Perceived School Safety and Creative Thinking: The Sequential Mediating Roles of Cooperation and Curiosity in Finland and Hong Kong (China)

Creative thinking requires students to explore uncertainty, express tentative ideas, and take intellectual risks, yet the role of perceived school safety as a broader learning-context condition for creative thinking remains underexamined. Using data from the 2022 cycle of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) from 10,239 students in Finland and 5907 students in Hong Kong (China), this study estimated two-level serial mediation models to examine the within-school associations of psychological–emotional safety, social interaction safety, and physical environmental safety with creative thinking through cooperation and curiosity. Physical environmental safety showed a positive direct association with creative thinking in both systems, and this association was stronger in Hong Kong (China). Psychological–emotional safety was positively associated with creative thinking through curiosity and through the sequential pathway from cooperation to curiosity in both systems. Social interaction safety showed no direct association with creative thinking but showed a positive sequential indirect association through cooperation and curiosity in both systems, with a stronger indirect effect in Finland. Indirect effects through cooperation alone were not significant, suggesting that cooperation may be more relevant to creative thinking when accompanied by curiosity. Curiosity was positively associated with creative thinking in both systems. The findings highlight perceived school safety as a multidimensional learning-context condition associated with creative thinking and suggest that curiosity represents a proximal process linking safety-related experiences with creative outcomes.