Studio Learning: Motivation, Competence, and the Development of Young Art Students' Talent and Creativity

This study focused on behavior associated with young art students' developing artistic talent (skills and art-making behavior) and creativity (personal expressions of visual information). The study examined the relationships among age and the components of creativity (i.e., technical skill, problem finding, ideation, evaluation, and motivation). The study compared the artistic processing and products of 25 younger art students (9- and 10-year-olds) with those of 26 older art students (11- through 16-year-olds). The author recorded participants' behavior as they created drawings in two contextsfrom imagination and from life. The author then administered a measure of the need for cognition (NCS). The observed behavior during the drawing activities provided scores on problem finding, evaluation, and ideation and three expert judges provided assessments of the technical skill and creativity revealed in the drawings. The score on the NCS and the number of years attending the art program provided two measures of motivation. Multivariate analyses of the effects of age on the developing components of creativity revealed changes related to the students' developing expertise. In both drawing situations, differences in technical skill explained the differences associated with age. This study found that technical skill explained age differences in life-drawing problem finding, creativity, and motivation. Technical skill also explained age differences in ideation and problem finding in drawings from imagination. There were significant correlations between life-drawing technical skill and each of the two measures of motivation. The number of years attending the art program also shared significant variance with life-drawing ideation, problem finding, and creativity and was a significant predictor of continued attendance in the art program. The findings are discussed within the context of competence motivation, artistic talent, developing creativity, emerging habits of mind, and art education.