I believe that it is our job, as educators, to provide students with an environment where they are allowed to be creative and take risks without fearing the penalties of failure. I do, however, question our ability to assess whether something is creative or not and whether our assessment should count for anything when it comes to student learning. This isn’t to say we can’t observe student creativity and commend them on what we deem creative (or should we?), but it doesn’t seem logical to me that we should ever allow for creativity to count for, or against, a student grade. For all of you who think that making “creativity” a component of assessment in a student grade spurs creativity I am about to convince you otherwise.
If good-natured educators are acting on Sir Ken Robinson’s warning that schools are teaching students to not be creative, then aren’t we misrepresenting his very message if we start to assess their work for this concept? Think about that idea for a second. We want to spur creativity in students in all subjects, but we will then be assessing the amount of creativity that they produce. I think we all know (or have been) the teacher that looks at student projects and grades based on the amount of creativity that a student uses in designing their product.
This means that some students will receive low marks in creativity if a teacher does not approve of their product. Consider, for a second, the contradiction that lies in this very practice of judging creativity. They are, in essence, eliminating the very creativity that we are trying to spur in all students. At the same time, we would be forcing students to align their creative beliefs with ours since they are striving to obtain high marks and teacher approval.
Think about some of the most creative “things” in life. How do you know they are creative? It is a personal opinion or feeling that overcomes you as you observe it. Therefore, an individual’s assessment of the amount of creativity a student exudes can never be accurate. It simply means that we would be generating students that align their creative ideas with OURS and, therefore, eliminates the creativity that we strive to cultivate.
In my view, creativity is based on a continuum that is individualistic in nature. You and I will never agree on what is “more creative” or “less creative”. I hate it to no end when I hear teachers talking about how “creative” a project is (of course this leaves the door open for me to be provocative and say it isn’t).
We cannot expect for students to develop their creativity and think outside the box if we continue to judge them on this nebulous trait. Instead, teachers should not judge how creative student work is, but urge kids to expand beyond how they currently think. Stop worrying about every student handing in the same type of project, and instead, allow him or her to develop outputs and ideas that are along their own lines of thinking and development. Take “creativity” off their assignment sheet unless you are urging students to be creative and specifically telling them to take risks beyond what is normally deemed acceptable.
If you are looking for concrete examples on how to do this then please stop, go back to the top, and read again.
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Great post.
Ribrics, grades and even instructions are creativities kryptonite.
Roninson’s books The Element and Out of Our Minds are must reads. And of course his TED talk.
How much I agree with this! I remember so well only picking reports rather than a poster or something that involved ‘art’. I was terrible at it- still am, and was NOT interested in even trying.
In 3rd grade, we had to do a solar system. I was talking to my dad and he talked me into doing a poster. I was excited that my dad was excited and I remember being WOWED by him showing me how to make Saturn just by cutting out a ‘crescent moon’ that was just a little bigger than the main planet.
Needless to say, I made a C or a poster when I would’ve aced a report (and learnd much, much more). It was disheartening.
Come to think of it, that may be one reason that I have no desire to do ‘art’ projects. Yep, ruined me for life.
(I say that in jest, but I remember thinking that I really did something ‘creative’, and I KNOW I did what I was supposed to- but I guess to make an A, I needed glitter & styrofoam. VERY disheartening- especially for someone that finally decided to give it a try.)
Nice post…..
We cannot expect for students to develop their creativity and think outside the box if we continue to judge them on this nebulous trait. Instead, teachers should not judge how creative student work is, but urge kids to expand beyond how they currently think.
I agree with your idea at its foundation, but at some level, we have to assess where they are to give them feedback. And urging kids to “expand beyond how they currently think” requires assessment of where they are and feedback to move beyond that.
As Evan Abbey noted on Twitter: http://is.gd/7mTz1 “Would agree w/ @aaron_eyler if he said we shouldn’t grade creativity i/s of assess it. Still, we should be pushing creativity”.
