Developmental Trends And The Underlying Mechanism Of Creative Thinking For Primary And Middle School Students

Creativity has been described as the most important economic resource and a corecompetence required for students to survive in the future (Florida,2002; Shalley, Zhou,&Oldham,2004). And researchers have been devoting their attention to the developmentaltrends and the influencing factors of creativity. This dissertation was to investigate thedevelopmental trends and the mechanism on the three tasks, and to explore possibletask-specific findings on developmental trends and influencing factors. And the secondpurpose was to examine potential stage-specific and gender differences in the mechanism.According to the concept proposed by the confluence approach, creativity dependson cognitive, conative, and environmental factors that combine interactively (Amabile,1983,1996; Lubart,1999; Sternberg&Lubart,1995). Based on the confluence approach,the ecological systems model of creativity development by Yeh (2004) andself-determination theory, this thesis was to explore the mechanism of creative thinking.This dissertation contained a pilot study and two studies. The pilot study was to insureacceptable or excellent psychometric properties of the questionnaires employed in thisdissertation. Study1was designed to investigate the developmental trends of students’creative thinking, and to find out the possible pattern or shape underlying the trends.Another purpose of Study1was to examine whether there was gender difference on thedevelopmental level. Study2was designed to examine the relationship among students’creative thinking and parental parenting behaviors, school climate and their autonomousmotivation and creative self-efficacy. Besides, Study2was conducted to examinewhether the overall mechanism apply to different stages, boys and girls, and differenttasks. And through the two studies above, we endeavored to provide empirical evidencefor the domain generality or specificity of creativity.Data used in this dissertation was from the database of a longitudinal researchproject. In the pilot study, a series of analyses were conducted to provide reliability andvalidity evidence for the questionnaires used in our research. Study1comprises studentsfrom Grade3to11(for reason of senior high school entrance examination, students of Grade9were not included),1038boys and946girls. They completed Figure, Use andRealistic creative problem solving tasks. Study2comprises students from Grade4to11(Grade9was not included),957boys and848girls. Besides three kind of tasks, studentscompleted series of parenting: parental psychological autonomy support, parentalbehavioral control and parental psychological control and perceived school climate,academic self-regulation questionnaire, and creative self-efficacy questionnaire.SPSS13.0and LISREL8.70were employed to analyze the data. The results were asfollows:1. rCAB tasks used in this dissertation had good internal reliability and excellentinterrater reliability, good convergent and discriminant validity, certain criterion validity,and excellent construct validity. Other measures also had excellent reliability andvalidity.2. The developmental characteristics of primary and middle school students’ creativethinking(1) Overall, there was an increase of creative thinking with age/grade. Of all thegrades, Grade3scored the lowest. There was a leap in Grade4followed by a gentleperiod until Grade6. There was a second leap in Grade7and a peak in Grade8. Thenthere was a flat fading from then on until Grade11. Nevertheless, senior high schoolstudents scored higher than those primary school students. The three tasks had basicallythe same developmental trends as the total score, and meanwhile there were nuanceddifference.(2) As for gender difference, there was no gender difference in the total score. InGrade8and11, girls excelled boys significantly on Figure and Use tasks. There was nogender difference on Realistic creative problem solving.3. The relationship between creative thinking and the influencing factorsThe confluence approach of creativity gives serious consideration to both individualand environmental factors in explaining creativity. The ecological systems model ofcreativity development confirmed that the first3ecological systems—namely themicrosystem, the mesosystem, and the exosystem—dynamically and interactivelyinfluence creativity. Self-determination theory proposed that autonomy support vs.control influence an individual’s motivation and thus influence behavioral outcomes. Based on the theories above, and given the fact that family and school experience makeup the mesosystem for primary and middle school students, this study was designed tobuild up the model comprised of parenting, school climate, autonomous motivation,creative self-efficacy and creative thinking. Besides, the dissertation was to examine thestage-specific, gender-specific and task-specific mechanism. The overall results were asfollows:(1) Stage-general mechanism of creative thinkingFirst, creative self-efficacy partially mediated the relationship between autonomousmotivation and creative thinking. Controlled motivation was not related to creativethinking.Second, a thorough analysis of the variable-centered approach and person-centeredapproach revealed that parental autonomy support and behavioral control contributed tocreative thinking, and psychological control was nagatively related to creative thinking.Third, school climate predicted higher creative thinking, and autonomous motivationand creative self-efficacy acted as mediators between the relationships.Fourth, parental autonomy support, behavioral control, and school climate predictedcreative thinking through the mediating role of autonomous motivation and creativeself-efficacy.(2) Stage-specific mechanism of creative thinkingFirst, the influencing factors for different stages varied. For primary and senior highschool students, parental autonomy support, behavioral control and school climate jointlypredicted creative thinking, while for junior high school students, parental behavioralcontrol and school climate were the effective predictors.Second, the relative importance of the influencing factors varied according to thestage. From the point of nature of the predictors, supportive environment was moreimportant for primary and junior high school students, behavioral control was the salientpredictor for senior high school students. From the point of source, parents were moreimportant for primary students, and school climate was more important for junior highschool students.(3) There was gender difference in the mechanism. Parental behavioral control,school climate contributed to junior girls’ creative thinking through individual factors. But environmental factors could not predict junior boys’ creative thinking.(4) The relations among parenting, school climate, individual factors and creativethinking were the same among the three tasks and were basically the same as the relationsfor the overall creative thinking.The findings above described the developmental trends and pattern of creativethinking from Grade3to11. Furthermore, the findings confirmed that the ecologicalsystems model of creativity could powerfully explained individual differences instudents’ creative thinking. The dissertation advanced the literature mainly in four aspects.First of all, with a wide range of grades and quite a big sample, employing three kinds oftasks, this dissertation powerfully demonstrated that there was not a “fourth grade slump”,rather Grade4was a leap. And overall, creative thinking increased with age, with leaps,peaks and steady phases. Second, consistent with the theories mentioned above, parentingbehaviors and school climate had effects on creative thinking through the mediating rolesof individual factors. And meanwhile, there were findings that were not consistent withself-determination theory and those reflecting a culturally dissimilar perspective. To bespecific, among the three parenting behaviors, parental behavioral control was the mostsalient positive predictor of creative thinking. So, in order to nurture children’s creativethinking, parental behavioral control that comprised of necessary guidance and clear rules,was the most effective way. In other words, necessary guidance from parents and clearrules contributed to creative thinking. Third, besides the general mechanism mentionedabove, there was stage-specific mechanism. And what’s more, there was genderdifference in mechanism for junior high school students. These findings were consistentwith stage-environment fit theory, and to provide developmentally appropriateenvironment, one should take into account the factors such as the stage and gender.Fourth, while there was a nuanced difference in developmental trends for three tasks, themechanism was the same. These findings provided evidence that creativity was to somedegree domain specific and to some degree domain general.