Unlocking Teacher Professional Performance: Exploring Teaching Creativity in Transmitting Digital Literacy, Grit, and Instructional Quality

Abstract

Schools need teachers’ professional performance to ensure the quality of educational output. Therefore, this research explores teachers’ professional performance based on digital literacy, grit, and instructional quality mediated by teaching creativity. The research participants are 465 junior- and high-school teachers in Indonesia. Structural equation modeling (SEM) is utilized in the data analysis, along with common method bias and correlational and descriptive analyses. The results show a significant relationship between digital literacy, grit, and instructional quality and teaching creativity and teacher professional performance. Teaching creativity also has a significant relationship with teachers’ professional performance and mediates the influence of digital literacy, grit, and instructional quality on teachers’ professional performance. This finding promotes a new empirical model of the causal relationship between digital literacy, grit, instructional quality, and teacher professional performance through teaching creativity. Consequently, it is proposed that teaching creativity, grit, digital literacy, and high-quality instruction can all improve teachers’ professional performance. Therefore, in order to advance teachers’ professional performance in the future, practitioners and researchers should discuss, modify, and possibly even adopt the new empirical model.

Keywords

• digital literacy
• grit
• instructional quality
• teaching creativity
• professional performance