Polite Girls and Creative Boys? Students' Gender Moderates Accuracy of Teachers' Ratings of Creativity

Abstract

The aim of this study was to examine whether, and to what extent, teachers are able to recognize the creativity of their students. The study measured the creative abilities, creative attitude, creative activity, as well as intrinsic motivation, intelligence, and school functioning of 589 Polish high school students, while their teachers (N = 178) rated students' creativity. The structural equation model (SEM) demonstrated that the accuracy of teachers' ratings of students' creativity is generally low-the latent factor of students' creativity reliably, however weakly, predicted teachers' ratings. The accuracy of teachers' ratings was moderated by gender: Only in the case of male students did the latent creativity factor reliably predict teachers' ratings. Students' school functioning emerged as a key factor positively associated with the perception of students as creative.

Are Teachers' Implicit Theories of Creativity Related to the Recognition of Their Students' Creativity?

“…As implicit theories of creativity determine the standards of defining traits associated with creativity and judging people's behavior (Daskolia, Dimos, & Kampylis, ; Lee, Kim, Ryu, & Song, ; Runco, Johnson, & Bear, ), we expect that the dominant aspects in teachers' implicit theories of creativity will make them focus on different aspects of students' creativity, such as cognitive characteristics, personality, or motivational traits. This article builds on our previous study published in this journal (Gralewski & Karwowski, ), showing that students' gender may moderate the accuracy of teachers' ratings. We believe that these findings may be better understood when implicit theories are incorporated into explanatory models.…”

The relationship between school achievement and creativity at different educational stages

“…The reasons for the observed differences can be traced to a degree of objectivity in the methods for measuring school achievements; while grading, teachers may lower or raise the grades based on their teaching method goals (Woodruff & Ziomek, 2004). As creative students are not always welcome in the classroom (Gralewski & Karwowski, 2013;Karwowski, 2007;Scott, 1999;Westby & Dawson, 1995), it is plausible that their grades are below their abilities, hence they are often among the underachievers due to teachers' biases (Karwowski & Wloch, 2012;Kim, 2008).…”

Accuracy of teachers' judgments of students' cognitive abilities: A meta-analysis

“…Studies have been conducted on teachers' judgments of their students' intelligence (e.g., , giftedness (e.g., Hany, 1995;Pfeiffer & Jarosewich, 2007), metacognitive abilities (e.g., Carr & Kurtz, 1994), motivation (e.g., Givvin, Stipek, Salmon, & MacGyvers, 2001;Kaiser, Retelsdorf, Südkamp, & Möller, 2013;Urhahne et al, 2010), M A N U S C R I P T A C C E P T E D ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT 4 specific interests (e.g., Karing, 2009), school anxiety (e.g., Federer et al, 2001), self-concept (e.g., Marsh & Craven, 1991;Praetorius, Greb, Dickhäuser, & Lipowsky, 2010), and school conformity (e.g., Gralewski & Karwowski, 2013).…”