This theory helps in describing the functionality of humans with an emphasis on processes of an interactive nature. The cognitive activities are assigned a special role by the theory through which individuals could obtain a handful of insight from their surroundings. Individuals could give a reflection of the theory along with mixing of own behaviors and the ideas. This could also regulate the processes of own self-efficacy. The objective behind connecting this theory with music education was to investigate the significance of developments for developing acceptable learning and teaching practices for advanced students. It is critical to have a good theoretical foundation for understanding how learning happens when planning curricula and instructional services for children with outstanding academic ability. To explain human functioning, social cognitive theory stresses a dynamic interactive process between environmental, behavioral, and personal components. This understanding of human connections and functioning became characterized as a set of triadic reciprocal causation (Avotra et al., 2021a). The theory assigns a major role to cognitive processes in which a person may watch others and the environment, reflect on it in conjunction with their own ideas and behaviors, and adjust their own self-regulatory functions as a result. When looking at learning interventions for that demographic, a learning model that stresses the primary role of cognition appears reasonable. Human agency and perceived self-efficacy are components of the social cognitive paradigm that influences cognitive growth and performance. So, a link could be developed in light of this theory toward the role of music education in developing certain cognitive factors in students for psychological wellbeing.

Self-esteem is still one of the most widely studied topics in social psychology. Self-esteem is often thought of as a component of one’s self-concept (Harder, 1994), although it is one of the most significant aspects of one’s self-concept for certain people. Indeed, self-esteem looked to be interchangeable with self-concept in the literature on the self for a time. The link of strong self-esteem with a range of favorable outcomes for individuals and communities as a whole has prompted this attention on self-esteem. Furthermore, there is a general view that boosting one’s self-esteem (particularly that of a child or teenager) is advantageous to both the individual and society (Cast and Burke, 2002). Self-esteem can relate to a person’s total self or specific components of their self, such as how they feel about their social status, ethnic or racial group, physical characteristics, physical prowess, and work or school achievement. Theorists have indeed classified various kinds of self-esteem as contingent vs. non-contingent; visible vs. tacit; genuine vs. fake; steady vs. volatile; worldwide vs. sector-specific. In terms of the complexity of self-esteem, many writers see it as a single, worldwide characteristic, while some others see it as a heterogeneous feature with distinct constituent parts such as the interpersonal, cognitive, and actual self. Differentiation has been made between a false sense of self-worth and a genuine sense of self-worth. Self-esteem which is dependent on meeting certain criteria of achievement or staying true to certain relational or psychological aspirations is referred to as contingent self-esteem (Deci and Ryan, 1995). This is a form of self-aggrandizement related to being ego-involved in certain objectives and obtaining them diligently. This is frequently related to social comparison and is typically associated with narcissism. From the other part, true self-esteem is much more consistent and is founded on a stable and resilient sense of self. Their value would be represented in action, proactive behavior, and vibrancy as an integral component of their self. When it comes to assessing self-esteem, many writers differentiate among explicit and implicit self-esteem, although that is the reflectively unrecognized influence of self-attitude on the judgment of nature vs. self-dissociated objects. In this connection of the theory, self-esteem was identified as a mediator between the relationship of music education and academic outcomes.

Self-determination is a key concept in psychology that relates to a person’s ability to make decisions and govern their own lives. This skill is crucial to one’s mental stability and wellbeing. Individuals who have self-determination believe they have self-control in life. This also affects motivation since individuals are much more driven to act if they believe their actions will have an impact on the result. Self-determination was used in a variety of fields, notably education and health care. According to research, having a high level of self-determination can help one succeed in a variety of areas. According to this theory, people can become self-determined when their demands for competency, connectedness, and independence are met. The concept of self-determination emerged from the research of scientists (Deci and Ryan, 1995), who published their views in the book “Self-Determination and Intrinsic Motivation in Human Behavior.”

They established a motivational theory that argued that individuals are motivated by a desire to learn and improve. Self-determination theory is a meta-theory of motivation and personal development, including psychological wellbeing, that is scientifically grounded (Ryan and Deci, 2000). According to the idea, all humans are born with a strong sense of curiosity and a desire to learn, and that certain contextual conditions may either promote or inhibit a person’s feeling of wellbeing, self-regulation, and intrinsic drive to learn. Belonging, competence, and autonomy are three intrinsic and basic psychological demands identified by the theory. Based on this theory, a study related to music participation was conducted by Krause et al. (2019). All these theories provided a strong ground for the mediators used in this study for the Students’ psychological wellbeing and academic outcomes.

