Thinking styles and conceptions of creativity among ...

Educational Psychology Vol. 31, No. 3, May 2011, 361–375

Thinking styles and conceptions of creativity among university students Chang Zhua* and Li-Fang Zhangb a Department of Educational Sciences, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, Free University of Brussels (VUB), Brussels, Belgium; bFaculty of Education, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong

(Received 2 August 2010; final version received 19 January 2011) Taylor and Francis CEDP_A_557044.sgm

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Educational 10.1080/01443410.2011.557044 0144-3410 Taylor 2011 0Article 00 Dr. [email protected] 000002011 ChangZhu & Francis (print)/1469-5820 Psychology (online)

This research aims to understand university students’ thinking styles and the relationship with their views of creativity. The Thinking Styles Inventory-Revised II was used to measure 13 thinking styles as defined in Sternberg’s theory of mental self-government and the Conceptions of Creativity Scales was used to inquire students’ views about the conditions for evaluating creativity from six aspects: intelligence, knowledge, style of thinking, personality, motivation and learning environment. Significant relationships were identified between thinking styles and conceptions of creativity. This research contributes to the understanding about the relationship between conceptions of creativity and thinking styles, and brings insights for educators about educational innovations, as one of the key objectives of educational innovations is to develop creativity of the younger generation. Keywords: thinking styles; creativity; university student

Introduction Creativity is central to today’s economy and societal development (Cortright, 2001; Florida, 2002) as new products, procedures and services call for creative personnel. Creativity is a topic of wide scope that is important at both the individual and societal levels for a wide range of task domains. At the individual level, creativity can lead to new ways of dealing with a job or daily life, and solving problems in a non-traditional way; at the societal level, creativity can lead to new scientific findings, new inventions, new procedures and social reforms. To educate the knowledge society and innovation economy, educational institutes must provide students with opportunities to engage in creative thinking (Sawyer, 2006). Some schools and universities have already transformed their curricula to emphasise creative teaching and learning. But these transformations have been limited to some elite schools and limited regions in some countries. A systematic implementation of creative teaching and learning seems to be still far from in place to meet the needs of the new century (Bereiter, 2002; Hargreaves, 2003).

*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected] ISSN 0144-3410 print/ISSN 1469-5820 online © 2011 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/01443410.2011.557044 http://www.informaworld.com

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C. Zhu and L.-F. Zhang


In studying the nature of creativity, many scholars have argued for the importance of intellectual styles in creativity (Noppe, 1996; Selby, Shaw, & Houtz, 2005). The studies of Zhang (2002) and Zhang and Sternberg (2005, 2006) have proposed that some thinking styles are more creativity-generating, while some thinking styles are more norm-favouring. Available research indicates that there is a need to understand how creativity is conceived and how thinking styles are related to conceptions of creativity. Although literature suggests some link between thinking styles and creativity (Farrell, 2001; John-Steiner, 2000), empirical evidence is needed for this conceptual link. This research aims at examining university students’ thinking styles, their conceptions of creativity and the relationship between the two constructs. Below, we first introduce these two concepts and the importance of making a connection between them. Thinking styles Thinking styles refer to people’s preferred ways of using the abilities that they have. Sternberg’s (1988) identified 13 thinking styles based on the theory of mental selfgovernment. Zhang (2002) reconceptualised the 13 styles into three types. Type 1 thinking styles tend to be more creativity-generating. They denote higher levels of cognitive complexity, including the legislative (being creative), judicial (evaluative of other people or products), hierarchical (prioritising one’s tasks), global (focusing on the holistic picture) and liberal (taking a new approach to tasks) styles. Type 2 thinking styles suggest a norm-favouring tendency. They denote lower levels of cognitive complexity, including the executive (implementing tasks with given orders), local (focusing on details), monarchic (working on one task at a time) and conservative (using traditional approaches to tasks) styles. Type 3 styles, including the anarchic (working on whatever tasks that come along), oligarchic (working on multiple tasks with no priority), internal (working on one’s own) and external (working with others), may manifest the characteristics of the styles from both Type 1 and Type 2 groups, depending on the stylistic demands of a specific task. The theory has been operationalised through several instruments, including the Thinking Styles Inventory (TSI; Sternberg & Wagner, 1992), the Thinking Styles Inventory-Revised (TSI-R; Sternberg, Wagner, & Zhang, 2003) and the Thinking Styles Inventory-Revised II (TSI-R2, Sternberg et al., 2007). Conceptions of creativity Creativity is the ability to produce work that is: (1) relatively novel; (2) high in quality; and (3) appropriate to the task at hand (Amabile, 1996; Lubart, 1994; Sternberg and Lubart 1995). In studying the nature of creativity, many scholars have elaborated on the characteristics of creative individuals (Dollinger, Palaskonis, & Pearson, 2004; Jalil & Boujettif, 2005; Selby et al., 2005). According to the Investment Theory of Creativity (Sternberg & Lubart, 1991, 1995), creativity requires a confluence of six resources: intelligence, knowledge, style of thinking, personality, motivation and learning environmental context. Sternberg and Lubart (1995) dissected the roles of six conditions or resources that can contribute to individual’s creativity. Intelligence is the most commonly regarded factor to determine one’s ability to be creative. Sternberg (1985) stated that three intellectual abilities are especially important for creativity: the synthetic ability to see problems in new ways, the analytic ability to recognise which ideas are worth pursuing, and the practical ability to convince others of the value of one’s ideas. He stressed that the confluence of these abilities is important. Knowledge


