The Influence of Singing on 15-year-old Students School Performances in Mathematics, Science and Reading Comprehension

Elita Maule^1, and Matthäus Hilpold²

¹Conservatory of Music of Bolzano- Bozen, Bolzano, Italy

²Technical University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria

Cite this paper:
Elita Maule and Matthäus Hilpold. The Influence of Singing on 15-year-old Students School Performances in Mathematics, Science and Reading Comprehension. American Journal of Educational Research. 2013; 1(8):294-299. doi: 10.12691/education-1-8-5

Abstract

Research suggests that music can act as a catalyst for cognitive skills in other disciplines, and the relation between music and spatial-temporal skills is fascinating. In particular, we are able to confirm, thanks to recent studies, the hypothesis that singing (heard or produced autonomously) improves the learning of language, above all on account of the motivation induced and the better structuring of the discourse within the musical container. However, various questions remain unanswered. Little is known about the precise elements of music education that are positively transferrable to other fields. Moreover, further transversal studies would be necessary to establish the duration of such effects. The study presented here stems precisely from the idea of adding a further step in the understanding of what effect musical and vocal experience, in our case in a family environment, might have on learning as a whole. The study takes into account the results of the survey OECD - PISA 2009 and the answers given by the parents of 2,247,100 fifteen-year-old students about the habit of singing with their children during their early childhood. The results would seem to indicate that the performances of the 15-year-olds in mathematics, science and reading comprehension are positively correlated to the frequency with which they were able to undergo musical-vocal experiences inside the family during their first years of life.

Keywords:
sing songs musical family practices school performances 15-year-olds students OECD- PISA research

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