Module 6: Assessing Creativity and Creative Thinking

1 Title Slide Welcome to the Assessing Creativity and Creative Thinking module in the
Assessing Higher-Order Thinking series. To advance to the next slide, select the
“forward” arrow located on the play bar at the bottom of your screen.
2 Introduction Brookhart defines creative thinking as a means of putting things together in
new ways - either conceptually or artistically, as well as observing things others
might miss, constructing something new, or using unusual or unconventional
imagery to make an interesting point.

Before we get started, let’s consider the following quote:

“Many will discredit the existence of creativity in the rank of higher-order

thinking skills, however creativity requires many of the same conditions for
learning as other higher-order thinking skills, such as that learning processes
are either enhanced by supportive environments or weakened when students
are exposed to environments in which fears, insecurities, and low self-esteem
exist” (Crowl et al., 1997).

3 Learning At the completion of this module, the learner will be able to incorporate and
Objectives assess creativity and creative thinking.

4 Assessing Creativity is certainly something that teachers want to encourage in their

Creative students, and yet it’s one of the most poorly handled aspects of classroom
Thinking assessment. Many teachers want their students to be creative but are not
entirely sure what to look for. Or, many teachers use the word “creativity” as a
dimension in a rubric that doesn’t really assess creativity at all. One common
misconception by teachers is that being creative means being artistic or
interesting. In this module, we will discuss ways to assess creativity and
creative thinking.

5 Assessing Many view creative thinking and critically thinking as separate entities,
Creative assuming that creative thinking is the brainstorming or putting together of new
Thinking ideas, and then critical thinking takes over and evaluates how successful the
new ideas are. However, it is possible for both creative and critical thinking to
occur simultaneously. For example, creative thinking may result in a
brainstormed list of possible activities, but critical thinking is needed to
prioritize them and evaluate which one would be the best to do.

In most assignments, creative and critical thinking go hand in hand in work that
would be categorized at the Create level of Bloom’s taxonomy. Students come
up with responses to your assignments, and they also present them to you as
finished work, presumably after exercising some critical judgment as to
whether their response – in the form of a project, essay, poem, or term paper --
fulfills the assignment’s requirements and shows what they can do. As you
assess students’ creativity, you yourself are using critical judgment.

6 What is What is required for creativity? According to the Partnership for 21st Century
Required for Skills, there are certain characteristics required in order to think creatively. For
Creativity? example, creative students can:
 • Recognize the importance of a deep knowledge base and continually
work to learn new things,
• Are open to new ideas and actively seek them out,
• Find “source material” for ideas in a wide variety of media, people, and
events,
• Look for ways to organize and reorganize ideas into different categories
and combinations, and then evaluate whether the results are
interesting, new, or helpful,
• And finally, use trial and error when they are not sure of how to
proceed, viewing failure as an opportunity to learn.

7 Creative A particularly interesting kind of creativity occurs when students define

Problem problems in new ways, or “think outside the box.” Creative problem solving
Solving involves identifying a problem with fresh eyes. The problem may end up being
Examples about something completely different than originally thought.

Brookhart provides two examples of creative problem solving. Click on the tabs
to learn more.

[Read themselves]

The Elevator Story (NPR)

“Skyscrapers only became possible after safe commercial elevator technology

became available, because skyscrapers were too tall for people to be able to
routinely take the stairs. In one office building, a problem arose. People became
annoyed and impatient waiting for the elevator to arrive. Grouchy employees
felt their time was being wasted. The building owners called in the engineers
and asked them to solve the problem of making the elevators faster. But they
couldn’t do that; the elevators were already traveling as fast as was safe. An
employee of the company solved the problem by redefining it. The problem
wasn’t that the elevators were too slow, it was that people thought they were
too slow and got bored waiting for the elevator. The employee suggested
installing mirrors by the elevator so that people had something else to do while
they were waiting. Instead of waiting, people checked their ties, hair, or
makeup. They were no longer bored or impatient, and the time passed quickly.”

7 Creative Folds & Wrinkles (NPR)

Problem
Solving Another example of creative problem solving involves a mathematics professor
Examples at Harvard who had been named the 2009 MacArthur Foundation fellow, where
each awardee gets half a million dollars to use any way he or she wishes.
“Mahadevan applies mathematical theory to questions about nonlinear but
common physical and biological events such as: How does the cloth fold or
drape? How does skin wrinkle? And how do flags flutter? In addition,
Mahadevan said he tried to explain common observations with mathematical
theory. He explained how he and his colleagues studied flowers blooming, using
time-lapse photography and then explaining the observations. They found that
 the petals grow along the edge more than they grow in the center. “So we made
a mathematical theory for it,” he says. “We tried to essentially connect that to
experiments and empirical observations in the laboratory, which are easy to do,
because you go to a florist and you buy a half dozen lilies, and you just watch
them” (NPR, 2009). In other words, Madadevan looks at what might seem like
normal, non-problematic events, and wondered about them. He also hopes to
pass along his knack for problem finding to others.