Educational Psychology

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refers to how much one knows about a field to move it forward. However, Frensch and Sternberg (1989) also pointed out that a closed perspective on knowledge about a field could result in not moving beyond the way in which a person has experienced problems in the past. Thinking styles are very relevant to creativity as they reflect people’s preferred ways of using the abilities that they have. For example, a legislative style, a preference for thinking in novel ways of one’s own choice, is important for creativity (Sternberg, 1997). However, creative thinkers do not necessarily stick to or possess only one thinking style, it is very helpful if one is able to use other thinking styles. Lubart (1994) and Sternberg and Lubart (1995) stressed the importance of certain personality attributes such as a person’s willingness to take sensible risks and willingness to overcome obstacles for creativity. Motivation is also important for creative work. Intrinsic, task-focused motivation is essential for people to focus truly on creative work in an area. Next to all these internal resources, the external environment can also play an important role in which it can support and reward, or suppress creative ideas. In other words, the creativity of an individual can be identified from these six aspects. For example, people who are more creative are more likely to think divergently, exhibit higher levels of cognitive complexity and flexibility, and are better at coping with unstructured and ambiguous situations (Kaufman, 2002; Sternberg, 2006). However, few empirical studies have been conducted using these elements to understand the individual profiles of how they conceive creativity. Relationship between thinking styles and conceptions of creativity Zhang and Sternberg (2009) stressed the conceptual link between thinking styles and creativity. However, they pointed out that empirical research on the relationship between intellectual styles and creativity is far from sufficient. Several scholars have argued for the importance of thinking styles in creativity (e.g. Farrell, 2001; JohnSteiner, 2000; Noppe, 1996; Selby et al., 2005). Other studies have also proposed the conceptual link between creativity and individual thinking styles. For example, Kaufman (2002) suggested that individuals with a holistic mode of thinking are critical for creativity; other scholars argued that other modes of thinking are also needed for creativity (Sinatra, 1984). Kirton (1976) developed an adaptive innovative theory in order to explain cognitive tendencies and problem-solving styles. He described adaptors as individuals who prefer to ‘do things better’ and innovators as people who prefer to ‘do things differently’. Kirton’s theory linked cognitive styles directly to individual’s creativity orientation. According to Kirton (1976), people with innovative cognitive styles tend to produce more original ideas and the adaptors tend to improve things within the existing framework. Both cognitive styles can be valuable for organisational creativity. Recent research suggests that in order to be creative, a wide repertoire of thinking styles, especially Type 1 styles play a critical role (Zhang & Sternberg, 2009). Some studies have attempted to empirically examine the relationship between thinking styles and creativity. However, measuring creativity directly has always been a challenge for many researchers. Some measurements have attempted to assess creative achievement or output (e.g. the Creative Achievement Questionnaire; Carson, Peterson, & Higgins, 2005). Some other measurements that claimed to evaluate creativity actually measure creative potential or conditions for creativity (e.g. Creative Personality Scale – Gough, 1979; intellect – Goldberg, 1992; Torrance tests of creative thinking – Torrance, 1974). As such, some previous studies failed to distinguish conditions of creativity and creativity itself, for example by measuring creativity


