Does background music have an impact on elementary students’ creative thinking skills?

This study is investigating the potential connection between music and creative thinking in the classroom. Creativity is not just about the arts; it is also a large part of critical thinking and problem solving. According to the standard definition of creativity, creativity is defined as the ability to produce something that is both useful and novel. This study looks at four elementary classrooms where approximately 45 students complete a creative thinking activity, based on portions of the Torrance Test for Creative Thinking (TTCT) (1966). The students will spend ten minutes drawing one picture which will be directly followed by ten additional minutes spent drawing ten different pictures. Two classrooms will be playing calm, non lyrical background music, while the other two classrooms will be playing no music. After the activity is over, the students are going to be given a short survey to see how they feel about music playing or no music playing and if it impacted their ability to creatively think on the activity. The activity will be scored based on the fluency, originality, and elaboration of the drawings, three key components to creativity. The hope for this study is to highlight whether background music is helpful while producing creative thinking in the everyday activities in the general elementary school classroom