research on music education

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About the Journal

Journal of Research in Music Education is a quarterly, peer-reviewed journal comprising reports of original research related to music teaching and learning. The wide range of topics includes various aspects of music pedagogy, history, and philosophy, and addresses vocal, instrumental, and general music at all levels, from early childhood through adult. Published quarterly; digital edition included with NAfME membership. Print edition available for $50/year.

• NAfME members, login to access journal issues. You will be returned to this page where a link to search for and view articles will be visible above the journal cover image.
• Guidelines for Contributors
• Code of Ethics (see below)
• JRME Editorial Committee
• Institutional Subscriptions

Feedback or questions? Contact  Amy Bradley .

NAfME Research Publication/ Presentation Code of Ethics

This version of the Code of Ethics was adopted in May 2006. This material is based on the following sources: Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 5th ed. (Washington, DC: APA, 2001); and Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct (APA, 2000), found at www.apa.org/ethics .

• Multiple submissions. An author must not submit the same manuscript for simultaneous consideration by two or more journals. If a manuscript is rejected by one journal, an author may then submit it to another journal.
• Duplicate publication. An author must not submit a manuscript published in whole or in substantial part in another journal or published work. Exceptions may be made for previous publication (a) in a periodical with limited circulation or availability (e.g., a government agency report) or (b) in an abstracted form (e.g., a convention proceedings). Any prior publication should be noted and referenced in the manuscript, and the author must inform the editor of the existence of any similar manuscripts that have already been published or submitted for publication or that may be submitted for concurrent consideration to the journal or elsewhere.
• Piecemeal publication. Investigators who engage in systematic programs of research report their results from time to time as significant portions of their programs are completed. This is both legitimate and inevitable in research programs that are on very large scales or of several years’ duration. In contrast to this kind of publication, articles are received in which a single investigation has been broken up into separate manuscripts submitted seriatim. Authors are obligated to present work parsimoniously and as completely as possible. Data that can be meaningfully combined within a single publication should be presented together. Authors who wish to divide reports of studies into more than one article should inform the editor.
• Authorship. Authorship is reserved to those who make major contributions to the research. Credit is assigned to those who have contributed to a publication in proportion to their professional contributions. Major contributions of a professional character made by several individuals to a common project are recognized by joint authorship, with the individual who made the principal contribution listed first. Minor contributions of a professional character and extensive clerical or similar assistance may be acknowledged in endnotes or in an introductory statement. Acknowledgment through specific citations is made for unpublished as well as published material that has directly influenced the research or writing. Individuals who compile and edit material of others for publication publish the material in the name of the originating group, if appropriate, with their own names appearing as chairperson or editor. All contributors are to be acknowledged and named.
• Copyright. Once an article is accepted, an author transfers literary rights on the published article to the publishing organization (in this case, NAfME) so that the author and the association are protected from misuse of copyright material. An article will not be published until the author’s signed copyright transfer has been received by the national office of the publishing organization. Contributors are responsible for obtaining copyright clearance on illustrations, figures, or lengthy quotes that have been published elsewhere.
• Conference presentation.  Papers submitted for presentation via any format (e.g., posters, paper-reading sessions) should not have been presented at another major conference. If the data have been presented in whole or substantive part in any forum, in print, or at previous research sessions, a statement specifying particulars of the above must be included with the submission.
• Ethical conduct and institutional review compliance. Authors are expected to comply with APA ethical standards ( www.apa.org/ethics/code2002.html ) and institutional and federal regulations on the treatment of human subjects.

Note:  Any violation of the Code of Ethics will result in immediate rejection of the manuscript/paper, without further consideration.

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Research Studies in Music Education

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• Description
• Aims and Scope
• Editorial Board
• Abstracting / Indexing
• Submission Guidelines

This internationally peer-reviewed journal promotes the dissemination and discussion of high-quality research in music and music education. The journal encourages the interrogation and development of a range of research methodologies and their application to diverse topics in music education theory and practice

The journal covers a wide range of topics across all areas of music education, and a separate "Perspectives in Music Education Research" section provides a forum for researchers to discuss topics of special interest and to debate key issues in the profession.

Since 2008 Psychology of Music (POM) and Research Studies in Music Education ( RSME)  have been sold together as a joint institutional subscription. Both journals are owned by the Society for Education, Music and Psychology Research (SEMPRE). Both are relevant to music psychologists and music educators alike. Music and psychology departments can benefit from having the additional content provided by both journals.

View the institutional subscription rates : The subscription to the journals is available in the usual 3 SAGE subscription models: print and online combined, print only, and e-access only. The SAGE institutional e-access only subscriptions are discounted further. Individual subscribers can purchase the journals separately in print only. If you are interested in becoming a member of SEMPRE and receiving a subscription to Psychology of Music as part of your membership dues please contact the SEMPRE membership secretary at: [email protected] This journal accepts supplementary materials, e.g. audio/video files, datasets, additional images etc. For more information please see our guidelines

This journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)

Research Studies in Music Education is an internationally peer-reviewed journal that promotes the dissemination and discussion of high quality research in music and music education. The journal encourages the interrogation and development of a range of research methodologies and their application to diverse topics in music education theory and practice.

This journal accepts supplementary materials, e.g. audio/video files, datasets, additional images etc. For more information please see our guidelines .

• Australian Education Index
• Clarivate Analytics: Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI)
• ERIC - Educational Management
• Educational Research Abstracts Online - e-Psyche
• IBZ: International Bibliography of Periodical Literature
• IBZ: International Bibliography of Periodical Literature in the Humanities and Social Sciences
• International Bibliography of Book Reviews of Scholarly Literature in the Humanities and Social Sciences
• International Bibliography of Book Reviews of Scholarly Literature on the Humanities and Social Sciences
• Music Index
• The Music Index: A Subject-Author Guide to Music Periodical Literature

Manuscript Submission Guidelines: Research Studies in Music Education

This Journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics

Please read the guidelines below then visit the Journal’s submission site http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/rsme to upload your manuscript. Please note that manuscripts not conforming to these guidelines may be returned.

Only manuscripts of sufficient quality that meet the aims and scope of Research Studies in Music Education will be reviewed.

There are no fees payable to submit or publish in this Journal. Open Access options are available - see section 3.3 below.

As part of the submission process you will be required to warrant that you are submitting your original work, that you have the rights in the work, and that you have obtained and can supply all necessary permissions for the reproduction of any copyright works not owned by you, that you are submitting the work for first publication in the Journal and that it is not being considered for publication elsewhere and has not already been published elsewhere. Please see our guidelines on prior publication and note that  Research Studies in Music Education may accept submissions of papers that have been posted on pre-print servers; please alert the Editorial Office when submitting (contact details are at the end of these guidelines) and include the DOI for the preprint in the designated field in the manuscript submission system. Authors should not post an updated version of their paper on the preprint server while it is being peer reviewed for possible publication in the journal. If the article is accepted for publication, the author may re-use their work according to the journal's author archiving policy. If your paper is accepted, you must include a link on your preprint to the final version of your paper.

