Assessment in drama education

Ongoing and regular assessment is a critical component of drama in educational settings, often taken through creative endeavours and performance events. However, the assessment of artistic work presents challenges for educational administrators more accustomed to high-stakes or scientifically rigorous styles of measurement that are easily subjected to testing. Drama assessment tasks with an aesthetic dimension require assessors to make personal responses to the student's product and can be unfamiliar to those more accustomed to assessment tasks with previously defined answers. This chapter contends that it is possible to assess drama learning with a high degree of integrity, and further argues that drama assessment should reflect the multifaceted nature of the art form and of the learning processes involved. This chapter discusses possible solutions to the challenges of drama assessment, as well as the limitations of assessing in creative and aesthetically charged fields. Assessment systems have also long devalued types of knowledges and ways of working, and to this, drama education is not immune. This chapter additionally applies a decolonising lens to the analysis of drama assessment practices, acknowledging intersectional realities that are often absent in an assessment context.