Digital Artifacts of Daniel

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Chapter 2:

This is a book for teachers and administrators on identifying, teaching, and guiding “talented art students”.  This includes everything from misconceptions of a “talent” to a curriculum to actually employ.  More importantly is the second chapter, where the authors discuss identifying said students.

It outlines a test called the Clark’s Drawing Abilities Test which requires the participant to create four specific drawings of specific scenes, and these are ranked by his/her art teacher as “below average”, “average”, and “above average”. Unfortunately the criteria for these ratings are not listed here, but I did find them in another paper.  The tasks and their criteria are:

1) Draw an interesting house as if you were looking at it from the across the street. (perspective, texture, size, recognition of detail)

2) Draw a person who is running very fast. (action, body proportion, recognition of detail)

3) Make a drawing of you and your friends playing in the playground. (receding space, grouping)

4) Make a fantasy drawing form your imagination. (imagination)

This test appears to be best administered to children, though it was tested on college-level and down while establishing its validity.  I say this because the author himself makes a comment about how the tasks fit well with younger children because at this age, they are trying to gain realism in their drawings and not work toward creative derivatives.

Such a test would serve well as a normalization factor or opening exercise to a future user study.  Borrowing from Gardner, it’s also just a good idea to have the participants of any user study drawing AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE.

This test can also not be a standalone assessment of an individual’s ability.  First, the author has a blatent disclaimer not to use CDAT as a means of qualification or cut-off.  Second, he also says that scores, while maintain a normal distribution, will vary by school, county, state, etc.  and that an individual’s background, age, personality, and values.

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Chapter 1: Early Inquiry, Research, and Testing of Children’s Art Abilities

Covered the early history (1900-1942) of developing “standardized” testing for art screening, first was in 1913.  All performed on children.  Manual created 18 principles about the “talent of drawing” that he gleamed from some 45 standardized tests on writing, drawing, and intelligence.

Chapter 5: Norman C Meier: A Critique of His Tests and Research

Covers Norman C. Meier’s test and research.  He is the head honcho of art testing during this early history.

“He decided that measurement of aesthetic judgment afforded the greatest potential for success and adherence to psychological measurement standards and practices.” (47)

“…all great works of art exhibit balance, stability, harmony, unity, symmetry, proportion, and rhythm successfully and that aesthetic judgment consists of being able to recognize and capitalize upon successful use of these aesthetic structures” (47)

Going on “aesthetic judgment”, created his first test by using artist’s originals and then reproducing slightly altered versions for comparison in the test (pick out the original).  After lots of iterations, ended up with a set of 50 dual choice sets and 10 four-choice sets, and a dissertation once administered several times.

The Meier test ultimately received lots of criticism by academia and artists alike, but it’s foundation work and simplicity of execution still led to many contributions.

Meier was a painter himself.

Chapter 6: Questioning Art Testing

Apparently Meier met much opposition in his testing of adult artist, many who were offended or didn’t see the point of testing the intelligence of artists.  His graduate assistants recalled that he was not an artist, but wanted to be one.  Apparently color blind too?  He was an observer in the art world and not really a participant. Children did find his tests fun, however, mainly because they were a break in the monotony of school work. Obviously I will need to look to later art tests to determine some valid.

Chapter 9: Recent Inquiry, Research, and Testing of Children’s Art Abilities

Appears that the common sentiment is that of the few tests that came out for visual arts between 1920’s and 1950’s, none of them were any good.  Additional work continued from 1960’s to 1980’s, but only two were ever made available commercially and were even able to be performed on a national-level (thus none have a achieved recognition as a standard).

There was one nationally administered test (NAEP:Art) by the government in 1977 and 1981 through ETS (people that do most of the national testing) that basically proved that no one knew his art history.  Book did not go into detail of it’s assessments.

Claire Golomb added a new facit to testing by having a open discussion with the child participant as s/he drew to discover more of the creative process.  Essentially proved that a child’s scribble are, in fact, intentional and meant to look like something (p93).  “…even young children are attempting to depict something when they draw and very frequently are dissatisfied with their drawings because the drawing falls short of their expectations. They recognize that the drawings do not look like what they are attempting to draw.”

While the Golomb and a few other followed a more psychological tangent for art testing, a forerunner in the analysis of visual arts education was Project Zero at Harvard (has Howard Gardner), which pushed a more aesthetics approach like Meier did.  Project Zero has been going strong for 40 years.

Chapter 10: Implications for the Future of Inquiry, Research, and Testing of Children’s Art Abilities

Shared criticisms that art testing is less about improving education and more about handling large numbers of applicants and about how to distribute funds.  The convienience of assigning a three-digit number to a person is appealing.

“Probably one of the best means of understanding art students is to watch them when they work and observce what they do.” (p99)

(Obviously) “…tests should be used as screening procedures or achievement procedures to see if students learn something over a period of time.” (100)

There is no standard curriculum for art classes, so you can’t have an SAT-like test (the SAT is based on the public school curriculum).  Because art has no tests, supposed the public doesn’t take it as a “purposeful subject.”

This latter chapter was a monologue between the three authors of the book and covered more the politics, environment, and philsophy behind creating and administering art tests, but did not cover anything that these tests might consist of, which is the meat that I’m looking for…

Introduction:
-drawing is a “whole” skill requiring a limited set of basic components
-five basic skills of drawing: (1) perception of edges, (2) perception of spaces, (3) perception of relationships, (4) perception of lights and shadows, (5) perception of the while, or gesalt
-teach the five principles and present conditions for the L-mode to reject what is seen so the R-mode will be used

Chapter 1:
-drawing is not driven by manual skill, but can be learned by anyone with average eyesight (3)
-the key to drawing is to set the proper conditions to look (5)
-this I can use…
-”all drawing is the same” except for the degree of complexity

Chapter 2: First Exercise
-view the example of other students on the exercise before beginning, when directed (12)
-need to use her terminology from the Glossary where possible, like L-mode and R-mode instead of left brain and right brain
-she has them draw reference lines beforehand, not requiring them to try to draw it straight themselves
-statement: required to put down reference lines for the user
-using the “cardboard” viewfinder, could have them draw a straight edge (if they draw on the “cardboard”, it’s the same as drawing flush against it)
- like the comment on (21) that this book is just to teach how to break looking stereotypically, not teaching to express yourself
-maybe saying “teaching a user how to draw” is not the goal of this research, but instead “how to best provide corrective feedback”
-talks about different styles of lines on “25″, calling the overtraced line “bold” (will definitely need an eraser so they can clean up old attempts that haven’t been faded automatically)

Chapter 3: L-mode and R-mode
-presented studies and cases that heavily suggest that each hemisphere of the brain is its own mind and functioning unit for specific tasks, developing asymmetrically
-each side has its own perception of reality (32)
-our current education system is designed more for the left-brain crowd
-sometimes they work together, sometimes one if more dominant, other times they can conflict
-it appears that the right brain processes visual information in “a mode suitiable for drawing” (35)
-discussed many of the cultural and linguistic reference to a left/right split, though I chose to skip these
-interesting: “using the right hemisphere, we understand metaphors,we dream, we create new combinations, of ideas (38)
-right-handed people are more lateralized than left-hander people
-good breakdown of L-mode versus R-mode on (44)
-the L-mode is very prone to be dominant and “rush in with words and symbols, even taking over jobs which it is not good at”
-need tasks that the dominate L-mode will turn down (46)