As one of the main skills of modern education, critical thinking has actualized the problem of developing new concepts in all preparation areas, including music. However, as experience shows, many teachers are not competent in critical thinking enough. The ultimate goal of this study was to define the relationship between educators' HOTS (critical thinking), creativity, and the ability to teach music in a creative manner. For this, the study involved 53 music teaching individuals who had completed preliminary training in the form of the course on the development of higher-order thinking skills (2019-2020). The put forward hypotheses stated that the ability to teach music creatively does not depend on the skills of critical thinking and creativity (H0) and, accordingly, that it is directly connected with these skills (H1). In order to find dependencies in the experimental data obtained as a result of testing, analysis of variance and methods of analytical statistics were used. As a result, the conclusion was drawn that critical thinking and musical creativity have a notable impact on music educators' competence to teach creatively. That is, hypothesis H1 was confirmed. The paper concluded by arguing that it is advisable to pay more precise attention to the activation of critical thinking skills when training music teachers to raise the effectiveness of the overall music education. Its results might be useful for interested academics, music educators, and music school administrators who wish to implement innovative educational approaches that positively impact student and teacher achievement.
