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Effects of Three Years of Piano Instruction on Children’s Academic Achievement, School Performance and Self-Esteem

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This study of the effects of three years of piano instruction is based on a sample of 117 fourth-grade children attending public schools in Montreal. The children had never participated in formal music instruction, did not have a piano at home, and their annual family income was below $40,000 Can. Children in the experimental group (n= 63) received individual piano lessons weekly for three years and were given an acoustic piano at no cost to their families. Children in the control group (n= 54) did not participate in formal music instruction. Participants were administered tests of self-esteem, academic achievement, cognitive abilities, musical abilities, and motor proficiency at the beginning of the project and throughout the three years of piano instruction. The results indicated that piano instruction had a positive effect on children’s self-esteem and school music marks but did not affect their academic achievement in math and language as measured by standardized tests and school report cards.
The Effects of Three Years of Piano Instruction on Children's Cognitive
Development
Eugenia Costa-Giomi
Journal of Research in Music Education, Vol. 47, No. 3. (Autumn, 1999), pp. 198-212.
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Journal of Research in Music Education is currently published by MENC: The National Association for Music Education.
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Wed Aug 1 03:12:15 2007
... Therefore, each is presented in more detail. Costa-Giomi (2004) and Costa-Giomi et al. (2005) found behavioral differences among persisting and dropout piano students. Dropout students were less likely to have siblings, missed more lessons, practiced less, completed less piano homework, and achieved lower scores on piano exams than continuing students. ...
... They achieved less from the beginning of their studies than their continuing peers. Costa-Giomi (2004) identified lowered motivation and diminished achievement as early predictors of dropout behavior in piano students. In a subsequent study, Costa-Giomi et al. (2005) found that dropout students elicit more verbal cues from the teacher but get fewer praises from the piano teacher as they accomplish fewer assigned goals. ...
... Contributing external and internal factors to dropout are quite similar to those in the school band or orchestra settings, but there are some differences: in the internal factors category, piano dropout students had weaker long-term commitment, lower overall musical accomplishment, and musical ability. In the external factors category, they started playing piano later in their life, missed more lessons, were less likely to have siblings, and had higher instances of stay-at-home mothers who were overall less educated than mothers of continuing students (Costa-Giomi, 2004;King, 2016;Gerelus et al., 2017Gerelus et al., , 2020. ...
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Music education often struggles to sustain students’ long-term commitment, with many perceiving lessons as frustrating or unengaging, leading to discontinuation. To address this gap, our study aimed to elucidate the primary reasons for dropout from the perspectives of various stakeholders, including students, parents, teachers, and principals. Drawing upon the self-determination theory, our research comprehensively investigated external and internal factors contributing to dropout. Among external factors, competing extracurricular commitments, music theory and solfége lessons, and teacher’s approach emerge as the most prominent. Among internal factors, our findings highlighted the critical role of autonomy, competency, and relatedness in shaping students’ decisions to continue or discontinue music education. Inadequate teacher-student relationships, limited peer interactions, and uninspiring classroom atmospheres significantly impacted dropout. Moreover, challenges in the music school curriculum, such as difficulties with music theory and solfège, resource limitations, and excessive workloads, emerged as prominent barriers to student engagement. By addressing these multifaceted issues, our study underscores the importance of fostering supportive environments that cater to individual needs and interests, ultimately enhancing the overall music education experience and reducing dropout rates. This research represents the first systematic empirical study in Slovenian music education, laying the groundwork for future quantitative investigations to advance education practices in Slovenia.
... They found that music classes helped combat a decline in self-esteem experienced by those in the control condition. Conversely, Costa-Giomi [96] randomly assigned children into two groups-one which received individual piano lessons and the other no formal music instruction. The self-esteem of children in the experimental condition increased significantly over three years; however, at no point did their scores differ from the control group. ...
... Importantly, research that fails to identify a relationship between formal music instruction and socioemotional development often consist of one-on-one music instruction (e.g., [96,[98][99][100]). By contrast, research on the involvement of group-based musical activities generally supports a positive association with socioemotional development or some of its components (e.g., [62,94,[101][102][103][104]), although research revealing few differences between music students and other groups (e.g., dancers) also exist [105]. ...