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through measuring personality traits, divergent thinking, problem-solving and problem-recognising capabilities or other individuals’ creative profiles. By reviewing the literature, we found that many previous studies linking thinking styles and creativity actually examined or postulated the relationships between thinking styles and conditions of creativity, such as personality, motivation and intelligence. Therefore, in this study, we aim at explicitly studying the relationship between thinking styles and conceptions of creativity, which refer to the conditions or resources of creativity as conceptualised by Sternberg and Lubart (1995). This research builds on the studies of leading scholars in this field (Amabile, 1996; Guilford, 1950; Sternberg, 2006; Sternberg & Lubart, 1995; Zhang & Sternberg, 2009). Cognitive style, learning style and thinking style are three popular style constructs in the field of styles (Zhang & Sternberg, 2006). Some studies have been conducted involving participants in different cultures about thinking styles. Empirical studies supporting the conceptual link between thinking styles and conceptions of creativity would be very valuable for research in this domain. In addition, data concerning the way students from different fields of study and different educational institutions conceptualise creativity are needed. Research questions and hypotheses The research addresses three questions: (1) What is the reliability and validity of a new inventory, Conceptions of Creativity Scales (CCS) and the TSI-R2, in this study? (2) Is there any group difference in thinking styles and conceptions of creativity by gender, fields of study and educational institution? (3) How are thinking styles related to conceptions of creativity? Regarding the third research question, this research put forth the following hypotheses based on the theoretical assumptions developed by Zhang and Sternberg (2009). Theoretically, individuals who score high on Type 1 styles are predicted to stress the importance of Thinking for creativity, as they may stress more on the importance of way of thinking and allow for novelty and seek for creative strategies; individuals score high on Type 2 styles are predicted to give more importance on Knowledge, as Type 2 style individuals are norm-favouring and therefore stress more on structured knowledge; individuals score high on Type 3 styles are predicted to regard Environment as an important factor for creativity, as they are more context-dependent, and therefore they would see environment as a key influencing factor for the creativity of persons. In addition, we predict that Type 1 style individuals would regard Motivation as an important factor for creativity, as previous studies (Fan & Zhang, 2009) confirmed that Type 1 styles were positively correlated with achievement motivation; we predict that Type 2 style individuals would also regard Intelligence to be an important factor, as they are usually more conservative in thinking and may see the level of Intelligence as a condition for a person’s creativity. We also predict that Type 3 style individuals would see Personality as a condition for creativity, as they are usually less organised and may think of a person with a strong will and persistence is inclined to be more creative. However, in general, all six influencing factors are relevant and are related to all types of thinking styles. The degree of influence or the predicting power of each factor may be different for individuals of different type of thinking styles.



