Assessing creative productivity

This research investigated the potential for curricula at the intersection of the arts and the sciences to develop creative productivity of students. The purpose of this research was to develop a series of rubric assessments to evaluate the content and creative and higher order thinking on a variety of teacher-made lesson plans and student-made products. The research used an iterative process to identify the criteria for the rubrics. The content validity process involved the use of experts in the domains of art and science education, assessment, and creativity to identify important themes from the research base of each domain. Then the process continued to teachers of cross-curricular lesson plans, to provide insights into usefulness of the constructs in practical contexts. The final instrument was used to evaluate cross-disciplinary student products. These works of art were evaluated by a sample of art teachers with over 5 years of experience. The art teachers had attended professional development offered by the Innovation Collaborative evaluator on arts integration and the rubric. The resulting inter-rater reliability estimates ranged from moderate to excellent, for each of the four rubrics. The resulting rubrics can be used to assess work in research or classroom environments.