Differential pathways from arts and creative activities to student learning and wellbeing: the roles of belonging, self-efficacy, and self-regulation.

BACKGROUND: Participation in arts and broader creative activities is associated with students' learning, emotional development, and wellbeing, but the psychological processes accompanying these associations remain insufficiently understood. Because all focal variables were observed in the same PISA 2022 cycle, the present study treats the proposed pathways as cross-sectional indirect-association patterns rather than as established temporal or causal mechanisms.

OBJECTIVE: This study examines whether school belonging, self-regulation, self-efficacy, and creative thinking show different cross-sectional indirect-association patterns linking a broad measure of arts-and-creative-activities participation with reading performance and subjective wellbeing. The comparison concerns outcome-specific association patterns and does not assume that participation temporally precedes the proposed intervening variables.

METHODS: A quantitative cross-sectional secondary-data design was employed using the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2022 dataset. The analytical sample comprised 441,183 15-year-old students from 64 countries and economies that administered the creative-thinking assessment and provided linkable student-questionnaire data. Participation was represented by a bounded breadth index with an observed range of 0-8 (primary weighted M = 2.34, SD = 1.82). Distributional checking in the analysis-ready PISA subset confirmed concentration toward lower breadth values (median = 2, IQR = 1-4, skewness = 0.83). Structural equation modeling estimated pooled direct and joint indirect associations through school belonging, self-regulation, self-efficacy, and creative thinking. The models are interpreted as survey-weighted pooled associations; no country-specific latent-mean or structural-path comparisons are made.

RESULTS: Participation in arts and creative activities was positively associated with reading performance (total association β = 0.18, p < 0.001) and life satisfaction (total association β = 0.24, p < 0.001). In the full parallel models, the joint indirect association through the four prespecified constructs was β = 0.11 for reading performance and β = 0.15 for life satisfaction. A mutual-adjustment sensitivity analysis showed that the standalone ordering was not stable for reading once the four intervening constructs were considered simultaneously. The main interpretation therefore rests on the aggregate direct, joint indirect, and total associations rather than on a strongest-mediator claim.

CONCLUSION: The pooled models identify positive direct and joint indirect associations between a heterogeneous arts-and-creative-activities breadth measure and both outcomes. The cross-sectional design does not establish temporal or causal mediation, and the analysis does not make strongest-mediator claims. The multi-country estimates are interpreted as survey-weighted pooled averages rather than evidence that structural relations are identical in every country. The findings apply to the broad participation construct and do not demonstrate effects of formal arts education or any single art form.