No abstract

This study examined the effects of a music methods course offered at a Cypriot university on the singing skills of 33 female preservice kindergarten teachers. To systematically measure and analyze student progress, the research design was both experimental and descriptive. As an applied study which was carried out in situ, the normal procedures of the course were not altered. The methods course incorporated singing instruction in 24 lectures and two 10-minute private singing tutorials at the beginning and middle of the semester. Students’ singing ability was measured before and after the course with a Singing Skills Assessment which required pitch matching and whole-song singing tasks. At the onset of the course 52% of participants could not echo sing accurately la-sol-mi patterns, 58% made several melodic mistakes when singing the criterion songs and only 36% could sing above A4. T test comparisons showed that by the end of the semester participants improved their singing skills significantly in the areas of pitch-matching melodic fragments (p < .001), singing simple children’s songs (p < .001), and highest pitch (p < .001). It is proposed that music methods instructors include some private vocal tuition in their courses, in addition to learning children’s songs, training in melodic patterns and simple vocal exercises.

Self-regulation and metacognition are important for lifelong functioning and can be strengthened with intervention at a young age. Research proposes that musical play enables self-regulatory development, but lacks rigorous approaches to investigate whether a causal relationship between the two exists. We introduced a musical play intervention in a real-world classroom, and examined its impact on self-regulation and metacognition. We adopted a quasi-experimental, pre-test and post-test control-group design, with 98 children aged 6. The intervention group (N = 45) participated in 13 musical play sessions, while the control group (N = 53) had 13 music lessons following the usual music curriculum. Children’s self-regulation and metacognition, including metacognitive knowledge, metacognitive regulation and emotional/motivational regulation, was assessed before and after the intervention through three validated instruments: a) an observational assessment of children’s self-regulation and metacognition while completing a task, b) a metacognitive knowledge interview following the task, and c) a teacher-reported assessment of self-regulation and metacognition. The results were equivocal: according to the teacher ratings, the intervention group’s self-regulation and metacognition improved significantly more than controls following the intervention, but this result was not corroborated by assessment of children’s self-regulation on task. Despite this, from the three areas of self-regulation and metacognition, there was a statistically significant improvement in metacognitive knowledge in the intervention group compared to controls, a result indicated by the teacher-reported assessment and by the metacognitive knowledge interview, which revealed a significant effect on children’s metacognitive knowledge of strategies. This study can further the discussions on the use of different methodological approaches when exploring self-regulation, and can inform policy and practice in relation to music and play in schools.