Modeling the contribution of grit, hope to perceptions of creativity among Chinese college EFL teachers

Although the importance of creativity is recognized in education, there is a dearth of research on how teachers’ commitment to students’ creative development is influenced by positive constructs. Therefore, the present study has examined how grit and hope facilitate teachers’ perceptions of creativity based on a modified Teaching for Creativity Scale (TCS) via the lens of positive psychology. For this purpose, data were gathered from 101 English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers. Then two structural models were constructed by partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) to examine the relationships among two sub-dimensions of grit: persistence of effort (PE) and consistency of interest (CI), hope, and TCS and self-perceived creativity (SPC). Results suggest that the revised instrument, TCS indicated high reliability and validity with a 4-factor structure. Secondly, there were significantly positive bivariate correlations among grit, hope, TCS, and SPC. Thirdly, the final two models fit the data sufficiently and CI positively affected both TCS and SPC through the mediator, hope. In contrast, PE could only directly predict TCS, not hope or SPC. Educational implications are also offered.