How Media and Language Arts Assessment Are Related

In Screening Images (Worsnop, 1994b, 1999), I say that media education has to have three components, which can be aligned with three components of the language arts:

In terms of assessment, I interpret the similarity with language arts as follows:

• Look to reading assessment theory and practice to inform the way experiencing media is assessed
• Look to the theory and practice of literary criticism and response (audience theory) to inform the way interpreting media is assessed
• Look to the theory and practice of writing assessment to inform the way making media is assessed

Let's take these in reverse order. The analytical scale at the center of Assessing Media Work (Worsnop, 1996b) is the equivalent of a writing assessment scale or rubric. It operates in the same way, except that it is offered as a way of assessing not only one kind of expression (i.e., writing) but many (e.g., video, audio, posters, photographs, Web sites). The holistic scale in Assessing Media Work for assessing personal response to a media text mimics the assessment of literature response well known to language arts educators. In addition, Media Literacy Through Critical Thinking (2000) provides an instrument for assessing analytical response to a media text, which is akin to traditional critical approaches to analyzing a literary text.

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Reading Online, www.readingonline.org
Posted November 2000
© 2000 International Reading Association, Inc.   ISSN 1096-1232