Zi-Meng Li,Jia Liu,Yue Cheng,Yi-Wei Luo,Yan-Hui Liu＊

1School of Nursing,Tianjin University of Traditional Chinese Medicine,Tianjin,China.

Abstract

Keywords:Achievement motivation, Meta-learning capacity, Creativity tendencies, Nursing students, Mediating effect

Introduction

As an important object of the cultivation of national innovative talents, college students have important and far-reaching significance for the development of schools and the cultivation of social talents.Gerrig pointed out that creativity is the ability to generate new ideas, discover and create new things [1].Face the challenges of the cultivation of innovative talents,college education should be fully aware of its important role in the training system of innovative talents.It is not only directly related to the realization of our country’ higher education goals, but also whether we can create a lot of innovative people for the talent strategy.Therefore, higher education needs to pay attention to the creativity of college students and serve the national development strategy.In addition, with the development of nursing disciplines in China, the enrollment scale has been continuously expanded, and the number of enrolled students has increased year by year.Therefore, the quality of nursing undergraduate students should be given sufficient attention.The National Health and Health Commission has formulated the National Care Development Plan (2016 - 2020), the fifth task of the main task states:Strengthen nursing education and stressing on the creativity spirit.Furthermore,formulate policies and measures to promote the training of nursing personnel in a coordinated manner,and comprehensively improve the quality of nursing personnel training [2].It can be seen that the innovative ability of nursing talents is crucial and has important theoretical and practical significance.

With the concern of innovation talents, many scholars have dedicated themselves to search for strategies to increase students’ creativity tendency,such as creating supportive work conditions,enhancing nursing students’ achievement motivation,increasing the satisfaction of students, and cultivate students’ meta-learning.However, most of researches are mostly based on a variable of achievement motivation,meta-learning ability or creativity tendency,while multivariable studies are still scarce [3-4].Therefore, starting from the direction of the positive psychology,this review assumes that the meta-learning ability can be preset achievement motivation, improve college students’ creativity tendency, if hypothesis verificated, the future education workers can take many measures to enhance achievement motivation,improve college students’ study enthusiasm, thus improve students’ meta learning ability and cultivate creativity.

Creativity tendency is the most important band for innovative talents, which consists of two aspects:creative emotional behavior and creative cognitive behavior.Creative emotional behavior refers to a person’s positive mental tendency towards specific creative activities that gradually develop in acquired learning activities and play a role in promoting or guaranteeing the development of creativity and the completion of creative tasks, which is a positive psychological tendency of creative activities, and is a person innate heredity and acquired special creative spiritual quality [5].It mainly includes four aspects:adventure, curiosity, creativity and challenge [6] Most research of creativity mainly involves the situation of the development of college student’creativity and the influencing factors [7-8] The results show that factors such as achievement motivation, personality characteristics, self-concept and family environment have an impact on individual creativity trends [9-10].People with higher creativity tendency personality is influenced by an individual's internal motivation [3].That is,people with high achievement motivation,they like to set moderate challenge goal, and dare to take certain risks.

Achievement motivation is an internal motivation for people to achieve success in the process of completing tasks [11].In other words, it manifests itself in interested in doing better and effective work than ever [12].Achievement motivation consists of two parts:one is the intention to pursue or hope for success, which is manifested as the action towards the goal; another is the intention to avoid or fear failure,that is, try to escape from achievement activities or situations and avoid expected failure results [13].The literature showed achievement motivation not only can either directly affect the individual’s creative achievements, but also influence the individual’s interest in learning and perseverance [14].They prefer personal responsibilities and want to obviously express behavior know about their performance and output[15].Therefore, empowering students’ achievement motivation will guide their behavior and needs toward worthwhile and definite goals.

Meta-learning is students’ self-consciousness and self-adjustment of self-learning process section and self-experience, that is meta-learning need meta-learning awareness as the basis, through the meta-learning experience to achieve meta-learning control [16].According to Guo [17], there have also been other studies on the influencing factors of meta-learning, such as achievement motivation,achievement attribution, self-efficacy, and so on, were demonstrated.

Methods

Design

A cross-sectional survey design was used in this study.

Study setting and participants

Participants were recruited from two universities in Tianjin, China.The data collection was undertaken from September to November 2018.Before the questionnaires were handed out, researchers would explain the purpose, significance and precautions of this study.After obtaining the informed consent of the respondents, the questionnaire will be issued on the spot and withdrawn on the spot.The researchers gave a unified guidance and training for nursing students to fill out the questionnaire after conversazione.According to the rough estimation method of Kenall’s sample size:10 times the number of variables/dimensions of the sample size, and considering the missing value of 20%, we determined that the number of our questionnaires was 218.Meanwhile, expanded the number of questionnaires on the basis of ensuring the number of questionnaires.Finally,470 complete questionnaires were obtained, of which 25 (5.3%) were invalid, with an effective sample rate of 94.7%.

