On music education and music impact research
The reported results and research in the area of “music impact studies” could be improved to benefit the scientific field and practical implementations of music education more effectively. One idea for development is to utilise the expertise of music educators more comprehensively, both as researchers and as special advisors of the field.
Still pictures from a video work “Atrato” (2014) by Marcos Ávila Forero, Biennale di Venezia, 2017. Photos by author.
Music impact research is a current topic, and it has been of high interest for example in cognitive science for decades. General interdisciplinary consensus is that musical training has a positive transfer and/or direct impact on human cognition, but the quality of music impact research has been challenged, too, recently for example by Salat & Gobet (2020). In the following, I discuss the challenges as well as possibilities for developing the collaboration of music impact research and music education research drawing on my practical and scholarly experience and background.
As a practising music educator and as part of my dissertation, I have worked with SEND (special educational needs and disability) populations and utilised music educational methods for example to support the literacy skills of children just starting to learn to read. Related to this research, I was fortunate to visit the University of Cambridge and the Centre for Neuroscience in Education (CNE) for the previous academic year (2021–22). One example of the gap between practice and research is that whilst this top academic research centre (CNE) utilises music educational methods as research interventions, the educational field at least in Finland is not even aware of the possibilities such methods, especially rhythm based interventions, could have for literacy skill development.
Here, “music impact research” refers to an area of research that mainly focuses on the cognitive impacts of musical activities or training (for example with child populations; Frischen, Schwarzer & Degé 2019; Bowmer et al. 2018; Bugos & DeMarie 2017). In the Western world, this kind of music impact research can be found within such disciplines as music perception, cognitive music science, music psychology or music therapy (which entails a more clinical approach). In Finland, for example, cognitive musicology, music psychology, and music therapy research at the University of Jyväskylä engage in impact research. At the University of Helsinki, a research tradition of music impact research exists within cognitive neuroscience.
Music education research in general can be defined as including everything that music is a part of. It extends from the use of music in everyday life to emotional self-regulation of teenagers, and from the technical methods of learning to play a violin more professionally to equality and democracy of music educational practices. Even the audio acoustic design of classrooms could be argued to be part of this vast area of research. Due to this multidimensionality, the research methodologies in my discipline are numerous and derive from many different research traditions. Maybe the main reason for the chameleon-like nature of music education research reflects the nature of musical activities itself: whilst spanning to every sphere of life, music is ever evolving as well (Vuust et al. 2022).
The field of music education research aims to be a discipline that contributes to the educational context as directly as possible via practical applications of music. The field also conducts research in the same areas as above-mentioned music impact research. I processed an extensive systematic review (15677 articles) on the topic of music intervention impact research (Ahokas et al. forthcoming 2023), and the first striking observation was that music education research rarely mixes with this area of research. In other words, other disciplines are conducting the research on the argued positive impact of music education.
Interdisciplinary research collaboration is the ethos of the era and manifests in many fields of science increasingly. In my field, this has traditionally meant that music educational institutes (for example music schools) provide research interventions as a part of a more comprehensive research setting. This offers minimal support for the practical applications and very seldom supports the development work of these applications either. I have experienced the lack of beneficial research as a researcher as well as a practising music educator. For example, when I have developed music educational practices in primary school settings and with ASD (autism spectrum disorder) populations, the lack of impact research that would benefit educational method development has been evident. In other words, the impact research referred to above does not support the practical field of music education as efficiently as it could. Understandably, one of the reasons for this derives from the different emphases in the research traditions (for example between music education, cognitive science, and music therapy).
I am not suggesting every music education researcher should study neuroscience or neuropsychology, even though I have found the study of neuropsychological expertise to be useful for my own work and research. Rather, I wish to encourage music education researchers to utilise the possibilities of differing interdisciplinary encounters and collaborations in a way that is most convenient for them. Methodologically, one approach is for example interdisciplinary research centres that provide cooperation possibilities. For the development of practical music educational implementations, the expertise of music educators is crucial and should be utilised in research in a more comprehensive way. As highly skilled musicians, music educators are the main special advisors in their area of expertise, and this competence should be utilised more thoroughly in the music impact research. I wish to encourage music education researchers to strengthen their agency as researchers with highly valuable and unique expertise in music and music educational tools. Further, I wish to encourage music impact researchers from other fields to engage and utilise the expertise of music educators more profoundly to support more impactful research. This kind of development could also enhance dialogue between researchers and policymakers.
J.Riikka Ahokas is a doctoral researcher in Music Education in the University of Jyväskylä. She has an MA in Music Psychology.
References
Ahokas, J. Riikka, Saarikallio, Suvi, Welch, Graham, Goswami, Usha & Parviainen, Tiina (forthcoming 2023) “Rhythm, body, brain”.
Frischen, Ulrike, Schwarzer, Gudrun, & Degé, Franziska (2019) “Comparing the effects of rhythm-based music training and pitch-based music training on executive functions in preschoolers.” Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience, 41.
Bowmer, Alice, Mason, Kathryn, Knight, Julian, & Welch, Graham (2018) “Investigating the impact of a musical intervention on preschool children’s executive function.” Frontiers in Psychology, 9, 2389. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02389
Bugos, Jennifer A., & DeMarie, Darlene (2017) “The effects of a short-term music program on preschool children’s executive functions.” Psychology of Music, 45(6), 855–867.
Sala, Giovanni, & Gobet, Fernand (2020) “Cognitive and academic benefits of music training with children: A multilevel meta-analysis.” Memory & cognition, 48(8), 1429–1441.
Vuust, Peter, Ole A. Heggli, Karl J. Friston & Morten L. Kringelbach (2022) “Music in the brain.” Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 23(5), 287–305.