8 Promoting Many common classroom activities and procedures foster students’ creative
Creativity in work. Mathematics teachers, for example, sometimes teach students to use
the “guess and check” as a strategy for problem solving. The process of generating
Classroom the guesses and then evaluating how close their guesses got to solving the
problem encompasses both the “create” and “critique” aspects of creativity
discussed previously.

Brainstorming, in any subject, is a classic creative activity. In a typical

brainstorming session, all ideas are accepted and listed. Evaluation of the ideas
comes later. This approach has the effect of generating a maximum number of
ideas. It also exposes all students in the group to everyone’s ideas, which can
help stretch students’ thinking and help them see how being open to ideas from
others is useful.

Lastly, writing reader-response logs is a creative activity for students. In a

typical reader-response log, students are asked to describe their thoughts,
feelings, surprises, and other reactions after reading a text or selection. There
are many ways to respond to literature, and students have an opportunity to
connect elements of their own lives with those in the text – a “reorganizing”
activity that can generate new insights.

9 Promoting The very best way to stimulate creativity is to inspire it by making assignments
Creativity in that are, in their own right, creative. To assess creative thinking, an assessment
the should do the following:
Classroom • Require student production of some new ideas or a new product, or require
students to reorganize existing ideas in some new way. Juxtaposing two
different content areas or texts is one way to do this.
• Allow for student choice on matters related to the learning targets to be
assessed.
• And if graded, evaluate student work against the criteria students were
trying to reach, where appropriate, as well as conventional criteria for real
work in the discipline.

The trick to designing creative assessments is to find the balance between

giving students enough specific direction that they can work toward the
learning target, yet open-ended enough to leave room for students to generate
their own ideas.

On the next slide, we will observe different levels of creativity with the
Taxonomy of Creative Design.
10 Taxonomy [insert Taxonomy Creative Design]
of Creative
Design Take just a moment to analyze the graphic on your screen. Notice the difference
between “imitation” and “original creation” in terms of novelty in form and
content. If you wanted to use this model in your assessments, you could decide
what level of creativity on which students are performing.

To determine what level students are being creative, you could use the
following tool:
• Is the creation the same or virtually the same as something that already
exists? The student is using imitation.
• For variation: Is the creation a slight change to an existing object, such
that it is different, but still retains the identity of the original object?
• Combination: Is it a mixture of two or more things, such that it can be
said to be both or all?
• Transformation: Is it a re-creation of something in a new context, such
that it has some characteristics of the original object, but it cannot be
said to still be that kind of object?
• And finally, does it appear to have no discernible qualities of pre-
existing objects or ideas? This student has created an original creation.

If you wanted to assess student’s creativity by this taxonomy, an example of a

rubric with similar criteria has been provided. [insert below rubric]

11 Missing the Many scoring schemes miss the point about creativity. For an example, an
Point instructor for an animal science course asks students to do a research project
over the history and characteristics of a breed of beef cattle, and then present it
on a poster.

The instructor designs their scoring scheme so that students will receive 10
points for Information and Content, 10 points for Creativity, and 10 points for
Directions Followed.

This is contradicting assignment because one-third of the points is awarded

toward creativity when the assignment asked students to research and report a
predetermined list of facts. Instead, the instructor could revise the assignment
so that students must answer an analysis-type research question, such as:
“Choose a cattle breed and describe how the cattle’s origins reflect the current
breed characteristics and purpose.”
12 Missing the Another contradicting assignment example would be an instructor asking
Point students to write a term paper and then assessing students for Content – which
is worth 20 points, Organization – also worth 20 points, and Creativity for 10
points.

If Content meant accuracy and completeness of information and Creativity

meant using higher-order thinking to discuss the content, and also that the
paper was presented in a neat, aesthetically-pleasing way, then a better way to
assess what was intended is to alter the assignment to reflect a question that
requires student thinking, or that requires students to come up with their own
research question and not just a topic. Then you would revise the grading
 scheme to reflect the following:

Thesis clear and supported – 20 points

Content accuracy – 20 points
Organization of paper – 10 points
Presentation – 5 points (or 0 points if the assignment is not graded and just for
feedback)
13 Review As we come to a close, let’s review. We started this module by addressing
misconceptions of creative thinking, and then we examined what is required by
students for creative thinking. We also looked at two examples of creative
problem solving and then discussed the Taxonomy of Creative Design. Lastly,
we analyzed some common mistakes that could lead to assignments and the
criteria for which we assess to be contradicting.

14 Sources Brookhart, S.M. (2010) How to Assess Higher-Order Thinking Skills in Your
Classroom. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

http://www.senseandsensation.com/2012/03/assessing-
creativity.html#!/2012/03/assessing-creativity.html

http://www.cala.fsu.edu/files/higher_order_thinking_skills.pdf
http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-
leadership/feb13/vol70/num05/Assessing-Creativity.aspx

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