cultures.

Necessary terms and definitions in archeology and anthropology

Supportive and non-supportive theoretical arguments

A working knowledge of the theories.

Stage 2 : Assessment EvidencePerformance Task:

Through what authentic performance tasks will students demonstrate the desired understandings?

In a “PBS-style” documentary, student plays role as a consultant for possible origins of human predisposition to make music.

Film will examine a variety of musical activities from diverse cultures.

Conveys how music relates to social bonding.

Student chooses three contrasting cultures as a starting point

Student creates documentary script demonstrating how each of example relates to the idea

Stage 2 : Assessment EvidenceKey Criteria:

By what criteria will “performance” of understanding be judged?

Choices are diverse and interesting

Captures the imagination Possesses clear and relevant

connection to human bonding Describes clearly musical

activities and social contexts Coherently suggests a plausible

relationship between the musical activities and social bonding

Stage 2 : Assessment Evidence (cont.)

Other Evidence: Through what other

evidence (prompts, observations, journals) will students demonstrate achievement of the desired results?

How will students reflect upon and a self–assess their learning?

Visual Project: Poster/ collage or PowerPoint demonstrating ways in which humans create and participate in music

Quiz on archeological evidence and on theories related to origins of music in humans

Small-group discussions Journaling/reflections

Stage 3: Create Learning Plan (highlights)

“Storyboarding,” or planning class activities, homework assignments

What learning experiences and instructional activities (in and out of the classroom) will enable students to achieve the desired results?

Discuss Pinker’s theory: music is an evolutionary byproduct serving no useful purpose

Discussion: why humans produce music? PowerPoint presentation on

archaeological evidence Instructor clarifies the direction of the

course, overview with graphics of three theories of music and social bonding

Students’ journal encounters with musical activity, considering the idea of social bonding

Assign visual project Students post completed visual projects

throughout classroom Class freely examines variety of posters,

with student comments/discussion

Finis? Perhaps even a cursory look at this learning

paradigm makes the point that over-arching, conceptual thinking is the desired result, and that is the place to begin assessment and instructional planning. Schools can be a fertile ground for “growing” minds that construct transferable meaning.

Richard R. Bunbury