Collecting, summarising and sharing evidence of the impact of music education
According to a recent research report, Sistema Scotland’s social change programme in Aberdeen – Big Noise Torry – has enhanced participants’ ability to learn in school, improved academic and behavioural skills, boosted school attendance rates, and improved their emotional wellbeing.
Dr Nina Kraus explains the vital role of music in learning at this ARTSpeaks event in Illinois in 2017.
A useful infographic about the relationship between music education and brain development, thanks to Ward-Brodt Music Store, Wisconsin, USA.
The findings of a recent study in England show that young people playing a musical instrument enjoy greater progress and better academic outcomes than those who do not, with the greatest impact for those playing the longest.
Pianist, writer and teacher, Andrew Eales, responds to a new research study in his post on the website, pianodao.com.
“Music is universal, it is magical, and it is omnipresent. Why would we be okay with our schools not having music?” asks Suzanne D’Addario Brouder in her blog on The Violin Channel.
Study after study proves that regardless of socioeconomic background, music-making students do better in school than those who have no music involvement. Whether it is improved spatial-temporal reasoning, which is integral to mathematics, or repetition of tunes and melodies, which is integral to verbal memory, learning, playing and creating music benefits children in many ways.
A study by researchers at the University of Southern California shows that exposure to music and music instruction accelerates the brain development of young children.
Research by Philip Yang at Eberhard Karls University, Tübingen, Germany used a survey of German teenagers to investigate the relationship between educational attainment and playing a musical instrument, either in early childhood or during one’s teenage years.
Professor Nadine Gaab has shown that people who play a musical instrument regularly have higher executive function (EF) skills than non-musicians.
Researchers from the University of Kansas have confirmed what decades of anecdotal evidence and the evidence on this site and elsewhere suggests : that increased music participation has important direct and indirect effects on student achievement and engagement.
In this article, originally published on the Musicstage website, Anita Holford and Dyfan Wyn Owen, both parents of a young musician, look at whether learning music really can make a difference to childrens’ futures.
Music Education Works 