Students' Divergent Thinking and Teachers' Ratings of Creativity: Does Gender Play a Role?

Abstract

The differences between genders regarding the properties of divergent thinking and teachers' ratings of students' creativity are the issue of the present research. Data gathered from three previous experimental studies in Greek primary school students (N total = 228) was used for this purpose. In these studies, divergent thinking tasks were assigned to students and teachers' ratings were collected. The results showed that there were indeed differences in performance — except in the subscale of originality — in favor of girls who were more likely to perform better when they had a male teacher. Teachers' ratings of creativity were not related to students' gender but to teachers' gender.