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Methods Participants In total, 917 Chinese university students from six universities in China, including five universities in Beijing and one university in Chengdu, participated in this study. The six universities can be classified into four types: national comprehensive university, national comprehensive and professional university, provincial comprehensive university and municipal professional university. Participants were from both bachelor and master studies and from different disciplines, including social sciences (economics, law, management, history, communication sciences, education sciences, psychology, literature and languages), sciences (mathematics, statistics, geology and chemistry) and art (music editing for media, fashion design, art design, image and animation). Among them, 645 students were female, and 268 students were male. The average age of the students was 21.67 years. The majority of the participants (n = 730) were bachelor students, and 179 were master students. With regard to the fields of study, 485 students were from social sciences, 245 students were from sciences studies and 185 students were from art studies. Instruments Thinking Styles Inventory-Revised II (TSI-R2) The first inventory used in this study is the TSI-R2 (Sternberg et al., 2007) comprised of 65 statements. This inventory assesses the 13 thinking styles in Sternberg’s theory. To respond to each statement, the participants were asked to rate themselves on a seven-point scale about their preferred ways of solving problems, carrying out tasks and making decisions. The Chinese version of the TSI-R2 used in this study has already been applied in several previous studies (e.g. Zhang, 2009, 2010). Studies using both the English and Chinese versions of the TSI-R2 indicated that all scales have satisfactory internal reliabilities, with Cronbach’s alphas between .63 and .86 (Higgins & Zhang, 2009; Zhang, 2009, 2010). Conceptions of Creativity Scales (CCS) The second inventory inquires about conceptions of creativity. This inventory assesses to what extent that people think the following six aspects are important for identifying student creativity: intelligence, knowledge, style of thinking, personality, motivation and learning environmental context. The CCS were developed based on the Investment Theory of Creativity (Sternberg & Lubart, 1991, 1995), which identifies these six factors as important conditions or resources for creativity. Twenty-four items were constructed, with four items measuring each scale. The questions were first pilot-tested with a small sample of 15 participants to verify if: (1) the items were clearly understandable; (2) the questionnaire was measuring what it intended to measure; (3) it is appropriate for the sample; and (4) the scales were reliable. Feedback from the pilot sample indicated that the questionnaire was valid and the reliability of the scales was acceptable (Cronbach’s alphas between .60 and .85). After that, the CCS was included in the survey for the participants of this study. The participants were asked to respond on a six-point scale that to what degree they think a certain aspect is important for creativity. A sample item for the dimension of intelligence is ‘the student is good at coming up with ideas that other people don’t think of’; a sample item for the dimension

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of knowledge is ‘the student knows well what other people have done in his/her field’; a sample item for the dimension of style of thinking is ‘the student enjoys dealing with tasks in new ways’; a sample item for the dimension of personality is ‘the student is willing to take sensible risks’; a sample item for the dimension of motivation is ‘the student is eager to act in new ways’; and a sample item for the dimension of environmental context is ‘the student finds himself/herself in a learning environment that allows him/her to think or act in new ways’. Data analysis First of all, reliability of the scales and factor analysis of the two inventories were examined. Secondly, descriptive analysis and multivariate analyses of variance (MANOVA) were conducted to understand the effects of independent variables (gender, fields of study, institutions) and their interaction effects on students’ thinking styles and conceptions of creativity. In addition, regression analyses were performed to examine the relationship between thinking styles and conceptions of creativity.

Results Reliability and validity of the scales in the present study The factor analysis made on the data obtained from the TSI-R2 reveals that each item in all 13 scales had factor loadings above .40. Reliability analyses of the scales of the TSI-R2 showed that the Cronbach’s alphas were between .56 to .81 and were acceptable and comparable in magnitude to previous studies (Zhang, 2009, 2010), except for the alpha coefficient of the anarchic style, which was lower than in the previous studies. Exploratory factor analysis was conducted for the new inventory (CCS; Zhu & Zhang, 2010). Table 1 summarises the results of the exploratory factor analysis. Principal component analysis extracted six factors that accounted for 75.3% of the variance in the data. In addition, the confirmatory factor analysis for the CCS revealed that a fix-factor model was appropriate (x2/df < 3; CFI > .90; RMSEA < .07). The reliability of the scales of conceptions of creativity was satisfactory with Cronbach’s alphas between .61 and .84.

Descriptive results and group differences in thinking styles and conceptions of creativity The means and standard deviations of the TSI-R2 and CCS by sample groups and the alpha coefficients of each scale are reported in Table 2. In order to test the group differences by gender, fields of study and institutions, MANOVA analyses were conducted and the results are reported in Table 3. The results show that gender had significant effects on four thinking styles, namely legislative (p < .01), judicial (p < .05), liberal (p < .01) and internal (p < .05) thinking styles, with male students having scored significantly higher than females. The fields of study had significant effects on four thinking styles (legislative, liberal, internal and anarchic) and two conceptions of creativity (knowledge and personality). Posthoc tests showed that art students scored higher than students in social sciences in legislative and internal thinking styles (p < .05), and scored higher than students in sciences in liberal and anarchic thinking styles (p < .05). Students in sciences seemed


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Table 1. Factor structure of the Conceptions of Creativity Scale by EFA (principal component analysis with Oblimin rotation) and correlations between factors (Pearson correlation).


