The Impact of Music Education and Athletic Participation on Academic Achievement

The Impact of Music Education and AthleticParticipation on Academic Achievement 

This article was interesting to me beacuse of the fact that it was an actual study to see if students who were althetic performed different than students who were musical. Since this sort of correllates to my study (to see if students who are musically trained perform well on math assessments vs. students who haven't received musical training.)

"For many years, music educators have dealt with this question: Did their students achieve at a higher academic level than their nonmusician peers because they were more intelligent or could some portion of this higher achievement be attributed to their training as musicians? Music educators have long believed that music, as a discipline, was drawing the best and brightest, but the effect that music has on students' academic ability has just begun to come to light."

This thesis statement, written by Schneider, Timothy W.; Klotz, Jack, caught my attnetion because I was curious about the same thing before coming up with my thesis. 

"Music and Mathematics The connection between music and mathematics is evident in the very nature of the music discipline itself. Music is built on counting systems and is performed over time. Numerical subdivisions, overtone structure, and tuning systems (Pythagorean tuning) are examples of inherent relationships between math and music."

The researcher does find evidence that musicians do perform better than those who are not trained in music. I especially like his information found on page 6 regarding music and math.

AUTHOR Schneider, Timothy W.; Klotz, Jack TITLE The Impact of Music Education and Athletic Participation on Academic Achievement. PUB DATE 2000-11-00 NOTE 36p.; Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Mid-South Educational Research Association (28th, Bowling Green, KY, November 15-17, 2000). PUB TYPE Reports Research (143) Speeches/Meeting Papers (150)

Integrating Music With Core Subjects

Integrating Music With Core Subjects by Jeffrey Aaron is an article found through JSTOR that I think speaks to an important idea. In the article, Aaron states that, "Any teacher including activities from all perspectives will be educating more completely." He suggests that children demonstrate different ways of understanding and to include ways that include art and music may help specific students be more successful.

In general, I think that including music in core subjects is a great way to keep a subject interesting. There are so many nursery rhymes that can assist younger students to learn challenging subjects and incorporating older children to be creative and include music in projects, etc., can help maintain interests in the "not so fun" areas of learning.

Aaron, J. (1994). Integrating Music With Core Subjects. Music Educators Journal, Vol. 80(No. 6). Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/3398709

Essay: Hong Kong Music Teachers Ask, "Does Music Education Research Matter?"

Essay: Hong Kong Music Teachers Ask, "Does Music Education Research Matter?"

This article speaks mostly to music education in Asia, but it does point out some interesting ideas about music education. The essay discusses music education and the fact that not all music education is the same. Depending on the teacher, results of the classroom students can be altered. For example, for my research project, I will see if students perform better on their math assessments following a specific music lesson. If I do not teach this lesson well enough that students can understand my ideas, the results of the test could be drastically different than if the lesson was taught in a way that students could better comprehend.

Some interesting ideas here...Mostly on pgs. 84-86 as these pages are not written specifically about Asia.

Brand, M. (n.d.). Hong Kong Music Teachers Ask: "Does Music Education Research Matter"? Bulletin of the Council for Research in Music Education, No. 169 (Summer, 2006), Pp. 79-86. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/40319312

Modest Support on the Subject

Article Link

Now this article is an interesting read. I think it's very valuable for my research becuase it actually claims that there is not enough support of music and math being connected. I think it is important for me to listen to all sides of the subject and understand why this article claims the evidence on the subject is modest, at best.

After reading the article, it seems that the author of the article searched for evidence supporting the subject of math and music being directly associated. The author could not find enough supporting evidence and therefore, assumes that the evidence does not exist.

This article is worthy of a second read, but I didn't find the article to provide any evidence refuting the idea that math and music are correllated.

Vaughn, K. (n.d.). Music and Mathematics: Modest Evidence for the Oft-Claimed Relationship. Journal of Aesthetic Education, Vol. 34, No. 3/4(Special Issue: The Arts and Academic Achievement: What the Evidence Shows (Autumn - Winter, 2000)), Pp. 149-166. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/3333641?uid=3739560&uid=2&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21104678001161

Musician children detect pitch violations in both music and language better than nonmusician children: behavioral and electrophysiological approaches.

I recently found a very interesting article involving children who are trained in music. The abstract of this blog revealed to me that the information this article provides will really assist with my research. I have not comppleted reading the entire article, but I skimmed a bit and read a few pieces of pertinant information that I found to be particularly interesting.

"The idea that extensive musical training can influence processing in cognitive domains other than music has received considerable attention from the educational system and the media. Here we analyzed behavioral data and recorded event-related brain potentials (ERPs) from 8-year-old children to test the hypothesis that musical training facilitates pitch processing not only in music but also in language. We used a parametric manipulation of pitch so that the final notes or words of musical phrases or sentences were congruous, weakly incongruous, or strongly incongruous. Musician children outperformed nonmusician children in the detection of the weak incongruity in both music and language. Moreover, the greatest differences in the ERPs of musician and nonmusician children were also found for the weak incongruity: whereas for musician children, early negative components developed in music and late positive components in language, no such components were found for nonmusician children. Finally, comparison of these results with previous ones from adults suggests that some aspects of pitch processing are in effect earlier in music than in language. Thus, the present results reveal positive transfer effects between cognitive domains and shed light on the time course and neural basis of the development of prosodic and melodic processing." (Magne, Schön, Besson.)

Music training has really been proved to assist students with mathematic understanding. Pitch processing and math correllate with each other. This article, along with several others, states that, "Musician children outperformed nonmusician children in the detection of the weak incongruity in both music and language." I like the fact that this article speaks to positive performance in other areas of education and that students trained in music out-perform those who are not.

Link to article for later reading: http://europepmc.org/abstract/MED/16494681

Problem Statement The problem is that many elementary students with ADH

struggle to stay on task long enough to complete the requiredassignments during class.Research QuestionHow can studentswith ADHD stay ontask long enough tocomplete moreassignments during class?
Supporting Literature SourcesCaria, Andrea, & di Falco, Simona, & Venuti, Paola. (2011).Functional and Dysfunctional Brain Circuits UnderlyingEmotional Processing of Music in Autism SpectrumDisorders.Cerebral Cortex December 2011;21:2838--2849.http://cercor.oxfordjournals.org/content/21/12/2838.full.pdf.Nordoff, Paul, & Robbins, Clive. (2006).Music Therapy in Special EducationBarcelona Publishers.

Problem Statement/Research Question

The problem is that many sixth grade students struggle with math and have low test scores. How can sixth grade students improve scores on their math tests?