Lesson 9- Music as teaching strategy & reflective vide (assignment)

     Hooray!! The last two weeks of this semester have begun!👀👀 Dr Lina pleaded with a guest speaker to speak about music as a teaching approach in this week's lesson. It was enthralling!! The guest speaker discussed how we may use music to capture students' attention, keep them focused, and even help them learn something new. He facilitated a puzzle game with us to show how background music can help us focus. He also stated that music may be used to teach language and literacy. Dr Lina returned to the questioning strategies during the tutorial session to scaffold us further. She instructed us to create a question using the question circle.  She instructed us to create a question using the question circle. She went into greater detail on why we should improve our questioning strategies and provided various examples to connect us to real-life experiences. She also invited Luanne, me, and Shiwei to play a quick musical game. While listening to the song, we were supposed to fill in the blanks in the lyrics. She demonstrated how we might use this game to improve students' listening skills and vocabulary. She then discussed the necessity of having a sense of humour in the classroom. She did so with a sense of humour that could engage pupils and grab their attention. The sessions this week were exciting!

    To be honest, I had no idea that music could affect learning. I believe this is because I have no trouble concentrating on learning and have discovered that music frequently distracts me. Following this session, I received a fresh perspective on how music may help someone focus. I did realise that some of the students are audio learners who enjoy music. I also believe that music can aid in chunking and encoding as well as improving our memories in particular areas such as chemistry. I used to utilise lyrics to memorise the chemistry periodic table. It also reminded me of my secondary school, where my English teacher had us listen to the song and fill in the blanks in the words. Through songs, she indirectly engaged us in active listening and enhanced our vocabulary. 

    According to my research, music contributes some advantages to students' learning. First, music enhances cognitive abilities. Music has been related to better cognitive processes such as memory, attention, and problem-solving abilities (Hanna-Pladdy & Mackay, 2011). For example, background music improves reading comprehension (Hall, 1952) and mathematics (Rauscher & LeMieux, 2003). Music also improves general intelligence (IQ) among children. Schellenberg (2004) found that the combined musical groups improved much more (7 IQ points) than individuals who received drama classes or no instruction (4.3 IQ points). The effect was small to medium in magnitude (d, =.35). In contrast, only the drama courses group's parent-rated indicators of adaptive conduct increased from pre- to post-test. This is because music gives learners a new educational experience. Moreover, Bugos et al. (2007) discovered that elderly people who got music instruction performed better cognitively than those who did not.

    Second, music has been proven to improve academic performance and language skills among students. Jacob & Pillay (2021) discovered a correlation between music education and academic achievement, particularly in disciplines like mathematics and reading. Butzlaff (2000) discovered a strong favourable connection between music training and academic achievement in a meta-analysis. Furthermore, Musical training has been demonstrated to improve language development, especially phonological awareness and verbal recall (Moreno et al., 2009). Musical activities, such as singing and rhythm exercises, can help young learners learn to speak (Gordon, 2010) such as the Cocomelon programme. According to Lemaire (2019), there is some support supporting the influence of background music on episodic memory. It was proposed that the presence of music reduced the amount of effort required to encode the words by providing a helpful background such as chunking certain topics as scaffolding.

    The most extensively researched impact of music is its stress-reducing capabilities, according to Mehr et al.(2019). Music increases students' well-being and decreases stress across a wide variety of therapy populations, according to Landis-Shack et al. (2017). Music listening reduces stress by lowering physiological arousal, as seen by lower cortisol levels, heart rates and mean arterial pressure. Furthermore, music has been shown to increase good emotions and sensations such as happiness while lowering negative emotions and sensations such as subjective worry, state anxiety, restlessness or unease (Jancke, 2008). Research also shows that music might assist students to lower anxiety and become more focused (Alexandra et al., 202). It is not only beneficial to our health and emotions, but it also plays an important function in classroom management, particularly with special needs students.

