Assessment has become a dirty word in arts education, because art is notoriously difficult to assess. Assessment, which is often disliked or even disavowed by arts educators, due to its history of incompatibility with the idiosyncratic nature of arts learning, should ideally be utilized as a means of measuring student progress and help teachers understand how to help students succeed. While assessment can also be used to evaluate programs and teachers and to compare student successes relative to those of other students, I will be focusing on measuring individual student progress for my thesis and building a curriculum to support that. To measure student progress, I have utilized three tools: (1) a modified proficiency-based model for beginning students, (2) co-creation of curricula and assessment for intermediate students, and (3) a goals- based curriculum and assessment model for advanced students. This thesis study chronicles the journey of one art teacher and her high school students towards a more authentic means of utilizing assessment in a contemporary and engaging curriculum.

This study explores how Landgarten’s Family Art Assessment can provide clinicians with valuable information about families that can be used to advocate for the needs of the children in the family. A comprehensive literature review covers family assessments using art developed by Psychologists, family art assessments created by art therapists, and the benefits of using them in clinical treatment. The researcher utilized a qualitative research approach. The data gathering took the form of surveys and semi-structured interviews with clinicians at a community mental health agency following their participation/observation in a Family Art Assessment administered to a family on their caseload by a board certified art therapist. The researcher used textual analysis of the interview transcription to identify emergent themes. The emergent themes included: the impact of domestic violence, power dynamic, disconnection, and the therapist’s efforts to increase connection and communication in the family. Study findings indicate that Family Art Assessments, when used as a consultation service administered by an experienced art therapist, can serve as an invaluable tool to provide clinicians with a more complete understanding of the families they are treating quicker than verbal therapy assessment methods alone. The findings also indicate that the Family Art Assessment helped clinicians conceptualize their cases from a more systemic perspective that considers the children’s environment and relational patterns within the family as contributing to their problem behaviors and symptoms, and allowed clinicians to envision a path in treatment that included advocating for the children’s needs.