Measuring Creativity

06/04/11
Just read an article on "how to measure creativity" (It is attached below).
The authors chose to judge creativity via 'uniqueness of response'.
Their findings:
Asking people to think creatively is more likely to garner unique results.
Under these circumstances, outside subjective judgments as to the uniqueness of an idea tend to be reliable.

What does this mean for my teaching?
Well, it does raise a new question for me - should I be trying to measure children's creative ability? If so, how can I do this? Would it be useful?

Is uniqueness the most desirable creative outcome in the classroom? I guess it could be in some circumstances, but an understanding of conventions are important too - it is much easier to be 'unique' when one understands conventions.

Also, if a child is unable to grasp conventional ways of doing, say, maths, or thinking about scientific fact, is that going to cause them problems in life?

Seems to me that uniqueness of response is only useful when the person judging that response understands the uniqueness of the idea (which they can only do if they understand the conventions surrounding the topic). A person could be coming up with unique ideas all day long, but unless they can identify the value in them, then it seems to me that they are meaningless.

However, I suppose that by explicitly asking people to 'be creative', you will in fact be assessing their understanding of the conventions. We can see  this in children all the time - they often think they are the first person to even come up with an idea or joke, but adults recognise these as derivative or already in use, or even not useful (i.e., claiming that ice is made of rats may be original, but it isn't helpful in any way).

So it seems that teaching conventions may be vital to having useful creative thoughts. However, does teaching conventions in fact restrict thinking to conventional lines of thought?
I suppose that this is the reason we have to teach creative strategies alongside research.

Questions going forward:
Is creativity measurable?
How does one balance teaching conventions with teaching creative thought?

Assessing creativity.pdf