• What do we publish? 1.1 Aims & Scope 1.2 Article types 1.3 Writing your paper
• Editorial policies 2.1 Peer review policy 2.2 Authorship 2.3 Acknowledgements 2.4 Funding 2.5 Declaration of conflicting interests 2.6 Research ethics and participant consent 2.7 Redundant publication 2.8 Research Data
• Publishing policies 3.1 Publication ethics 3.2 Contributor's publishing agreement 3.3 Open access and author archiving
• Preparing your manuscript 4.1 Formatting 4.2 Artwork, figures and other graphics 4.3 Supplemental material 4.4 Reference style 4.5 English language editing services
• Submitting your manuscript 5.1 ORCID 5.2 Information required for completing your submission 5.3 Permissions
• On acceptance and publication 6.1 Sage Production 6.2 Online First publication 6.3 Access to your published article 6.4 Promoting your article
• Further information
• Feedback, Complaints & Appeals

1. What do we publish?

1.1 Aims & Scope

Before submitting your manuscript to Research Studies in Music Education , please ensure you have read the  Aims & Scope .

1.2 Article Types

Manuscripts should be up to 6000 words in length, excluding Abstract and reference list.

RSME  publishes  two types of articles:  original research articles , and perspectives articles. All articles are double blind peer refereed, and expected to contribute something significant and novel to the field.

Research papers published by RSME follow the format of a standard journal article, and must be based on empirical research (all research methodologies are welcome).

The Perspectives Series is a scholarly forum for authors to present ideas and perspectives in music education. Perspectives may seek to engender debate from a personal values position or stake a claim on a new methodological, philosophical or pragmatic ‘space’.

1.3 Writing your paper

The Sage Author Gateway has some general advice and on  how to get published , plus links to further resources. Sage Author Services also offers authors a variety of ways to improve and enhance their article including English language editing, plagiarism detection, and video abstract and infographic preparation.

1.3.1 Make your article discoverable

When writing up your paper, think about how you can make it discoverable. The title, keywords and abstract are key to ensuring readers find your article through search engines such as Google. For information and guidance on how best to title your article, write your abstract and select your keywords, have a look at this page on the Gateway: How to Help Readers Find Your Article Online .

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2. Editorial policies

2.1 Peer review policy

RSME  operates a strictly anonymous peer review process in which the reviewer’s name is withheld from the author and, the author’s name from the reviewer. The reviewer may at their own discretion opt to reveal their name to the author in their review but our standard policy practice is for both identities to remain concealed. Each manuscript is reviewed by at least two referees. 

Each manuscript is reviewed by at least two referees, who will recommend to the Editor whether a manuscript should be accepted, revised (major or minor revisions), or rejected. The Editor will make a decision on the manuscript based on the recommendations from the expert referees. Please note that the Editor’s decision on a manuscript will be final.    Authors of manuscripts given a minor or major revision decision are invited to submit their revised manuscript via the journal’s submission site. The responsibility for submitting the revised manuscript lies with the corresponding author.” 

2.2 Authorship

All parties who have made a substantive contribution to the article should be listed as authors. Principal authorship, authorship order, and other publication credits should be based on the relative scientific or professional contributions of the individuals involved, regardless of their status. A student is usually listed as principal author on any multiple-authored publication that substantially derives from the student’s dissertation or thesis.

Please note that AI chatbots, for example ChatGPT, should not be listed as authors. For more information see the policy on Use of ChatGPT and generative AI tools . 

Research Studies in Music Education is trialing the publication of CRediT author contribution statements. At submission stage, there will be the ability to list the roles that each author was responsible for. Please refer to the CRediT Gateway page for more information. You should not include an author contribution statement in your manuscript as this will be added at Production stage. This does not replace the Acknowledgements section.

2.3 Acknowledgements

All contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in an Acknowledgements section. Examples of those who might be acknowledged include a person who provided purely technical help, or a department chair who provided only general support.

Please supply any personal acknowledgements separately to the main text to facilitate anonymous peer review.

2.3.1 Third party submissions

Where an individual who is not listed as an author submits a manuscript on behalf of the author(s), a statement must be included in the Acknowledgements section of the manuscript and in the accompanying cover letter. The statements must:

• Disclose this type of editorial assistance – including the individual’s name, company and level of input
• Identify any entities that paid for this assistance
• Confirm that the listed authors have authorized the submission of their manuscript via third party and approved any statements or declarations, e.g. conflicting interests, funding, etc.

Where appropriate, Sage reserves the right to deny consideration to manuscripts submitted by a third party rather than by the authors themselves .

2.3.2 Writing assistance

Individuals who provided writing assistance, e.g. from a specialist communications company, do not qualify as authors and so should be included in the Acknowledgements section. Authors must disclose any writing assistance – including the individual’s name, company and level of input – and identify the entity that paid for this assistance”).

It is not necessary to disclose use of language polishing services.

2.4 Funding

Research Studies in Music Education requires all authors to acknowledge their funding in a consistent fashion under a separate heading.  Please visit the Funding Acknowledgements page on the Sage Journal Author Gateway to confirm the format of the acknowledgment text in the event of funding, or state that: This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors. 

2.5 Declaration of conflicting interests

Research Studies in Music Education encourages authors to include a declaration of any conflicting interests and recommends you review the good practice guidelines on the Sage Journal Author Gateway .

2.6 'Research ethics and participant consent'

Ethical approval statement

Upon submission, authors will be asked to state the relevant ethics committee or institutional review board provided (or waived) approval. Please ensure that you have provided the full name and institution of the review committee, in addition to the approval number. Where exemption from ethics approval has been granted by an appropriate body, this should be specified and the reason for exemption should be provided. Manuscripts should include statements that provide a clear explanation as to why ethics approval and/or informed consent was not sought for a given study in a specific country or region.

Informed consent

Authors are required to state in the methods section whether participants provided informed consent (for inclusion, collection/use of data or samples, and/or publication, as applicable) and whether the consent was written or verbal.

2.7 Redundant publication

The Editors of Research Studies in Music Education ask authors to declare if any data reported in their submission have been published previously wholly or in part. For example: the reanalysis of a previously published dataset by a different set of authors would need to be declared. The publication of multiple articles using the same dataset with somewhat related outcomes could be considered inappropriate. Within the cover letter and methods section, authors should declare if datasets or participants reported in their submission overlap with any prior published work to help a thorough Editorial assessment of the study.

2.8 Research Data

The journal is committed to facilitating openness, transparency and reproducibility of research, and has the following research data sharing policy. For more information, including FAQs please visit the Sage Research Data policy pages .

Subject to appropriate ethical and legal considerations, authors are encouraged to:

• share your research data in a relevant public data repository
• include a data availability statement linking to your data. If it is not possible to share your data, we encourage you to consider using the statement to explain why it cannot be shared.
• cite this data in your research

3. Publishing Policies

3.1 Publication ethics

Sage is committed to upholding the integrity of the academic record. We encourage authors to refer to the Committee on Publication Ethics’ International Standards for Authors and view the Publication Ethics page on the Sage Author Gateway .

