**3.1 The problem of the twenty first century: how the digital immigrants assess the digital natives?**

*"Our task, regarding creativity, is to help children climb their own mountains, as high as possible. No one can do more."*

*Loris Malaguzzi*

In the digital society changing fast, creativity is accepted as one of necessary basic skills of the twenty first century for professional and personal success [20]. For that reason, many countries have been focusing on the creativity in terms of their education process more and more. It has been a primary subject to determine and develop the creativity of the students in the early ages of them [48, 49]. So, reliable psychometric tests are necessary to select creative individuals and determine the potential of the creative individuals in the field [27, 28]. Consequently, the usage of the assessment scales that will measure the potential of the creativity of the individuals and can make automatic calculations, which are suitable for the conditions of the twenty first century, is not a choice but a necessity.

Education and instruction environments can be defined as the places preparing the individual for life. If it is the case, what kind of assessment scale(s) should we use to measure the creativity of these individuals? Teachers are not always the right people measuring or assessing the creativity in a best way. As an example of it, Torrance's [50] (the father of the creativity was an English teacher) 12-year-study can be given. According to the result of the study, the relationship between the assessment and the creative features of the students could not be found. The same students are seen to have shown their creativity in their adulthood [51]. The reason for this matter should be questioned. How much do teachers know their students? or how can teachers choose the students who have the creativity potential? If the teachers are expected to find answers for these questions, the system should also be regulated to serve for the aims of the teachers. So, where is the basis of the current system based on? Let's get ready to find out by going back in time.

The organizational processes, which see the creativity as a concrete aim, are very few. No matter thinking out of the box, being eager to take risk and being original are the words that are uttered frequently, it is open to discussion whether the system and decision-makers in the system truly want it. For example, the starting point of the current school-based education is based on the book of "The principles of Scientific Method", which is a book by mechanical engineer Frederick Taylor written in 1911 to

#### *Perspective Chapter: New Approaches to the Assessment of Domain-Specific Creativity DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.102311*

increase the productivity in the workplace. The "Taylorism" approach, which was put forward in his book, still has its effect on the education system. The reason why this approach had so much impact on the education can result from the fact that it was supported by the father of the American psychologist Edward Thorndike. Taylorism claims that the individuals should be placed based on their talents and supports the idea that the scale of the system should be based on the speed. Because, the measurement of the speed is easier than determining the individual's talent on a field. Therefore, to assessment people's ability, they were looked into how much they were fast. As a result of this, standardization was focused not on the individualism and creativity [ 52 ]. The fact that how much this approach serves to meet the requirements of the human profile needed in the twenty first century is open to discussion.

 Individuals grown up as digital natives [ 53 ] and known as the twenty first century individual, can be defined as game age or application generation [ 54 ]. If we want to assess this age's native, we should design a scale appropriate for the conditions of this age. While assessing the creativity, we should get used to it. If not, as the digital immigrants, how can we guide to the digital natives who have a great potential to contribute their potentials to the universe?

 When the scales are checked in the worldwide, it is clearly seen that using paperpen-tests have been replaced with the web based tests. This change shows itself not only in the format of the tests but also in the process of the assessments (see [ 55 ]). For example, PISA, which is a test applied globally, was planned to be in the computer based environment and delayed to 2022 due to the global pandemic, but even so, it is seen that the test was revised according to the needs and the conditions of the period. The change in the application and assessment in PISA has also been seen in the question styles. According to the announcement published on the formal website,


#### **Figure 3.**

 *A question related to creativity in PISA.* 

for the first time in the exam of PISA in 2022, students are expected to produce a visual artwork instead of giving a written answer or choosing one correct answer to measure the creative potentials of the students, The assessment includes open-ended tasks in which the answers do not have only one single answer but many of them [55]. This means that collecting answers from many students in the world and gives the hint of using computer-based (objective and automatic) assessment techniques. One example from the question of the PISA is shared below (**Figure 3**).

In addition to this, the tendency of preferring the subjective assessment approach to objective (and automatic) assessment is also observed in the field of creativity [44, 56–59]. This can be stemmed from the needs of the age. Furthermore, field experts should be open to progressive approaches to accelerate the growth of the proofs belonging to the assessment of the creativity [60].
