Informal Assessment Teachers ask students questions during class as a way of informal assessment.
However, cultural differences exist in the function of questions. In African and Asian cultures, children are expected to listen and not to ask questions (Ner-
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love & Snipper, 1981). In these cultures, students are not expected to respond to questions to which the teacher already knows the answer (Heath, 1983). Many students in some these cultures will not respond to questions at all (More, 1989; Rhodes, 1988). In addition to these African and Asian students, Native American students’ seeming reluctance to participate verbally in response to teacher ques- tions in the classroom causes the students to appear to be nonverbal or silent (Dumont, 1972); however, these students have cultural expectations to behave as such.
Interviews Examiners and interviewers can also affect students’ performance. Commu-
nication among strangers is contrary to the core beliefs of collectivist cultures (Kim & Choi, 1994). Thus, students from these cultures may need to establish a personal relationship with their examiner before an interview or an oral test can be determined to be a valid assessment. Fuchs and Fuchs’s (1986) meta-analysis found that the effects of examiner unfamiliarity have a significant impact on stu- dents’ standardized test scores, especially for low socioeconomic students. Exam- iner effects may lead to a bias, especially in behavior ratings (e.g., Skiba, Knest- ing, & Bush, 2002). Therefore, teachers conducting traditional or behavioral assessments require adequate training in culturally competent practices (Castillo, Quintana, & Zamarripa, 1999).
ADDING CREATIVITY ASSESSMENT
Expanding assessment practices to include creativity testing might address cultural biases (Kaufman & Agars, 2009). Creativity is defined as producing something that is novel and useful (Runco & Jaeger, 2012). Observations of emi- nent creators show that eminence in any field requires specific domain knowledge to be joined with creativity, and high IQ alone does not lead to superior creative achievements. To maximize the impact of high IQ, creativity must be identified and cultivated (Wallach & Wing, 1969; Kim, 2005, in press). Lifetime creative accomplishments are related to creativity in childhood (Plucker, 1999, Torrance, 2002). Creativity assessment shows few differences across gender or ethnicity (Kaufman & Agars, 2009; Torrance, 1977). Further, evidence from data collected statewide on the effects of the Georgia multiple criteria rule for identifying stu- dents (Georgia Department of Education, 2010) supports the effectiveness of adding creativity assessments for identifying gifted students, especially those from underserved populations (Williams, 2000). The addition of creativity assessment as an option to meet the standards has facilitated identification of gifted students from underserved populations (Krisel & Cowan, 1997).
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The Torrance Test of Creative Thinking The best option for creativity assessment currently may be to employ the Tor-
rance Test of Creative Thinking (TTCT) (Torrance, 2008). The TTCT includes two forms (A and B) of the TTCT-Verbal and two forms (A and B) of the TTCT- Figural. The TTCT can be administered as an individual test or group test for any age and developmental level, beginning with kindergarten. The tests require 30 to 45 minutes working time, so speed is relevant. The tests require some draw- ing ability, but artistic quality is not necessary to receive credit. Torrance recom- mended the creation of a game-like, “fun” atmosphere to avoid the threatening situations associated with testing.
The TTCT –Figural consists of three activities: picture construction, picture completion, and repeated figures of lines or circles. The TTCT-Figural is com- prised of five norm-referenced measures so that the numbers of points earned are relative to the norm group. The measures are Fluency, Originality, Elaboration, Abstractness of Titles, and Resistance to Premature Closure. In addition, there are thirteen criterion-referenced measures of Creative Strengths so that credit is given depending on whether the criterion appears in the responses. Fluency measures the ability to produce many ideas; Originality measures the ability to produce unique ideas; Elaboration measures the ability to produce a number of ideas beyond the minimum details; Abstractness of Titles measures the degree a title is expressed beyond obvious labeling of the pictures drawn; and Resistance to Premature Closure measures the degree of psychological openness. The thirteen Creative Strengths measure various creative thinking and personality constructs including: Emotional Expressiveness, Storytelling Articulateness, Movement or Action, Expressiveness of Titles, Synthesis of Incomplete Figures, Synthesis of Lines or Circles, Unusual Visualization, Internal Visualization, Extending or Breaking Boundaries, Humor, Richness of Imagery, Colorfulness of Imagery, and Fantasy (see Kim, 2006 for details).