3.1.1 Plagiarism

Research Studies in Music Education and Sage take issues of copyright infringement, plagiarism or other breaches of best practice in publication very seriously. We seek to protect the rights of our authors and we always investigate claims of plagiarism or misuse of published articles. Equally, we seek to protect the reputation of the journal against malpractice. Submitted articles may be checked with duplication-checking software. Where an article, for example, is found to have plagiarised other work or included third-party copyright material without permission or with insufficient acknowledgement, or where the authorship of the article is contested, we reserve the right to take action including, but not limited to: publishing an erratum or corrigendum (correction); retracting the article; taking up the matter with the head of department or dean of the author's institution and/or relevant academic bodies or societies; or taking appropriate legal action.

3.1.2 Prior publication

If material has been previously published it is not generally acceptable for publication in a Sage journal. However, there are certain circumstances where previously published material can be considered for publication. Please refer to the guidance on the Sage Author Gateway or if in doubt, contact the Editor at the address given below.

3.2 Contributor's publishing agreement

Before publication, Sage requires the author as the rights holder to sign a Journal Contributor’s Publishing Agreement. Sage’s Journal Contributor’s Publishing Agreement is an exclusive licence agreement which means that the author retains copyright in the work but grants Sage the sole and exclusive right and licence to publish for the full legal term of copyright. Exceptions may exist where an assignment of copyright is required or preferred by a proprietor other than Sage. In this case copyright in the work will be assigned from the author to the society. For more information please visit the Sage Author Gateway .

3.3 Open access and author archiving

Research Studies in Music Education offers optional open access publishing via the Sage Choice programme and Open Access agreements, where authors can publish open access either discounted or free of charge depending on the agreement with Sage. Find out if your institution is participating by visiting Open Access Agreements at Sage . For more information on Open Access publishing options at Sage please visit Sage Open Access . For information on funding body compliance, and depositing your article in repositories, please visit Sage’s Author Archiving and Re-Use Guidelines and Publishing Policies .

4. Preparing your manuscript for submission

4.1 Formatting

The preferred format for your manuscript is Word. LaTeX files are also accepted. Word and (La)Tex templates are available on the Manuscript Submission Guidelines page of our Author Gateway.

4.2 Artwork, figures and other graphics

For guidance on the preparation of illustrations, pictures and graphs in electronic format, please visit Sage’s Manuscript Submission Guidelines .

Figures supplied in colour will appear in colour online regardless of whether or not these illustrations are reproduced in colour in the printed version. For specifically requested colour reproduction in print, you will receive information regarding the costs from Sage after receipt of your accepted article.

4.3 Supplemental material

This journal is able to host additional materials online (e.g. datasets, podcasts, videos, images etc) alongside the full-text of the article. For more information please refer to our guidelines on submitting supplemental files

4.4 Reference style

Research Studies in Music Education adheres to the APA reference style. View the APA guidelines to ensure your manuscript conforms to this reference style.

4.5 English language editing services

Authors seeking assistance with English language editing, translation, or figure and manuscript formatting to fit the journal’s specifications should consider using Sage Language Services. Visit Sage Language Services on our Journal Author Gateway for further information.

5. Submitting your manuscript

Research Studies in Music Education is hosted on Sage Track, a web based online submission and peer review system powered by ScholarOne™ Manuscripts. Visit http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/rsme to login and submit your article online.

IMPORTANT: Please check whether you already have an account in the system before trying to create a new one. If you have reviewed or authored for the journal in the past year it is likely that you will have had an account created.  For further guidance on submitting your manuscript online please visit ScholarOne Online Help.

As part of our commitment to ensuring an ethical, transparent and fair peer review process Sage is a supporting member of ORCID, the Open Researcher and Contributor ID . ORCID provides a unique and persistent digital identifier that distinguishes researchers from every other researcher, even those who share the same name, and, through integration in key research workflows such as manuscript and grant submission, supports automated linkages between researchers and their professional activities, ensuring that their work is recognized. 

The collection of ORCID IDs from corresponding authors is now part of the submission process of this journal. If you already have an ORCID ID you will be asked to associate that to your submission during the online submission process. We also strongly encourage all co-authors to link their ORCID ID to their accounts in our online peer review platforms. It takes seconds to do: click the link when prompted, sign into your ORCID account and our systems are automatically updated. Your ORCID ID will become part of your accepted publication’s metadata, making your work attributable to you and only you. Your ORCID ID is published with your article so that fellow researchers reading your work can link to your ORCID profile and from there link to your other publications.

If you do not already have an ORCID ID please follow this link to create one or visit our ORCID homepage to learn more.     

5.2 Information required for completing your submission

You will be asked to provide contact details and academic affiliations for all co-authors via the submission system and identify who is to be the corresponding author. These details must match what appears on your manuscript. The affiliation listed in the manuscript should be the institution where the research was conducted. If an author has moved to a new institution since completing the research, the new affiliation can be included in a manuscript note at the end of the paper. At this stage please ensure you have included all the required statements and declarations and uploaded any additional supplementary files (including reporting guidelines where relevant).

5.3 Permissions

Please also ensure that you have obtained any necessary permission from copyright holders for reproducing any illustrations, tables, figures or lengthy quotations previously published elsewhere. For further information including guidance on fair dealing for criticism and review, please see the Copyright and Permissions page on the Sage Author Gateway .

6. On acceptance and publication

6.1 Sage Production

Your Sage Production Editor will keep you informed as to your article’s progress throughout the production process. Proofs will be sent by PDF to the corresponding author via our editing portal Sage Edit or by email, and corrections should be made directly or notified to us promptly.  Authors are reminded to check their proofs carefully to confirm that all author information, including names, affiliations, sequence and contact details are correct, and that Funding and Conflict of Interest statements, if any, are accurate.

6.2 Online First publication

Online First allows final articles (completed and approved articles awaiting assignment to a future issue) to be published online prior to their inclusion in a journal issue, which significantly reduces the lead time between submission and publication. Visit the Sage Journals help page for more details, including how to cite Online First articles.

6.3 Access to your published article

Sage provides authors with online access to their final article.

6.4 Promoting your article

Publication is not the end of the process! You can help disseminate your paper and ensure it is as widely read and cited as possible. The Sage Author Gateway has numerous resources to help you promote your work. Visit the Promote Your Article page on the Gateway for tips and advice.

7. Further information

Any correspondence, queries or additional requests for information on the manuscript submission process should be sent to the Research Studies in Music Education editorial office as follows:

Julie Ballantyne, Editor Email:  [email protected]  

Dr Nicole Canham, Assistant Editor Email:  [email protected]  

8.  Research Studies in Music Education Complaints and Appeals

For information on the journal's appeals procedure please click here .

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• Our Mission

How Music Primes the Brain for Learning

To reap the benefits of music on learning, kids need consistent and abundant musical practice, according to the latest cognitive research.

Ten years ago, musician Angélica Durrell began teaching a small group of Connecticut high school students how to play different percussion instruments, including the charango and toyos —musical instruments native to Central and South America, where many of the students had recently immigrated from. They learned to play Pachelbel’s Canon and then moved on to master “Will You Love Me Tomorrow,” the sixties doo-wop hit by The Shirelles, singing the lyrics in both English and Spanish.

