A Five-Dimensional Model of Creativity and its Assessment in Schools

ABSTRACT

Creativity is increasingly valued as an important outcome of schooling, frequently as part of so-called “21st century skills.” This article offers a model of creativity based on five Creative Habits of Mind (CHoM) and trialed with teachers in England by the Centre for Real-World Learning (CRL) at the University of Winchester. It explores the defining and tracking of creativity’s development in school students from a perspective of formative assessment. Two benefits are identified: (a) When teachers understand creativity they are, consequently, more effective in cultivating it in learners; (b) When students have a better understanding of what creativity is, they are better able to develop and to track the development of their own CHoM. Consequently, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has initiated a multicountry study stimulated by CRL’s approach. In Australia work to apply CRL’s thinking on the educational assessment of creative and critical thinking is underway.

Acknowledgments

This article draws substantially on research commissioned by Creativity, Culture and Education (CCE) and by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), undertaken by the author with his colleagues Guy Claxton and Ellen Spencer in 2011–2012, published by OECD as a Working Paper in 2013. The article also draws on further empirical testing by schools and education departments across the world. For this special issue the material has been re-presented to focus on the possible applications of CRL’s five-dimensional model of creativity for practice, policy, and research. A small amount of specific description of the five habits and of data-analysis is included verbatim from the earlier OECD work. The author is particularly grateful to the many schools whose teachers have contributed to the thinking in this article, especially Rooty Hill High School in Sydney, Australia, and, most of all, to his two researcher colleagues at CRL.

Notes

¹ An archive version of this framework can be found at http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20110223175304/http://curriculum.qcda.gov.uk/uploads/PLTS_framework_tcm8-1811.pdf

² See http://www.insight.vic.edu.au/assessment-tools/cct for early thinking on this kind of assessment.

³ http://victoriancurriculum.vcaa.vic.edu.au/critical-and-creative-thinking/introduction/learning-in-critical-and-creative-thinking

⁴ http://creative-partnerships.com/

⁵ See http://www.oecd.org/edu/ceri/assessingprogressionincreativeandcriticalthinkingskillsineducation.htm