Intelligence Knowledge Thinking Personality Motivation Environment I1 I2 I3 I4 K1 K2 K3 K4 T1 T2 T3 T4 P1 P2 P3 P4 M1 M2 M3 M4 E1 E2 E3 E4 Knowledge Thinking Personality Motivation Environment

.67 .46 .62 .58 .39 .27 .14 .15 .16

.74 .82 .85 .49 -

.55 .58 .61 .72 -

.71 .60 .55 .64 -

.73 .63 .74 .56 -

.19 .15 .12 .20

.31 .13 .01

.23 .21

.29

.75 .79 .69 .63

Note: ‘-’ refers to factor loading smaller than .40 on the corresponding dimensions.

to regard knowledge to be more important compared to students in social sciences (p < .05). Art students seemed to regard personality to be more important compared to students in sciences (p < .05). No significant differences were found between gender groups and students in different fields of study with regard to their conceptions of the importance of intelligence, thinking, motivation and environmental context. Across institutions, differences were identified regarding two thinking styles (anarchic and oligarchic), with two resources contributing to creativity (knowledge and environment; p < .05). Post-hoc analyses show that students from the university with the profile of national comprehensive education scored lower in the scales of anarchic and oligarchic styles compared to students from the universities of municipal professional education. With regard to the contribution of knowledge and environment to

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Table 2.

Descriptive statistics for TSI-R2 and Conceptions of Creativity Scales.

Scale

Total sample

Sample by gender

Female


M TSI-R2 Legislative Executive Judicial Global Local Liberal Conservative Hierarchical Monarchic Oligarchic Anarchic Internal External Conceptions of creativity Intelligence Knowledge Thinking Personality Motivation Environment

SD

α

M

SD

Male M

SD

Sample by fields of study Social science & humanities M

SD

Science M

SD

Art M

SD

N = 910 5.04 1.02 .68 5.14 1.09 .72 4.97 1.02 .63 5.01 1.00 .60 4.64 1.11 .65 4.81 1.14 .81 4.53 1.10 .69 5.22 1.06 .70 5.19 1.06 .64 4.98 1.03 .65 4.47 1.07 .56 4.58 1.11 .62 4.92 1.17 .75 N = 689

n = 645 4.99 1.01 5.22 1.10 4.91 1.03 5.03 1.01 4.57 1.08 4.71 1.16 4.49 1.09 5.29 1.04 5.22 1.07 4.94 1.00 4.42 1.01 4.48 1.10 4.91 1.23 n = 468

n = 268 5.21 1.03 5.12 1.02 5.11 1.00 5.02 .97 4.67 1.08 4.99 1.12 4.46 1.14 5.24 1.03 5.25 1.05 5.07 1.03 4.40 1.12 4.66 1.15 4.87 1.13 n = 221

n = 485 4.99 1.02 5.18 1.09 4.98 1.03 5.02 1.01 4.68 1.11 4.83 1.13 4.56 1.05 5.23 1.06 5.24 1.28 5.04 1.01 4.48 1.09 4.53 1.10 4.98 1.18 n = 376

n = 245 5.10 1.04 5.26 .98 4.95 1.03 4.96 .98 4.62 1.05 4.67 1.18 4.46 1.08 5.32 .99 5.22 .99 4.92 1.02 4.32 1.04 4.58 .70 4.82 1.21 n = 176

n = 185 5.26 .99 5.03 1.14 5.05 1.01 5.08 1.01 4.59 1.13 5.04 1.14 4.53 1.19 5.20 1.01 5.05 1.08 4.94 1.07 4.62 1.03 4.81 1.13 4.89 1.17 n = 137