Within a few years, the after-school music program—aimed at Latino students, many of whom were struggling academically—became renowned in the school district, recast from a “nice-to-have” extracurricular into a strategic tool for addressing some of the district’s persistent challenges. Durrell’s students, teachers and school leaders noticed, were attending school more consistently, their English was improving, and they seemed increasingly comfortable making friends.

Today, Durrell’s non-profit program Intempo serves more than 3,000 students each year in Stamford and Norwalk schools, underscoring music’s profound impact on learning from both a cognitive and a social and emotional learning (SEL) vantage point. “We went from approaching it from a music perspective,” Durrell says, “to approaching it from an immigrant inclusion, language acquisition, and grade-level reading-acquisition perspective.”

Consistent exposure to music, like learning to play a musical instrument, or taking voice lessons, strengthens a particular set of academic and social-emotional skills that are essential to learning. In ways that are unmatched by other pursuits, like athletics for instance, learning music powerfully reinforces language skills, builds and improves reading ability, and strengthens memory and attention, according to the latest research on the cognitive neuroscience of music.

Experts are hoping this body of evidence might alter the current state of music education in schools—which is extremely uneven and, in some places, downright nonexistent. In a 2014 survey from Americans for the Arts, a nonprofit advocacy organization, teachers reported that 1.3 million elementary students didn’t have music classes in their schools, and nearly 4 million didn’t have a visual arts class. More recently, data from the 2016 National Assessment of Educational Progress showed improvements in some areas, though arts participation and access varied greatly by region . For example, while 68 percent of eighth-graders had music class in 2016, students in the Northeast were twice as likely to attend music class compared with students in the South and the West, where only one-third of students had access to music classes.

Now, following months of pandemic-related learning disruptions, organizations that track arts education like the federally-funded Arts Education Partnership say it’s difficult to even get a handle on who’s learning music at school.

The Cognitive Benefits of Music

The key to understanding music’s advantages, researchers say, lies in how the brain processes sound, the raw material of music, language, and—perhaps counterintuitively—learning to read. The sounds that come in through our ears travel along an anatomically complex “auditory pathway” that’s deeply connected to parts of the brain that determine how humans move, how we think and speak, what we know, and what we pay attention to. “The hearing brain is vast,” explains neuroscientist Nina Kraus, author of the new book  Of Sound Mind , in an interview with Edutopia . “People think of the hearing brain as being a silo within the brain. In fact, our hearing engages our cognitive, sensory, motor, and reward systems. That’s huge. From an evolutionary perspective, being able to make sense of sound is ancient and has engaged all these different perspectives.”

What makes music learning so powerful is how it engages all those different systems in a single activity. To play the violin, for example, a student needs to coordinate their motor, cognitive, and sensory systems to be able to put their fingers on the correct strings and move the bow at the right time; to read musical notes on a sheet of music and know what sounds they represent; and to hear if the pitches and rhythms are correct and coordinating with other players at the right time. Then there’s how the sound of music makes the student feel, which lights up the brain’s reward system. Engaging all these different systems makes learning how to play music one of the richest and deepest brain activities that humans perform. “Teachers resoundingly tell me that children who play music also do better in school,” Kraus writes. Young musicians also tend to have stronger language and reading skills than non-musicians because their brains have spent more time actively “engaging with sound.”

The type of instrument doesn’t matter: flute, violin, accordion, piano, voice—even abundant exposure to music can make an impact. “What is important is that engaging with sound changes and strengthens how the brain responds to sound,” Kraus says.

Music as Academic Strength Training

At Durban Avenue School in Sussex County, New Jersey, music teacher Shawna Longo calls out a particular rhythm, and then her kindergarteners play it on their Boomwhackers , tuned percussion tubes that come in different sizes and colors to symbolize different pitches. “Now only the red ones! Do ‘I like pepperoni pizza,’” she calls out, and the children play ta-ta-tee-tee-tee-tee-ta-ta. “They can only play when I hold up their color,” she says. “They have to learn when to wait, and when to play.”

The ability to keep a steady beat and anticipate the next beat, research has shown , are reliable indicators that a child is ready to learn to read. But keeping rhythm isn’t the only musical skill that paves the way for language development and reading, notes education researcher Anita Collins in her new book, The Music Advantage .

Learning to read music—decoding musical notation and connecting it to sounds—activates the same “phonological loop” in the brain as when kids learn to read words, deepening sound-word connections. Collins describes the process in her book:

• The eye sees a symbol on the page, whether it’s an eighth note D or a letter t at the start of a word

• The brain hears the sound, pulling it from the memory of music and speech sounds all brains possess

• The brain instructs the body to make that sound, whether it’s hands playing an instrument or the mouth shaped to make the t sound

• The brain listens to be sure the correct sound was made, and then makes adjustments

(From page 54 of The Music Advantage )

Processing sound strengthens the same areas of the brain that are responsible for learning language and learning to read—and while neuroscientists are still teasing out the how and the why, Collins writes that the latest research indicates that “music and reading may well be complementary learning activities,” with music functioning as a robust tool to improve language learning.

The Sound of Social Cohesion

When Covid-19 lockdowns first spread across the globe in March 2020, multiple videos showed people in Italy singing together from their balconies. At a time of extreme stress and isolation, Italians turned to music to connect with their neighbors.

Music and song are among the most basic ways humans have connected with one another for thousands of years. “Music lives in the oldest part of our brain,” Collins tells  Edutopia . “Music and song are at least as old as language and the spoken word.”

In a landmark 2018 study , researchers from the University of Toronto found that an adult singing and moving to a musical beat with a one-year-old child in tow increased social cohesion: the child was more likely to help when the adult later “accidentally” dropped an item. The study has been replicated many times, Collins writes, and shows how music taps into a primal bond that may encourage prosocial behavior like empathy and helping—the very behaviors that adults want children to develop as they grow, and behaviors schools strive to teach using the tenets of social and emotional learning.

When students belt out the school song at basketball games, or sing the clean-up song in kindergarten, it’s a potent practice for strengthening basic human social bonds. “Singing is a very powerful tool to make children feel in community,” says Kelly Green, vice president of education at Kindermusik, which creates research-based music curriculum for early childhood learners. “It’s deep SEL.”

Like Italy’s balcony singers during lockdown, social singing and music-making might be especially helpful to students now, when loneliness, anxiety, and depression are skyrocketing among young people. But Green says that kids in school sing a lot less than they used to. We tend to think “that learning music is only to develop as a musician,” Collins remarks. “People don’t feel confident to sing anymore. The fear that sits under ‘I can’t sing, I’m not musical’ is incredibly deep. When I start singing with students, they often realize singing is just a practiced skill. All these things start happening. They feel this sense of euphoria.”

Kids Benefit From Deep and Consistent Engagement

Facing limited budgets, increased academic expectations and testing , and a music teacher shortage , some schools and districts are increasingly looking to nonprofit organizations and community partners for help. Groups like Save the Music Foundation provide grants for schools to purchase student instruments and provide teacher training. The Harmony Project brings intensive music training and support to underserved students in the Los Angeles area. The Soulsville Charter School, a music-influenced middle and high school in Memphis, Tennessee, taps into the birthplace of American soul music and legendary Stax Records with the support of the Soulsville Foundation .

