The Positive Influences of Rubrics on Student Performance - Case Study Example

Chapter Two-Literature Review Teachers utilize assessment procedures to verify, strengthen and scaffold their perceptions of how instruction can contribute to learning. Garfield (1994), however, cautioned educators that the ultimate goal of evaluation is to enhance learning. When the system of grading or learning expectations are not made clear to students, Little (2006) contended that misunderstandings are likely to occur and threaten to affect student learning adversely. Providing students, therefore, with the right kind of feedback can result to a significant positive difference in their learning (Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory, 2005). As one of many tools utilized by mentors to appraise improvement in learning, rubrics present promising positive outcomes as evidence from empirical research and expert accounts converge into the positive influences of rubrics on student performance. Arter and McTighe (2001) elucidated the triune roles that rubrics facilitate : (1) setting up of clear targets of instruction, particularly those which are intricate and difficult to identify, like writing and problem solving; (2) provision of valid and reliable evaluation of student performance; and (3) enhancement of motivation and achievement as an offshot of a clearer picture of the required quality of performance on the part of the students. As students are made aware of what their errors were and lucid explanations are given regarding these errors, feedback is considered as corrective in nature, and substantial positive increments may be expected in their achievement (Walberg, 1999). The mechanics behind the use of rubrics classifies its provisions for feedback as criterion –reference, and are thus, corrective. Crooks (1988) maintained that rubrics offer students with valuable norms for success in academic tasks, thereby allowing them a clearer image of the desired learning outcomes. Another key advantage of the use of rubrics is the opportunity it poses for students to be part of a curriculum-embedded assessement. Glasgow (2002) posited that student involvement in the assessment of their learning through rubrics empowers them towards being more focused and self-directed, thereby sustaining the objectives of instruction enroute to better performance. Stiggins and Chappus (2008) vividly described learning classrooms as those where students are customarily involved in self-assessment, monitor and share their development, and in so doing cultivate their self-confidence as learners and their motivation towards academic excellence. Scaffolding the Arter and Mctighe and Glasgow propositions are Stevens and Levi (2005) who asserted that evaluation is a method which must be dynamically integrated with student learning instead of being just passively posted after the end of the learning time frame. Stevens and Levi believe that an appropriately developed rubrics, viewed and utilized as a dynamic mentoring tool, is capable of imparting efficacy in academic learning and assessment initiatives. Steven and Levi underscored that utilization of scoring rubrics allows students in many instances to prepare better quality assignments and projects since guesswork around what the teacher expects from them is significantly minimized, if not totally eliminated. At the same time, the preparation of the rubrics also imposes on the teacher to eloquently express and quantify the most valued outcomes required of student performance. A confirmation of the foregoing assertions from students, themselves was provided by Andrade and Du (2005) who reported that rubrics support student learning and academic performance in the undergraduate level. The study involved fourteen teacher education students as study participants who were were organized into focus groups. Their discussions centered on the ways in which they used rubrics in their assignments to devise an approach, check and reveal feedback from and to one another. The students asserted that the use of rubrics significantly assisted in focusing their efforts on school work for them to come up with higher quality works, receive better ratings, and alleviated the pressures related to the completion of assigned tasks in school. Findings disclosed from the Shafer, Swanson, Bene, & Newberry (2001) investigation of the effects of teacher knowledge of rubric construction and use on student achievement in high school are encouraging. The study, which was conducted on four selected courses, namely : algebra, biology, English and government, favored the performance of students whose teachers obtained training in rubrics for both selected response and constructed-response items in algebra and in constructed response items in biology. Meanwhile, in a more extensive venture, Beaudry (2003) examined the effects of holistic rubrics in the subjects Reading and Writing among high schools in the state of Maine divided