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This study aims to investigate the development of pitch-matching, rhythmic entrainment, and socioemotional skills in children who received formal music instruction and other non-music based after school programs. Eighty-three children, averaging 6.81 years old at baseline, were enrolled in either a music, sports, or no after-school program and followed over four years. The music program involved formal and systematic instruction in music theory, instrumental technique, and performance. Most control participants had no music education; however, in some instances, participants received minimal music education at school or at church. Musical development was measured using a pitch-matching and drumming-based rhythmic entrainment task. Sharing behavior was measured using a variation of the dictator game, and empathy was assessed using three different assessments: the Index of Empathy for Children and Adolescence (trait empathy), the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (theory of mind), and a Fiction Emotion-Matching task (state empathy). Results revealed no time-related associations in pitch-matching ability; however, formal music instruction improved pitch-matching relative to controls. On the contrary, improvements in rhythmic entrainment were best explained by age-related changes rather than music instruction. This study also found limited support for a positive association between formal music instruction and socioemotional skills. That is, individuals with formal music instruction exhibited improved emotion-matching relative to those with sports training. In terms of general socioemotional development, children’s trait-level affective empathy did not improve over time, while sharing, theory of mind, and state empathy did. Additionally, pitch-matching and rhythmic entrainment did not reliably predict any socioemotional measures, with associations being trivial to small. While formal music instruction benefitted pitch-matching ability and emotion-matching to an audiovisual stimulus, it was not a significant predictor of rhythmic entrainment or broader socioemotional development. These findings suggest that the transfer of music training may be most evident in near or similar domains.
... They are capacities that lie beyond artistic growth (to varying degrees) for which the arts may provide a fertile environment for development (Eisner, 2002). For example, children who receive music education have been found to exhibit improved fine motor skills (Costa-Giomi, 2004) and enhanced auditory attention (Kraus & Chandrasekaran, 2010) even outside the musical context in which those skills were developed (for example, on a general, nonmusical measure of fine motor skills, in the case of Costa-Giomi). This constitutes evidence of some degree of transfer. ...
... Although meta-analyses of musical training and children's cognitive development conducted by Cooper (2020) and Sala and Gobet (2017) yielded similar findings, the authors of both studies reported a key caveat: the magnitude of the extra-artistic benefits of musical training were inversely proportional to the quality of the study in which they were reported. In fact, in the meta-analysis conducted by Cooper (2020), there was no effect of musical training on children's cognitive development after accounting for variations in study quality, and it is certainly the case that a number of carefully-designed studies featuring random assignment have found no effects of musical training on children's cognitive development (e.g., Costa-Giomi, 2004;Mehr et al., 2013). This raises the possibility that the apparent extra-artistic benefits of music education to cognitive domains of children's development may be an epiphenomenon that is at least partially-explained by selection bias, a point raised by Winner and Cooper (2000) in their meta-analysis of the effects of arts education on children's academic achievement. ...
... As part of the regular school curriculum or as an extracurricular activity, music education programs have been shown to be effective in fostering students' skills in social, interpersonal, and academic areas (Adderley, Kennedy, and Berz 2003;North, Hargreaves, and O'Neill 2000;O'Neill 2006;Schellenberg 2006). Numerous studies have documented how the benefits of instrument learning cross over to enhance non-music related skills, and as a result, many public schools are implementing after-school music programs aimed at teaching students more than just music (Chong 2008;Chong and Kim 2010;Costa-Giomi 2004;Mason and Chuang 2001). ...
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The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, it outlines an author-developed school orchestra model. Second, it describes students' perceptions of their orchestra experiences after model implementation in terms of program satisfaction, personal and social experiences, and learning motivation. The orchestra program was implemented in 77 elementary schools over the course of a full school year. The model includes procedures for setting up and managing a school orchestra including teaching curriculum, learning repertoire, and networking the resources. For the students' perceptions of the orchestra experiences, 593 elementary students from 15 schools were randomly selected from the orchestra model schools, and were asked IJEA Vol. 17 No. 35-http://www.ijea.org/v17n35/ 2 to complete a survey at the end of the one-year implementation. Students reported satisfaction with the orchestra program, positive personal and social experiences, and learning motivation. The results indicate that school orchestra programs can provide meaningful opportunities for students to gain positive experiences in self-confidence, actualization, building relationships, listening skills, motivation for participation and academic achievement.
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