“You have to be willing to say, ‘We can’t do this alone,’” says Tamu Lucero, superintendent of Stamford Public Schools, where Durrell’s Intempo program is now a critical component of the district’s new-arrivals program. Even though Stamford schools already offered regular music programming, Lucero says, “we were willing to be open to the idea of how we could use an outside partner to enrich the learning environment for students.”

Researchers will continue to untangle some of the reasons behind why music learning is so beneficial to students—but know enough to conclude that listening to music or writing a song for a class project only begins to scratch the surface. To get maximal brain benefits, students should actively engage with music by learning to play an instrument or studying voice, preferably in a group setting. The evidence is strong enough to recommend music education as a discrete class for all kids—and across the grade levels—as a critically important investment.

Or as Nina Kraus states, “Music should be a part of every child’s education. Period.”

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Effects of the Educational Use of Music on 3- to 12-Year-Old Children’s Emotional Development: A Systematic Review

José salvador blasco-magraner.

1 Department of Teaching of Musical, Visual and Corporal Expression, Faculty of Teacher Training, Universitat de València, 46010 Valencia, Spain; [email protected] (J.S.B.-M.); [email protected] (P.M.-L.)

Gloria Bernabe-Valero

2 Faculty of Psychology, Universidad Católica de Valencia “San Vicente Mártir”, 46001 Valencia, Spain; [email protected]

Pablo Marín-Liébana

Carmen moret-tatay.

Interest in the study of emotions in education has grown in recent years. Some of our modern challenges, such as constantly adapting to new scenarios or the need for team work have justified the introduction of emotional competence into educational systems, while diverse studies confirm the relationship between music and emotional intelligence, so that the former could be used as a tool to develop the latter. The aim of this work was to examine the evidence for positive effects of music on the emotions of 3- to 12-year-old children, to which end a systematic review was carried out. Two reviewers independently evaluated 424 studies that were identified in MEDLINE, Psycinfo, and CINAHL databases, in order to determine whether they met the stated inclusion criteria. A total of 26 articles were selected for review. The results suggest several beneficial effects of music on children’s development, such as greater emotional intelligence, academic performance, and prosocial skills. It can therefore be concluded that music should be used in school settings, not only as an important subject in itself, but also as an educational tool within other subjects.

1. Introduction

The study of emotions is a subject that has raised researchers’ interest, being extended to fields ranging from philosophy, education, or psychology to health sciences. Regarding the field of education, a century ago John Dewey pointed out the importance of the social and emotional nature of the classroom and the relationship between social processes and learning [ 1 ]. However, the increase in the study of emotions in the area of education during the last two decades has given rise to a more humanistic, holistic, and socio-emotional approach to educational activity [ 2 ]. Salovey & Mayer [ 3 ] were the first to define emotional intelligence as “the ability to monitor one’s own or others’ feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them and to use this information and to guide one’s thinking and actions”. Since then, a large number of programs have emerged aiming to help educators prevent problem behaviours and to promote children’s health and character development [ 4 ]. In 1994, the Collaborative to Advance Social and Emotional Learning (CASEL) was created, an organisation whose aim was to promote and implement social and emotional learning as an integral part of teaching in schools. [ 5 ].

UNESCO´s well-known Report of the International Commission on Education for the 21st Century, entitled Learning: The Treasure Within [ 6 ], established four pillars on which the new education of the 21st century was based: learning to know, learning to do, learning to live together, and learning to be. The last two are closely related to emotional intelligence. Since then, research on the importance of emotional education in the field of education has not stopped growing in different scientific disciplines, especially in Psychology, Neurosciences and Behavioral Sciences [ 7 ]. Thus, for example, in the field of psychology there is a wide variety of works that address the study of emotions in the educational context from different topics, such as the importance of emotional competence in the classroom [ 8 , 9 ]; emotions and emotional regulation in the classroom [ 10 , 11 ]; or the importance of goals in the emotional experience of academic failure [ 12 ]. The field of neuroscience has produced numerous studies on the development of emotional regulation and the possible implications for education [ 13 ]; as well as the implications of affective and social neuroscience for educational theory [ 14 , 15 , 16 ]. Lastly, in the Behavioral Sciences, one can find studies as diverse as the essential characteristics of educational programs for students with emotional and behavioral disorders [ 17 ] or the professional preparation for teachers to effectively implement evidence-based practices for students with Emotional Disabilities [ 18 ].

The reasons for the significant increase in research on the relevance of emotional education in the specific educational contexts have been, in part, the fast and relentless global technological and economic and social changes which have created previously unimaginable pressures and challenges on the younger population, especially on children [ 19 ]. Moreover, the new challenges posed by today’s society demand future professionals who are able to learn constantly by working in a team [ 20 ], which is a challenge in interpersonal emotional management. It is therefore necessary to have eminently social individuals with a high capacity to adapt to the constant changes that today’s society demands [ 21 ]. For this reason, the educational systems of the most developed countries include in their educational programs the development of individual’s emotional competencies [ 22 ]. Social and emotional education is defined as “the educational process by which an individual develops intrapersonal and interpersonal competence and resilience skills in social, emotional and academic domains through curricular, embedded, relational and contextual approaches” [ 1 ] and all children should develop it in order to achieve full and integral personal formation.

What role does music education play in emotional development? In recent years, music education has gained special relevance as part of the curricula of compulsory education in most Western countries [ 23 ], both for its learning benefits in itself [ 24 , 25 , 26 ], as well as for its ability to promote the learning of other disciplines [ 27 , 28 ]. Music has a remarkable capacity to express, transmit, and evoke various emotions and affections in human beings [ 29 , 30 ], regardless of their nationality or culture [ 31 ].

In the last two decades the research on music and its ability to generate emotions in humans has been systematized [ 32 , 33 , 34 , 35 , 36 , 37 , 38 ]. Numerous studies affirm the ability of music to trigger physiological responses, such as changes in the heart rate, skin temperature, and conductance, respiration and hormone secretion [ 39 , 40 , 41 , 42 , 43 ]. Other studies claim that music aids emotional regulation [ 44 , 45 , 46 , 47 ] and some have shown that music stimulates the cognitive aspect [ 48 , 49 , 50 , 51 ]. Ultimately, music is described as multidimensional and researchers have categorised it by its arousal properties, emotional quality, and structural characteristics [ 52 ].

The link between music and emotion has contributed to the value of music as a discipline that can be implemented in formal education to develop students’ emotional competence [ 2 , 53 ]. One of the advantages of musical activities is that they mostly require collective participation, which requires cooperation and coordination on the part of the members of a society [ 54 ], making them useful tools for the advancement of socioemotional development. In addition, the social interactions required for music-making offer many opportunities for students to develop their abilities to evaluate their own feelings and at the same time try to relate constructively to the feelings of others [ 55 ]. According to Pellitteri [ 56 ] there are five ways in which music education and social-emotional learning are complementary: music can be used as an emotional stimulus; it can be an aesthetic experience; it can be used for relaxation and imagery; music-making is a form of self-expression; and music-making can be a form of group experience [ 57 ].

