The effect of movement on attitudes of fifth grade students toward their music class

The purpose of this study was to determine if movement, when used as an integral part of music instruction, significantly affected fifth graders' attitudes toward their music class. The study was conducted in two schools in Knoxville, Tennessee. Control (Non-Movement) and experimental (Movement) groups were chosen randomly in each of the two schools. Two of the classes were situated in a school which was predominantly low socio-economic class and the other two classes were situated in a school which was pre-dominantly of the upper socio-economic class.

The procedure for collecting data involved an eight-week period in which both experimental and control groups received two 30-minute lessons a week. The same teacher taught the four classes, the content remaining the same but the methodology differing. At the conclusion of the eight weeks a posttest was administered to every student. Data from the posttest was interpreted by two raters on a semantic differential. Each student's score was the result of the average of the score given by the two raters. Factor Analysis was used to analyze the data.

Results from the analysis indicated that fifth graders responded more favorably to their music programs when allowed to participate in movement activities as part of the learning process. Males tended to respond more favorably than females within the movement groups. Socio-economic status did not appear to affect students' attitudes toward their music class.

This study is a positive indicator that movement has a favorable effect on attitudes and that both males and females respond well to movement as part of their music learning. However, relationship between physical movement and cognitive gain in music learning was not a focus of this study.