Instruments

Instrument used in this questionnaire survey included:(a) Demographic Information, (b) Achievement Motivation Scale, (c) Meta-Learning Capacity Questionnaire,and(d)Creativity Tendencies Scale.

Demographic information of nursing students.The general demographic statistics table was designed by researchers.On the basis of literature analysis, the researches compiled their own entries, including age,gender, grade, part-time job, and place of birth.These demographic data are potential variables influencing achievement motivation, meta-learning capacity and high creativity tendencies of Chinese baccalaureate nursing students.

Achievement motivation.AMS was used to measure the achievement motivation of students [18].It has 30 items and 2 subscales:success motivation (15 items),avoid failure motivation (15 items).Responses are rated on a 4-point Likert-type scale from 4 (definitely meet) to 1 (not meet at all).The item scores are summed for a total score,with higher scores indicating higher levels of achievement motivation.The Chinese version of the AMS has previously been shown to have good reliability(the Cronbach's α was 0.85)(Ye,1992)and has been widely used among the Chinese population.In present study, Cronbach's α coefficients for the scale was 0.781.

Meta-learning capacity.Meta-learning capacity was used to measure the meta-learning capacity of students and analyze the influencing factors [4].It has 35 items and divided into undergraduate meta-learning ability present situation and its influence factor.The five dimensions (23 positive and negative items) included in current situation:meta-learning knowledge(8 items),meta-learning control(5 items),meta leaning reflection(4 items), learning experience (4 items) and meta-learning compensation (2 items), and the four dimensions (12 positive and negative items) included in influencing factors:volition, interest, self-efficacy and motivation.Each item was rated from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree).The item scores are summed for a total score,with higher scores indicating higher levels of meta-learning capacity.The meta-learning capacity questionnaire has previously been shown to have good reliability (the Cronbach's α was 0.830) and has been widely used among the Chinese population[19].

Creativity tendencies.CAP was used to measure the creativity tendencies of students [20].It has 50 items(contain positive and negative items), and 4 dimensions:adventure (11 items), curiosity (14 items),creativity (13 items), and challenge (12 items).Responses are rated on a 3-point Likert-type scale from 3(definitely meet)to 1(not meet at all).The item scores are summed for a total score,with higher scores indicating higher levels of creativity tendencies.The Chinese version of the CAP has previously been shown to have good reliability (the Cronbach's α was 0.939)and has been widely used among the Chinese population.

Data analysis

Analyses were performed using the SPSS 17.0 program, and all statistical tests were two sided (α=0.05).Descriptive statistics was used to summarize participants’characteristics of achievement motivation,meta-learning capacity and high creativity tendencies.One-way analysis of variance tests was used to assess the relationship between certain characteristics of baccalaureate nursing students.Pearson correlation was calculated to test the correlation among achievement motivation, meta-learning capacity and high creativity tendencies.Hierarchical linear regression analyses were performed to explore the mediating role of meta-learning capacity.

Ethical considerations

The study was anonymous, and participation was voluntary.This study was approved by the relevant university ethics committee.

Results

Demographic data

The majority of partcipants were all baccalaureate nursing students, and most of them were female (n=404, 90.8%).Age of sampled subjects ranged from 18 to 22 years, with an average age of 19.83(SD=1.86).In terms of part-time job status, most of the samples (n=290, 65.2%) had taken part in one and 35.71% had not.In the field of family origin status,25.4%(n=113)of our sample students came from cities, 16.6% from towns, and 58.0% (n=258) from rural areas.The demographic characteristics were presented in Table 1.

Descriptive statistics

Descriptive statistics for the study variables were presented in Table 2.The achievement motivation of participants was at medium level (slightly higher than average value of 3.0), with a medium level of meta-learning capacity(below average 2.0),among the 5 dimensions of meta-learning capacity, the score of meta-learning experience was the highest (mean=2.634, SD=0.575), while meta-learning knowledge of students ranked the lowest(mean=1.854,SD=0.492).The overall average of college students’ creativity tendencies 92.06 points, among the 4 dimensions of creativity tendencies, the score of curiosity was the highest (mean=26.056, SD=4.331), while adventure of students ranked the lowest (mean=19.643, SD=3.385).

Table 1:Characteristics of participants(N=445)

Table 2:Descriptive statistics of the study variable

Preliminary correlation analyses

Pearson’s r tests were constructed to test the correlation of 3 variables (see Table 3).The results revealed that there was a moderate strongly positive correlation between achievement motivation and creativity tendencies (r=0.307;P＜ 0.01),achievement motivation and meta-learning capacity (r=0.406;P＜0.01), and meta-learning capacity and creativity tendencies (r=0.380;P＜ 0.01).These results supported Hypothesis 1 and 2.