Music education thus has a strong impact on children and young people´s intellectual, social, and personal development and therefore on pupils´ psychological well-being [ 58 , 59 ]. To our knowledge, no systematic review has been carried out on how the educational use of music affects the emotional development of children between 3 and 12 years of age. In order to answer this question, a systematic review was carried out to obtain as many studies as possible that explore this developmental stage. The information obtained from all of the studies on this specific subject was thus synthesized and partial or biased conclusions were avoided by referring to the available documents or the authors’ subjective inclusion criteria.

2. Materials and Methods

To find out the effects of the educational use of music on 1–3-year-old children’s emotional development, a systematic review was carried out following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) statement guidelines. The question under study was: How does the use of music in the educational field affect the emotional development of children aged between 3 and 12 years old?

The articles were selected in different stages by two independent reviewers, who independently extracted data from articles that had been deemed eligible in the selection stage. Discrepancies at further stages were resolved by consensus with a third researcher, so that the process can be described in two main stages. First, the researchers read the titles and abstracts individually, and secondly, the full text to finally compare agreement. The inclusion and exclusion criteria were the same in both stages. In the case of a disagreement, a third reviewer was consulted. The articles rejected in the first or second stage for not meeting the inclusion criteria had the reason for their exclusion described in the results section. Data extraction was based on the recommendations of the “Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews”, including the following information: (i) general information about the study (e.g., author’s citation, and country of origin); (ii) methodology (e.g., duration/follow-up of the study and design and type of music intervention); (iii) information related to the sample (e.g., selection method, sample size, age and sex distribution); (iv) information related to the outcome (e.g., effects in the emotion variable); and (v) additional information (e.g., statistical methods involved or size effects).

Studies were identified in the MEDLINE, Psycinfo, and CINAHL Web of Science and EBSCO databases through EBSCO and WOS (ISI Web of Knowledge) to determine whether they met the stated inclusion criteria. General search terms with the controlled descriptors for each database were used, employing the Medical Subject Heading (MeSH) from MEDLINE terms, and the descriptors and terms published in the literature. As this is a relatively recent field of study there is not yet a general consensus on the definitions of several analysis variables and categories on the relations between music and emotional development, we opted to use generic key words, which opened up a large number of papers. The two main words were music and school , with the addition of school to reduce the search to the educational field.

To connect these terms, we used the Boolean terms “AND” and “OR” to expand and restrict the search spectrum. In addition, a manual search was also performed. The total electronic search of all databases was performed between August and December 2020. The final syntax is defined as follows: “Music” AND “Emotion” AND “School”. In this way, we tried to restrict the sample to studies that focused on the relationship between music and emotions in educational contexts.

2.1. Inclusion Criteria

To be included in the review, articles had to meet the following requirements: (i) the sample of a study had to be children between 3 and 12 years of age, i.e., who were in pre-primary or primary school, to adjust the research question to the selected age range; (ii) it had to be an empirical study (i.e., cross-sectional, cohort, or case-control studies) to guarantee any conclusions drawn from our observations of reality; (iii) it had to measure the role of music in emotion so as to draw conclusions on the effect of music in primary education on the children’s emotional development; and (iv) it must have been published since 2000, in order to analyze studies from the last 20 years, when this new field of knowledge was developed.

2.2. Exclusion Criteria

Articles that met one of the following exclusion criteria were not added to the analyzed sample: (i) those not expressly measuring emotions, dealing with the subject matter in an indirect or secondary way, i.e., those that did not directly deal with the relation between music and emotional development in spite of containing the key words; (ii) those that were non-empirical theoretical or bibliographical studies; (iii) those that were single case studies, due to the difficulty of generalizing any results obtained; (iii) those that included sample ages outside the selected range, i.e., studies on children less than 3 years old, adolescents and adults; and (iv) those that were grey literature or non-peer reviewed journal articles, to guarantee the quality of the reviewed papers.

The results obtained in the systematic review are presented below. After a selective process using the PRISMA protocol flowchart as a reference [ 60 ], the results of the systematic review are depicted in Figure 1 . The sample analyzed reached a total of 26 scientific articles. The number of articles excluded according to the different criteria is shown in Table 1 and a summary of the content developed from the analyzed articles can be consulted in Table 2 . Below is a description of the sample used and a narrative summary of the different papers, grouped according to subject matter.

Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) flowchart to show study selection process [ 60 ].

Table showing reasons items were excluded.

Summary of findings.

3.1. Sample Description

Evolution of publications.

Distribution of identified topics.

3.2. Combined Results

After analyzing the selected studies the results were organised into two lines: (1) dependent variables, a description of the socio-emotional effects/benefits of music; and (2) independent variables, different types of musical experience and their different effects. It should be noted that many authors did not make this distinction, while other co-relational studies did not follow a specific direction in the associations found. However, we attempted to structure these by assigning dependent and independent variables according to the interpretation of the aim of the studies.

3.3. Organization of the Information on Dependent Variables: What Emotional Effects Are Provided by Music?

This section was structured on the groups included in Table 3 , in which the results are given according to: emotional intelligence, and the educational, training and socio-emotional benefits.

3.3.1. Emotional Intelligence

After analyzing the selected articles we found 11 papers divided into two sub-topics: (1) emotional perception, appraisal, and expression, (2) and emotional regulation.

Perception, Assessment and Expression

Six studies addressed the role of music in relation to emotional perception and assessment. For example, Nieminen [ 65 ] observed that students in the first two years of primary school have the ability to identify greater happiness in pieces composed in the major mode than in the minor mode. This relationship was stronger in those with musical training, especially among the younger ones. In a similar vein, Schellenberg and Mankarious [ 68 ] measured perceptual differences between a group of students with and without musical training, finding that the former scored higher in identifying emotions in images and/or texts. However, the authors point out that this relationship appears to be mediated by IQ, which may be biased both in terms of participating in formal music education activities and identifying emotions on the basis of a measurement instrument based on visual and linguistic processes.

In relation to specific interventions, Kim and Kim [ 73 ] found that the use of a music education program based on group instrumental performance improved students’ ability to recognise emotions. Katagiri [ 79 ] found in a study conducted with a group of children with autism spectrum disorder that teaching them to recognise emotion is more effective with music than when only verbal instructions are used. In addition, it was found that the use of background music associated with the emotions being worked on obtained better results than nursery rhymes, especially for the emotion of anger, as opposed to happiness, sadness, and fear. Of these above four studies it was deduced that musical entertainment and/or music education can help to recognise emotions in pieces of music, texts, and images, unlike other types of non-musical activities, and that this result can also be applied to specific populations such as children with autism spectrum disorder.

However, another study did not find any effect of music training on Emotional Comprehension in children who began the program with high levels of social skills [ 74 ], although it did provide a significant improvement in the children who had poor social skills at the beginning of the study. Along the same lines, Habibi et al. [ 64 ] compared the differences between children who participated in after-school activities in music, sports, or who had not enrolled in any specific activity. The study found no significant differences between the three groups in recognising emotional states by viewing pictures of eyes and empathising with the emotions of others, supporting the idea that the differences found in other studies are due to musical experiences.

