Norma Dávila, our Teacher Support Manager in Mexico, discusses assessing creativity by thinking outside of the box. Norma was a second language specialist for Anahuac ICIF and has trained English teachers in Mexico, Central America, Italy and Switzerland.
Creativity is certainly a higher-order thinking skill that teachers want to encourage in their students. Yet, it’s one of the least handled aspects of classroom assessment. Teachers want their students to be creative, but are not entirely sure how to set a rubric or what to look for.
For some projects teachers set percentage or points for creativity but leave it undefined and unclear for students. In many cases creativity ends up meaning a nice colored notebook cover or a cute poster.
Let’s define creativity first:
Erick Fromm described creativity as “the ability to see (or to be aware) or to respond”. Fromm also stated that “Creativity involves the “willingness to be born every day”.
Howard Gardner defined the creative individual as a person who regularly solves problems, fashions products, or defines new questions in a domain in a way that is initially considered novel but that ultimately becomes accepted in a particular cultural setting”.
What is important to remember about creativity definitions:
- There are many definitions of creativity, none of which is universally accepted.
- Even though researchers and educators may use the term creativity, they may be referring to very different constructs.
- The definition you adopt will determine the factors or characteristics you consider to be essential to understanding and locating evidence about creativity within an individual.
- Therefore, it is important to identify the main characteristics of creativity.
Researchers have clustered a final list of characteristics into four categories, these are:
- Generating ideas: The specific characteristics include: fluency, flexibility, originality and elaboration.
- Digging Deeper Into Ideas: The specific characteristics include: analyzing, synthesizing, reorganizing or redefining, evaluating and understanding complexity.
- Openness and Courage to Explore Ideas: The characteristics include aesthetic sensitivity, curiosity, sense of humor, fantasy, imagination and intuition.
- Listening to One’s Inner Voice: The characteristics include awareness of creativeness, persistence or perseverance, internal focus of control and self-direction.
The characteristics include awareness of creativeness, persistence or perseverance, internal focus of control and self-direction. In light of the above many resources have been developed to assess creativity and creative thinking to answer questions posed by researchers and teachers:
- “Can creativity be measured?”
- “What assessment tools are available to assist us in recognizing creativity in students?”
- “How might we evaluate and compare various ways of assessing creativity?”
To answer these questions, three crucial terms should be clarified:
- Measurement: which refers to the use of any instrument or testing procedure through which quantitave data can be obtained
- Test: which refers to a particular kind of assessment that includes a standard set of items or questions
- Assessment: that involves gathering, organizing, analyzing and interpreting qualitative or quantitative data
With these terms in mind Creativity assessment might be regarded as an attempt to recognize or identify creative characteristics or abilities among people or to understand their creative strengths and potentials.