A few studies have been conducted in the past to look into the impact of music education on Students’ psychological wellbeing from different perspectives (e.g., Croom, 2014; Demirbatır, 2015; Erginsoy Osmanoğlu and Yilmaz, 2019; Krause et al., 2019; Mehraban, 2020). Through stimulating Students’ imagination and association, music education may enhance Students’ interests, emotions, and other non-intellectual variables, fulfilling the goal of nurturing Students’ inventive personalities. As a result, music instruction at colleges and universities is an effective way to help students overcome their “dysfunctional” personalities. Students may regulate their own identities for developing a feeling of self-efficacy via music instruction, allowing them to overcome the numerous personality flaws caused by the many negative forces in today’s cultural context (Arora and Singh, 2020). The significance of music education for treating illness could be effectively performed in educational institutes since it is understood that educating music is a way of tutoring art and has significance in psychological regulation and treatment. Music education’s personal development benefits have gotten less emphasis. Yet, other research continues to link music training to the development of psychological advantages, such as self-efficacy.

Another study of middle school and high school band, choruses, and orchestral Students’ self-efficacy was undertaken by several researchers. The findings revealed a small positive association between musical ability and self-efficacy. Self-efficacy is higher among students who have a higher level of musical talent. While this research shows a link between music ability and self-efficacy, it does not examine the influence of tutoring music on children lacking this ability by contrast (Zelenak, 2015). The benefits of individual music instruction on pupils’ self-esteem have been proven in studies. Despite the fact that all students have identical motor skills, musical ability, and cognitive abilities, there is concrete evidence that children receiving paid piano lessons have a considerable advantage in developing self-esteem compared to counterparts unable to get tutoring on music education (Costa-Giomi, 2004). Researchers back up this assertion by stating that an active passion for music is statistically significant in predicting self-esteem in children who have paid music tutoring (Wu and Lu, 2021). Research into the influence of school-based music programs on personal development has also been undertaken.

The study focused on a music program that offered general music sessions to primary school children during the school day. The control group received no musical education and suffered a drop in self-esteem. The ones who were enrolled for music learning did not experience a drop in self-esteem. The hand drumming music program in Australia was shown to result in self-esteem being boosted by a substantial amount along with reducing problems associated with behaviors in the children who recently completed their training (Faulkner et al., 2010; Rickard et al., 2013). When researchers looked at high school students reporting specific personal reasons for participating in music-related co-curricular activities, they discovered that they cited sentiments of good self-esteem and self-efficacy. Furthermore, researchers discovered that drumming participants in Africa thought of themselves as serving the cause of music. They felt like it was a great thing to be a part of and it boosted their ability in having the satisfaction of self-efficacy in concluding the lengthy research on learners (Barbre, 2013). All these supportive papers suggested relationships between music education and the psychological wellbeing of students, along with the self-esteem and self-efficacy of the students, so we propose the following:

According to the research on self-esteem, there is a substantial relationship between self-esteem and psychological wellbeing. However, this relationship differs depending on the sort of self-esteem being studied. Self-esteem, for example, has been shown to play a beneficial influence in boosting psychological wellbeing in a broad body of research. Furthermore, culture has indeed been found to influence the causal relations between self-esteem and happiness. In individualistic civilizations, self-esteem was shown to be more strongly linked to life satisfaction than in collectivist societies. Individuals from individualistic cultures may value their distinctive qualities and personal characteristics, making self-esteem a more important factor. Individuals in collectivist societies, on the other hand, may place a higher emphasis on relational and communal elements of the self. In collectivist societies it is critical to understand which types of self-esteem are favorable to psychological wellbeing (Diener and Diener, 2009; Sowislo and Orth, 2013).

Some researchers studied the relationship between self-esteem and psychological wellbeing by expanding self-esteem studies beyond the individual to the social level. As per the social identity theory, the collective is an important element of the self, and hence assessing the collective self may help people feel better about themselves. Indeed, they discovered that self-esteem was significantly linked with wellbeing in many white, Black, and Asian students in the United States. Even so, once individual self was taken into account, the relationship between collective self-esteem and wellbeing became non-significant for white students, small for Black students, and moderate too strong for Asian students. This shows that culture may have a significant impact on the importance of various sorts of self-esteem (Crocker et al., 1994). Many studies, such as Singhal and Prakash (2021), indicated a significant relationship among the wellbeing of students and self-esteem. Numerous of studies also pointed out the mediating role of self-esteem from different perspectives and found a significant contribution of self-esteem as a mediator (Hesari and Hejazi, 2011; Bajaj et al., 2016). These studies suggested the role of self-esteem as mediator in music education and psychological wellbeing in the context of our study, so we developed the following hypotheses.