However, the results in which no difference was found between the musically trained group and the other two groups could have been due to the short training time (5 days per week for two/three weeks). As the authors themselves propose, the differences associated with musical training were found in another longitudinal study with a 14-month training period with 5–7 year old children [ 88 ]. However, Habibi et al. [ 64 ] considered that their results also give some indirect support for the idea that the kinds of social and emotional skills reported in children who have studied music may be a by-product of music training and designed their study controlling the base line of previous skills in all of the groups, which provided a good base for a complete longitudinal study for the subsequent identification of whether the development of different skills in musical and non-musical adults is specifically due to musical training or to previous skills.

Three papers that deal with emotional expression agree that music can favor emotional expression. For example, Boone and Cunningham [ 62 ] found that, between the ages of 4 and 5 years, children are able to physically express some emotions that they perceive through music, such as happiness, sadness, anger, and fear (especially the first two). A study conducted with students from low socio-economic backgrounds concluded that using an Orff-based approach improved their ability to express emotions [ 78 ]. Improvement was also observed in a study in which a music therapy program was implemented [ 61 ].

Emotional Regulation

Two of the articles analyzed dealt with emotional regulation in relation to educational programs including music therapy and concluded that they favored emotional regulation. On the one hand, Brown and Sax [ 63 ] compared the emotional state and regulatory capacity of a group of students after attending a traditional education program or a program with a greater emphasis on arts education, including music education. It was found that individuals who participated in the latter showed a greater capacity to regulate emotions, both positive and negative. Moore and Hanson-Abromeit [ 61 ] observed that a music therapy program improved a range of behaviors associated with emotional regulation such as aggression, attention and both internal and external attitudes.

3.3.2. Educational and Training Benefits

Eleven of the articles analyzed studied the effect of the use of music on the performance of school tasks. For example, Tricard et al. [ 77 ] found that video clips and background music to induce joy and sadness caused students who experienced a positive mood to score higher on deductive reasoning activities. Teske et al. [ 75 ] also found that students’ creativity was enhanced. On the other hand, Venegas et al. [ 76 ] found that the use of an interdisciplinary application that used music to support the learning of graphical representation in mathematics generated positive emotional levels in students. Similarly, another study found that greater use of music education increased motivation levels among students [ 63 ]. Rauduvaite [ 70 ] found that the introduction of urban popular music into the classroom can promote meaningful values in education, partly due to the emotional bond that students have with this type of repertoire.

However, music does not always have only beneficial effects. Su et al. [ 86 ] concluded that listening to background music while reading reduces students´ anxiety and improves some aspects of their reading comprehension, such as extracting explicit information and making direct inferences. However, other aspects with a higher level of interpretation, such as the integration of ideas or the evaluation of content, language, and textual elements, scored lower. Similarly, Rauduvaite [ 70 ] found that the introduction of urban popular music into the classroom can promote meaningful values in education, partly due to the emotional bond that students have with this type of repertoire. Soulier et al. [ 72 ] investigated the relationship between a music-induced mood and performance on spelling tasks, concluding that inducing negative emotions through sad music resulted in poorer performance.

Other studies propose indirect methods to promote an emotional state that can improve the performance of school tasks. In the context of a remedial class, Pimenta and Trevisan [ 69 ] concluded that the introduction of music, especially choral singing, led to an improvement in the feelings experienced when attending these sessions and a new way of relating to the class, as well as a greater interest and involvement in the class. In a similar way, Ramdane et al. [ 66 ] studied the beliefs of a group of Islamic education teachers about the effect of using singing in their classes, and found that the vast majority believed that singing gave them greater emotional awareness and motivation, which could lead to better learning. Similarly, another study found that the use of music with a strong religious-emotional component led students to improve their concentration and creativity [ 82 ].

Improving emotional skills can improve the results of music practice. A research study addressed the relationship between emotional skills and instrumental piano practice [ 80 ], obtained several results. Firstly, they found that identifying emotions helped students to integrate emotional expression into their piano playing and to play more fluently. Secondly, the type of activities most effective in addressing emotional competence were improvisation and associating the pieces with personal experiences. Thirdly, emotional control allowed for greater organisation of the study, minimising moments of impatience, of playing fast and skipping steps, of not being aware of the music, and of not facing difficulties. Finally, bearing in mind that a public performance is conditioned by concerns about others’ judgements, as well as one’s own level of self-esteem, it was claimed that the variable under study could be enhanced by sharing feelings, collaborating, and helping peers, or achieving a goal through effort.

To sum up, the diverse papers analyzed provide empirical evidence of the effect of music in different areas of education, including the negative effects to be avoided (such as its interference with reading tasks that require a high degree of interpretation) and the positive ones that need reinforcement (e.g., a positive mood to promote learning).

3.3.3. Socio-Emotional Benefits

Nine studies found that the use of music enhanced some socio-emotional benefits in diverse areas such as social skills, empathy, and reducing emotional problems. For example, Schellenberg et al. [ 74 ] found that students with a musical background scored higher in sympathy and prosocial skills, although only those with lower levels of musical performance. Another study concluded that singing music with a strong emotional component led students to improve in attitude and social skills such as teamwork [ 82 ]. Similarly, an intervention based on music education resulted in students developing pro-social emotions in relation to their peers with autism spectrum disorder, especially in cases where the latter were bullied [ 81 ]. Kawakami and Katahira [ 71 ] studied the relationship between empathic traits and liking sad music, concluding that those individuals with a higher level of concern for the negative experiences of others, greater capacity to adopt the perspective of the other, and greater development of fantastic imagination, experienced more positive emotions when listening to sad music. Porta [ 81 ] showed that film music makes sense of the audiovisual narrative and helps to hold children’s interest even when they lose the visual part.

Regarding the approach to music education, Jeremić et al. [ 67 ] measured differences in the social-emotional competencies of children who were taught singing by a specialist teacher who used an active methodology in which she performed the songs, or by a non-specialist teacher who played the recordings on audio devices. Significant improvements in social-emotional competencies were found in the experimental group that had used an active method. For example, they were more empathetic towards those who had difficulty with intonation and felt more positive about singing individually. These results suggest that not all of the ways of using music obtain the same effects.

Other studies found a decrease in negative social-emotional attitudes when participating in certain intervention programs that included music. Thus, Ho et al. [ 83 ] studied the effect of an experience combining participation in a drumming group with educational counselling on students with low socio-economic backgrounds. The group made significant improvements in behaviors such as anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, inattention, and some defiant attitudes. In the same direction, Kang [ 71 ] investigated the effect of a therapy based on the use of music (singing, listening, and performing) and sand play in children who had witnessed domestic violence. The author observed that individuals showed improvements related to emotional behavioral problems such as depression, anxiety, aggression, oppositional behavior, and post-traumatic stress. Finally, it was observed that the use of a music education program based on group instrumental performance reduced physical and verbal aggression [ 73 ].

Although there have not been a great number of studies performed that show the socio-emotional benefits, they all provide diverse methods for using music to improve these skills.

3.4. Organizing Information by the Independent Variables: What Types of Musical Experience Have What Types of Socio-Emotional Effects?

