Dear Brendan

I am sure Je Kan will provide you with the better explanation of your concerns related to creativity and productivity especially in relation to SAT and social formation. Meanwhile, please find my point of view as follows:

1.       Perhaps I agree with your boss, the “right” creativity or more appropriately “Innovation”  can bring better SAT results. At present, we are differentiating students according to their results by assembling them into sets. Top set, bottom set etc. Perhaps this approach is not that effective as expected as evidenced by the results  

2.       I think we should classify students according to their aptitude rather than results  and teach them accordingly

3.       For example, generally speaking, there are two types of people: one are “Blue Collar”, and others are “White Collar”

4.        Blue Collar learn through hand-on experience. The others can learn through conventional learning techniques. If you try to teach a blue collar student by using conventional techniques, you may find very challenging and difficult to induce concepts in them. It does not mean that they are not interested in learning. We are not applying the right approach to develop them  

5.       First we need to classify students into blue collar and white collar

6.       Second we need to further identify their aptitude toward their learning.

7.       Third we need to identify their learning style

8.    It will give you the right parameters to develop your learner-focused teaching & learning strategies 

8.       You may conduct a pilot study and assess the results. Depending on your learning & Teaching strategies, If your results are positive then it means you have influence educationally on your students and managed to gain social validation of your work and created a new social formation in terms of students learning

Regards

Aga