The TTCT-Figural is particularly well known for being fair in terms of gender, race, community status, and for persons with different language back- grounds, socioeconomic status, and culture (Cramond, 1993; Torrance, 1977). Researchers found that in most situations there are no statistically significant dif- ferences in performance on the TTCT due to race or socioeconomic status, and in some cases, the TTCT favors African American children and children of low socioeconomic backgrounds (Torrance, 1971; Torrance & Torrance, 1972). The TTCT has been translated into over 35 languages, is the most widely used test of creativity, and its 40 years of longitudinal studies support its predictive validity (Kim, 2007).
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The Rainbow Project Sternberg (2009) suggested it is possible to increase excellence and diversity
simultaneously in higher education admissions. Sternberg’s theory of successful intelligence (Sternberg, 1997, 1999) postulates that intelligence has three com- ponents: creative skills in generating novel ideas, analytical skills in discerning whether they are good ideas, and practical skills in implementing the ideas and persuading others of their worth. The Rainbow project measures creativity by multiple-choice items and by performance-based items (Sternberg, Grigorenko, & Jarvin, 2006). The addition of creativity measures to standardized admissions tests provided better predictive power for first-year college academic performance and reduced ethnic-group differences compared to standard admission tests in the U.S. (Sternberg et al., 2006). As a result, Tufts University now includes creativity assessment as part of the college admission procedures (Sternberg, 2008).
School assessments, like standardized tests, often emphasize analytical and memory-based skills. Success in life depends of a broader range of abilities than conventional tests can measure. For example, memory and analytical abilities may be sufficient to produce high grades in science courses, but are probably not suffi- cient to produce outstanding research. In particular, outstanding research must be creative in generating ideas for theories and/or experiments, analytical in discern- ing whether ideas are good, and practical in getting ideas funded and accepted by competitive refereed journals. Sternberg’s theory of successful intelligence (Sternberg, 1997, 1999) provides one basis for improving the prediction of stu- dents’ success and possibly for establishing greater equity and diversity (Bowen, Kurzweil, & Tobin, 2006). It suggests that broadening the range of skills tested in order to go beyond analytic skills and to include practical and creative skills as well, might significantly enhance the prediction of undergraduate performance beyond current levels.
CONCLUSIONS
Creativity leverages intelligence and is a better predictor of creative accom- plishments than is IQ (Kim, 2008b). Including creativity as an additional cri- terion to standardized tests and alternative assessments could benefit minority groups by reducing or eliminating the various cultural biases present in traditional standardized tests. Creativity assessment may allow students to be assessed based on their actual cognitive ability rather than their ability to adapt to the culture of the majority, especially when the assessment minimizes verbal components (Jel- len & Urban, 1989; Torrance, 1977). Creativity plays a role in and is related to
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intelligence; however, Kaufman (2010) states that ethnic differences in creativity are rare. He argues that the use of creativity in college admission assessment may reduce ethnic bias resulting in an increase in fairness in admission decisions (Kaufman, 2010). The use of creativity in standardized testing may place minori- ties on equal ground with the majority culture in ways that traditional standard- ized tests have failed or are incapable of doing.
Developing culturally competent assessments should not be the only answer to cultural fairness. In addition to culturally fair assessment, other accommo- dations should be made for individuals with culturally diverse backgrounds to minimize the distortions that arise from their specific disadvantages. Culturally competent assessment is more than just culturally fair testing (Skiba et al, 2002). Addressing test bias is only the tip of the iceberg. Culturally competent assess- ment requires the interpretation of test results to inform educators’ and admin- istrators’ identification of educational contexts that may methodically increase the disadvantages of these students and then develop interventions to alleviate these disparities (Skiba et al, 2002). Moreover, considering cultural background should not be focused only on race, ethnicity, or language. Broader cultural fac- tors should also be considered including, but not limited to, religion, gender, age, social class, sexual orientation, and others. This requires not only culturally fair assessment, but infusion of multicultural issues in teaching methods and cur- riculum development to attend to the special needs of culturally diverse students (Villegas & Lucas, 2002). Therefore addressing cultural bias in testing requires a multimodal intervention.