| After noting that historically our conceptions of creativity have been complex while our methods of examining it simplistic, an ecological approach is proposed which would involve examining the combined effects of social and personal determinants of a creative behavior in a naturalistic setting. This study presents a model of creative performance that incorporates the primary characteristics of Amabile's componential model of creativity: motivational orientation, cognitive style, domain skill, and social environment, and then provides a test of that model. A total of 98 students enrolled in a university's Freshman Writing Seminar, and their instructors from 18 sections served as participants in this field study. Prose writing samples were collected from all students and were assessed for the creativity and technical quality of the writing. Additionally, assessments were made of each student's intrinsic and extrinsic motivational orientation, flexibility of cognitive/work style, and perception of the social environment of the writing seminar. The data were analyzed in two complementary fashions: through traditional factor analysis, correlation, and regression, and then through a causal modeling approach using LISREL VI.;Both the traditional analyses, and the causal modelling provided good (though not unequivocal) support for Amabile's model: extrinsic motivational orientation was a negative predictor, and non-conformity (cognitive/work style) and technical quality (a measure of domain skill) were positive predictors of prose creativity. Social environment showed a stronger impact on student's interest in writing than on the creativity of the sample; however, Innovative Teaching showed some positive influence on creativity. Finally (for a subset of the data, N = 82), a descriptive model of writing (creativity, technical quality, and interest) in a person/environment context is proposed which (1) accounts for 99% of the variance in the measurement model and (2) accounts for 69% of the variance in the structural model, (3) provides a good overall fit to the data according to five goodness-of-fit indices, and (4) does not differ significantly from the data. Findings are discussed with respect to the study aims, and implications for creativity theory and research and for educational practice are discussed. |
