Monthly Archives: January 2016

Does Assessment Kill Creativity? – Reflection

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Does assessment kill creativity?
Pre-reading:
This title asks me to consider many other questions. What is assessment? What kind of assessment? In what subjects? What is creativity? How can you assess creativity?
I find it difficult to assess creativity at all. In this sense, how are you able to determine whether or not assessment can kill creativity. The title is quite damning. It is a matter of opinion, rather than something that can be defined. So how can you determine whether or not assessment kills creativity. Kill is also quite intense – couldn’t we instead just say does assessment impact creativity?

During:
The article asks many of the same questions that I had from the title. There are a number of ideas and quotes that I found to be useful and interesting:
“Creativity researchers generally agree that creativity involves a combination of uniqueness and usefulness” (255).
“Creativity is often viewed as simply that which is unique, out of the ordinary, bizarre, or deviant. Without the additional criterion of usefulness, creativity quickly can become a euphemism for negative, undesirable traits” (256).
Creative process = two stages: divergent and convergent
Divergent: brainstorming; focuses on generating novel ideas, problems, or solutions to problems
Convergent: focuses on evaluating and choosing ideas, completing the task, and communication results
“A mastery goal structure is representing by goal-related messages that focus on self-improvement, skill development, creativity, and understanding” (258).
Provides students with information and feedback on their performance in regards to their personal prior achievement
Assessment as providing useful feedback on how to improve
“Student creativity is fostered when teachers minimize the use of assessments in making social comparisons. When students focus on self-improvement, they are more likely to take risks, seek out challenges, and persevere in the face of difficulty” (259).
Ideas for Assessment:
Minimize Social Comparisons
Minimize the Pressure of Assessment
Focus on Informational Aspects of Assessment
Recognize Risk-Taking and Creative Expression

Post-Reading:
The best answer to the question of “does assessment kill creativity?” comes from the article, “it depends”. I found it interesting that the article addresses many of the questions that I initially had from reading the title. The article does a sufficient job of answering the question and providing ideas for how to foster creativity while also using assessment. The ideas for assessment focus mainly on the individual. They focus on minimizing the social comparisons and the pressure of assessment. They instead offer ideas for focussing assessment on informal aspects and recognizing when a student is taking risks and expressing their creativity. While the article attempts to offer definitions of creativity, it cannot give a definitive definition as it cannot be defined. Instead, it offers an ambiguous definition of which is a combination of uniqueness and usefulness. Therefore, to answer the title of the article, if assessment is student centered and focuses on individual improvement then it does not ‘kill’ creativity. Rather, it fosters the uniqueness and usefulness of each individual’s creativity.

Beghetto, R.A., (2005). Does assessment kill student creativity? The Educational Forum, (69) 2 p254-263

http://www-tandfonline-com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/doi/ref/10.1080/00131720508984694

Technology in Action

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What do you do when is a Thursday afternoon and your students just won’t listen? Why you bring out robots, of course!
Technology is a resources that we sometimes take for granted. It is used almost everyday in the classroom, but we sometimes forget to think outside the box as to how we can incorporate it in new and exciting ways. Why not put it in the hands of the students and let them facilitate their learning?
My classroom is fortunate to have a collection of ‘robots’ and technology tools at their disposal. On Thursday, we set up stations and let the students ‘have fun’. There were stations where students could work with Ozobots, Sphero, create their own stop motion movies, works with circuits, develop mazes, and use the iPad’s to work on coding. It was student directed learning.
My inquiry project is focusing on using technology in the classroom for personalizing learning. This afternoon activity used technology while allowing students to experiment and create. I had the opportunity to work with the students who were experimenting with circuits. I observed students who are normally reserved and do not take chances in the classroom jump in. They were eager to try something new and were quick to start experimenting. It gave the students the opportunity to self direct their learning. All they were given was the package of circuits and the booklet that was included. These students started with trial and error before realizing that they needed to follow the directions. Once they were able to make their first few complete circuits, they were excited to experiment and see what they could come up with. It was interesting to see this process and to see them work together to figure out how to solve their problems.
After observing this, I started to think of the ways that I would be able to incorporate this type of learning into my practicum – letting students experiment while using trial and error. The students were able to choose which station they wanted to work at and were not given more direction then what each ‘robot’ was able to do. The students were self directed. I am looking forward to utilizing technology more in the classroom and allowing students to self direct their learning while learning from their experiments.