Principles of evaluation and assessment in drama

The following article is comprised of an extract from Beyond the Script Take 3: Drama in the English and literacy classroom by Robyn Ewing and Jennifer Simons, with Margery Hertzberg and Victoria Campbell

A diverse range of assessment strategies should be used if assessment is helping the teacher to make authentic judgements about students’ learning. Drama devices can provide highly creative assessment tools that enable classroom teachers through careful observations and questioning to make judgements about areas that require further development. 

Some key principles in making these judgements: 

• Assessment and evaluation must always be acknowledged as being subjective in nature.
• As much information should be gathered from as many perspectives as possible, including your students’ perceptions of their learning. Where possible it is also valuable to seek parents’ perspectives.
• Self-evaluation and peer-evaluation strategies can be very rewarding and informative, and should be used wherever possible. Initially students will require structured scaffolding to develop their understandings and skill in using these strategies to make sure that accurate and respectful information is gathered.
• Providing opportunities to talk, draw and write about drama experiences provides further evidence of, and further insights into, students’ understandings.
• Not every piece of work need be assessed. When possible, engaging students in deciding which of their work should be assessed is important.
• Criteria for assessment in drama need to be developed and discussed with students, so that they understand the purpose(s) of assessment activities as well as the criteria. For example, if the students are required to show their ability to work together in small groups, the criteria for demonstrating this ability need to be workshopped beforehand. Explicit feedback on specific criteria is most helpful to students.
• Drama activities can often be used to assess student learning in other learning areas. In English, asking students to depict three frozen moments in a story that they consider critical and then provide their rationale for these choices, readily demonstrates their understanding of a text. Similarly, writing in-role can be a powerful indicator of a student’s understanding of a character’s perspective about a dilemma they are facing. In Science or the Social Sciences role-play can also provide a powerful assessment strategy. Depicting a droplet of water’s journey through the water cycle, for example, can demonstrate a student’s understanding of changes in its shape, state and energy.
• Reflection is the most important component of evaluation and assessment. Both the teacher and students need to take time to reflect on their learning. Reflection may be thought of as a conscious or focused attempt to consider our learning from particular events, experiences, conversations, ideas or emotional reactions so we can develop deeper understandings of these experiences (Ewing, 2014). Both the teacher and students need to take time to reflect on their learning.