Elita Maule¹, Franz Hilpold^2,

Interest in the possible benefits that music can bring to intelligence development has considerably grown in the past two decades. Especially music seems to enhance academic achievement in other disciplines. However numerous studies made under different points of view have yielded discordant results due to two orders of problems: 1- difficulty of isolating variables that can co-affect the positive transfer between music and other learning processes (e.g. socioeconomic family status, motivations, the role of the teacher, type of music interventions). 2- Methodological inhomogeneity and the variety of different approaches (e.g. presence or absence of randomization, presence or absence of the control group, representativeness of the sample). This study takes into account the results of the OECD – PISA 2009 survey and merges them with the more detailed and comprehensive data collected in Italy and in the autonomous province of South Tyrol (Italy). In order to comply with the needs of the research only one kind of musical practice is taken into account, singing song in early childhood, using a randomized sample, isolating as related variables the parents’ cultural, socio-economic and the immigration status. The results show how the practice of singing songs in early childhood influences the choice of curriculum after compulsory education and what types of families tend to encourage the practice of singing related to the cultural level of the parents.

academic achievement, choice of school curriculum, family cultural background, OECD – PISA Research, singing songs