12-year old investigates music participation
posted in Musings, Announcements |I just received a fascinating email from Cambridge Journals, the publisher of one of the leading music education research journals, the British Journal of Music Education (BJME). BJME just published a research study conducted and written by a 12-year old student, Eleanor Denny. Working with researchers and other children at Open University, Eleanor designed, conducted, and wrote up a fascinating study about why students participate in musical experiences.
Here is her abstract:
I undertook this project as a 12-year-old student while studying research methods at the
Children’s Research Centre at the Open University. It has already been shown that doing
music improves children’s Mathematics and English scores. The aim of this study was to
find out if it also raises the aspirations of the children taking part. A questionnaire was
given out to 80 Year 7 children at two schools in Milton Keynes. Questions investigated
the children’s musical participation and future aspirations as well as their parents’ attitudes
and education.The most important findings are that the musical participation of the children is
positively correlated with their future aspirations. Musical participation is most closely
linked with parental enthusiasm for it. Parental pressure and education were found to
have no link with musical participation, but families with low incomes may find affording
musical activities hard to maintain.It is recommended that more money be put into music education so children of low
socio-economic backgrounds can have more of a chance to play musical instruments.
You can download and read the full research article here. Dr. John Finney from the University of Cambridge wrote a wonderful response to her article here.
Implications for music education
Why don’t we involve our students more in our research? Is the traditional “top-down” approach the best way to affect change in music education? I love John Finney’s idea that we should involve our students as “co-enquirers” in our research. All too often, we place ourselves as teachers and researchers in the role of “most knowledgeable” when, perhaps, our students should be seen in that role.
It is a great day in music education when one of the world’s leading music education research journals publishes a research study conducted and written by a 12-year old. Congratulations Eleanor!
