What Affects How Pre-service and In-service Teachers Rate Elementary Students’ Creativity?: Demographic and Psychological Interactions

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Abstract

This study examines how elementary students’ demographic characteristics, raters’ demographic and personality attributes, and their interactions influence creativity evaluations. Participants (n=310) were pre-service and in-service teachers or other undergraduate and graduate students majoring in education-related fields. Participants evaluated elementary students’ responses to a verbal divergent thinking task and completed self-report measures including scales for Teaching for Creativity, Openness to Experience, Authoritarian Personality, and demographic information. Key findings revealed that controlling for the expert-judged creativity of the student responses, the interaction between students’ race and gender emerged as the most significant predictor of creativity ratings, indicating potential implicit biases in teacher ratings of creativity. We discuss these findings and their potential implications for creativity assessment in education.

Authors

• Sofiia Kagan, University of Georgia

• Denis Dumas, University of Georgia