Making the Grade

Teaching dance at a college or university often means assigning grades to things that are viewed subjectively, from performance and choreography to class participation and technical improvement. It may seem difficult to evaluate artistic endeavors along the same institution-wide guidelines that are used to grade students’ academic work. The key, according to veteran dance professors, is to devise a grading system for your dance classes that will tie into the rigorous academic expectations found at the college level, while helping your students to grow into more mature dancers.

Define Your Criteria
Before the semester even begins, you’ll need to establish a set of guidelines by which you will be evaluating your students. It may seem difficult to list things to look for in performance and technique classes, and each teacher will be a little different, but having technical and artistic goals in mind will help you better shape your teaching for the coming months.

As a higher ed dance teacher, you’ll likely be dealing with both performance-based grades and academic assignments; the latter can be more straightforward, while the former may require you to get creative with your grading strategies. Think about the unique skills required of dancers and use those as a starting point for your evaluations. Mary Fitzgerald, assistant professor at Arizona State University’s Herberger College of Fine Arts, shares some of her criteria for assessing students’ dancing in class or performance settings:

n What is the student’s overall understanding of the choreographic style he or she is performing?
n Is he or she specific in the translation of the work?
n Does the student’s technical ability support the expressivity of the movement?
n Does the student show a range of nuances and dynamics while dancing?
n What type of spatial intelligence does the student demonstrate? Is there an understanding of three-dimensionality?
n Are the student’s musicality and phrasing clearly expressed?
n Does the student’s technique open up a range of possibilities in the interpretation of the choreography?
n Does the student “own” the movement that he or she is performing? Is there a depth of physical investigation that allows for the layering of personal artistic voice?
n Does that voice offer a different perspective and/or insight about the work, advancing the integrity of the choreography?

Fitzgerald also takes factors such as attendance and overall improvement into account when she evaluates students in technique class. Additionally, you may want to set specific movement goals for students to accomplish by the end of the semester, such as performing clean double pirouettes or adding beats into petit allegro. Depending on the course, you will need to decide what criteria will be appropriate and what material or skills will be most important for your students to learn. Also, bear in mind that students may come to you at different technical levels, or with different learning rates, and you may want to take these factors into account when assigning grades.

Explain Your Expectations
One of the key components in a good grading system is communication. At the beginning of the semester, your students may be apprehensive about how you will grade them. Put them at ease by explaining, in detail, what will be expected of them. “The teacher’s criteria need to be made clear to the students, and the teaching methods through which the students will gain the ability to meet these criteria must also be clearly articulated,” says Larry Lavender, head of the dance department at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro.

Take the list of criteria you developed before the start of the semester and distribute copies to students so they are aware of their responsibilities for the course. You should also encourage students to come to you with any questions they may have regarding assessments, so that you’re all on the same page when grades are handed out.
“The general rule is that if you describe what you are going to teach, and explain and demonstrate clearly what will count as success in learning and doing the material, then it is legitimate later to refer to those expectations in grading or assessing,” Lavender says. Touching base with students on their progress during the course can help you be sure you are getting these ideas across.

Give Specific Feedback
Specific feedback and direct, meaningful corrections about the way students are doing things will help them understand what you are asking of them. Most teachers do this instinctively, but in higher education it is very important that you are aware of how often and how well you are interacting with students in a teaching capacity. After all, their grades may depend on it.

For example, Lavender says, “A teacher cannot just say ‘you are weak/strong in performance,’ for there is no information there about what this teacher considers essential about performance.” Instead, he suggests giving detailed criticism, such as, “Your phrasing of the material is choppy and stiff, but the material is designed to be smooth and lyrical,” or “You are giving equal value and emphasis to each part of the phrase rather than grasping the varied rhythmic accent pattern within the movement.”

Clear, specific critiques—and praise for improvement—will help students see how they’re progressing through the course of the class. Refer to your checklist of criteria throughout the year, assigning a number or rating as to how a student is doing on a variety of assignments, to help you assess the student’s progress throughout the run of the class. Give out progress reports or hold conferences to let students know exactly how they’re doing at various points in the semester, so that they know what they’ll need to work on in preparation for a final grade.

Teach Critical Thinking Skills
One thing that differentiates dance at the college level is the need for critical thinking —that is, for students to fully understand the material beyond a basic level and to be able to articulate that understanding. This is important in learning movement as well as in the more traditional, classroom sense; Fitzgerald points out that the internalization of concepts or skills implied by critical thinking is vital to owning the movement. How can you as a teacher both impart this type of knowledge and make sure that it has been received?

Most teachers, even those with a lot of experience, find this a challenge. Jennifer Fisher, assistant professor in the dance department at the University of California, Irvine, says that this issue is one she has been working on. She explains, “In my Critical Issues in Dance class, an assignment that worked really well required students to identify a current issue in the dance world, state their issue and present the arguments their sources put forward, then lead a class discussion.” To do this assignment successfully, the dance students needed to have a thorough knowledge of their subjects, which included everything from whether men should dance on pointe to the question of maternity for dancers.

It stands to reason that students would be using critical thinking skills to lead a discussion on such topics—but is there an actual resource that can help you evaluate their progress clearly? Lavender suggests becoming familiar with the Taxonomy of Educational Objectives by Benjamin S. Bloom, which divides thinking skills into different categories (see sidebar on page 106). Commonly known as Bloom’s Taxonomy, this resource can be used to both track and evaluate the development of critical thinking, helping you to identify specific progressions of learning and assisting in the evaluation of students’ skill level, as well as their understanding of the material you present. The skills identified start out simple, such as rote memorization, and then become more complex, until students reach what is considered critical thinking. Bloom’s Taxonomy is very specific and is an invaluable resource for any instructor—especially those in higher education, where this type of learning is often an expected outcome.

Evaluating students doesn’t have to be a struggle. Just make sure you have some good tools in your arsenal to help you figure out how to go about it. Develop a checklist of what you want to convey to your students throughout the semester and make sure you know how to identify the different phases of the learning process. As long as you prepare adequately and share your expectations with your students, learning should thrive in your classroom! DT

Originally published in Dance Teacher, September 2005
1. Knowledge: The ability to define something from having memorized it
2. Comprehension: The ability to summarize the information learned in one’s own words
3. Application: The ability to take knowledge and use it in new situations
4. Analysis: The ability to break down information and understand
its structure
5. Synthesis: The ability to internalize knowledge, apply it in different ways and make connections between various pieces of information
6. Evaluation: The ability to evaluate, predict and make judgments based on the knowledge gathered

From Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, by Benjamin S. Bloom

Catherine L. Tully is the Outside Europe Representative for the UK’s National Dance Teachers Association and teaches at Concordia University in River Forest, IL.

Originally published in Dance Teacher, October 2005