紫砂名家教育背景與經歷對其創新能力與個人成就影響的相關性研究

Abstract

In recent years, China has successively introduced a series of policies guiding and promoting the development of arts and crafts. Traditional Chinese arts and crafts represented by the Zisha craft have encountered excellent development opportunities. Under the background of building a "culturally strong country", how to solve the inheritance problem of arts and crafts techniques and truly achieve the goal of "revitalizing arts and crafts" is a meaningful topic. Continuously cultivating arts and crafts talents with innovative capabilities is the key to revitalizing the arts and crafts industry. In the past hundred years, traditional arts and crafts have mainly been inherited through the apprenticeship system outside the higher education degree system. However, after the establishment of the modern national education system, the apprenticeship education that was isolated and excluded from the academic education system has faced a crisis of being unsustainable. In recent years, many universities in China have gradually resumed undergraduate enrollment for relevant majors of arts and crafts. Since 2012, under the discipline system of design, undergraduate talent cultivation has been carried out with the unified major name of arts and crafts. The "Opinions on Carrying out the Pilot Work of Modern Apprenticeship" issued in 2014 put forward the concepts of integration of industry and education and collaborative education between schools and enterprises, and exploratively incorporated the traditional education method of "master-apprentice inheritance" into the postgraduate education content of Master of Fine Arts (MFA). The new major setting of arts and crafts reflects the national attention to the cultivation of arts and crafts talents and also implies the need for active exploration in the reform of relevant talent cultivation models.

As the national "intangible cultural heritage", the Yixing Zisha making skills are also actively exploring the mode of modern apprenticeship training of traditional Zisha skills jointly carried out by vocational education colleges and master studios. These phenomena have raised thought-provoking questions for this research: On the one hand, how does this model of jointly cultivating Zisha craft talents through cultural education and apprenticeship education affect the innovative capabilities and personal achievements of the educated? Is it conducive to cultivating influential arts and crafts masters in the Zisha industry? On the other hand, through in-depth research and analysis, can we study the relationship between the cultivation of arts and crafts masters and the education and training model, so as to provide targeted suggestions for the talent cultivation model of arts and crafts masters in the new era?

Our study answers the above questions through empirical analysis. This research collects and organizes data on cultural and educational experience, apprenticeship education experience, innovation ability, and personal achievements of famous Zisha craftsmen in Yixing through questionnaire surveys. We use Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) to estimate the correlation between cultural and educational experience, apprenticeship education experience, innovation ability, and personal achievements of famous Zisha craftsmen, so as to provide practical suggestions for the education and training model of contemporary arts and crafts industry, the inheritance of traditional handicraft skills, and the mechanism of improving innovation ability.

Firstly, this research answers the question of how educational experience affects the innovative capabilities of famous Zisha craftsmen. The educational experiences concerned in this research mainly include three categories, namely, academic degree education experience, training class education experience, and apprenticeship education experience. In terms of innovative capabilities, this research measures them from two aspects of indicators, namely, the subjective self-evaluation of innovative capabilities by the respondents and the objective innovative capabilities manifested by patent applications. This research will respectively examine the impact of these three types of educational experiences on the two innovative capability indicators and analyze the correlation between them based on the least squares estimation method. The empirical results of this part show that the improvement of the academic degree education level will significantly enhance the innovative capabilities of famous Zisha craftsmen, and there is a positive correlation between the academic degree education level of famous Zisha craftsmen and their innovative capabilities. In terms of training class experience, both the training of Zisha craft training classes and the training classes of traditional Chinese culture and history will have a positive impact on their innovative capabilities. Finally, there is a significant positive correlation between the apprenticeship education experience and the subjective innovative capabilities of famous Zisha craftsmen, but the impact on the objective innovative capabilities measured by patent applications is not significant.