Mediation analyses

To further explore the contribution of demographic variables, achievement motivation, meta-learning capacity on creativity tendencies, stepwise multiple linear regression analyses were conducted (see Table 4).In the regression equation, creativity tendency was considered as the dependent variable, and the remainders were independent variables.When meta-learning capacity appears, achievement motivation access to creativity tendencies, which explained from 9.5% to 17.2% of the total variance,indicating that meta-learning capacity in achievement motivation, and creativity tendencies plays a part in mediating.

Table 3:Pearson correlation coefficient of study variables(N=445)

Table 4:Testing the mediation role

Hierarchical regression analyses were used to test the mediation effect of meta-learning capacity (see Table 4).In model 1, creativity tendency was considered as a dependent variable, and achievement motivation was an independent variable; results showed that achievement motivation had a positive impact on creativity tendencies(β=0.307,P＜0.001).Model 2 was constructed to investigate the effect of the independent variables on the mediator variable; results showed that achievement motivation had a significant impact on meta-learning capacity (β=0.406,P＜0.001).Taking creativity tendencies as the dependent variable, and both achievement motivation and meta-learning capacity as independent variables,model 3 was constructed.We found that both achievement motivation and meta-learning capacity had a positive influence on creativity tendencies (β=0.221-0.365,P＜0.001), and when the meta-learning capacity variable was introduced, the regression coefficient of achievement motivation on creativity tendencies declined compared with model 1(β=0.221,P＜0.001).These 3 models supported Hypothesis 3.

Discussion

The results of this study support the hypothesized relationship between the study variables.Significant positive relationships between achievement motivation,meta-learning capacity and creativity tendencies, as well as the mediation of meta-learning capacity, were demonstrated.However, creativity tendencies in this study among baccalaureate nursing students was lower than some other professional students [6], which may be that there is a difference between the college entrance examination results and the learning content of specialized courses.In addition, According to the scores of the Williams Creativity Test Manual (Taiwan revision), it can be concluded that the overall level of creativity of college students is generally low.The result is supported by Chen JX and Zhu XF [14] who reported that their research on the creativity tendency of undergraduate students that the creativity level of undergraduate students is also not high.Therefore, this phenomenon should be taken seriously by educators,and then implement the individualized teaching,formulate the targeted training program.According to Amabile[21],there have also been other studies on the influencing factors of creativity tendencies, such as social environment, motivation orientation, evaluation expectation, creation opportunity and reward for creation behavior,were demonstrated[22].

Achievement motivation had a significant effect on creativity tendencies in this study.The findings of this study imply that high achievement motivation and other intrinsic motivation can promote high creativity tendencies and stimulate creative potential, and comprehensively improve creativity.Therefore,Nursing education and managers should give psychological motivation help students affect the desire to succeed.

Beyond providing achievement motivation support for earlier findings, the most interested finding from this article is the mediating role that meta-learning capacity plays between the achievement motivation and creativity tendencies.For meta-learning capacity in this study among Chinese baccalaureate nursing students was at an average level, which may be indicates that college students are at an average level in terms of breadth, depth, frontier and basic knowledge acquisition.However, the findings revealed that the high level of the meta-learning ability score usually has a clear learning motivation [17].In other words,for students, high levels of achievement motivation and meta-learning capacity can be helpful to enhance their creativity tendencies.high level achievement motivation can fully mobilize students'enthusiasm and initiative in learning, so that students can turn the passive situation of "Let me learn" into the active situation of "I want to learn", and then deeply influence the learning results.Therefore, nursing educators and managers should pay attention to overcome the tendency of "emphasizing the improvement of intelligence factors and neglecting the cultivation of non-intelligence factors", and to give students a positive academic guidance in daily teaching activities, so as to make nursing undergraduate students more love nursing, and inputting to the current stage of learning, further to stimulate and develop their creative tendencies.

There are several limitations in this article.First, the study design was a cross-sectional type.Thus, the relationships among achievement motivation,meta-learning capacity and creativity tendencies may not be causal.Future research should employ a longitudinal design to test the causal model.Second,this study only used a small sample of nursing students from two university, and the results may be limited.Furthermore, the relationships among achievement motivation, meta-learning capacity and high creativity tendencies were rarely explored in the related literatures, and there were no other studies that supported the results of this research.So, related researches can be conducted.They provide an available viewpoint for future research as educators worldwide are likely to be interested in the learning of baccalaureate nursing students.Another potential limitation is the localized nature of this article.Further,most repeated researches should be conducted in different cities in the future.

Conclusion

The present study was the first to explore the relationships among achievement motivation,meta-learning capacity and creativity tendencies among Chinese baccalaureate nursing students using a serial-multiple mediation model, with results highlight the importance of achievement motivation in increasing creativity tendencies.Furthermore, we also found that meta-learning capacity mediated the relationship between achievement motivation and creativity tendencies.These results provide information to assist nursing educators and administrators to enhance nursing students.In the future, educators can take a variety of comprehensive measures to enhance the achievement motivation,enhance the learning enthusiasm of nursing students,so as to improve the ability of meta-learning and cultivate students'creativity.