Defining and judging creativity is quite complex and controversial. However, based on Sternberg's (2003)Propulsion Theory, creativity can be recognized and defined at different levels. Obviously in good teaching, the teacher is encouraging the expression of creativity, no matter how humble. Evaluating creativity may depend on the teaching objectives. Based on the teaching objectives, the teacher can construct appropriate assessment rubrics. I believe that it is neither practical nor necessary to quantify creativity in the real sense. Take for example, a student who comes up with an alternative method of solving a math problem, s/he can be awarded just an extra credit but this must be included in the assessment criteria. You can read more about defining creativity from Lubert and Sternberg (19966) and Runco (2004). I hope that helps.

Thank you Costantine, it does help :) though I'm more interested in how the evaluation of creativity is exploited in the arts classroom. The example you give is exceptional in the case of maths. In the arts classroom we are constantly evaluating students on how they come up with an alternative methods of solving problems... how they get out of the box and deviate from the normative parameters of the proposed activities.

Hello Pedro

I have conducted research on How Can We Nurture and Develop Creativity in First Year Design Students available at  http://arrow.dit.ie/ltcdis/18/

Hopefully it might answer some of your questions!

Regards

Kerry

 Amazing! Thanks! 

You have to face two big limitations: the frame, and the preferences.

Creativity is totally dipendent on the topic (is it interesting for the student?), how it is showed to a student (is it engaging?), where (and again how)  it is exposed (is the student comfortable with the environment?). I could potentially be the most creative person on the earth, but is the frame stimulating?

I humbly think that the research has to move a step before, searching for the variables that determine the best creativity stimulation, and then decline this variables on the students' preferences (for example on their favourite subject/topic).

Hope to be useful

Pier

Thank you Pier, it is always useful to exchange with colleagues.

I believe we should define creativity as one’s capacity (capability) to build productions that are new and adapted to the context in which they manifest themselves (Lubart, T. 2011 – The psychology of Creativity).

There are two major items here. The first, ''adapt to context'', this is what most disciplines do, and it is fairly easy to evaluate (we do it as well in the arts classroom). The second item (the tough cookie as I say) is the ''newness'' value. How do students go beyond the boundaries? How they get out of the box? This is the hard part to deal within the arts classroom. Art teachers are constantly on the lookout for this ''newness'' aspect. But I must say that this phenomenon is not easy to evaluate, since personal aesthetic values come into play. Furthermore, not only these factors are not written in the evaluation forms of our students, they can also fluctuate from teacher to teacher...

Pedro, I would say that creativity is the capacity for creating new structures.

Best wishes,

Antonio.

 Antonio,

I mostly agree with your affirmation. But I also believe that we must dissect the subject a bit further in order to have some discernment over what creativity is as a multidimensional phenomenon.

The newness is an element of creativity (possibly a common denominator to all creativity). But it is not all.

Creativity cannot subsist without context and adaptability.

Furthermore, one can be very creative with (within and over) existing structures. And that existing structures are the beginning of all creativity.

Thus, ''newness'' is value? isn’t it?  

What do you define ''new''? How do you value and appreciate what is ''new''? And how do you score ''newness'' in your classroom? 

This question of how to grade creativity is like putting the cart before the horse. Art education teaches mostly skills not creativity directly. One can be creative with language of art when a whole experience has been realized. Rubrics with the teacher's objectives can measure only the end of what the teacher thinks is the most creative. Creative is when the student can come up with excellent solutions beyond the teacher's expectations and ego. Why does there need to be a measurement or can creativity just be something that is recognizable which is subjective of only a portfolio can show.

Dear Pedro

A Danish Professor of Psychology Lene Tanggaard wrote an interesting article on assessing student creativity ("Creativity assessment as intervention; The case of creative learning" in Academic Quarter vol. 09, autumn 2014). She has a very good overview of the different tests (e.g. Torrence's test of Creative Thinking (TTCT) and Evaluation of Potential for Creativity (EPoC) etc.) and their pros and cons. She also defines creativity in a student setting. It might be relevant for what you are looking for?