4.84 4.38 4.58 4.72 4.91 4.44

4.82 4.38 4.60 4.74 4.95 4.40

4.91 .72 4.39 .81 4.53 .73 4.67 .73 4.86 .72 4.54 1.08

4.84 4.35 4.57 4.46 4.83 4.45

4.88 4.70 4.63 4.24 5.08 4.39

4.80 4.49 4.75 4.61 4.78 4.42

.70 .92 .70 .72 .77 .96

.69 .84 .61 .65 .79 .83

.69 .96 .69 .72 .78 .92

.98 .93 .78 .72 .75 .95

.79 1.05 .64 1.16 1.09 1.10

1.02 1.11 .85 1.08 1.03 .72

creativity, students from universities of municipal professional education scored significantly higher than students from national comprehensive universities. In addition, interaction effects were found among the independent variables. The interaction effects of gender and fields of study were significant on the local and conservative thinking styles. The interaction effects of fields of study and institutions were significant on the anarchic and oligarchic styles, and three resources contributing to creativity (knowledge, thinking and environment). The interaction effects among the three independent variables (gender, fields of study and institution) were significant on the local thinking style. With regard to the importance of the six factors of conceptions of creativity, the results show that the respondents in this study regarded motivation and intelligence to be the most important factors for creativity, with a mean score of 4.91 and 4.84, respectively. Personality and thinking were regarded as secondary important factors for creativity, with a mean score of 4.72 and 4.58, respectively. Environment and knowledge were regarded as relatively less important factors for creativity, with a mean score of 4.44 and 4.38, respectively.


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Table 3. MANOVA results for group differences in thinking styles and conceptions of creativity. Independent variable Gender


Fields of study

Institutions

Gender × Fields of study Institutions × Fields of study

Gender × Fields of study × Institutions

Dependent variable Legislative Judicial Liberal Internal Legislative Liberal Internal Anarchic Knowledge Personality Anarchic Oligarchic Knowledge Environment Local Conservative Anarchic Oligarchic Knowledge Thinking Environment Local

F

Sig.

Partial η2

4.08 6.45 5.88 5.70 4.97 5.26 9.09 3.65 8.64 6.40 4.70 8.64 7.08 8.62 3.23 3.21 4.70 8.64 7.08 2.79 8.62 2.73

.044* .011* .016* .020* .026* .022* .003** .018* .003** .010* .034* .003** .008** .003** .040* .041* .034* .003** .008** .019* .003** .029*

.005 .012 .008 .007 .009 .010 .025 .012 .013 .014 .007 .023 .020 .024 .006 .006 .007 .024 .015 .011 .024 .009

*p < .05; **p < .01. Note: Only results with significant effects are retained in this table.

Predicting conceptions of creativity from thinking styles Table 4 summarises the regression analysis results predicting conceptions of creativity from thinking styles, controlling for age and gender. The results show that the importance of intelligence for creativity was positively predicted by several thinking styles of the three Types, namely Type 1 styles (hierarchical, liberal), Type 2 styles (executive, monarchical, local), Type 3 styles (oligarchic), and negatively predicted by judicial (Type 1) and conservative (Type 2) styles. The importance of knowledge was positively predicted by three thinking styles, hierarchical (Type 1), executive (Type 2) styles and negatively predicted by internal (Type 3) thinking style. The importance of thinking was predicted by liberal (Type 1) and local (Type 2) thinking styles. The importance of personality was positively predicted by monarchical and local (Type 2) thinking styles. The importance of motivation was positively predicted by global and liberal (Type 1) styles, and monarchical (Type 2) style; and negatively predicted by conservative (Type 2) style. The factor environmental context was only positively predicted by external (Type 3) thinking style.

*p < .05; **p < .01; ***p < .001.

βType 3 style F Change(Thinking styles) Sig. F Change(Thinking styles)

βType 2 style

R2age and gender R2total R2Thinking styles βType 1 style

.002 .253 .263 *.20 hierarchical *-.20judicial *.25liberal **.21executive **.28monarchical *.16local **–.21conservative *.22oligarchic 3.86 .000***

Intelligence

*-.21internal 1.95 .021*

*.22executive

.018 .126 .103 *.23hierarchical

Knowledge

Predicting conceptions of creativity from thinking styles.

Conceptions of creativity

Table 4.