People who have a high level of self-efficacy have a can-do attitude, which helps them to perceive obstacles as issues to solve problems rather than avoid them. They also create appropriately challenging objectives for themselves and stick to them with tenacity. Because they are extremely engaged, people with high self–efficacy love life. When they are confronted with difficult events, their confidence in their capacity to control the situation to their advantage leads them to be self-assured. Greater wellbeing, stress control, greater self-esteem, improved physical state, and better illness adaptation and survival are linked to high self-efficacy. On the other hand, poor self-efficacy seems linked to increased symptoms of anxiety and depression, along with decreased rates of psychological wellbeing (Bandura et al., 2003). A lot of studies such as Siddiqui (2015) indicated a significant positive correlation between self-efficacy and the psychological wellbeing and suggested analyzing the relationship in our context of the study. Several researchers concluded the mediation of self-efficacy in various situations in which self-efficacy plays a mediating role between different variables and contexts (Zhao et al., 2005; Molero et al., 2018; Sabouripour et al., 2021). These studies found a positive strong mediation of self-efficacy and helped us in developing the following hypotheses of this study:

This interesting connection between academic outcomes and Students’ psychological wellbeing had been studied many times in the past and found significant results (Bhat and Siddiqui, 2015; Alkhatib, 2020; Amholt et al., 2020; Gökalp, 2020; Chaudhry and Ikram, 2021). Psychological suffering has been identified as a serious and pressing concern among university students across the world. According to a study done in the United States, psychology is responsible for five of the top six health-related issues. High psychological distress and low psychological wellbeing are two classifications that may be used to describe university students who are suffering from a high level of mental illness. According to a study conducted by experts, university students in Australia discovered that high levels of psychological wellbeing were associated with reduced levels of depression. However, a lack of psychological wellbeing leads to an increase in despair. A scale to evaluate psychological wellbeing and psychological discomfort was used to evaluate the wellbeing of students. The link between discomfort and psychological wellbeing is presented in the research (Bhullar et al., 2014; Roslan et al., 2017; Sharp and Theiler, 2018). All this supporting literature hinted about the connection of the wellbeing of students and academic achievement in terms of performance, so we propose the following hypothesis in this regard:

This study is based on the following conceptual framework (see Figure 1).

The measurement model of the constructs was examined in the first step to determine the reliability, convergence, and discriminant validity of latent constructs. In this study, latent variables are assessed by the observed indicators (items) and are reflective in nature. In the reflective model, indicators are affected by the latent variable in the other words arrows are toward the indicators from their latent variables as can be seen in Figure 2 measurement model in which arrows point from latent variables toward indicators. In the First step, indicator loading was measured for each construct. It has been proposed that if the value of outer loadings is greater than 0.70, it is acceptable, which means that construct represents the 70% of items that construct (Hair et al., 2019; Avotra et al., 2021b). However, some studies suggest that a value greater than 0.50 is also an acceptable reliability (Hulland, 1999). In this study as indicated in Table 2, all outer loading is greater than 0.50 which shows reliability, except for ME2, SE4, SEC5, SP6 which were removed from the model to generate better results. Cronbach’s alpha, composite reliability and rho_A test were used for investigating the internal consistency of the construct. According to Hair et al. (2019), Cronbach’s alpha’s value should be higher than 0.7 to establish the internal consistency of constructs. Table 2 illustrates that Cronbach’s alpha of each latent construct is higher than 0.70 which shows higher internal consistency of scale. The second method that determines the internal reliability and consistency of a scale is composite reliability. All Composite Reliability (CR) values greater than 0.7 indicate Internal Consistency (Hair et al., 2019; Yingfei et al., 2021). Table 2 highlights that the composite reliability of each latent construct is above 0.70 thus internal consistency is established. Third method for measuring reliability is rho_A. The value of rho_A is greater than 0.70 is acceptable for determining reliability (Hair et al., 2019; Xiaolong et al., 2021). Table 2 reflects that all value of rho_A is greater than 0.70 thus internal consistency is established.

Convergent validity refers to all items of the constructs that are closely related to each other (Hair et al., 2012). The average variance extracted (AVE) is used for determining convergent validity for all constructs. The threshold value of AVE is equal or greater than 0.5 to establish the convergent validity of constructs (Hair et al., 2019). In this study, AVE for all the variables is above 0.50. Thus, convergent validity has been established.

Discriminant validity refers to each construct being empirically distinct from other constructs. Discriminant validity discusses the differentiation of each latent variable from other variables. There are three methods to determine discriminant validity in Smart-PLS: Fornel and lacker criteria, Cross loadings, and Heterotrait-Monotraite. According to Fornell and Larcker (1981), to establish the discriminant validity of constructs the square root of AVE of each variable in the research model must be higher than the correlation of the same variable with others. Table 3 indicates that the square root of AVE of each construct is greater than the diagonal values below. Hence, discriminant validity is established.

Another method to determine discriminant validity is cross-loading. After the Fornell and Larker method, cross-loading is an authentic method for determining discriminant validity. Criteria for this technique is that the values of each item with its own construct are higher as compared to other constructs. If the value of item is highly correlated to their own construct compared to other constructs, then discriminant validity is established in Table 4.

