Creativity: A social approach

Early thinking in the modern era often regarded creativity as a somewhat asocial means of individual expression, self‐realization, and self‐fulfillment. However, it also is a socially influenced phenomenon that serves society. A social approach offers the opportunity of distinguishing between large and small amounts of novelty, as well as between “orthodox” and “radical” novelty. Disciplines, teachers, and students differ from one another on these dimensions. This explains some differences among teachers in the way they see creativity and creative students. The social approach also emphasizes the importance of groups, role models and mentors, and classroom climate, all of which teachers can influence. A social analysis suggests guidelines for instruction and assessment that differ from those derived from cognitive or personal approaches.     

On Creativity: A brainstorming session

The article problematizes in aphoristic condensation the heterogeneous concepts of creativity in philosophy, psychology and sociology and outlines their paradoxes. Creativity in these concepts is tied to the human potential to bring into being something new and to the capacity of drawing differences. In its contingency, creativity is ambivalent to a high degree—at one and the same time a desirable resource and a threatening potential. So on the one hand, creativity is meant to be mobilized and set free; on the other hand, it is meant to be controlled and reined in. The imperative of being creative is nowadays connected to the mobilization of the entrepreneurial self. Entrepreneurial action demands permanent innovation—and consequently ceaseless creative exertion. Everybody not only has to be simply creative, but more creative than the others.     

Rejoinder

In a recent paper, Bifulco and Bretschneider [Econ. Edu. Rev. 20 (2001) 417] analyzed the performance of data envelopment analysis (DEA) and corrected ordinary least squares (COLS) using simulated data. The results were discouraging as both methods performed poorly even in cases when measurement error was assumed away. The authors concluded that current methods of evaluating school district performance are inadequate for performance-based school reform. As will be shown in this comment, the simulation performed was faulty due to inconsistency of the data generating process and the methods employed. After correcting for this inconsistency and re-estimating efficiency, the results are more consistent with the literature and more favorable to both approaches.     

Connected Learning and the Foundations of Psychometrics: A Rejoinder

This paper continues an exchange between its author and Andrew Davis. Part I addresses the attribution and ontological status of mental constructs and argues that philosophical work on these topics does not undermine high stakes testing. Part II examines the significance for testing of the connectedness of meaningful learning. Part III addresses the high stakes in high stakes testing in connection with the risk entailed by limited scoring reliability. It concludes that there is no straightforward relationship between the magnitude of what is at stake for students and teachers and the threshold of acceptable reliability in scoring.