Progression in student creativity in school: first steps towards new forms of formative assessments.

Creativity is widely accepted as being an important outcome of \ud schooling. Yet there are many different views about what it is, how best it can be \ud cultivated in young people and whether or how it should be assessed. And in many\ud national curricula creativity is only implicitly acknowledged and seldom precisely \ud defined. This paper offers a five dimensional definition of creativity which has been \ud trialed by teachers in two field trials in schools in England. The paper suggests a \ud theoretical underpinning for defining and assessing creativity along with a number of\ud practical suggestions as to how creativity can be developed and tracked in schools. \ud Two clear benefits of assessing progress in the development of creativity are identified:\ud 1) teachers are able to be more precise and confident in developing young \ud people’s creativity, and 2) learners are better able to understand what it is to be \ud creative (and to use this understanding to record evidence of their progress). The \ud result would seem to be a greater likelihood that learners can display the full range\ud of their creative dispositions in a wide variety of contexts