Creative Assessment in Theological Education

Typical approaches to assessment, in higher education in general and in theological education in particular, require students to write essays, reflections, book reviews, and seminar presentations. In this paper, I explore the idea that more creative approaches to assessment are (1) theologically sound and (2) intrinsically motivating to both students and lecturers.

In my experience, many lecturers set the same topic every year. I am surprised that they don’t find this boring.  I do not deny that essays, exams, and book reviews are important ways of assessing cognitive understandings. However, there is much more to education than cognition. Students find these forms of assessment predictable and boring. Students and lecturers are much more than rational beings.

Humans are creative and emotional beings as well. “In the beginning God created . . . . God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good” (Genesis 1:1, 31).  A creative and emotional God made humans in God’s image.  God intends humans to express God’s creative and emotional character.

A creative and emotional God made humans in God’s image.  God intends humans to express God’s creative and emotional character.

I address three issues. First, using Genesis as a springboard, I explore some theological perspectives on the dominion mandate and its relationship to creativity. The dominion mandate finds expression in a creative life built around four aspects: “i. Building community (1.28: ‘be fruitful, multiply and fill the earth’); ii. Economic production and creation care (2.15: ‘till and guard’ Eden); iii. Meaning-making (2.19, 20: ‘naming’); iv. Rest, reflection and worship (‘sabbath’)”¹

Second, I examine neurological ideas, particularly the role of the right and left hemispheres in learning and education. I suggest that a rounded theological education, an education that produces students well equipped to practice and lead others in the characteristics of the dominion mandate, will necessarily incorporate approaches that utilise both the right and the left hemispheres. Third, as an expression of Wolterstorff’s injunction that curriculum and pedagogy “must lay heavy stress on creativity”, I survey some examples of creative assessment in theological education.²