Scholarship & Research
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Item The relationship between music and language achievement in early childhood(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Education, Health & Human Development, 1989) Harding, Judy Ann HoveIn the fall of 1988, this study was conducted in the public schools of Helena, Montana, to see if a statistically significant relationship existed between the amount of musical experiences children had in early childhood and their language achievement as measured following the children's second year in elementary school. Parents of randomly selected third grade children completed the HOMES questionnaire to determine the musical experience of their children. Language achievement was determined by the CTBS scores in mechanical language, expressive language, reading, and spelling. Gender was also of interest in this study; therefore a two-way analysis of variance test was used with gender and musical experience being the two independent variables and one of the four language scores being the dependent variable. The test was run four times, once for each dependent variable. A chi-square test was also run to determine if either gender was given significantly more musical experience. Three hypotheses were tested for each language skill. No interaction of independent variables existed for any of the dependent variables, so main effects were tested for each. The high group for musical experience also was found to be significantly higher in language achievement for the skills of expressive language, reading, and spelling. Only mechanical language showed no such relationship. It was also the only skill area that did show a significant relationship to gender, with girls being higher. The chi-square test showed that girls received significantly more musical experience than boys. Because a strong relationship was found to exist between music and three areas of language development, it was recommended that parents, teachers, and other caretakers of young children provide environments rich in musical experience. Additionally, further research should be performed to determine which particular types of musical experience have the strongest relationship to language development.Item The Mozart effect and fourth grade spelling test scores(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Education, Health & Human Development, 2000) Howard, Laurie JoItem The relevance of African American singing games to Xhosa children in South Africa : a qualitative study(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Education, Health & Human Development, 2009) Burns, Carolyn Diane; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Priscilla Lund; Douglas Bartholomew (co-chair)In post-apartheid South Africa there has been a strong emphasis on teaching traditional music in the schools. Previously the music was greatly influenced by Western European and English systems. New standards were developed in the Arts and Culture Curriculum 2005. The purpose of this study was to explore how children in South Africa could be taught African American singing games, their perception and preferences, and how these songs would meet the new standards. A qualitative study was conducted with 69 Xhosa children in grades five and six at Good Shepherd Primary School in Grahamstown, South Africa. The learners were introduced to three African American singing games of which they had no prior knowledge. The songs were taught in the South African traditional manner; i.e., singing and moving simultaneously. Interviews were subsequently conducted with 47 learners and 5 families. The primary school teachers also provided information informally. The learners related their knowledge of African American singing games compared to their traditional Xhosa singing games and other music. They recognized a relationship between African American slavery and the apartheid era. A learner's preference of song was directly related to his previous experience with a Xhosa children's song or traditional music used for rites and rituals. Interviews with the teachers and parents were very positive indicators that the African American singing games should be included in the curriculum. Parents remembered and sang Freedom Songs and they indicated the need for their children to learn about other African cultures. The outcome of this study may provide South African teachers with materials to introduce African American folk music as an applicable source of multicultural music with African origins. The study suggests successful ways in which we teach multicultural music.