Teachers’ assessments of primary children's classroom work in the creative arts

Summary The primary aims of this study were to derive a taxonomy of the constructs used by primary teachers in assessing children's work in visual art, music and creative writing, and to investigate the extent to which these constructs can be used consistently by different teachers. They were operationalized in the form of a series of rating scales derived from repertory grid type analyses of teachers’ descriptions of arts activities and artistic products. In two pilot studies and a main study, which included two in‐service day conferences, teachers from 17 primary schools evaluated children's products from activities which were operationally defined as either structured or unstructured in each of the three artforms. Statistical analysis of the ratings revealed three clear findings, namely (1) that there was a high level of intercorrelation between individual teachers’ ratings of different pieces of work across all scales, (2) that there was a high level of intercorrelation between the different rating scales employed in each of the artforms and (3) that the products of unstructured activities received significantly higher overall ratings on those of the scales with an evaluative component than those from structured activities. These results have important practical and theoretical implications for further research on assessment in the arts.