The hidden loss of creative potential at school: Is girls’ creative potential under-identified?

Abstract

Gender disparity is increasingly visible in creative achievement as people age despite there being little evidence for gender differences in creative potential. The source of gender disparity has been explained in several aspects including thinking potential, age, personality, and beliefs. However, the way creative potential is identified at school is understudied as a source of gender disparity. The present study aimed to examine the gender difference in the creativity gap—defined as the discrepancy in the creative potential that students exhibited between inside and outside of school to provide insight into the gender disparity. The study analyzed 553 South Korean students’ responses to a 36-item questionnaire (Creative Activity and Accomplish Checklist) using diagnostic classification models to obtain diagnostic information for individual students’ creativity gaps between inside and outside of school. The results indicated that the creativity gap was pronounced as evidenced by a substantial number (14.4%≤Gap≤ 20.6%) of students’ creative potentials being under-identified at school. The creativity gap was significantly more noticeable in girls while no significant gap was found in boys, implying that girls were at a higher risk of loss of creative potential at school than boys. Girls tended to be lower in creative self-efficacy than boys. Moreover, the lower creative self-efficacy, the more creativity gap for girls in four domains while this pattern was held for only one domain in boys. The implications were discussed in terms of the school climate as well as the cultured beliefs about a traditional gender stereotype.