Assessing the creative outcomes of instruction in the arts remains a persistent dilemma for teachers and administrators. This chapter examines three of the most important questions that lie at the centre of most debates about the philosophy and practice of arts assessment. These are "what", "how" and "why". What should be the important focus of assessment in the arts? How might teachers effectively assess the learning outcomes that follow from arts instruction, and why bother? One of the most problematic assessment concerns in the past has been the difficulty of assessing creative products and behaviour since all too frequently assessment methodologies serve to inhibit rather than promote imaginative outcomes. A more productive relationship between the assessment process and creative behaviour is discussed with reference to new ideas about creativity promulgated by the work of contemporary social psychologists. The question of how to conduct assessment in the arts is made more difficult when issues of standards are raised and the perennial challenges of reliability and validity of qualitative judgments are applied to the work of examiners. The strategies outlined below address these issues and conclude with the argument that assessment, properly done, can promote rather than inhibit creative thinking. Assessing the creative outcomes of student learning has always been a dilemma for educators and will continue to be so for as long as we continue to value imagination as one of the most important underlying virtues of engagement in the arts. I have had the good fortune over the past 45 years to spend time teaching art and art education in Australia, Canada, and the United States, and since 1993 I have worked as an examiner for the International Baccalaureate program with five years of that time as chief examiner for the visual arts. I have seen many models of assessment in the countries I visited, some of the most interesting of which, to my knowledge, have never been formally studied and documented. The International Baccalaureate itself boasts a robust assessment model that is highly regarded in more than a hundred countries. This chapter is a documentation of what I have learned over the years about the what, who, and how of assessment in the visual arts together with recommendations for best practice. Assessment, of course, is a continuous process in art education. The day-to-day formative judgments made by teachers to assist students' progress towards their learning goals play a central role in any successful art education program. However summative assessment is the force that gives impetus to the direction of the program and defines what is most important to learn. Formative assessment tends to be a private matter between the student and teacher while summative assessments are oft en a much more public affair. In those countries where art is valued as a core subject the question of how to establish standards is an ongoing debate that finds its way into the public arena. In the Netherlands, for example, the art exam questions are sometimes discussed in the national newspapers. In this chapter I will discuss summative rather than formative assessment. Good summative assessment models have the potential to improve the quality of student learning in local, state, national, or international contexts, and also gain respect for the discipline. I will use the International Baccalaureate model as a backdrop to the discussion of suggested practices. The International Baccalaureate (IB) program is one that well reflects the challenge of achieving universal excellence variously expressed in multiple personal and cultural contexts. The IB is a system of international education taught in half the countries of the world. As described in documents accessed through the information page of the IB website the centrepiece of the program is its flexibility in responding to local interests but at the same time providing access for students to what is shared and what is different in human experience. Developing an effective summative assessment model hinges on three questions "what should be assessed?", "who is qualified to assess it?", and "how should it be done?" I address each of these questions separately in the following.
