LAURA GARDNER SALAZAR

In order to discover the current status of
assessment in theatre education, the Amer-
ican Alliance for Theatre and Education
(AATE) selected "Assessment" as the title
of the first file it would develop for its newly
founded national data base. This file at-
tempts to bring together and make accessible
a list of as many known sources as possible
on assessment and evaluation for theatre in
education in the United States at the present
time. ¹ It includes books, articles, confer-
ences, unpublished studies, conferences on
arts assessment, and researchers in the field
as well as related materials from associated
fields and other pertinent information. Each
item was checked by an AATE researcher
and is annotated. Citations came from stan-
dard texts on how to teach drama, disserta-
tions, current research in the field, and
works on assessment in the allied arts. Since
I had chaired the Data Base Committee, I
volunteered to gather the data
for the first file. At this time,
the data base holds close to
two hundred entries.

As with all of the arts, the-
atre is very difficult to assess.
Over and over again, writers
and those who spoke personal-
ly to me mentioned that com-
plex activities such as drama
and theatre cannot be assessed
with current standardized, mul-
tiple choice, norm-referenced commercial
tests. Technical and superficial aspects of
theatre (speaking loud enough, facing down-
stage, etc.) can be measured objectively. Crea-
tive aspects such as complexity of character,
plot originality, and sensitivity to time and space
are much harder to measure. Cecily O'Neill et
al. note that relating to others, suspension of
disbelief, and making contributions to the
work, gaining insight, and elevation of language
and understandings all need to be noted in stu-
dent progress in theatre. ² There is very little ex-
perience across the broad educational world of
ways to assess these cognitive and affective do-
mains. A central danger in evaluating student
progress in theatre lies in the temptation to eval-
uate only the technical and concrete and to ig-
nore or devalue the creative and artistic aspects.

Howard Gardner found in his Spectrum
classes that children's weaknesses and
strengths could be seen through teacher ob-
servation of children's attraction to and
progress in various activities, and that stan-
dardized intelligence measures missed docu-
menting talents in the arts. ³

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