Using Music in the Classroom as a Pedagogical Tool

Abstract

This study’s purpose was to find and discuss how and why teachers include musical methods in their instruction. A focus was placed on music as a pedagogical tool in two main forms of employment. The first was using music to teach content such as memorization of vocabulary or skills. The second was music being used to affect behavior e.g. classroom management. A survey was sent to a public school system’s superintendent’s office. The survey was aimed at discovering which teachers were including music as an instructional tool, how they were doing so and their professional opinions on the efficacy of this inclusion. A statistical analysis using independent samples t-tests was conducted to analyze differences between teacher subgroup responses for the following: Are teachers in STEM subjects significantly more or less likely to report implementing music in their classrooms than teachers in non-STEM subjects? Do teachers that utilize music as a teaching tool report higher levels of student engagement than teachers that do not? Do teachers identify music as being more useful in affecting classroom environment or as a teaching tool? For all three research questions, the null hypotheses were retained.