Developmental Characteristics and Influencing Factors of Primary and Secondary School Students’ Creativity

• In Event: Comparative large-scale assessment research: Textbooks, literacy, creativity and aspirations

Proposal

Developmental Characteristics and Influencing Factors of Primary and Secondary School Students’ Creativity
An International Comparative Study Based on OECD Data

Abstract: Since the 21st century, innovation has become a common goal for almost all developed countries in the world, and the development of creativity has gradually become the focus of educational efforts in all countries. In 2021, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development released the results of the first international study on the level of social and emotional development of primary and secondary school students in the 10 and 15-year-old groups, in which creativity was measured as an important dimension of open-mindedness. The results showed that the creativity of primary and secondary school students tended to decrease with age, with boys generally having higher levels of creativity than girls, and with little difference in the type of school in which creativity was measured compared to age and gender differences. Multiple linear regression analysis revealed that students’ creativity was mainly influenced by three factors: family socioeconomic background, activity participation, and the teacher-student relationship.
Keywords: OECD； SSES； creativity； international comparison

Introduction
Creativity has been acknowledged as a crucial fundamental skill for human survival and progress since the dawn of the 21st century. The '4Cs' model of important human skills for the 21st century is explicitly stated in the series of human development reports published by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP, 2018), which includes critical thinking, collaboration, creativity, and communication. One of these is creativity, which is a crucial trait for people in the twenty-first century. Guilford (1965) described creativity as a versatile, creative, accurate, and fluent cognitive invention ability; According to Budiarti (2015), creativity is the capacity of a person to produce something novel, either in the form of ideas or in the form of practical activity, that is noticeably different from the situation at hand.
As a key skill in globalization and increasingly digitalized economic and social development, creativity has attracted the attention of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). In 2019, the OECD launched the Study on Social and Emotional Skills (SSES), which aims to examine the level of development of social and emotional skills among adolescents in the ten countries participating in the study; to explore the factors influencing the development of social and emotional skills among adolescents; and to analyze the relationship between social and emotional skills and life outcomes such as student health and well-being, so as to provide insights for policymakers, school administrators, and primary and secondary school teachers to develop students' social and emotional competence. The Big Five Model is used as the theoretical framework for the SSES, which assesses students’ social and emotional skills along five dimensions: open-mindedness, task performance, engaging with others, collaboration, and emotional regulation. Open-mindedness includes creativity as one of its sub-dimensions. This study examines the variables impacting creativity based on a comparative comparison of students’ levels of creativity development in the nine cities taking part in this evaluation. It also offers empirical support and recommendations for developing creative and inventive skills.

Method
Sample
The OECD’s Social and Emotional Skills Survey (SSES) gives an overview of students’ social and emotional abilities and assesses the major variables that either help or impede the development of these abilities. The SSES student self-assessment data published in 2021 provided the information used in this investigation. A total of 60,078 student samples were gathered from the SSES, with a valid sample size of 49,831 and an overall response rate of 83 percent.
Data analysis
The dependent variable of this study is students’ creativity. Eight student self-report questionnaire items are used to measure students’ perception of their own creativity.
The rating scale ranges from 1 (“very disagree”) to 5 (“very agree”). The independent variables of this study include family economic background, activity participation, and the teacher-student relationship. The control variables include students’ age, gender, and school type.
This study collates and analyzes the self-evaluation data of SSE students through spss26, presents the development of creativity of primary and secondary school students in various countries through descriptive statistics, and shows the age differences, gender differences, and school type differences of creativity. In terms of influencing factors, since the dependent variable of this study is a continuous variable and the selected independent variable is a dichotomous variable, multiple linear regression is used to analyze the impact of different factors on students’ creativity.
Results
First, the level of creativity development of primary and secondary school students decreases with age. The level of creativity development of primary school students is generally higher than that of junior high school students.
Second, there is a significant gender gap in the creativity development level of primary and secondary school students, and the specific performance of the gender gap differs among students of different age groups. The creativity level of girls in the 10-year-old group is higher than that of boys; Boys’ creativity is generally higher than girls’ in the 15-year-old group.
Third, family socio-economic background, activity participation, and teacher-student relationship are the key factors affecting the creativity level of primary and secondary school students. This also means that although the family’s socio-economic background has a negative impact on the development of students’ creativity level, participating in various extracurricular activities, and developing high-quality teacher-student relationship are effective ways to compensate for the family weakness.

Author

• Qian Wang, Faculty of Education, East China Normal University