Chinese Language Teachers’ Evaluation On The Creativity Of Composition: Current Situation And Influencing Factors

In the primary and secondary education context,how to cultivate students’ creative writing has always been an important topic for educators.However,the reality shows that many efforts made by teachers in this area have failed to achieve the desired results.The development of students’ creative writing is influenced by many factors.The lack of the teachers’ evaluation on the creativity of composition may be one of the important factors.Therefore,this study aims to investigate the current situation of Chinese language teachers’ evaluation on the creativity of composition and to examine the relationship between teachers’ characteristics,student factors,environmental factors and teachers’ evaluation on the creativity of composition under the background of Chinese writing teaching.We will further explore whether the intervention on teachers’ evaluation on the creativity of composition would have a positive impact on students’ creativity of composition and teachers’ evaluation on that.The whole research consisting of 7 studies which was divided into three parts:Study 1 aimed to explore the current situation of Chinese language teachers’ evaluation on the creativity of composition in junior high school.It was found that less than one third of the compositions attained teachers’ evaluation and feedback on its creativity through analyzing the written evaluation of 1774 compositions(nearly 70,000 words)from 61 teachers,and that different teachers’ evaluation on creativity of composition varied.To explain the reasons behind the findings,the second part(study 2,3,4)examined the influences of three factors on teachers’ evaluation on the creativity of composition,including teacher characteristics,student factors,and environmental factors.Study 2 examined the relationship between teacher characteristics and their evaluation on the creativity of composition.Results showed that teachers who had any of the three characteristics(agreeing with the idea that student writing should be a creative activity;agreeing with the effectiveness of the composition evaluation;had a higher self-efficacy in creative writing)tended to give more compositions evaluation feedback on its creativity.Teachers who had any of the three characteristics(agreeing with the effectiveness of composition evaluation function;had a higher self-efficacy in creative writing;had more creative writing achievements)mentioned creative evaluation standards in more compositions.Study 3 aimed to explore the influence of student factors on teachers’ evaluation on the creativity of composition.Study 3a examined the influence of student’s handwriting quality and creativity level of composition on teachers’ evaluation on the creativity of composition.The results showed that those compositions with higher handwriting quality and high level creativity of composition received significantly higher scores regarding creativity.Compared with those compositions with lower handwriting quality,compositions with higher handwriting quality received more feedback on language creativity.Study 3b examined the influence of familiarity between teachers and students on teachers’ evaluation on the creativity of composition.The results showed that teachers who were unfamiliar with the students were more involved in the evaluation process on the creativity of composition and tended to give creative evaluation feedback to more compositions.Study 4 explored the influence of environmental factors on the evaluation on the creativity of composition.Study 4a examined the influence of evaluation time and creativity level of composition on teachers’ evaluation on the creativity of composition.Their eye movement patterns were recorded.The results suggested that teachers with limited time to evaluate student compositions were inclined to underestimate the content creativity of compositions with the high level creativity,and that when no time limit was given,the amount and duration of gazes on the compositions with high level creativity were significantly more and longer than those under other experiment conditions.Study 4b aimed to inspect the specificity of creative evaluation criteria and creativity level of composition on teacher’s evaluation on the creativity of composition.The results showed that teachers could accurately determine the creativity level of the composition regardless of the specificity of the creative evaluation criteria,and that the specific creative evaluation criteria increased teachers’ attention to the emotional creativity of the composition.Study 5 adopted the pre-and post-test design of the control group and conducted a one-semester intervention for teachers on evaluation of the creativity to explore the impact of the interventions on students’ creativity and teachers’ evaluation on creativity of compositions.The results showed that the creative self-efficacy of the students in the intervention group was significantly higher than that of the control group.The intervention significantly increased the teachers’ feedback on the creativity of students’ compositions.Under the conditions of this study,the following conclusions could be drawn based on the results of these 7studies:(1)In the daily composition evaluation of teachers,the attention paid to the creativity of students’ compositions was not sufficient;(2)The teacher’s view of creativity of composition,their view of composition evaluation,their creative efficacy of writing,and their creative achievement of writing were all related to the evaluation on the creativity of compositions;(3)The handwriting quality of students affected the teacher’s evaluation feedback on the language creativity;(4)Familiarity between teachers and students affected the degree to which the teachers involved in the evaluation of compositions,and further affected the evaluation feedback on the creativity of the compositions;(5)The teacher underestimated the content creativity of the compositions with high level of creativity under limited time condition;(6)The specific creative evaluation criteria was beneficial to increase the teachers’ attention of creativity in all the aspects of compositions;(7)Appropriate interventions on the evaluation on the creativity of compositions promoted the students’ creative self-efficacy in composition and increased the teachers’ evaluation feedback on the creativity of student’s compositions.