No, assessment should not kill student creativity. It should serve as a guideline to foster specific creativity.

“Creativity is the interaction among aptitude, process, and environment by which an individual or group produces a perceptible product that is both novel and useful as defined within a social context.” (Beghetto, 2005, p. 255)

Posting best work may deviate the openness or creativity. (Beghetto, 2005, p. 257)

Coming from a design undergraduate study, I wholeheartedly agree with this article. My instructors have always critiqued everyone’s work while highlighting the ones that he or she thinks is the “path” we should innovate towards. While this does stifle some innovation, the article seems to concur that this is an acceptable method to guide students toward the appropriate social context in which the assignment was designed for. In interactive arts and technology, not only do we design projects that are novel and functional but also aesthetically pleasing. That was something that I thought I can add toward my own teaching when I assess projects during reading, but on second thought… elementary students probably have no prior knowledge whatsoever on visual art or spatial design. Maybe I can save that for a higher grade or scaffold them beforehand. Overall I agree that by only highlighting the best works, it adds unnecessary stress to students not highlighted and is frustrating because from past experience it means I have to work through a different mindset or ideas I am unfamiliar with. Creativity is about the uniqueness of an idea, it is nothing unique when we have 30 of the same project handed in. I took note that although we should promote creativity in our classrooms, it can also be seen as disruptive. Creativity usually means a deviation from the intended lesson plan and its outcome. In order to support creativity, teachers will have to put in more time and effort to cater to unique assessments that may or may not be supported realistically due to time constraints. Perhaps creativity should be promoted in Art, Science, English and others while others like Math will be more structured and creativity will be discouraged? I am going to stick with my initial reaction to the title. Though in the back of my head I feel the skill mastery being the objective ultimately is a better way of teaching knowledge, even though I am not sure if this is widely supported by the curriculum.

Reference

Beghetto, R. A. (2005, September). Does assessment kill student creativity?. In The Educational Forum (Vol. 69, No. 3, pp. 254-263). Taylor & Francis Group.