Testing for More Able and Talented Students in Art and Design
Time and time again I see students that have been assessed as MAT students when in fact they are nothing of the kind. I have done it myself, you have students who are keen, intelligent, knowledgeable and good at art. They constantly do well at all of your assignments. It is so tempting to place them in the MAT bracket. It is often only when you actually sit them side by side with a truly more able student that their weaknesses are exposed.
It is fairly easy to spot someone who is very able at drawing or painting. The reason that you need to test for it is that it is more difficult to spot creative talent or those who have a flair for critical studies. Creativity can come in many forms and often, students who are talented in certain areas of art are ignored. I have taught many young people who are astonishingly aware critics of art yet who have weak written literacy skills or who have serious behavioural problems. I have also found that students of lower academic ability seem to have a higher aptitude for abstraction and more readily understand abstract concepts, whereas the opposite seems to also be true. Many of the higher ability academic students often struggle to make sense of abstraction and appear to possess less imagination and creativity at times.
If we want to educate young people in Art and Design and to instil a love and passion for it, then we should be aware of how to spot talent and how to nurture it. In doing so, we should always value those that might not have the talent but still have the passion. A life long appreciation of art is not to be underestimated.
I have attempted in the past to produce a formal test for MAT or G&T art students but I have abandoned it as being too costly in terms of time, effort and money. My own classroom assessment practice can easily pick up the very best students. I don't need a test. It will take me a term or two to correctly separate GOOD students from GIFTED and I will do this by pushing them into tougher and tougher extension tasks in the project we are working on.
I do NOT have separate Schemes of Work for MAT students nor do I have extra classes purely for them outside of school. I also do NOT believe in accelerating these into early exam entry. I have tried all of these things in the past and they have worked to a greater or lesser degree. However I have not sustained these experiments because they created an elitist ethos in my department that did as much harm to those that weren't chosen to be in it as those that were.
The de-motivation it caused to many was horrendous. And in any case, when I studied the University acceptance data for my students after they left school it became apparent that there was little or no difference in the number of MAT students taking up art post 18 as those that were not MATs. I also found that many students who were grade C in my classes went onto take up art as a vocation. Now you could imply from that that it was my teaching that created this pattern and that maybe my MAT classes were poorly designed. However, in talking to many practitioners of art I have come to the conclusion that there are better ways to teach MAT students than this.
- I have an art club for ALL and encourage MAT students to attend.
- I have enrichment activities such as artists and gallery visits for as many as I can and try to involve my MATS as often as I can in these.
- My curriculum is designed so that MATs can flourish in the classroom
- I don't accelerate into early exams.
- I keep a record of all of my MATS and I keep a close eye on their progress, making sure that they are stretched, challenged and are making good progress.
- I constantly praise them and offer them opportunities to work outside of school and on special projects.
- I encourage their own, independent ideas and to develop their own artistic direction.
- I have a special area of display where students can post their own, personal artwork from home and I encourage MATs to post their work on it.
- I try to make the rest of my class understand that they should not compare themselves to MATs.
- I try to NOT to make my MATs think
