On a tweet, an educator posted a partial photo of a rubric and blasted the creator for trying to grade creativity as a category. Lots of other followers jumped on the bandwagon. I'm in the minority here, but I feel strongly that creativity can and should be graded. My ultimate goal for expecting creativity is to teach risk taking and independent thinking. I include variations of creativity in my assessments as often as I can, because I want students to stop copying whatever "the creative kids" are doing and take a chance on a novel idea. I want them to try something new rather than simply following existing instructions.
Students often misinterpret creativity as artistry. They are not synonymous. Creativity is what teaches us to look for connections between ideas that aren't normally connected. That's how problems are solved. That's how medicine advances. That's how new inventions are patented. I want my students to feel comfortable trying something new, splendidly failing, and trying again. The act of being willing to try is what I reward. I don't care whether the attempt is messy; in fact, it should be. The important intent here is in process thinking. That's my personal mantra. Trust the process. It will guide your learning.
One of my rubrics for a project on the Hero's Journey states clearly what level of creativity is expected. Sure, you can use my model, but at least do SOMETHING different. That's minimal creativity. Abandoning my model altogether, but still demonstrating mastery however you want gets 100% in the creativity category. In other words, break the rules! I encourage it. I'm not sure why the Twitter folks feel that it is wrong to judge creativity. The idea that some people are creative, some aren't, and it isn't fair to judge, makes no sense to me. Creativity is a muscle that needs flexing to strengthen, in the same way that to become a good writer, a student has to learn all the rules then find unique ways to manipulate them. We grade writing. Why not creativity? Reward experimentation. Iteration is what develops courage in creativity.
I am happy to be the dissenting voice on this one.
Students often misinterpret creativity as artistry. They are not synonymous. Creativity is what teaches us to look for connections between ideas that aren't normally connected. That's how problems are solved. That's how medicine advances. That's how new inventions are patented. I want my students to feel comfortable trying something new, splendidly failing, and trying again. The act of being willing to try is what I reward. I don't care whether the attempt is messy; in fact, it should be. The important intent here is in process thinking. That's my personal mantra. Trust the process. It will guide your learning.
One of my rubrics for a project on the Hero's Journey states clearly what level of creativity is expected. Sure, you can use my model, but at least do SOMETHING different. That's minimal creativity. Abandoning my model altogether, but still demonstrating mastery however you want gets 100% in the creativity category. In other words, break the rules! I encourage it. I'm not sure why the Twitter folks feel that it is wrong to judge creativity. The idea that some people are creative, some aren't, and it isn't fair to judge, makes no sense to me. Creativity is a muscle that needs flexing to strengthen, in the same way that to become a good writer, a student has to learn all the rules then find unique ways to manipulate them. We grade writing. Why not creativity? Reward experimentation. Iteration is what develops courage in creativity.
I am happy to be the dissenting voice on this one.