Music Education and Academic Success

1
Music Education and Academic Success

• Presented by
• Abby Chase and Andrea Fair

2
Hypothesis

• Music education contributes to academic success
  in the core academic areas of language arts and
  mathematics and generally to all learning.

3
The Research

• Research supports the hypothesis many times over
  as analysis of the connection between music
  education and academic performance has been
  examined by educators.
• The research was presented in articles by John
  Huffman, Rebecca Johnson, and Daniel Amen.

4
Music, Math, and the Mind

• Research shows a positive connection between
  Learning Through the Arts (LTTA) with positive
  academic performance.
• Authors premise is that learning anything is
  enhanced when core subjects are mixed with art,
  music, theater, and dance.

5
Music, Math, and the Mind

• Queens University in Ontario - a three-year
  study conducted by Rena Upitis and Katharine
  Smithrim examined the effect of LTTA on language
  and math performance.
• Using standardized tests, they compared the
  achievement of 467 students in grade six from
  schools participating in LTTA with 281 6th grade
  students from two types of control schools. They
  found that, although there were no significant
  differences in most areas of language and math,
  the LTTA students scored higher in computation
  (basic arithmetic) and estimation.

6
Music, Math, and the Mind

• Hoffman presents the concept of engagement.
• Smithrim defines engagement as the situation
  where children are wholly involved physically,
  emotionally, intellectually, and socially with
  their learning.
• Engagement students involved with their
  learning and vested in the results as they see
  the big picture where subject areas relate and
  connect.

7
Music, Math, and the Mind

• Huffman also included brain research.
• Gordon Shaw and Mark Bodner - brain-imaging
  studies.
• Same parts of brain were active when listening to
  Mozart as when engaged in tasks that require
  spatial-temporal reasoning - like doing puzzles
  and playing chess.
• Listening to music primes the brain, warms it
  up, and gets it ready to do spatial tasks.
• Related to students understanding of fractions
  and ratios.

8
Whats New in Pedagogy Research?

• Asked the questions
• Does studying and playing music make you smarter
  for the rest of your life? Does it make you
  smarter in a particular subject, like math?
• Two-part study from Toronto
• Examined length of time of music lessons related
  to academic progress.
• Continued study into college level to examine
  whether positive connections continued after
  music lessons had ended.

9
What New in Pedagogy Research

• Examined connection between academic success with
  parent background and IQ.
• Statistical results students who had taken
  music lessons earlier in their lives were
  statistically more successful in all academic
  areas, specifically in mathematics and
  organizational skills, and had higher IQs.

10
Music and the Brain

• David Amen connected learning to play a musical
  instrument with the enhancement of brain
  function.
• Music enhanced the right hemisphere which helps
  seeing images in three-dimensional pictures
  (visual spatial reasoning).
• Preschool children who received piano keyboard
  lessons for six months improved their performance
  dramatically on a visual spatial reasoning task.
• Spatial reasoning augments mathematical and
  analytical capability.

11
Music and the Brain

• College Entrance Examination Boards reported
  that students with experience in musical
  performance scored 51 points higher on the verbal
  part of the SAT and 39 points high on the math
  section than the national average.
• Music and music majors had the highest reading
  scores of any students on campus.

12
Music and the Brain

• Music education is found to enhance four specific
  areas of education
• Success in Society
• Success in School
• Success in Developing Intelligence
• Success in Life

13
Conclusion

• Education in music and art enriches a child's
  life
• Education in the arts opens up a world of beauty
  and self-expression, and incorporation of the
  arts into the core academic areas teach
  discipline, organization, and sequential learning
  habits. These skills transfer to academic
  success in all areas.
• There is significant research that supports this
  thinking perhaps the best thing about the
  research is that it calls attention to the
  correlation between arts education and the core
  academic subjects and makes people think about
  that connection and its influence in all
  students learning.