— 2.68 .001**

*.20local

.009 .190 .189 *.24liberal

Thinking

— 1.84 .033*

*.17monarchical *.21local

.002 .139 .138 —

Personality


— 3.83 .000***

*.18monarchical *.–22conservative

.008 .252 .240 *.21global *.18liberal

Motivation

*.13external 1.47 .113

—

.004 .081 .083 —

Environment

370 C. Zhu and L.-F. Zhang


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Therefore, the hypotheses that Type 1 thinking styles are inclined to stress thinking and motivation as conditions for creativity are largely confirmed. The hypotheses that Type 2 thinking styles are more inclined to stress knowledge and intelligence as conditions for creativity are also largely confirmed, although associations with these two factors were found for Type 1, 2 and 3 thinking styles. The hypotheses that Type 3 styles are inclined to stress environment and personality as important factors for creativity are partly confirmed, with environment being identified as an important factor but the factor personality was not associated with Type 3 styles. In addition, the regression analyses showed that by adding the thinking styles as a block of variables revealed that the effect of thinking styles was significant on all conceptions of creativity except for the model for environment. Discussion In this study, we examined university students’ thinking styles and their conceptions of creativity and the interplay between the two. First of all, empirical evidence was provided with regard to the reliability and validity of the new inventory (CCS; Zhu & Zhang, 2010) and the TSI-R2 (Sternberg et al., 2007). Results indicated that the CCS provided empirical evidence with regard to the importance of the six factors in creativity. The six factor structure was verified in this study, and the results indicate that the confluence of these six factors contributed 75.3% in identifying creativity. Furthermore, based on the mean scores of the six factors, important insights are gained regarding how people perceive creativity and what factors are considered important in creativity. In general, the results indicate that motivation plays a foremost role in nurturing creative personnel. Intelligence seems to still play an important role as people normally would think about the smartness or giftedness of a person, and intelligence is regarded as the second important factor for creativity after motivation. Sternberg (2001) proposed that there is a dialectical relationship between creativity and intelligence. Intelligence is necessary for creativity because not only is generation of novel ideas necessary but the critical analysis of novel ideas is also necessary. To be able to generate novel ideas, there must be some basic intelligence, but to further analyse those ideas that are generated, there must be higher intelligence. Personality is considered more important than the knowledge factor and the environment factor. In general, although there were different views among different groups of students, most students seem to regard motivation, intelligence and personality as the three most important facets of conceptions of creativity. The relatively low conception of the factor of environment seems not to be in line with the social psychological theories of organisational creativity in which environment plays an important role (Amabile, 1983). This might be related to the fact that the respondents in this research were all university students; and further research involving other participants would be useful regarding environment as a facet of conceptions of creativity. Significant group differences in thinking styles and conceptions of creativity were identified based on gender, students’ fields of study and educational institutions. The results suggest that compared to female students, male students seem to have a tendency to be more creative, evaluative of others, taking a new approach to do things, working on things that come along and working on their own. Compared to students in social sciences, art students seem to have a tendency to be more creative and working on their own. Compared to students in sciences, art students seem to have a higher tendency to take new approaches to do things and work on things that come along. The


