Evaluating creative learning environments: New instrument

by | Sunday, February 18, 2018

Note: This post (and the SCALE instrument) has been updated on 2.21.18 

Creativity is a key educational goal and essential 21st century skill. That said, much of the existing research in the field of creativity has focused on individual, psychological, and/or personality variables, which, while important, offer minimally practical advice to educators.  The intentional design of learning environments is an area that has not seen much attention in the literature, yet it is profoundly important to supporting creativity in children.

In a recent paper (link below) Carmen Richardson and I propose an instrument (Support of Creativity in Learning Environment: SCALE) that is designed to assess the ways in which a learning environment supports student creativity. SCALE is modeled on The Three-Minute Classroom Walk-Through and is a short, focused, and informal instrument aimed not to evaluate the teacher but rather to gather information about practice. SCALE measures three different aspects of a learning environment: Learner Engagement; the Physical Environment; and the Learning Climate.

The complete process that led to the development of the SCALE instrument can be found in:

Richardson, C., & Mishra, P., (2017). Learning Environments that Support Student Creativity: Developing the SCALE. Thinking Skills and Creativity https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tsc.2017.11.004

The actual instrument, along with some background information and instructions for use can be found below:

Richardson, C. & Mishra, P. (2017). Support of Creativity in Learning Environment: SCALE).

A few randomly selected blog posts…

véjà du, on seeing anew

I recently learned about véjà du (see here to learn more). I was sufficiently intrigued by this idea to use this as an assignment in the CEP818, Creativity in Teaching and Learning course I am currently teaching (with Mike DeSchryver). The assignment students were...

Creative teachers study cited by neaToday

Danah Henriksen and I recently published a paper in TCRecord titled:We teach who we are: Creativity in the lives and practices of accomplished teachers. More details of the paper and link to download it can be found on this page: Creativity & Teaching, new article...

Stop motion fun

My daughter, Shreya, had some friends over yesterday and they created a short stop-motion animation film with the new setup in our basement. Enjoy [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTkhuEfTAnk[/youtube] More videos made with my kids can be seen by clicking...

Shreya makes the newspaper!

For Halloween, my daughter, Shreya's fifth grade class entertained a bunch of first-graders with a spooky music and dance show. A news reporter was there and her photo (Shreya's not the news reporter's) ended up on the cover of The Towne Courier, the local community...

Why blog

Andrew Sullivan is one of my favorite bloggers, not because I agree with all that he says there is a certain sensibility that emerges as you follow his blog for a while that appeals to me. He has a great piece in The Atlantic Monthly titled Why I blog?. Speaking of...

Number (non)sense & flatulence!

Numbers are a gas! (Image credit: Phillie Casablanca) Numbers are seen as being critical to developing our understanding of a subject. As Lord Kelvin, (1824-1907) said: ... when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something...

Momentary Lapis Lazuli of Reason: Academia for better or verse

Momentary Lapis Lazuli of Reason: Academia for better or verse

Graduate school can be a grind. Academia can be dull and dreary. But not if poetry and parody are brought into the mix. This is a volume of academic poetry titled Momentary Lapis Lazuli of Reason: Academia for better or verse. The poems in this volume are...

Nerdview or being stuck in our worldview

I recently received a note from a graduate student as an unnamed university. This student wrote to me after having assigned the TPACK handbook chapter (co-authored with Matt Koehler) to a bunch of pre-service teachers, and suggested that the chapter was hard to read,...

Multitasking & the learner

Multitasking & the learner

One of the myths of the new digital generation is that they are natural multi-taskers. The evidence, however, indicates that multi-tasking is detrimental to performance and success, and  though we may try delude ourselves, the fact of the matter is that, we do...

2 Comments

  1. Mithun Ranjan Dey

    I am really grateful to be a part of such informative webinar

    Reply
  2. Saad Raja

    Good creative information is shared, it is all about creative thinking.

    Reply

Trackbacks/Pingbacks

  1. Education & Skills Sector Reading List, February 2018 – The Learner - […] While creativity is a key 21st Century education goal, how can we measure the ways in which a learning…

Submit a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *