The Impact of Singing and Purposeful Movement on Music Listening Skills in Fourth-grade Students
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Education (Ed.D)
Department
Curriculum and Instruction
Date of Award
Fall 2025
Abstract
Over the past 70 years, elementary music educators have increasingly used singing and purposeful movement to develop students’ listening skills. Research supports the benefits of both strategies, yet no study has directly compared their effectiveness. Additionally, no study has solely examined students’ ability to recognize and analyze the musical form of masterworks using these strategies. This quantitative, pretest-posttest experimental study aimed to determine the impact of singing and purposeful gross motor movement on elementary students’ critical listening abilities and to assess which method was more effective. Three instructional strategies were compared: listening only (control group), listening with singing, and listening with purposeful gross motor movement. To do this, three fourth-grade classes from a single school were tested on their ability to recall the titles of four masterworks and analyze their form after eight weeks of music lessons. Pretest and posttest data were analyzed to determine if a significant difference existed between the groups. Although students showed growth from pretest to posttest, the small sample is not likely to be representative of a larger population. The impact of the strategies cannot be precisely measured, and the most effective strategy cannot be concluded with certainty.
Advisor
Josh Thompson
Subject Categories
Education
Recommended Citation
Meek, Darla Lynne, "The Impact of Singing and Purposeful Movement on Music Listening Skills in Fourth-grade Students" (2025). Electronic Theses & Dissertations. 1330.
https://lair.etamu.edu/etd/1330