into high and low achieving groups. Results showed that more than 85 percent of high school teachers in high-achieving schools group affirmed having utilized holistic rubrics to assess student performance against 65 percent of teachers in the low-achieving schools. Some 31 percent of teachers in high-achieving schools make use of rubrics more frequently compared to only 14% of the teachers in low-achieving schools who claimed to have used rubrics only on a weekly basis. The use of rubrics also aids in improvement of learning since it facilitates immediate teacher feedback as regards to assigned tasks or projects. Glynn, Aultman and Owens (2005) found out that students benefit much more from feedback of a dynamic assessment all year round, which includes points for improvement and areas where a skill is mastered. Some studies which confirmed the association between self-assessment and improved academic achievement include those of Nedzinskaitė, Švenčionienė, & Zavistanavičienė (2006), McDonald and Boud (2003) and Kobus, Lee, and Provo (2008). The work of Nedzinskaitė, et. al revealed that the participation of students’ in their own assessment serves as a vehicle in the advancement of their learning brought about by the climate of trust and their enhanced academic maturity. The McDonald and Boud venture was a large-scale research from more than 25 percent of the cohorts in the country of Barbados representing top, bottom and middle-level achievers from ten high schools. Findings indicated that self-assessment resulted in pronounced improvement in the results of external examinations across the whole curriculum , although student achievement in business-related, humanities-related and technical subjects were higher than those for science subjects. The Kobus, et. al. study revealed only minor, though positive changes in the students’ outlook towards school work as a consequence of practicing self assessment, but researchers attributed the small increment in achievement to the timing of the intervention, which was towards the end of the school years, instead of the intervention being given at the beginning. The study of Marchant, Paulson and Rothlisberg (2001) substantiated the advantages which may be derived from self-assessment as to its effects on student achievement. Findings by Marchant, et. al. suggest that through self-assessment, learning is maximized by their improved competence, skills and self-direction, and with their seeming control over their success and failures. Moreover, the study touched on another dimension bettered through self-assessment, the students’ motivation to learn. A number of experts and researchers recognize the utility of rubrics in inculcating motivation for learning among students, including : McKinney (2008), who singled out the use of rubrics as one of her nine general strategies to encourage intrinsic motivation among her students; Merlin (2003), who suggests the use of rubrics as one of the ways to increase student motivation for learning even for elementary pupils; Theroux (2004), who recommends the use of models for motivation through peer assessment or self evaluation via rubrics or other criterion-referenced assessment model, in order to show fine work habits and good quality school work; and Davis (2005), who found out through research that performance assessments in the form of rubrics constitute effective instructional tools for the evaluation of student learning and are capable of instilling interest in science. With the foregoing discussions confirming the importance and positive effects of rubrics on student achievement primarily via clarifying of expectations and instilling motivation for learning, the next paragraphs lay the groundwork to establish a connection between arts and student achievement across disciplines. Gabriel (2001), in his interview with experienced educator James Catterall from the University of California, Los Angeles, aptly referred to such association as the “marriage of art and learning”. Catterall (in Gabriel, 2001) affirmed the positive effects of immersion in the arts to cognition, “ranging from large and significant in music learning and spatial-temporal reasoning, to small and non-significant in areas like dance and non-verbal communication”. Murfee (1998) collated an extensive gamut of literature and research findings pointing to the encompassing influence of the arts in enhancing student achievement. Foremost among these literature is the theory of multiple intelligences (Gardner, 1993), which revolutionized the perception of the academe on how people learn in general . Gardner’s theory maintained that there are eight different kinds intelligence : interpersonal (people smart), intrapersonal (self smart), kinesthetic (body smart), linguistic (word smart), logical (number smart), musical, naturalistic (nature smart) and visual/spatial (picture smart). Spatial or visual intelligence has something to do with a person’s ability to recognize