The Influence Of Challenging Teachers' Authority On Creative Thinking Of Teenagers And Its Mechanisms

There is rapid development of the creative thinking of teenagers in the period of Junior middle school,and it is also an important period for them to develop from their dependence on parents and teachers.Junior middle school students who expected to be treated with equal by their teachers and parents,are no longer completely subject to the authority of their teachers and parents,which is called "rebel psychology".Challenge authority is considered as a creative spirit in the modern society.So,does the challenge of teachers' authority have anything to do with the creative thinking of junior middle school students?In the two studies,this paper investigates the influence of the initiation on the creative thinking of junior middle school students by starting the junior high school students to challenge authority of teachers.In the experiment one,through several situational stories,the junior middle school students were start to challenge the professional authority and the power authority of teachers,and then completed a creative thinking test task.Because the creative thinking has a variety of forms and its main cognitive processing is not the same,therefore,in experiment one we arranged three kinds of creative thinking tests.Those are Remote Association Test which is for Creative Imagination,Chengyu Riddle Problem which is for Insight,and Impossible Problem which is for Divergent Thinking.We used 2(initiating challenge type:challenging teacher's professional authority or challenging teacher's authority of authority)*2(startup effect:high or low)in Experiment one.The dependent variables were scores on three types of creative thinking tests(remote association,Chengyu Riddle Problem,and impossible questions).The results showed that,(1)the main effect of starting type and priming effect is not significant in remote associative test task,and the interaction between two factors is not significant,too.(2)the main effect of the two factors is not significant on the task of the Chengyu Riddle Problem test,but the interaction between the two factors is very significant.The simple effect analysis showed that the subjects who challenged the professional authority of teachers were highly effective,and their scores were significantly higher than those of the subjects with low priming effect.However,the subjects who challenged the power of the teacher's authority had a higher starting effect,and they scored significantly lower than those with low priming effect.(3)the main effect of the challenge type is significant on the test task of the impossible problem,and the score of challenge teachers'professional authority group is significantly higher than that of challenge teachers'power authority group.On the basis of the previous experiment,the author further discusses the psychological mechanism of challenging teachers' professional authority to promote creative thinking of junior middle school students.This study assumes that autonomy and cognitive motivation will play multiple mediations in the process of challenging teachers'professional authority to promote creative thinking.Like experiment one,this study start junior middle school students to challenge the professional authority of teachers,secondly measured the state of students' autonomy,thirdly finished the Chengyu Riddle Problem test,finally mesuered their cognitive motivation.The results showed that the path coefficient of autonomy in challenging teachers' professional authority and creative thinking(Chengyu Riddle Problem)was significant.However,the path coefficient between cognitive motivation and the score of Chengyu Riddle Problem is not significant,so the chain mediating effect between the independent variable and the dependent variable is not significant.The conclusions of the two studies including,(1)in the task of insight,the scores of the high priming effect group of challenging teachers' professional authority were higher than low priming effect group,the scores of the high priming effect group of challenging teachers' power authority arelowerr than low priming effect group.(2)in the task of divergent thinking,the scores of the challenging teachers' professional authority group were significantly higher than that of the group of challenging teachers' power authority.(3)autonomy plays a part in mediating between challenging teachers'professional authority and middle school students' creative thinking(insight problem solving).