Does Assessment Kill Student Creativity
Pre-Reading:
When reading the title, “Does Assessment Kill Student Creativity”, I considered all of the positive aspects of assessment, as opposed to focusing on the challenges. I personally think some form of assessment if necessary for students. Maybe not at a primary level, but in intermediate and in high school, I can recognize its importance. I am not suggesting that teachers only assess students through standardized tests, but, I do think that assessment (formative or summative) is crucial for a student’s success.
During Reading:
-Because of pressures placed on teachers and how they use instructional time, creativity is given less focus
-“Teachers are required to devote increasingly large portions of their instructional time preparing students for assessments” p. 254
-What is creativity?
o“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”
-Creative process occurs through two stages: divergent and convergent
-Divergent: brainstorming to generate ideas
-Convergent: evaluating/choosing ideas, completing the project, and then discussing the results
-*Science fair example: choose an idea, complete the project, and explain the outcome to viewers!
-Not all students reach their potential in being creative because of classroom assessment
-Teachers ask students to display their best work: “teachers communicate to students that outperforming others, rather than self-improvement, is the reason for engaging in achievement-directed behavior” 257
-Assessments in classrooms allows to comparisons amongst peers
-Assessment itself doesn’t diminish creativity, but the message that teachers convey when asking students to do their best is what may kill creativity
-Counter argument: some students may excel in such structured classroom settings
-How to protect creativity: convey the message of assessment differently!!
-Minimize comparisons! *an example of this in my practicum classroom comes to mind. When doing DPA with the classroom next door, I suggested our class vs. theirs. The teacher opposed to this idea as we are creating comparisons such as: my class is better than yours (depending on the results). Therefore, we ended up mixing the two classes together to create teams
-Put less pressure on assessment!
-Don’t see low grades on assessments as a way to punish the students, but as a way to learn from them! This can be a useful for teachers as well as the students
Post Reading:
I thought this reading would be about the consequences of assessing students, and only put forth the negative aspects of it. However, this reading did much more than that. It explained creativity, and then instead of breaking down the negative aspects of assessment, it explained how the teacher’s role in conveying messages may be the part in what kills creativity. For most students, it is not the assessment in itself, but the way the teacher puts pressure on the students. I thought this article was interesting as it explained how to use assessment in a way that minimizes the pressure! We had a discussion last term, in which one of my peers said that a lot of this program is telling us “what not to do”, when will we learn “what to do”. This article did just that. It explained the consequences of how teachers present information, and provided the reader with alternatives in communicating.
Reference:
Beghetto, R. A. (2005). Does Assessment Kill Student Creativity? The Educational Forum , 254-263.