the visual world accurately, and either reconstruct or modify such image mentally or on paper. It is believed that spatial or visual intelligence is highly developed among those people with inclination in the arts. This theory encourages the hypothesis that the engagement in the arts can be instrumental in improving the students’ ability to learn by way of interventions directed to stimulate the spatial/visual intelligence enroute to a better understanding of the lesson being taught, and thus improve achievement in school. Murfee observed how institutions of learning who have embedded subjects such as art, creative writing, dance, drama and music into their curriculum derive the benefits of art education exuding a profound influence on students’ academic success. Owing to the interconnection between the arts and significant episodes in history, Murfee noted how proficiency in the arts provide a vast foundation of knowledge and ideas to draw upon and explore in comparison to those do not study the arts. Proof to this is the tendency of students who were exposed to art lessons to perform better in the Scholastic Assessment Test than their counterparts who did not attend art classes. Murfee also unearthed evidence which support the generalization that exposure to the arts do aid cognition in the areas of creativity, mathematics, reading and writing from the results of researches conducted during the early 1990s. Later researches included in Murfee’s exposition documented accounts of improvement in student engagement and persistence as a result of an arts-based curriculum, thus promoting motivation for learning and even curbing absenteeism and drop-out rates. Even at-risk students found the significance of the arts in their mastery of academic skills in such academic programs as Different Ways of Knowing, Safe Heavens, etc. Ruppert (2006) brought together compelling literature on how the arts scaffold academic achievement from recent developments confirming positive indications of support for arts education around the United States such as : (1) the Department of Education itself, particularly in its No Child Left Behind program where art education was cited as one of the core academic subjects being tapped to help improve learning outcomes, side-by-side with math, science and other disciplines; (2) the Colorado State Commission on Education, which mentioned that 43 states required its schools and districts to provide instruction in the arts; (3) integration of arts in the curriculum as a strategy to institute reform in education towards enhancement of student performance; and (4) results of a 2005 Harris poll, where the American public declared overwhelming support for the arts as essential to well-rounded education. The results of the longitudinal study conducted by Catterall (2002) which involved 25,000 secondary school students in a USA-wide survey on student participation in the arts in order to describe the relationship between involvement in the arts and academic achievement, revealed a significant importance of participation in the arts in the scholastic achievement of middle and high school students. Deasy (2002) in the research compedium he edited showed that the academic and social effects of art learning experiences enable students to reach high levels of academic achievement to improve overall school performance. In a nutshell, the research results included in the Deasy compendium lead towards the following generalizations: 1. Students who are capable of visual representation of a written assignment exhibit their understanding of the topic better when plain words were used. Students performed higher scores in content knowledge when they are able to both write and draw. 2. Knowledge of the arts tend to extend learning beyond just specific subject matter attainment, by stimulating the students’ ability to formulate inferences about art work and transferring such reasoning about images in other subjects. Students exposed to the Visual Thinking Curriculum (VTC) exhibited higher reasoning ability than those who did not experience visual training in art criticism. The VTC program is a school-based initiative currently being utilized by many schools in New York, and designed by the Museum of Modern Art with the primary goal of developing critical thinking by expressing thoughts about an art work (Palmer, 2008). The basic idea behind VTC is for a person to be able to think in pictures, which is made possible by one of the eight types of multiple intelligences, referred to as spatial/visual. An exercise in VTC enables students to activate their spatial/visual intelligence to aid in the understanding of various subject matter. 