Finding creativity and flow in a high-stakes assessment context

Remarks by the Minister for Education and Skills underscore the accountability that public institutions and the teaching profession carry for assuring the success of the nation's education enterprise. This article challenges assumptions about the nature of education that are critical to the accountability and testing regimens currently in favor internationally. While supportive of the goals of accountability systems, it argues that higher order pedagogies that reconcile competing historical trends between ‘progressive’ and ‘back to basics’ themes are very promising in an era of important new tools. These approaches include designing classroom ecosystems in ways that routinely elicit high performance and flow-like experiences in learning. Such designs, when successful, alter the terms of accountability and testing dialogues.