If you can't find the article let me know, and I can send it to you.

Dear Beinart,

Let me bounce on your intervention : Creative is when the student can come up with excellent solutions beyond the teacher's expectations and ego. Ego does not frame with school grading systems and academic standards, does it?  As for your comment : This question of how to grade creativity is like putting the cart before the horse. I’m really not sure what do you mean.... Art involves creativity all the time, creativity does not involve art all the time... they are not the same. My question is centered on creativity which I believe is the cart, and in your perspective art would be the horse... (not the other way around, is it?)

Dear Rydhal,

Thank you so much for the reference, it will definitely help, and no I was not aware of Professor Lene Tanggaard’s work.

Dear Pedro:

You have said:

About context and adaptability:

Yes, you are certainly right. 

The context defines the realm of possibilities for the action (resources, conditions, time limit, social influences, etc.), and the adaptability defines the realm of possibilities for the mind representations (characteristics of mental models, and probabilities for adjusting to a changing environment).

Thus, ''newness'' is value? isn’t it?

Right, I also think novelty (or newness) is a value… if you state that: I mean, a value is an input under the form of a precondition, and it usually is not discussed, it is taken for granted in the realm of creativity.

What do you define ''new''?

I would define “new” as something that is different and (usually) more recent from the available options.

How do you value and appreciate what is ''new''?

I see 2 ways: (1) newness is a value, so it necessarily is valued as “good”, or as “right”, etc.  (2) newness shows better options, possibilities, and solutions, then it is valued as “good” or “right” per se, not in principle.

And how do you score ''newness'' in your classroom? 

I guess there are many ways: intuitive ones, and explicit ones.

Intuitively, you can appreciate and score during the whole course, and express your appreciation in the final marks (grades), including a qualitative appreciation.

And explicitly, newness may be included in the syllabus, and then you must assign marks to that, and to discuss about them with your students.

But the main point of this question is the “How to”. Right: How? I think that should be discussed at the beginning of the course, and you can obtain interest ideas from your students, but all of that within a frame that you have defined as an expert, with a theoretical basis.

If you ask your pupils to create new and creative solutions to standard problems, and to puzzles, etc., you must give them the ruling games since the beginning.

Well, Pedro, this is my opinion.  Hope to be useful, and to continue our interchange.

Best wishes,

Antonio.

Thank you so much Antonio, you leave me wishing to have you as a professor! Your comments are very useful! 

This is an amazing discussions and a challenging topic! 

Now the extra challenge is to explain all this to the scientists in the education faculty... the most sensitive topic being the ''intuition'' factor... some of them refute it completely! 

One of the articles cited in the previous comments... very rich and interesting!

Ha ha ha, Thank you Pedro...

I'll check the paper as soon as possible.

About intuition, I was not aware that it was dismissed by some scientists, please excuse my ignorance.  Perhaps most of us refer with "intuition" to a mixture of knowledge, playing rules, experience, and non-algoritmic reasoning,as in the case of the Expert knowledge which cannot be put into simple rules, for the design of Expert systems.  This way, I see no problem with the use of the concept of "Intuition".

Hope to hear your news soon, Pedro.

Best wishes,

Antonio.

The big difference between art and science : art embraces intuition; you can make art based only on intuition. Science embraces intuition as well, however in the case of science, intuition must be empirically verified... ''Systematic characteristic of the research does not rule out creative thinking but it certainly does reject the use of guessing and intuition in arriving at conclusions'' Kothari, 2004. 

Probably we can consider art's "empirically verified" as the "creation of the opera" .

But what do you think the aim of the artist is? Probably we have to consider this aspect to decide if we are "empirically verifying" our opera.

Sorry for being out of topic, but this is quite interesting for me :)

Dear Barbaro,

To a certain level of abstraction arts and science are the same (Solso). Objectively there are a few differences. The artist can rely solely on guessing and intuition to attain his/her aim. This is not the case for the scientist. Another noticed difference between arts and science is the freedom level of the actors in these fields. Here I define freedom as one’s capability to assume responsibility for the choices that he/she makes within the framed work. It seems much easier to assume choices in the arts than in the sciences.

