The role of educational motivation in the creativity of intellectually gifted primary schoolchildren

Abstract

The importance of external and internal motivation in the academic success of students and their persistence in achieving educational and cognitive goals is considered within the framework of the theory of self-determination. The role of different types of educational motivation in the development of the creative potential of students remains insufficiently studied, especially in relation to primary schoolchildren. The research objective is to clarify the role of different motives for learning activity through differences in the figurative and verbal creativity of intellectually gifted primary schoolchildren on the threshold of adolescence. The study involved 96 intellectually gifted primary schoolchildren of the 3rd-4th grades (the average age is 9.6; the number of boys and girls is the same). The internal and external motivation of their educational activity was studied using the “Scale of educational motivation” developed by T.O. Gordeeva based on the Academic Self-Regulation Questionnaire (SRQ-A) by Ryan and Connell. Divergent creativity was analyzed using N.B. Shumakova’s methodology “Figurative and verbal creativity”. An ambiguous relationship has been revealed between different types of motivation and indicators of verbal and imaginative creativity. Internal cognitive motivation and self-development are reliably and directly related to imaginative fluency (r=0.28 and r=0.24), while external motivation (parental regulation) and imaginative creativity (including imaginative originality and elaboration) are linked reversely (r=-0.31, r=-0.24). The regression analysis has demonstrated that external motivation (learning for the sake of fulfilling the parents’ requirements) at primary school age is a negative predictor of imaginative creativity and originality of intellectually gifted students in their adolescence (F=6.91, β=-0.321, p=0.01 and F=6.57, β=-0.314, p=0.01).

Keywords

• external and internal motivation
• intellectual giftedness
• creativity
• primary schoolchildren