Assessment of Creativity

Developing creativity is one of the goals of our school education.For this we need to identify the creative talent and encourage it in our children.Hence,assessment of creativity is very important .

Creativity is multifaceted.It consists of a number of abilities ,qualities and skills.Fluency ,flexibility,originality and elaboration are the four main criteria of creativity.It refers to something new/novel which has usefulness also for the society.

Since creativity is multifaceted, its assessment also has to be multi-dimensional as no single method of assessment can provide all the information. There are a number of assessment techniques informal  as well as formal. The informal techniques make use of observation,ratings, check lists, anecdotal records,general school activities etc. Formal assessment involves the use of standardized tests, prominent among which are Torrance Test of Creative Thinking,Bacquer Mehdi Test of Creativity ,Passi-Usha Test of Creativity.

The main feature of creativity tests is that they are open ended.They allow the respondent to answer in a variety of ways . The creativity tests assess the divergent thinking, the ability to see relationships between two unrelated things/objects,put things in a new context and guess consequences. In contrast ,intelligence  tests assess convergent thinking. It assesses such abilities as memory,logical reasoning and clear thinking.There is a right or wrong answer in intelligence tests whereas there is no right or wrong answer.

A proper conducive environment is essential for the assessment and expression  of creativity. Assessment of creativity will enable the counselor to provide proper guidance to the students to actualize their potential .Assessment data will also help the teachers in planning their lessons and providing different types of curricular and non curricular experiences to enhance their creative potential.Creativity is there in each and every individual. It is a matter of providing the right opportunity ,encouraging and rewarding the child for the expression of creativity.