RETRACTED: Interdisciplinary approaches to arts education: Exploring the link between creative thinking and mastering exact sciences

Abstract

The study aims to examine the relationship between the formation of creative thinking through learning, music achievement, and exact sciences performance. The data were collected for the academic period of 2017–2018 (N = 1042), 2018–2019 (N = 1006) and 2019–2020 (N = 1271). To identify the link between the creative thinking skills of music students and their progress in exact sciences, an adapted creativity questionnaire was introduced. The correlation coefficients were obtained with the help of a regression analysis performed in SPSS. The study relied on the linear regression analysis and the Fisher z-transformation. T-tests were introduced to study group differences in average academic achievement between students who attended music classes and those who did not have them. The size of the Cohen's d effect was calculated in order to determine the mean differences in standard deviations between the groups. In the adapted creativity questionnaire, the reliability coefficient of creative mathematics tests was 0.78 while creative computer science tests received 0.79. There is a symmetrical relationship between music learning and academic performance in exact sciences. According to the findings, creative thinking skills of music students have a positive correlation with student performance in mathematics (r = 0.435, p = 0.05, p = 0.004) and computer science (r = 0.402, p = 0.05, p = 0.000). The results of a positive relationship between the creative thinking skills of students who previously studied music and their success in mastering exact sciences can be sent to educational administrators to maintain and improve programs.