This study examines how learning experiences shape the development of students’ creative competencies through the dual mediating roles of academic engagement and motivational factors. Focusing on students from the Department of Art and Design at a vocational and technical college in China, the study adopts purposive sampling to gather 287 valid responses. A structured questionnaire was designed encompassing four latent constructs: instructional quality, participation, drive to learn, and creative capacity. Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) was used to evaluate the model and test mediation effects. Results reveal no significant direct influence of instructional experiences on students' creative outcomes. However, indirect effects were observed via full mediation by academic engagement and partial mediation by motivation. The model explains 56.8% of the variance in the outcome variable (R²= 0.568) and achieves a strong model fit (GoF = 0.657). These findings emphasize the interplay between instructional design and internal psychological mechanisms, offering insights for pedagogical strategies and theory-building in creative education domains. © 2025 by author(s).
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