Study On The Relationship Between Cognitive Flexibility,Creative Personality And Creative Self-efficacy Of College Students

Education for creativity development has always been a hot research topic among education researchers both at home and abroad.The massiveness of education content,the wide range of education objects and the long education period are also the reasons why the research of innovation has never been on the decline.Higher education is the most important and primary stage after kids grow up to adults,so paying attention to college students' creative self-efficacy will vastly promote the development of their creativity.This research tries to analyze the current situation of undergraduates' creative self-efficacy,cognitive flexibility and creative personality through a series of data collected from questionnaires and interviews,and to discuss the relationship among the three factors,especially the latter two effects on the former.Finally,the paper puts forward suggestions to enhance college students' cognitive flexibility and creative personality to facilitate the development of their creative self-efficacy.Through the study,the writer wishes to popularize college students' sense of creation,enhance motivation to create,cultivate innovative thinking and create a good atmosphere of innovation for universities,and make its due contribution to the smooth development of educational causes.In this study,stratified cluster random sampling and simple random sampling were adopted to select 700 undergraduates of Northwest Minzu University as survey objects.636 valid questionnaires were collected,and the return rate is 90.86%.The study adopts three questionnaires: “Cognitive Flexibility Scale” which was revised by Zhao Bing,“College Students' Creative Self-Efficacy Scale” which was compiled by Yang Lihua,and the Chinese version of “Big Five Personality Scale” which was revised by Zhu Xiaojia.Coefficient of internal consistency in the three questionnaires are respectively: 0.825,0.890,and 0.740.Based on statistical analysis and discussion,the conclusion obtained as follow:1.Creative self-efficacy of college students is at medium high level;There is no significant difference in grade,nationality,whether an only child or not and parents' education level;There are significant differences in gender,major,whether he/she is a student cadre,hometown and score of last semester.To be more specific,male students' scores in creative self-efficacy,sensitivity,originality and fluency are all significantly higher than girls';college students majored in arts and history score significantly higher in sensitivity than those majored in science and engineering;student cadres perform better than ordinary students in flexibility and fluency factors;students came from cities get higher scores in fluency than those from countryside;students with higher curriculum scores also perform better in sensitivity,flexibility,originality and creative self-efficacy.2.The overall level of cognitive flexibility of college students is relatively low.There is no significant difference in major,nationality,whether an only child or not,hometown and education level of parents;There are significant differences in gender,grade,whether a student cadre,score of last semester.Specifically,male students score significantly higher than female students in flexible willingness and flexible efficacy;sophomores and junior students score significantly higher than freshmen and senior students in cognitive flexibility,flexible willingness and flexible efficacy;student cadres perform much better in each aspect of cognitive flexibility than those who did not serve as student cadres;cognitive flexibility and its flexible efficacy both indicate significant differences in grade.3.College students' creative personality is generally at medium level,and there are significant differences in whether he/she is a student cadre and hometown location.Specifically,student cadres get higher creative personality scores than other students;students from urban areas score significantly higher than students from rural or county areas.4.Via correlation analysis,stepwise regression analysis and mediating effect test,it is concluded that there are significant positive correlations among creative self-efficacy and its four factors,cognitive flexibility and its three factors,and creative personality.Moreover,both cognitive flexibility and creative personality play important roles in predicting creative self-efficacy and the former two can jointly predict the variation of creative self-efficacy by 29.5%.The creative personality of college students plays a partial mediating role between their cognitive flexibility and creative self-efficacy.Finally,based on the current situation of cognitive flexibility,creative personality and creative self-efficacy of college students,as well as the relationship between the three,the writer puts forward some specific educational suggestions: to enhance cognitive flexibility of college students from perspectives of gender,grade and score;family,school and society should work together to cultivate college students' creative personality;the mediating role of creative personality between cognitive flexibility and creative self-efficacy should be taken seriously by providing freshman orientation,internship opportunity,research guidance and so on.