Teachers don’t judge all kids’ ability to think creatively equally, a recent study shows.
Subconscious biases appear to cloud teachers’ judgment of students’ creative ability, according to the results of the study that examines how homeroom teachers rated 243 elementary students’ capacity to “think or behave in an original way.”
Teachers were more likely to recognize as creative students who came from more-affluent households, were deemed better behaved, were native English speakers, and who were previously identified as gifted. Teachers used a far less holistic strategy to determine the creativity of students whom they labeled “behaviorally at risk,” those who qualified for free or reduced lunch, and English learners. Among this latter group of students, teachers rated student creativity based only on academic achievement in reading and math.
Students deemed “behaviorally at risk” received the least objective ratings by their teachers, according to the researchers. The better these students performed on creative tasks, the lower teachers scored them on originality.
“For these students, their disruptiveness may mask their potential,” said Sofiia Kagan, the lead author of the study and a graduate research assistant in the gifted and creative education program at the University of Georgia.
Overall, researchers concluded that teachers seemed to notice creativity “only for those groups of students who are more privileged than other students,” said Kagan, who warned that depriving certain groups of students from positive labels like “creative” could negatively impact their educational trajectory.
This matters more than ever now, as the value of creativity, in both the classroom and the workforce, has surged. Some college-based programs that train educators how to teach gifted students now refer to their programs as gifted and creative education. And students exposed to gifted programming, which is designed to provide more advanced and creative curricula, could reap advantages post-graduation, as industry leaders rank creativity as the No. 2 core job skill required of employees, according to the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2023.
Given the demand in today’s workforce for employees who can think creatively, all students would benefit from teachers who recognize and nurture creativity in the classroom.
Yet, as this study indicates, teachers may not be able to equitably identify students’ creativity. Nor is creativity considered an integral part of general education, though some experts say it should be.
“I believe that all students would benefit from problem-based learning and creative tactics,” Kagan said. “But there is a huge gap in teacher education and how to implement creativity in the classroom on a daily basis.”
Creativity is often missing from general education standards
Teaching standards don’t always emphasize or even recognize creativity, which could in turn explain teachers’ failure to notice or nurture it among their students.
A 2024 report in the journal Creative Education that took a deep dive into “creativity education” in the United States, individually and compared to other developed countries, revealed a “notable absence” of related policies and initiatives, especially in the nation’s PK-12 education system.
In turn, it found the U.S. education system ranked low in “creative competency” compared to those in other countries. The report pointed to an over-reliance on standardized assessments and curriculum constraints as factors preventing teachers from including creativity in their curriculum.
But in gifted courses, students are encouraged to problem solve, hone their creativity, and lean into original thinking.
“We’ve always valued creativity as one of the highest forms of intellectual productivity. Creativity is the heart of both personal expression and global innovation, making it important on both an individual and societal level,” Shelagh A. Gallagher, the president of the National Association for Gifted Children, wrote in an email.
Bias in rating student creativity: the latest obstacle to equitable gifted education?
But as this recent University of Georgia study suggests, teachers’ personal biases may prevent students from historically marginalized backgrounds from using their innate creativity to their advantage.
In the study, teachers were asked to rate students’ originality compared with others’ in the same grade level, responding to this question: In comparison to other 3rd (or 4th or 5th) graders you have taught, how much does each student below think or behave in an original way?
Teacher ratings of student creativity differed depending on student demographics and behavior, researchers reported. Notably, data from multiple previous studies also found that teachers commonly associate creativity in students to high academic performance, Kagan said.
Historically, efforts to identify gifted students have fallen along racial and socioeconomic lines.
In a 2023 report that examined the process of identifying gifted students in 3rd grade cohorts across three states, students who qualified for free or reduced-price lunch, were English learners, or were Black or Latinx were up to eight times less likely to be identified as gifted compared with their classmates who were white, Asian, not eligible for free/reduced-price-lunch, or native English speakers.
“A major barrier [to identifying gifted students] is teacher inability to see potential in particular groups of students,” Anthony Vargas, then the Manassas City, Va., district’s supervisor of gifted and talented and advanced programs, told Education Week in 2023, when he was named a Leader To Learn From. Vargas has since accepted a position as the director of the division of instructional programs with the Maryland education department’s advanced-academics and gifted and talented programs.
When Vargas headed up Manassas City public schools’ gifted and talented and advanced programs, he worked deliberately to change how teachers assessed “giftedness.” He broadened assessments to include the Scales for Identifying Gifted Students, or SIG-2, which uses a checklist of seven traits to identify gifted potential in students—including creativity.
During his tenure, participation in the district’s gifted program of students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds rose from 22% to 41%.
“We’re looking for the kid who seems like an outside-the-box thinker,” Amanda Jones, the gifted-resource teacher at the district’s Mayfield Intermediate School, told Education Week in 2023. Jones worked alongside Vargas in his initiative to widen the scope of students assessed for giftedness.
Kagan said she’d like to see giftedness identified and nurtured among all students.
“To be able to develop student creativity, we need to start with teachers,” she said. “We don’t teach teachers how, for example, to ask students questions, to listen to students, to do things to actually develop creativity in students.”