Heterotrait-Monotrait ratio of correlations (HTMT) is another method for evaluating discriminant validity of the data in SEM proposed by Dijkstra and Henseler (2015). If the values of HTMT are high, then the discriminate value problems arise. The threshold value of HTMT is 0.9 proposed by Dijkstra and Henseler (2015) which means two variables are correlated but not more than 0.9. All values of HTMT in Table 5 have a value less than 0.9, which reflects that the discriminant validity of constructs have been established.

Variance inflation factor values are used to investigate the collinearity Issues and common method biasness of structural model. According to Hair et al. (2019) VIF is an indicator which is used to measure whether all indicator variables are correlated to each other or not and to avoid all issues regarding the significance and its value must be less than three (Hair et al., 2019). In our results, all values are less than three as shown in Table 6. Hence, we conclude that there are no collinearity issues between the variables in the proposed structural model.

Model fitting parametric was tested before going for the structural assessment model. Model fits parametric includes SRMR (Standardized Root Mean Square Residual) and NFI (Normed fit indices). SRMR refers to “the difference between the observed correlation and the model implied correlation matrix whereby values are less than 0.08” (Hu and Bentler, 1998). In this study value of SRMR is greater than 0.8 which meets the required criteria. The second model fit parametric is Normed fit indices (NFI), greater than 0.90. Value of normed fit indices is 0.901 which is acceptable. The structure equation model (SEM) provides the means that shows the hypothesized path by supporting the theoretical model. Basically, SEM model comprises with the hypothesized relationship between the independent and dependent variables in the projected research model. The structural model predicts that how well the theoretical model envisages the hypothesized pathways. For the current study, SEM Model is assessed with the coefficient of determination (R²), Coefficient of determination (R²⁾ measures the variation in the dependent variable due to independent variables. R²-value of 0.75, 0.50, and 0.25 are considered substantial, moderate (Hair et al., 2019). Table 7 shows the value of 0.570 for PWB which is strong. This shows that all independent variables have 57% variance in psychological wellbeing whereas value of 0.242 for self-esteem shows 24% variance in self-esteem due to all independent variables. Value of 0.242 for self-efficacy shows 25% variance in self-efficacy due to all independent variable. Moreover, value of 0.394 for student performance shows 39% variance in student performance due to all independent capacity is established.

Hypothesis1 proposed that there is a relationship between music education and psychological wellbeing. Result indicates that Music education has a significant and positive effect on psychological wellbeing (β = 0.512, t = 9.010, p = 0.000). As the value of p < 0.05, therefore this hypothesis is accepted. Hypothesis 2 proposed that there is a relationship between music education and self-esteem. Our result indicates that the ME has a significant and positive effect on self-esteem (β = 0.491, t = 9.873, p = 0.000). As the value of p < 0.05, therefore this hypothesis is accepted. Hypothesis 3 proposed that there is a relationship between music education and self-efficacy. Results indicate that music education has significant and positive effect on self-efficacy (β = 0.504, t = 11.492, p = 0.000). As the value of p < 0.05, therefore this hypothesis is accepted. Hypothesis 4 proposed that there is a relationship between self-esteem and psychological wellbeing. Results indicate that the SE has a significant and positive effect on psychological wellbeing (β = 0.125, t = 2.386, p = 0.017). As the value of p < 0.05, therefore this hypothesis is accepted. Hypothesis 5 proposed that there is a relationship between self-efficacy and psychological wellbeing. The result indicates that the SEC has a significant and positive effect on PWB (β = 0.257, t = 5.306, p = 0.000). As the value of p < 0.05, therefore this hypothesis is accepted. Hypothesis 8 proposed that PWB has significant positive impacts on SP. Results indicate that the PWB has a significant and positive effect on Students’ performance (β = 0.627, t = 17.247, p = 0.000). As the value of p < 0.05, therefore this hypothesis is accepted (Table 8).

This study proposed the mediating role of self-esteem and self-efficacy between the relationship of Music education and Students’ psychological wellbeing. Our research applied Preacher and Hayes (2008) method for mediation analysis which is the most powerful and rigorous method for mediation analysis. Hypothesis 6 proposed that SEF mediates the relationship between ME and PWB The result shows that SEF positively mediates the relationship between ME and PWB (β = 0.061, t = 2.337, p = 0.020) as shown in Table 8. As the value of p < 0.05, therefore this hypothesis is accepted. In Hypothesis 7, we proposed that SEF mediates the relationship between ME and PWB. Results illustrate that SEF positively mediates the relationship between ME and PWB (β = 0.129, t = 4.851, p = 0.000) as shown in Table 7. As the value of p < 0.05, therefore this hypothesis is accepted (Table 9 and Figure 2).