The Relationship Between High School Students' Subject Selection And Their Creativity In The Context Of New College Entrance Exam

Creativity is of great importance to individual and social development.Diversity of knowledge which affect creativity greatly was paid sustained attention from researchers.A large number of studies have shown that the relationship between them is complex;no matter whether this connection is examined from the perspective of multicultural experience or from the perspective of the same culture,findings remain mixed.We believe that an important reason for those inconsistencies is that diversity of knowledge and creative are assessed in different ways across studies.In recent years,under the background of implementing the new college entrance examination reform policy,some provinces and regions of China have applied the "choose 3 from6" subject selection mode.That is,students can choose any three subjects from the six(including physics,biology,chemistry,geography,history and politics),along with the three main subjects(Chinese,Mathematics and English)for their college entrance examination.This approach provides a relatively objective perspective for us to investigate the construct of the diversity of individual knowledge.Given this perspective,current study aims to take subject selections as indicators of diversity of individual knowledge and use a variety of tasks to investigate the creativity of high school students and furtherly explore the relationship between the diversity of knowledge and creativity.We also believe that the relationship between them may also be affected by factors such as intelligence,personality,and motivation.Therefore,in this study,we will explore the relationship between the afore mentioned constructs,that is diversity of knowledge and creativity of high school students and additionally exam the factors affect this relationship and the mechanism behind it.This study consists of four well-defined studies.Study 1 explored whether different subject selections could influence the domain-general creativity through the synergistic effect of the diversity of life experience.The study randomly selected 452 high school students who have finished subject selection in Shanghai.The creativity scores on figural imagination and alternative uses tasks(AUT)along with scores on Runco Ideational Behavior Scale(RIBS)of the participants in different grades(grade one,grade two,grade three),with diverse selection combination(pure sciences group,arts and sciences group)and diversity of life experience(high level group,low level group)were examined.The results showed that:(1)Students chose pure sciences subjects group scored significantly higher in the figural imagination and AUT tasks than students chose the arts and sciences group;(2)In the tasks of figural imagination,there was a significant interaction between grade and subject selection as well as selections and diversity of life experience.That is,in the third grade,the score of pure sciences subject selection was significantly higher than students chose combination of arts and sciences subjects.The score of participants with abundant life experience was significantly higher than that of with barren life experience with pure science subject's selection.In study 2a,we examined whether the relationship between different choice of subjects and domain-general creativity was affected by intelligence and intellect characteristics of openness.In this study,216 high school students of Shanghai were randomly selected as subjects.The Ravens Advanced Progressive Matrices,the Big Five Aspect Scales and creative tasks from Study 1 were used as research materials.The results showed that:(1)Intelligence completely mediated the relationship between choices of subjects and domain-general creativity(figural imagination tasks and AUT tasks);(2)The intellect characteristic of openness did not have a significant mediating effect between different subject combinations and domain-general creativity.In study 2b,we further examined the relationship between different choices of subjects and domain-general creativity,and whether it was influenced by motivation.This study randomly selected 217 high school students of Shanghai.The Need for Cognition Scales and creative tasks from Study 1 were used as research materials.The results showed that the need for cognition marginally moderated the relationship between different combinations of subject selection and AUT flexibility.In study 3,we aimed to explore the relationship between different combinations of subject's selection and domain-specific creativity,and whether the relationship between them was different from the relationship of the domain-general creativity.This study randomly selected 215 high school students of Shanghai,and their scores in the domain-specific creativity(the pen designing task)were measured and effect of the selection of subjects(pure sciences combination,arts and sciences combination)and gender(male and female)are investigated.The results showed that students with pure sciences subject selection also scored significantly higher on the domain-specific creativity than those with arts and sciences combination.And gender had significant main effects on fluency and flexibility dimensions for the pen designing task.In general,under the conditions of this study,the following conclusions can be drawn:(1)Different subject selections of high school students were correlated with their creativity to some extent: both in domain-general fields(figural imagination tasks and AUT tasks)and in domain-specific fields(the pen designing task),students with pure sciences combination selection had a significantly higher level of creativity than students with arts and sciences combination.(2)Intelligence completely mediated the relationship between different combinations selection of subjects and domain-general creativity(figural imagination tasks and AUT tasks): compared with the students chose arts and sciences subjects group,students with pure science subject selections had stronger intelligence in reasoning,so they performed better in the domain-general creativity(figural imagination tasks and AUT tasks).(3)The need for cognition marginally moderated the relationship between different combination of subjects and some divergent thinking ability(AUT flexibility).Under the low need for cognition,students with pure sciences subjects' choices scored significantly higher on AUT flexibility than students with arts and sciences selection;however,under the high need for cognition,there was no significant difference in the flexibility of AUT between the two combinations of subject selection.This study explores the relationship between the diversity of knowledge and creativity from the perspective of subject selection.The conclusions are helpful to understand the relationship between the diversity of knowledge and creativity.The mediating roles of intelligence and moderating roles of the need for cognition between the diversity of knowledge and creativity are also helpful to understand the mechanism under this connection.The conclusion of this study provides a theoretical basis for the cultivation of high school students' creativity,that is to say,in the cultivation of high school students' creativity,we should focus on the important role of subject selection,intelligence levels and the need for cognition levels.