    Although music supports students' learning, there are some aspects we should take into account when we are facilitating our class with music as a teacher. It is essential to remember that the attention span is limited and that several competing senses can prevent a person from absorbing certain sensory information (deHaan, 2010). This is because working memory can only process so much information at once, which is referred to as cognitive load. Reducing the amount of auditory input processed by the brain helps the mind to focus more on the visual data it receives. Moreover, Gonzales and Aiello (2009) discovered an almost significant main impact for loudness, a substantial main effect for music complexity, and significant interactions with each and participants' preference for listening to music while working for volume and music complexity. While modifying music was a major focus of this research into the impacts of music, other elements might be modified. The focus shifted to the individual characteristics of the participants. While music knowledge is useful, these studies are still focused on the individuals who listen to music, thus it is important to look at the qualities that distinguish people and study how they may relate to the impacts of music. This means that several factors should be considered when using music to enhance learning. As a result, teachers should be considerate of the aspects of subject matters, students' working memory capacity, students' behaviour and characteristics as well as their learning preference before integrating music into their teaching since not all students enjoy music. For example, pupils who do not have a foundation in music may struggle to grasp the material and will lose interest in learning. 

    The sessions were very insightful to me and I learned how to amplify the advantages of music to enhance my learning as well as my classroom in future after completing this blog. I understand that everything has two sides. Therefore, as a pre-service teacher, I would like to incorporate music in my classroom but not so much. Perhaps I will try to chunk some difficult content topics into music or rhyme to reduce my students' cognitive load. Furthermore, I would also like to play some soft and relaxing background music before the class starts and during a short break to reduce the stressful environment of the classroom. If there is an audio learner in my class, I would also try my best to help him or her by using music. 

Reflective video for assignment: https://youtu.be/QSpT9nKf-hA

References: 

Bugos, J. A., Perlstein, W. M., McCrae, C. S., Brophy, T. S., & Bedenbaugh, P. H. (2007). Individualized Piano Instruction enhances executive functioning and working memory in older adults. Aging & Mental Health, 11(4), 464-471. https://doi.org/10.1080/13607860601086504

Butzlaff, R. (2000). Can music be used to teach reading? Journal of Aesthetic Education, 34(3/4), 167-178.

deHaan, J., Reed, W.M., Kuwada, K. (2010). The effect of interactivity with a music video game on second language vocabulary recall. Language Learning and Technology, 14(2), 74-94.

Gonzalez, M. F., & Aiello, J. R. (2019). More than meets the ear: Investigating how music affects cognitive task performance. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 25(3), 431–444. https://doi.org/10.1037/xap0000202

Hall, J. 1952. The effect of background music on the reading comprehension of 278 eighth and ninth-grade students. Journal of Educational Research, 45: 451 – 458.

Hanna-Pladdy, B., & Gajewski, B. (2012). Recent and past musical activity predicts cognitive ageing variability: Direct comparison with general lifestyle activities. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 6, 198.

Jacob, U.S., & Pillay, J. (2021). Effectiveness of music therapy on reading skills of pupils with intellectual disability. Cypriot Journal of Educational Sciences, 16(1), 251-265. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1288684

Jäncke, L. (2008). Music, memory and emotion. Journal of Biology, 7(6), 21. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1186/jbiol82

Landis-Shack, N., Heinz, A. J., & Bonn-Miller, M. O. (2017). Music therapy for posttraumatic stress in adults: A theoretical review. Psychomusicology: Music, Mind, and Brain, 27(4), 334–342. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1037/pmu0000192

Lemaire, C. E. (2019). The effect of background music on episodic memory. Psychomusicology: Music, Mind, and Brain, 29(1), 22–34. https://doi.org/10.1037/pmu0000234

Mehr, S. A., Singh, M., Knox, D., Ketter, D. M., Pickens–Jones, D., Atwood, S., Lucas, C., Jacoby, N., Egner, A. A., Hopkins, E. J., & Howard, R. M. (2019). Universality and diversity in human song. Science, 366), https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aax0868

Moreno, S., Marques, C., Santos, A., Santos, M., Castro, S. L., & Besson, M. (2009). Musical training influences linguistic abilities in 8-year-old children: More evidence for brain plasticity. Cerebral Cortex, 19(3), 712-723.https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1093/cercor/bhn120

Schellenberg, E. G. (2004). Music lessons enhance IQ. Psychological Science, 15: 511 – 514. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0956-7976.2004.00711.x