Proposing a Tripartite Evaluation System of Musical Creativity in the Educational Context: Integrating Cognitive, Personality, and Environmental Dimensions

Musical creativity is an enigmatic and significant topic of enduring interest, but its evaluation remains a challenging and underexplored area. Grounded in the context of compulsory education in China and the requirements of the latest version of China’s National Standard for Arts Curriculum 2022, this study discusses how to evaluate musical creativity with reference to the three theories developed by Webster, Williams, and Burnard. The paper moves on to construct an Evaluation Index System of Musical Creativity (hereafter EISMC) with reference to the Delphi method, and fixes its weightings using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). After three rounds of consultation with professionals working in the field, it was determined that EISMC should have three primary indices: creative musical thinking , creative musical personality , and creative musical environment . Nine secondary indices were represented by divergent thinking , and 27 third-level indices were represented by flexibility . These indices reflect the multifaceted concerns of evaluators surrounding the daily evaluation of musical creativity. This bridges the gulf between theory and practice and provides a theoretical foundation, a replicable design paradigm, and practical suggestions for the effective evaluation of musical creativity both in China and abroad, which facilitates an enhancement of the evaluation of musical creativity.