Listening to music in the context of developing and encouraging creative thinking in upper elementary school students

Abstract

The subject Music Culture, and especially the subject area Listening to Music, with its carefully designed procedures, methods, and activities, enables the enrichment of the spiritual aspect of the student's personality, as well as its harmonious development. Music is a source of positive emotions, pleasure and aesthetic experience, and is one of the favorite student activities. The paper discusses the problem of whether listening to music encourages and develops creative thinking in students. The sample included students in the fifth, sixth, and seventh grades of primary school (N = 108). Creative thinking was measured by a modified Torrance test of creative thinking. During the testing, the experimental group was exposed to the influence of auditory examples provided by the curriculum, while the control group performed the test without the presence of an auditory stimulus. The results of the research showed statistically significant differences between the control and experimental groups, which confirms that listening to music encourages and develops creative thinking in students.