The relationship between creative school climate and intrinsic motivation among secondary school students in Estonia and Russia

This study examined the relationship between creative school climate and intrinsic motivation. Estonian (N = 910) and Russian (N = 491) secondary school students were compared, in order to highlight possible differences that may arise from cultural background. In comparison, Estonia is a more individualistic society, and Russia a more collectivistic society. The results demonstrated that the Estonian students had higher intrinsic motivation on one of two subscales, Learning Curiosity, whereas the Russian students had higher extrinsic motivation (both subscales) and higher scores for the other intrinsic subscale, Task Difficulty. The results also showed that there were differences in how school climate factors influenced students’ motivational orientation. In the Estonian sample, the school climate was related to intrinsic motivation, whereas in the Russian sample, it was related to both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. An implication of the study is that there is cultural variation in how school climate factors influence students’ motivation, something which needs to be taken into consideration when building creativity-supportive schools.