This is a very interesting and difficult question to answer, and getting of topic may lead us to some answers on how to better evaluate creativity. Thanks for your participation.

Pedro:

I have not measured creativity, so I looked on RG and found several studies that can be helpful in answering your question:

https://www.researchgate.net/publicliterature.PublicLiterature.search.html?type=keyword&search-keyword=measuring+creativity&search-abstract=&search=Search

Best regards,

Debra

Thank you so much Debra. This an amazing time to be alive and to do science :)

Thank you for posting the question. It's an important, if not THE most important component that I discovered in my research on how the arts affect behaviour. The level of creativity is perhaps best revealed by measuring the counterpart of creativity, which is inhibition. Inhibitions are like prison walls to ideas, and since ideas are pretty much endless, mapping the inhibition would indicate the level of creativity. 

I'm not sure if I'm capable enough of explaining it clearly, so I'll use an example to sketch it out. Like, if I'd tell you to draw an apple in 3 minutes with a pencil on a piece of paper, the first borders around the concept 'apple' would be the time and the material. Within those borders, your mind would then have the freedom to create an image that represents your concept of an apple. But really that could be anything, an apple is not just its shape, it's also its smell, its colour, its bite, etc etc. The more creative you are, the more approaches you can come up with. 

On the other side of that spectrum, there's the general preconception of what a drawing of an apple would look like on a piece of paper. That preconception restrains the creation of the image to the shape of an apple.

Creativity is what solves problems, and problem solving is part of the executive system of our brain. The stronger the EF, the higher the level of creativity. 

Thank you so much Pris.

Yes creativity is an act, a transaction if one can say, that is always framed within existing structures. Sometimes, only within existing structures, it is very rare for a Mathematics student to come up with something new, in that case creativity is validated when the student adapts to the proposed structure. In this scenario creativity is valued as imitation.

At other times, we value the aspect of newness in creativity; in this scenario imitation is less valued tough existing structures are always there.

In other words, would you say that shy creators tend to remain within existing structures, and extroverted creators (like Salvador Dali for instance) tend to go beyond the boundaries of existing structures? 

Oh no, this is not what I meant. I'm a lousy teacher :o)

I don't think creativity is an act. I think creativity is a neurologic ability. To create something tangible (like a piece of art work), a whole set of cognitive processes is activated in the brain. I would define 'creativity' as the ability to create.  

An act of creativity would be generating an idea, a strategy, a solution, an approach, a painting, etc.. The verb that describes the act would be to generate. This is where the brain is actively processing information to generate something that will help the person forward. 

Then, a creation is a manifestation of the result of that neurological process, e.g. the idea, strategy, solution, approach, painting, etc.

What I'm saying is, that inhibition limits the ability to create. Inhibitons can be mind sets, preconceived ideas, standards or norms that we think we have to live up to, items that must have a certain shape, etc. 

In my apple example, the given time (3 minutes), the obligatory use of paper and pencil, inhibited the free creation of an apple. Further restraints to creativity would come from the students preconceptions of what an apple looks like.

To answer your question if shy creators tend to remain in structures and extrovert creators don't, I would respond with the more inhibited the creator is, the less he'll tend to go out of the ordinary. 

I quickly glanced at the responses, and I'm very disappointed to see the usual emphasis on creativity as an individual ability/process/attitude. When are these questions going to include some meaningful discussion about creativity in the classroom as a group process? Many of the apparent paradoxes are dealt with the moment we acknowledge that creativity requires dissent, agreement, synergies, and other system-level elements that are crucial and left out when focusing on individual traits. To measure and define creativity, the emphasis must be on collaboration.

Hello Ricardo,

Yes, I agree we should not forget collective creativity (conscious and unconscious), as well as environment and other factors.

But creativity, as a general concept must be defined first (looking for a consensus definition).

Only then we can look out for all kinds of creative expression, individual, collective, animal, human, etc...

Only then we can attempt to measure it.  

What is your basic definition of creativity? 

Thanks for your input.