Progression in Creativity – development new forms of assessment: A literature review.

This review underpins a piece of work undertaken by the Centre for Real- World Learning (CRL) at the University of Winchester, and commissioned by Creativity, Culture and Education (CCE) to explore the possibility of developing a framework for assessing creativity in school age learners. It explores creativity, and its assessment, adopting a socio-constructivist perspective, drawing on the work of such theorists as Vygotsky (1978), and Lave and Wenger (1991). As such, it does not cover areas of organisational creativity (often referred to as ‘innovation’), although there are large bodies of work focusing on this aspect of creativity in both the private and public sectors. While recognising a diversity of approaches to the theorising of creativity, this review narrows its focus to those approaches that look specifically at the individual student (within a social context). Because the work this review supports attempted to develop a framework for assessment of individuals, the review thus gives only limited space to work focusing on creative outputs or environments that support creativity. It gives primary weight to focusing on the characteristics of the creative individual that might be assessed.