Rate My Professor Jeff Smith

Jeff Smith is Emeritus Professor in the College of Education at the University of Otago, where he served as Dean from 2020 to 2021 and Associate Dean for University Research Performance from 2016 to 2018, coordinating the university's participation in the 2018 Performance-Based Research Fund quality evaluation. He joined the University in 2005 after spending 29 years at Rutgers University as Chair of the Educational Psychology Department and Associate Dean of the Graduate School of Education. During that period, he also served for 18 years as Head of the Office of Research and Evaluation at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, where he collaborated on studies of learning in museums. Smith holds an A.B. from Princeton University and a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. In November 2023, he was appointed Emeritus Professor in recognition of his outstanding contributions to education prior to his retirement from the College of Education in December 2023.

A quantitative psychologist specializing in measurement, Jeff Smith's research interests include the psychology of aesthetics, educational assessment, instructional feedback, formative assessment, and learning in cultural institutions. He is the founding co-editor of the journal Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, former editor of Educational Measurement: Issues and Practice, and past president of the Society for the Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts. His achievements have earned him the Gustave Fechner Award for Outstanding Contributions to Empirical Aesthetics from the International Association of Empirical Aesthetics and the Rudolph Arnheim Award for Outstanding Achievement in Psychology and the Arts from Division 10 of the American Psychological Association. Key publications encompass the co-edited volume The Cambridge Handbook of the Psychology of Aesthetics and the Arts (Cambridge University Press, 2014), the book Scoundrels, Cads and Other Great Artists, and recent articles including 'Sources of self-efficacy beliefs in learning accounting: Does gender matter?' (Journal of International Education in Business, 2025), 'Self-efficacy in teaching mathematics and the use of effective pedagogical practices in New Zealand primary schools' (Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education, 2025), and 'The influence of three approaches to feedback on L2 writing task improvement and subsequent learning' (Studies in Educational Evaluation, 2023).