Incorporating Music into Education

Incorporating Music into Education
I have recently explored the idea of the Mozart Effect and the use of music to enhance children’s learning. As a group, we shared ideas about this topic in the form of an online debate with another group, a learning style which I will discuss more in a separate blog post. I have summarised the arguments of the debate below.
The Mozart Effect refers to the study that found that spatiotemporal reasoning was improved for ten to fifteen minutes after listening to complex classical music such as the Mozart piano sonata (Rauscher & Shaw, 1998). However, a study by the Knight Foundation (2002) reported that only 30% of 850 17-21 year olds enjoy listening to classical music, implying that it is unlikely that the 70% who do not are unlikely to benefit from listening to this genre (John & James, 2002).
Another criticism of the Mozart Effect is the lack of scientific evidence to support the claim. For example, one researcher’s work found no evidence to support the Mozart effect. This study took place in an ordinary school environment, with a sample of over 8000 ten and eleven year olds (Hallam, 2000). The fact that no signs of the Mozart effect’s key beliefs were found in a study of such a large number of children shows that it cannot be a very reliable concept.
On the other hand, classical music is not the only type of music that has been found to benefit peoples’ learning. Music in general has been found to enhance learning, in particular spatial-temporal tasks. Other evidence of this was found in a study of children, with results showing that children performed better in these tasks after receiving a musical lesson beforehand (Chikahisa et al, 2006).
            Music is also known to help children with particular special educational needs, such as autism spectrum disorder (autism). A 2004 study from the Journal of Music Therapy reported that using music in day to day activities with children with ASD helps to ‘improve social behaviours, increase focus and attention, increase communication attempts, reduce anxiety, and improve body awareness and coordination’ (Whipple, 2004). This is further supported by another study which found that children with autism are more likely to express their emotions and engage in social interactions during therapy sessions involving music than they are in normal therapy sessions (Kim et al, 2009).
References

Chikahisa, S., Sei, H., Morishima, M., Sano, A., Kitaoka, K., Nakaya, Y., & Morita, Y. (2006). Exposure to music in the perinatal period enhances learning performance and alters BDNF/TrkB signaling in mice as adults. Behavioural brain research, 169(2), 312-319.

Hallam, S. (2001). The effects of listening to music of children's spatial performance. Psychology of Education Review, 25(2), 22-26.

John, S. (2005). James L. Knight Foundation (2002). Classical music consumer segmentation study: How Americans relate to classical music and their local orchestras.

Kim, J., Wigram, T., & Gold, C. (2009). Emotional, motivational and interpersonal responsiveness of children with autism in improvisational music therapy. Autism, 13(4), 389-409.

Rauscher, F. H., & Shaw, G. L. (1998). Key components of the Mozart effect. Perceptual and motor skills, 86(3), 835-841.


Whipple, J. (2004). Music in intervention for children and adolescents with autism: A meta-analysis. Journal of music therapy, 41(2), 90-106.

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