LAWRENCE — Creativity is increasingly seen as an integral part of education and essential to the future of a competitive nation. Little is known about how to identify and teach traits. New research from the University of Kansas suggests that while one of the most common methods used to study creativity may be reliable, how it is used varies widely, relies on subjective judgment, and is completely unreliable. may not be valid for

Subjective creativity ratings are one of the most popular methods in creativity research. Essentially, this approach relies on judges studying a work or topic and assessing whether it meets the criteria for creativity. Haiying Long, Associate Professor of Educational Psychology at KU, said he led a study that analyzed 84 studies using an approach also known as the Consensual Assessment Technique. I have found that it has not proven to be effective. She said caution should be exercised in relying on the approach or attempting to translate it for use in schools.

Long compared the approach to the Academy Awards voting, where voters provide ratings after watching the film. So is CAT, which was introduced in 1982 and has been in widespread use ever since.

“I feel like there are a lot of things about this approach that don’t align with what I’ve learned about educational measurement. “A general assessment that has been used for 40 years without much assessment or consideration of validity seems dangerous to me.”

Co-authored with Jue Wang of the University of Miami, Long’s research was published in the journal Educational Psychology Review. Researchers analyzed the studies and found that they focused most on the reliability and consistency of judges. Some were rated as experts in their field, others as semi-experts, but the study focused primarily on the consistency of the judges’ ratings. Judges were reliably consistent about 70% of the time. However, its reliability cannot be assumed to mean that the evaluation is valid.

“What I found was that the 84 studies were very different in each area,” says Long. “Some were in writing or art or science. Some were for elementary school, some for college. are very different.”

In the creativity study, judges gave high scores to the work they observed either because they liked it, because they thought it really met the criteria for creativity, or both. It was almost never revealed. According to the researchers, the wide range of subjectivity and lack of consistency in approach means that care must be taken when declaring subjective creativity ratings to be fully valid.

The CAT is one of three major approaches in creativity research, a creative and divergent thinking test and questionnaire used to assess different aspects of creativity, such as creative activity and creative self-belief. lining up. Consensus-based evaluation methods are the only methods that evaluate the creativity of a product or work based on subjective judgment.

Long and Wang write that the goal is not to discredit CAT or discourage its use, but to encourage further research and understanding of evaluation and its uses. This could not only strengthen creativity research and understand its role in education, but also help educators develop curricula and methods for teaching creativity and identifying it in students. . Currently, students are perceived as creative by teachers who, on the basis of classroom observations, mostly determine that they are or can be creative.

“When using this approach, we should be aware of its weaknesses and use other approaches as well,” says Long. “At the same time, we need to research this approach further and better understand how it works in order to better understand how it can be applied to classroom use.”

In terms of classroom use, Long, who has previously published a study on the strengths and weaknesses of education’s most popular classroom creativity assessment, focuses on student strengths to motivate students holistically. I would like to continue my research on developing creativity models to study. This is a tool that educators can use to identify where students’ creative potential is strongest, build from there, and provide support in areas that may be lacking. can be useful for converting

“We want to do it in a modern way, using the best technology available. I was. “All students are capable of creativity, but we need to support them. The test is not about seeing who is creative and who is not, but about each individual’s strengths and what they are. It should identify the best way to support them.”

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