3. Visual arts provide a well-defined “meta-cognitive marking point” which allows students to understand text through imagery. Basically, students exposed to visual arts automatically build images of words they read or encounter. Visualization training or mental practice was found to have improved the reading skills of students within a nine-week time frame. Visualization training, according to Jowdy (2007), involves active use of a person’s brain in the creation of an image of the results one wishes to achieve. The term was originally applied in sports psychology to enhance performance by stimulating all the five senses through mental imagery. 4. Art leads to enhanced interdisciplinary academic performance. Results of studies included in the Deasy compendium suggest that properly structured art experiences in school yield beneficial scholastic and social effects, although more research need to be undertaken so that the academe and the world at large may be better-informed of specific and well-defined characteristics of the arts and how these impact learning. Contributors to the Deasy compendium perceived the need for assessment mechanisms, which can potently measure the outcomes of instruction in the arts and identify the effects of art experiences to learning. Deasy’s compendium also revealed a paucity of verbal descriptors which will allow more eloquent accounts of experience in art education to describe “clarification of mental habits, social competencies, and personal dispositions” vis a vis the learning of the arts and how such characteristics may be investigated in the light of how they apply to learning. Moreover, a need has also been felt towards professional support for art educators in school, which Deasy recognized as an obstacle both for teachers and students. Another aspect of arts education which promises to assist educators in enhancing student achievement was bared by Ramey (2005) from an examination of grades 7 – 12 of three schools whose students were encouraged to stay in school by involving them in the arts. Results revealed that successful involvement in the arts was intrumental in these students’ resolution to remain in school, to complete secondary level and to formulate plans for their future. The Ramey study also examined the possible connection between developing talent in the arts and building self-efficacy. Self-efficacy generally refers to peoples’ perception of their potential to put up and implement strategies or plans required to accomplish the designated type of outcome for a particular task (Pajares, 2002). Self-efficacy, according to Ramey, transcends one’s own beliefs about his/her personal capacity to successfully carry out a task in order to attain a goal, which may include among others, the achievement of learning. The psychological paradigm of self-efficacy is that, it is developed over time and from various interactions with people and events. Ramey posited that immersion in the arts as positive events in a students’ learning experience tends to boost students’ self-efficacy towards improved academic performance. Finally, the works of Lowensfeld and Brattain (1987), and Morman-Unsworth (1992, 2001) were revisited to gain some insights into how the arts aid in enhancing student performance and/or motivation cross discipline. Lowenfeld and Brattain, who considers art experiences as “fundamental catalysts in the thinking process and the development of cognitive ability in children”, identified the fundamental attributes of creativity used in arts which can transcend into other subjects and help improve student performance. These are: (1) sensitivity to problems and experiences of the living; (2) creativity exercises fluency, the production of a large number of ideas within a short span of time, allowing students to think freely and rapidly; (3) creativity also breeds flexibility, where students have the potential to easily adjust to new situations or change their frame of thinking quickly as new events or situations emerge; (4) creativity in the arts encourages originality, or the capacity to formulate new responses or novel ideas; (5) creativity also boosts a students’ capability to redefine or reorganize to help them rearrange ideas, change the functions of objects and see them in a different perspective; (6) creativity spawns the ability to abstract, a skill in analyzing the different parts of a problem and visualizing specific relationships; (7) ability to synthesize which involve the potential to merge several elements to form a whole or something new; and (8) ability to organize, or to draw parts together in a meaningful way. Morman-Unsworth (1992) re-examined the basic aspects of creativity listed by Lowenfeld and showed how the objectives of a no-nonsence art education varied with time and social needs. Morman-Unsworth also argued that the interdisciplinary approach to learning, which looks at the process of learning as a series of associations among the different subject areas and recognizes knowledge as a summation of these associations, is the real essence of what education is. Such approach was, according to Morman-Unsworth, what Lowenfeld expected from art education, reflecting from Lowenfeld’s philosophy that “art is a fundamental human process … a