How creative thinking assessment could provide a model for broader change

When he was a young teacher, Professor Lucas helped develop the Oxford Certificate of Educational Achievement in the UK, a forerunner to the digital learner profiles he advocates today.

He has been ‘trying to describe how students are developing rather than where they have apparently failed the tests the system sets them’ ever since.

The statement is shared by Rethinking Assessment, an organisation he co-founded in the UK to learn from best practice and ‘broaden and modernise assessment to fully and fairly prepare young people for a dynamic world’.

Professor Lucas’s work – including with the Global Institute of Creative Thinking, the Centre for Real-World Learning and as chair of the advisory board for the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) Creative Thinking Test, has given him a unique perspective on how reforms in curriculum, teacher practice and assessment can influence change.  

It has also resulted in resources to help education systems, policymakers and school leaders make changes they can evaluate, such as this field guide to assessing creative thinking in schools developed with principals and teachers in Western Australia.

Professor Lucas says that while he originally underestimated the power of assessment and school accountability, he came to learn they have ‘profound roles’ in improving education. ‘As the saying goes, what gets measured gets done in schools,’ he says.

Professor Lucas will share his insights on assessment, and the value of new approaches being undertaken to evidence 21st century skills (or complex dispositions as he prefers to describe them) at Research Conference 2025 in February.

He will discuss how new ‘more holistic and nuanced approaches’ to valuing, teaching and measuring Critical and Creative Thinking could provide a model for system change in other areas.

Bringing it all together

Positive reforms have been occurring globally, with an increasing focus in curriculum on students being able to understand key concepts and develop skills to apply knowledge to meaningful problems, Professor Lucas says.

As well as these competencies, student dispositions and capabilities are also being built in, with countries like Canada, Korea, Singapore, China and Finland increasingly acknowledging links between the elements.

Professor Lucas says reforms to improve teaching practice have been slower and mired in differences of opinion.  ‘The knowledge-rich, direct-instruction lobby is powerful and enjoys contesting anything to do with problem-based learning, even when the evidence does not support this,’ he explains.

‘It’s all too easy to frame educational debate in simplistic binary terms when in truth, common sense and a growing body of research shows that society today needs knowledgeable and capable young people who are able to flourish in a complex world.’

Understandably, change in schools is associated with fears about increasing teacher workloads.

‘I would argue it’s not about adding in more content, or competencies, or more pedagogies or new assessment demands but about better integration and stopping doing some things,’ Professor Lucas says.

Learn more

Professor Bill Lucas is a keynote speaker at ACER’s Research Conference 2025 Transforming learning systems – enabling holistic growth for all students in Melbourne on 6 and 7 February.

See the full program and list of speakers.