Assessment of Creativity in K‐12 Education: A Scoping Review

Abstract

Over the past two decades, creativity has emerged as one of the core 21 st century learning objectives within K-12 education systems around the world. While some literature has demonised assessment as something that inhibits creativity, a growing body of research supports feedback-driven teaching -also known as formative assessment or assessment for learning-as an effective pedagogical approach across contexts and content areas. Given this empirical foundation, we propose that assessment for learning holds powerful potential for helping students to learn about being creative. To examine intersections of creativity and assessment in K-12 educational contexts, we carried out the scoping review study reported here, with the aim of advancing understanding of how assessment can support and promote creativity in classroom contexts. Fifty-one research articles were selected for review, based on inclusion criteria which required that articles (a) reported the collection and analysis of quantitative or qualitative data, (b) addressed K-12 classroom or extra-curricular contexts, (c) addressed the formative or summative assessment of creativity for pedagogical intent, (d) were peer-reviewed, and (e) were published in English. Analysis of the research revealed two dominant and consistent themes. Firstly, multiple studies indicated the importance of defined criteria for effective and useful creativity assessment within K-12 classroom contexts. Secondly, a number of studies identified the particular value of self-assessment and/or reflection in supporting creativity. We discuss implications of these findings in relation to educational policies and practices that seek to promote creativity, and areas for future research.

Existem concordância e confiabilidade na avaliação da criatividade de resultados tangíveis da aprendizagem de computação na Educação Básica?

“…A avaliação da criatividade do produto por professores requer uma profunda compreensão sobre o que é criatividade e se ela está ou não presente nos artefatos dos alunos. No entanto, pesquisas indicam que professores podem ter dificuldades para reconhecê-la [11]. Estudos têm mostrado que tais avaliações com base nos resultados de aprendizagem dos alunos muitas vezes não são confiáveis, exigindo, até mesmo para modelos maduros de avaliação da criatividade, avaliadores experientes no domínio específico, a fim de avaliar os produtos de uma forma confiável e válida [11][30].…”

“…Trazendo a definição do artefato de software como produto criativo para a prática da sala de aula resulta na necessidade de que professores sejam capazes de compreender profundamente o que é criatividade e se ela está ou não presente nos artefatos dos alunos. No entanto, pesquisas que abordam a avaliação da criatividade por parte dos professores indicam que eles podem enfrentar desafios no reconhecimento da criatividade [11]. Nesse contexto, uma dimensão da avaliação da criatividade é a adequação das medições observacionais que dependem de avaliadores humanos.…”

Imagine: Design for Creative Thinking, Learning, and Assessment in Schools

“…PISA was designed to provide a psychometrically sound large-scale assessment, but to focus on group (country) level reports rather than individual proficiency. Furthermore, many models of creativity (including the framework in PISA) have not addressed learning or development of these skills ( Barbot 2019 ; Bolden et al 2019 ), thereby limiting their applicability to foster creative thinking in students.…”

“…The proposed expanded Creative Thinking Learning and Assessment Model (see Figure 1 ) is designed to capitalize on the foundational understanding developed through PISA 2021 work and to build upon insights gained through their application in learning and formative assessment. The goal of formative assessment is to provide students with feedback and guidance based on their current levels of some target competency, and prior research on creative thinking shows that formative assessment is a promising approach to its development ( Bolden et al 2019 ). Our approach to learning builds on four of the five key formative assessment strategies proposed by Black and Wiliam ( 2009 ): clarifying learning intentions and success criteria; engineering effective tasks that elicit evidence of learning; providing feedback that moves learners forward; and activating students as owners of their learning.…”

Assessing Product Creativity in Computing Education: A Systematic Mapping Study

“…And, although there exist already a variety of reviews on creativity assessments, they are mostly targeted on general approaches to measure creativity and not focusing on specific strands (Said-Metwaly et al, 2017). Bolden et al (2019) and Snyder et al (2019) provide overviews of the assessment of creativity in any discipline in K-12, not targeting specifically on computing education. Very few reviews are related to creativity in the context of computer science, analyzing approaches for leveraging creativity in agile requirements software engineering (Aldave et al, 2019) and individual creativity support systems (Wang and Nickerson, 2017).…”