dynamic and unifying activity, with great potential for the education of our children”. Morman-Unsworth (2001) responded to Duncum (1999) in his work “What Elementary Generalist Teachers Need to Know to Teach Art Well” where the latter elucidated the teachers’ needs for solid foundations in teaching-learning strategies for making and responding to art and described some of such strategies. Using a very professional, yet argumentative approach, Morman-Urnsworth questioned a number of points laid down in Duncum’s work. One of Urnsworth’s arguments is that she finds Duncum’s idea of the class copying from a standard drawing “very destructive”. Urnsworth believes that perceptual training, with the students afforded a climate of quiet concentration to allow their eyes to explore and direct the drawing task, will boost confidence and enhance reading skills. The last material was included in this literature review as a caveat for art teachers and researchers, as well, to realize that although considerable work has been written to authenticate the hypothesis that art education aids in enhancing achievement cross discipline, lesson content and the approach utilized by art teachers need to be complementary, and not detrimental, to the development of the students. Future research directions, therefore, point towards ventures which will devise new or revise current strategies in teaching arts so that its propensity to nurture knowledge cross disciplines is preserved. References Andrade, H., & Du, Y. (2005). Student perspectives on rubric-referenced assessment. Practical Assessment, Research and Evaluation , Vol. 10 No. 3. Arter, J., & McTighe, J. (2001). Scoring Rubrics in the Classroom: Using Performance Criteria for Assessing. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press. Beaudry, J. (2003, September 6). Does the Use of Holistic Rubrics Affect Student Performance in Reading and Writing? Retrieved April 3, 2008, from University of Southern Maine website: http://www.usm.maine.edu/cepare/pdf/meg/meg07.pdf. Catterall, J. (2002). Involvement in the Arts and Success in Secondary School. In R. Deasy, Critical Links: Learning in the Arts and Student Achievement and Social Development. Washington, DC: Arts Education Partnership. Crooks, T. (1988). The impact of classroom education on students. Review of Educational Research p. 438-481. Davis, R. (2005). Performance Assessments in Physics and Physical Science. Retrieved April 5, 2008, from Montana State University: http://www.montana.edu/msse/ capstone2005.htm. Deasy, R. (. (2002). Critical Links: Learning in the Arts and Student Academic and Social Development. Washington DC: Arts Education Partnership. Dumcum, P. (1999). What Elementary Generalist Teachers Need To Know To Teach Art Well. Art Education, Vol. 53 No. 6. p. 33-37. Gabriel, J. (2001, May). A Marriage of Art and Learning: An Interview with James Catterall. Retrieved April 5, 2008, from Brain Connection: http:// www.brainconnection.com/content/7_1. Gardner, H. (1993). Frames of Mind. New York, NY: Basic Books. Garfield, J. (1994). Beyond testing and grading: using assessment to improve student learning. Journal of Statistics Education Vol. 2 No. 1. Glasgow, J. (2002). Standards-based Activities with Scoring Rubrics: Middle & High School. Larchmont, NY: Eye on Education, Inc. Glynn, S., Aultman, L., & Owens, A. (2005). Motivation of learning in general education programs. Journal of General Education, Vol. 54 No. 2. pp. 150-170. Jowdy, D. (2007, June 28). Visualization Training: More than Meets the Eye. Retrieved April 5, 2008, from Active Cities: http://activecitiesusa.com/node/252. Kobus, T., Lee, M., & Provo, J. (2008, January). 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Retrieved April 6, 2008, from Education Resources Information Center website: http://eric.ed.gov/ERICDocs/data/ericdocs2sql/ content_storage_01/0000019b/80/1b/c4/46.pdf. Ruppert, S. (2006). Critical Evidence: How the Arts Benefit Student Achievement. Retrieved April 5, 2008, from National Assembly of State Arts Agencies: http://www.nasaa-arts.org/publications/critical-evidence.pdf. Shafer, W., Swanson, G., Bene, N., & Newberry, G. (2001, April). Effect of teacher knowledge of rubrics on student schievement in four content areas. Applied Measurement in Education, Vol. 14 No. 2. Stevens, D., & Levi, A. (2005). Introduction to Rubrics. Sterling VA: Stylus Publishing. Stiggins, R., & Chappus, J. (2008, January). Enhancing Student Learning. Retrieved April 4, 2008, from School District Administration: http://www.districtadministration.com/viewarticlepf.aspx?articleid=1362. Theroux, P. (2004, June 20). Intrinsic Motivation. Retrieved April 5, 2008, from Enhance Learning with Technology website: http://members.shaw.ca/ priscillatheroux/ motivation.html. Walberg, H. (1999). Productive Teaching. In H. Waxman, & W. H., New Directions for Teaching Practice and Research (pp. 75-104). Berkely, CA: McCutchen Publishing Corporation. Read More