Next, this research further pays attention to the impact of innovative capabilities on personal achievements. In the specific empirical analysis, this research measures the personal achievements of famous Zisha craftsmen from four dimensions, namely, the value of works, the professional title mechanism, the number of award-winning times, and the number of personal works collected. Here, this research respectively examines the impact of subjective innovative capabilities and objective innovative capabilities on personal achievements. The empirical results of this part show that regardless of the changes in the indicators of the explanatory variables, the subjective innovative capabilities of famous Zisha craftsmen always show a significant positive correlation with their personal achievements. The stronger the innovative capabilities of famous Zisha craftsmen are, the average and maximum prices of their work transactions will be significantly increased, and the probability of obtaining higher honorary titles and professional title ranks will also be significantly increased. In addition, the number of national awards won by works and the number of works collected by first-class museums will also be significantly increased. The objective innovative capabilities show a significant positive correlation with the value of personal works, the number of award-winning times of works, and the number of works collected by first-class museums. In addition, the increase in the number of various patents of famous Zisha craftsmen will significantly increase the probability of obtaining higher professional title ranks, but only the number of design patents has a significant positive impact on personal honorary titles.

Finally, based on the practices of Baron and Kenny (1986), this research adopts the three-step method of mediating effect to analyze the correlation between the educational experience, innovative capabilities, and personal achievements of famous Zisha craftsmen. The empirical analysis of this part finds that the academic degree education experience has a significant positive impact on famous Zisha craftsmen obtaining higher professional title ranks and the number of national awards won by works. Among them, both the subjective self-evaluation of innovative capabilities and the innovative capabilities measured by patent applications play a mediating role, that is, the academic degree education experience further enhances personal achievements by enhancing their innovative capabilities. However, different indicators for measuring academic degree education have different effects on personal achievements. The increase in the years of education will also significantly increase the upper limit of the market value of the works of famous Zisha craftsmen. Famous Zisha craftsmen with a bachelor's degree have more works collected by more influential first-class museums, and innovative capabilities also play a mediating role in such a positive correlation. For the impact of training class education experience, the experience of arts and crafts training classes has a significant positive impact on personal achievements except for honorary titles. In these significant positive correlations, the innovative capabilities of famous Zisha craftsmen play a mediating role. The experience of training classes of traditional Chinese culture and history significantly increases the probability of famous Zisha craftsmen obtaining higher professional title ranks and the number of national awards won by works and the number of works collected by first-class museums. In these significant positive correlations, the innovative capabilities of famous Zisha craftsmen also play a mediating role. Finally, the apprenticeship system has a significant positive impact on the market value of the works of famous Zisha craftsmen. It not only significantly increases the average price of work transactions but also significantly increases the maximum price of works. In addition, the apprenticeship system will also significantly increase the probability of apprentices obtaining higher honorary titles and professional title ranks, in which innovative capabilities play a mediating role.

This research topic has certain practical value. Under the promotion of the "building a culturally strong country" strategy, on the one hand, the state has increased the cultivation of arts and crafts talents through setting up arts and crafts majors in the mode of cultural education. On the other hand, it is also actively exploring incorporating the traditional education method of "master-apprentice inheritance" in the arts and crafts industry into the current cultural education system to promote the progress of the arts and crafts industry. However, what impact does such a talent cultivation model have on the cultivation of the innovative capabilities of arts and crafts practitioners? Is it conducive to cultivating some arts and crafts masters with industry and social influence, thus truly promoting the inheritance of traditional intangible cultural heritages like Zisha? The conclusions obtained by this research provide data support for the education and training model of the arts and crafts industry, the inheritance of traditional handicraft techniques, and the mechanism of enhancing innovative capabilities, enrich the existing discussions on the development of the arts and crafts industry to a certain extent, and provide valuable evidence for promoting the cultivation of talents in the arts and crafts industry and facilitating the progress and development of the arts and crafts industry.

Date of Award	10 Mar 2025
Original language	Chinese (Traditional)
Awarding Institution	City University of Hong Kong
Supervisor	Mingjie Rui (External Supervisor) & Mingping Yanni YAN (Supervisor)