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results are partly in consistence with a previous study (Fan & Zhang, 2009), in which male university students are more liberal than female students. Regarding views of creativity, no gender differences were identified in this study. Some differences were found between students in different fields of study. Compared to students in social sciences, science students seem to view knowledge as a more important condition for creativity. Compared to science students, art students seem to see personality as a more important factor for creativity. Institutions also played a role in students’ thinking styles and conceptions of creativity. The results indicated that students from national comprehensive universities seemed to adopt less of the Type 3 (anarchic and oligarchic) thinking styles compared to students from municipal professional universities. In addition, students from national comprehensive universities regarded knowledge and environment less important as factors contributing to creativity compared to students from municipal professional universities. This might be related to the fact that in general, national comprehensive universities have a better environment (infrastructure, investment, quality of teachers, etc.) compared to municipal professional universities, thus students from the latter may feel more of a need for a favourable environment for nurturing creativity. Furthermore, the knowledge level of students from national comprehensive universities is generally regarded to be relatively higher than students from municipal professional education due to the national selection scheme of university entry examination, which could have led to the differences in their conceptions of knowledge as a contributing factor for creativity as Sternberg (1985) argued that there is some threshold with regard to knowledge for someone to move forward and come with creative ideas in a certain field. The findings of this study provide empirical evidence regarding the relationship between thinking styles and conceptions of creativity. The results indicate that all three types of thinking styles are related to the intelligence and knowledge factors for identifying creative talents. Type 1 and 2 thinking styles are related to the thinking and motivation factors for identifying creative talents. Only Type 2 thinking styles are related to the personality factor for identifying creative students. And only Type 3 thinking style is related to the environment factor for identifying creative students. The results seem to suggest that people with a more creative and adaptive thinking style (Type 1) are more inclined to stress the importance of thinking, motivation, intelligence and knowledge as important factors for creative personnel. The more normfavouring style (Type 2) people seem to be more inclined to stress the importance of five factors of intelligence, knowledge, motivation, personality and thinking for creativity. Type 3 persons are described as in favour of using different ways of doing things based on the nature of the specific tasks (Zhang & Higgins, 2008). The findings of this study indicate that only Type 3 persons regard environmental context as an important factor for creativity. The more a person is of an external style, the more he or she would think that environment is important for nurturing creativity. Implications, limitations and conclusions The findings of this study have practical implications for teaching and educational innovations. As creativity is the core of the knowledge economy (Sawyer, 2006; Sawyer et al., 2003), a key task of educators of today is to prepare the learners to create knowledge and nurture creativity (OECD, 2000). How schools should prepare students to be creative and participate in complex creative systems is a challenge for all educational institutions. Understanding the conditions for creativity can help the



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educational institutions have proper policies in place for developing students’ thinking styles and nurture creativity. Currently, there is a profound interest in encouraging creativity in education. The results of this study can provide suggestions to educators what types of thinking styles need to be fostered and cultivated in order to develop and foster creativity of the younger generation. For example, the global and liberal thinking styles are associated with motivation, therefore, fostering global and liberal thinking styles of individuals may be helpful to promote student motivation, and thus be more conducive to the development of creativity. There are a couple of limitations of the present study. First of all, as there is a lack of other empirical studies examining the relationship between thinking styles and conceptions of creativity with similar constructs, the generalisation of the results need to be tested further with other populations. Secondly, this study is the first empirical study applying the CCS. Although the reliability and validity of this instrument was confirmed in this study, further testing with other populations such as high school students and teachers would be useful to further verify the validity of this instrument. In addition, this study only examined the conceptions of Chinese students, which makes it inappropriate to generalise the results to other contexts. Furthermore, the group differences among institutions identified in this study also need to be further studied. Therefore, future research involving participants from other educational and cultural contexts can strengthen our understanding about conceptions of creativity and the link between thinking styles and conceptions of creativity. Regardless of these limitations, this research has made contributions in the field of thinking styles and creativity by applying the CCS in the Chinese context and examining the relationship between thinking styles and conceptions of creativity. This study provides empirical evidence for the relationship between thinking styles and views of creativity. Previous researcher have said that researchers in this filed are still struggling to understand what factors cause creativity to emerge and what can be done to aide in its development (Aguilar-Alonso, 1996; Fatt, 2000; McIntyre, 1993). This research provides empirical evidence regarding what factors are considered to be important to contribute to creativity emergence. From this study, we know that next to intelligence, which has been normally considered as a key factor for giftedness, motivation, thinking, personality and knowledge are all necessary individual conditions that are conducive for creativity. Furthermore, environment is also an external condition that can play an important role in cultivating creativity. As to the predictive power of thinking styles, the results show that almost all types of styles are linked to some factors for creativity to a certain degree. Based on the scoring of the examined six factors and the predicting results from thinking styles, we suggest that the global, liberal and hierarchical thinking styles seem to be the most desirable styles for fostering creativity. As Dickhut (2003) stated, with increasing knowledge about the processes involved in creativity, there is greater hope for developing teaching approaches that favour and nurture creativity. The present study contributes to this increasing knowledge, and we sincerely hope that educators can apply more and more teaching strategies that can encourage the development of student Type 1 thinking styles and the nurturing of student creativity.

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