I guess I’m just not sure how “pushing creativity” and “urging kids to expand beyond how they currently think” are different.
Russ,
I think there is a fine line (of which I am really just starting to think about) between “pushing creativity” and “urging kids to expand beyond how they currently think”. One of the keys is rooted in analyzing how kids go about solving problems. In other words, if kids develop a creative (different than the norm) way to solve a problem then I would say we are giving them a skill that they can transfer to life. At some point, their employer will say that they want a finished product and they don’t care how it happens.
I find fault when we tell kids there is only “one way to do something” when there can clearly be another. I also think it is ridiculous when people add in “Creativity” as a component of a grade. If I am a kid my response would be: who the hell are you to tell me what is creative or not when someone probably did this same activity with another class before you did?
I also wonder how we “push” creativity. I really don’t know how we can accomplish this without forcing some type of conformity into what the teacher thinks is “creative”. I am still mulling this over and will definitely come back to it in the future.
More than anything, I just hope this post continues to generate discussion over how to stop schools from making kids “uncreative”.
Notice how somehow I always end up with more questions than I do answers. lol
Thanks for your comments as always!
I believe your right about the teacher role in assessing creativity is tricky and a problem of authority, but lets instead question the idea of authority. The Assessment needs to be holistic and need not come from one source or a single teacher. I recommend Ron Berger’s An Ethic for Excellence. Creativity is hard to define, and assessment does not mean you have to define permanently what it means. The assessment should be ever growing and come both from the real world, the students, other teachers, the teachers and expects in the art or craft your are trying to practice. You need to be creative in your idea of what it means to creative, but you also need to be creative about the role of the teacher of the authority of assessment and knowledge. We need to broaden our ideas of schooling to not be limited to what we are doing now. Rewiring the current system is not going fix the shorts. We need to reinvent our ideas of what education is and means for today’s society. We need creative students, but what we really need is a society and culture that embraces creativity as the role of greatness and power, not some to tack on to a report card or rubric.
Good post.
Completely agree. Teachers should not judge or assess creativity. They should be enablers or channels for kids to be creative, imaginative. However, IMO we need some sort of structuring/process so that teachers can be effective agents in encouraging and promoting creativity.
Rather than teaching or assessing or encouraging creativity, I prefer to allow creativity whenever it bubbles up. Teaching creativity implies that creativity can be quantified somehow–that there are criteria for creativity. Even the terminology of \outside the box\ implies there is a \box\ in which we function. When educators allow for creativity, students will be creative regardless of whether they are inside or outside a \box,\ regardless of whether \creative thinking\ is part of the curriculum or not.
Forgive me for quoting from my book again, but it relates:
“Creativity and learning complement each other. Deeply understanding a subject increases the ability to think creatively about it. In turn, thinking creatively about a subject deepens understanding of it.”
I completely agree with your thoughts on this topic. However, teachers can foster deeper learning of what they are teaching (and assessing) by engaging students in creative thinking. A simple example: when you ask me to think of something in a metaphorical way, I have to revisit in depth the original idea. This re-processing of the original material, sparked by the creative approach, engages me in deeper thinking about the original, and that increases my understanding of it. We need to realize that it’s the THINKING we’re after—the thinking that empowers learning—not the product. Creativity is a great approach for sparking the learner’s thinking.
Again, great insights. Love this “new” blog!
David,
Totally agree with your idea that “what we really need is a society and culture that embraces creativity as the role of greatness and power”. The current economic situation of the country is exactly the environment that could foster that type of value shift. Hopefully, we see this type of movement in the near future.
Thanks for your insight.
Kevin,
As usual, you provide insight and grounding to ideas. Thanks for your example as it has started to stir more thoughts and ideas in my head. Now just one question: how do I get my hands on the book!?!?!?
Your thoughts are always important! Thanks!
