Music Education and Academic Success Presented by Abby Chase and Andrea Fair

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

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.

“Music, Math, and the Mind” Research shows a positive connection between Learning Through the Arts (LTTA) with positive academic performance. Author’s premise is that learning anything is enhanced when core subjects are mixed with art, music, theater, and dance.

“Music, Math, and the Mind” Queen’s 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 th 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.

“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.

“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.

“What’s 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.

“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.

“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.

“Music and the Brain” College Entrance Examination Board’s 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.

“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

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.