To talk about creativity, we must first define that which we are talking about. I head to David Bohm’s “On Creativity” to consult on this matter.
“Creativity is, in my view, something that is impossible to define in words. How, then, can we talk about it? Words can indicate or point to something in the minds of the readers that may be similar to what is in the mind of the writer…”
And so Bohm begins his 145 page exploration of that which cannot be defined in words. How silly of me to try to do in a text box! Some further excerpts that are relevant to my view of creativity:
“One aspect of what this something might be can be indicated by noting that the search is ultimately aimed at the discovery of something new that had previously been unknown.”
This passage seems to capture a common conception of creativity, one that I have certainly seen in some of the replies to this post. But as others have pointed out, is that it? Is it merely extending the boundary of one’s knowledge? Of expressing a different point of view?
I think that is part of the process, but not its totality. This idea captures the idea of contrast, and it is by means of contrast that we know anything at all-there is no consciousness without contrast. So we must follow the process further.
“What he is really seeking is to learn something new that has a certain fundamental kind of significance: a hitherto unknown lawfulness in the order of nature, which exhibits unity in a broad range of phenomena. Thus, he wishes to find in the reality in which he lives a certain oneness and totality, or wholeness, constituting a kind of harmony that is felt to be beautiful…the aspect of discovering oneness and totality in nature.”
And here we have what Aaron may be referring to when he says “synthesis.” The weaving of knowledge and experience into a whole. This whole by its very nature includes all that we know and all that we don’t know-the cosmos as we currently call it.
So the act of creativity on an individual level is the active engagement of recreating harmony in one’s perspective congruent with the larger universe. What we are talking about academically is embedded in the larger concept of human development. This is the concept of ego and Self as defined by Carl Jung. The ego being the “i” and when healthy it is felt to be harmoniously integrated into the Self or “I.” This is very much the same concept as in Daoism, where there is a “dao” of something, Adam for example, and the Dao, meaning the primordial Way.
In psychology neurosis is what separates us from Self and it is this content that must be uncovered and reintegrated through consciousness to experience harmony. But this harmony is not a regression but rather a new structure as transformation has occurred. And it is when this transformation has occurred (and over the course of our lives it should happen many times) that we see what is commonly called creativity. But in fact creativity is a process, and this is just a particular point in the process when it is easy to point at it and name it.
Again from Bohm, “So to sum up we may say that quite generally, in a creative act of perception, one first becomes aware (generally non-verbally) of a new set of relevant differences, and one begins to feel out or otherwise to note a new set of similarities, which do not come merely from past knowledge, either in the same field or in a different field. This leads to a new order, which then gives rise to a hierarchy of new orders, that constitutes a set of new kinds of structure. The whole process tends to form harmonious and unified totalities, felt to be beautiful, as well as capable of moving those who understand them in a profoundly stirring way.”
So to address an issue in Aaron’s original post-creativity is not something to be assessed other than is it happening or not. Is someone stagnating, not learning or growing, not evaluating new perspectives or old ones? Then the evaluation is simply, you are stuck, it is time to consider this in new ways. Otherwise all that is necessary is encouragement and support. Yes, young man or woman, keep going! You are on the path!
I think that many teachers believe that a creative work has to be a one of an artistic nature. Too often, we forget that creativity is also needed in approaches to problem solving. I even fall into that trap myself and say that I’m not creative. What I really mean is that I can’t create paintings and am embarrassed for others to hear me sing. A friend recently reminded me that my love of baking and experimenting in that realm is also an example of creativity and can even be considered artistic at times. As teachers, we need to be careful that we allow our students the opportunities to discover their creativity, be it in expressing ideas uniquely, carving pumpkins or creating paintings, and recognize that creativity may manifest itself differently in each of them than it does in us.
@Damianne I agree with your point. As a foreign language teacher, students , and some colleagues, I might add, don’t view creativity in its broader sense. In order to communicate, especially in another language, one must make words make sense. That, to me, requires creativity.