Ten studies used listening to music as the independent variable to compare its effects in different emotional areas and in general found them to be beneficial. Nieminen et al. [ 65 ] showed that children better identified their emotions according to major or minor chords. Su et al. [ 86 ] concluded that background music improved students’ moods, and thus indirectly other skills such as reading comprtehension. Porta [ 84 ] found sound held children’s interest even in the absence of images and that music had a significance for children in aspects related to emotions. Tricard et al. [ 77 ] found that videoclips and background music promote positive emotions in children and a significant improvement in deductive reasoning. Teske et al. [ 75 ] found that happy music promotes a positive mood and creativity. Katagiri [ 79 ] found that background music increases emotional comprehension in autistic children. Rauduvaite [ 70 ] found that popular music helped children’s education due to their emotional tie with this repertory. Finally, Boone & Cunningham [ 62 ] found that children could represent the emotional significance of music by expressive movements, especially the sad and happy moments. One of the controversial aspects was the effect of sad music on children: while Kawakami & Katahira [ 85 ] found that empathic children enjoy sad music, Soulier [ 72 ] found that inducing negative emotions through sad music reduced their concentration on spelling tasks.

Fourteen studies used musical training as the independent variable and obtained evidence that it improved diverse socio-emotional competencies, including: identifying emotions in images and/or texts [ 68 ]; a greater capacity to regulate emotions [ 63 ]; concentration and creativity [ 82 ]; students’ ability to recognise emotions [ 73 ]; improved learning and mathematics [ 76 ]; a positive effect on children’s self-expression, self-efficacy, and social skills [ 78 ]; improved the feelings experienced when attending class [ 69 ]; greater emotional awareness and motivation from singing [ 66 ]; increased empathy and positive feelings for learning [ 67 ]; influenced the effects of emotional understanding [ 64 ]; influenced emotional awareness, regulation and autonomy [ 80 ]; increased pro-social behavior in neurotypical children in relation to the social exclusion of autistic children [ 74 ]; promoted the development of pro-social skills [ 81 ]; improved behaviors such as anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, inattention and some defiant attitudes [ 83 ]; and increased children’s motivation and thus their learning capacity [ 66 ].

Finally, two studies used a musical therapy program as the independent variable and found improved emotional behavioral problems, including depression [ 71 ] and children’s emotional comprehension and emotional regulation [ 61 ].

4. Discussion

This systematic review seeks to understand the role that music plays in the emotional education of children in infant and primary education. The scientific literature indicates, on the one hand, that in all educational processes there is an emotional component that conditions the teaching-learning process [ 1 ]. On the other hand, today’s society demands individuals who are increasingly able to adapt to change [ 21 ], and with the skills to work collaboratively [ 20 ]. This has led to the implementation of various educational programs that seek to introduce the development of emotional competence in the classroom [ 4 , 5 , 22 ]. At the same time, some studies belonging to the fields of Psychology [ 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 ], Neuroscience [ 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 ], and Behavioral Sciences [ 17 , 18 ] have investigated the importance of emotional education in the education system. In addition, the central role of music has been demonstrated in aspects such as emotional expression, emotional induction, and emotional regulation [ 29 , 30 , 31 , 32 , 33 , 34 , 35 , 36 , 37 , 38 , 44 , 45 , 46 , 47 ].

Starting from this conceptual framework, this review aims to systematise the knowledge accumulated through the research works of the last two decades with samples made up of individuals from 3 to 12 years of age. The 26 articles analyzed indicate that publications on this topic have experienced a linear growth since 2008, that most of the research is carried out in the context of primary education, and that the topics most frequently dealt with are the development of emotional intelligence [ 87 ], educational and training benefits, and socio-emotional benefits.

With regard to the first aims, two studies have observed that students with musical training have a greater facility for recognising emotions [ 65 , 68 ]. The attribution of this effect to musical experiences is reinforced by a study that found no differences prior to such training [ 64 , 74 ]. Other studies have shown how certain educational interventions using music led to improvements in the emotional recognition of students [ 73 , 79 ]. However, caution should be exercised with these results, as Schellenberg et al. [ 74 ] found no differences between children with and without musical training, whereas Schellenberg and Mankarious [ 68 ] point out that the relationship could be mediated by IQ, which would act as a bias. In this regard, it would be interesting for future research to experiment with measurement instruments that do not depend on the cognitive abilities of the participants.

In relation to the two studies [ 64 , 74 ] that found no differences between the groups with and without musical training in emotional recognition skills, we consider that the results, in spite of being the opposite of those expected, do not invalidate the general statement that music favors emotional perception and assessment. This is because firstly it provides evidence that music is an especially efficient instrument for children who had poor social skills at the beginning of the study, and secondly it emphasises the need to control the participants’ basic levels and carry out longitudinal studies long enough to capture the improvements produced while establishing relationships that specifically assolciate these benefits with musical training.

Similarly, it has been found that the use of proposals that include music improves children’s capacity for emotional expression [ 61 , 78 ], who are able to express perceived emotions through music from the age of 4–5 years old [ 62 ]. Emotional regulation also benefits when methodologies in which music plays a central role are used [ 61 , 63 ]. Therefore, the results obtained suggest that the use of music, whether in the form of specific ongoing training or one-off interventions, improves some aspects of emotional intelligence [ 87 ], especially emotional perception, expression, and regulation.

This is consistent with some studies that argue that music has a remarkable capacity to express, transmit, and evoke diverse emotions and affections in human beings. Thus, for example, Flores-Gutierrez & Diaz [ 29 ] claim that there are musical sequences that stimulate a specific group of emotions and others that evoke a more general response to a type of emotion that has a certain polarity, such as being pleasant and vigorous. Thus, in their study they find music that globally stimulates one of the four major axes defined in their circular affective model, such as pleasant (Mozart), unpleasant (Mussorgski), exciting (Metallica), or relaxing (Japanese music) emotions. For their part, Thompson & Quinto [ 30 ] claim that the power of music to elicit emotion lies in its ability to engage participants in tightly controlled synchronisation at multiple levels of abstraction. Music optimally recruits synchronisation processes that are ubiquitous in human behavior and that greatly influence our emotional lives.

This ability to express, transmit, and evoke diverse emotions and affects is, moreover, independent of the culture to which one belongs. Balkwill & Thompson [ 31 ] demonstrated that naïve listeners from different cultures obtained as high a level of agreement in their emotional responses to music as expert listeners, who were deeply familiar with the culture-specific cues embedded in the music samples.

On the other hand, music helps emotional regulation. In this regard, Randall et al. [ 45 ] conducted research in which they found that using music to regulate a recently experienced emotion achieved the greatest hedonic success. For these authors, personal music listening is used as an independent regulatory resource, allowing listeners to achieve specific emotional goals. Saarikallio & Erkkilä, [ 47 ] conducted a study to recognise music´s role in mood regulation in adolescents. The study showed that listening or performing music has an impressive capacity to promote emotional self-regulation. In this regard, music offered adolescents resources to enhance and restore well-being, making their emotional lives more varied and colorful. In addition, Saarikallio [ 46 ] asserts that the general nature of music-related emotional self-regulation remains relatively similar throughout adulthood.

It therefore seems reasonable to think that the educational use of music may contribute to students’ development of some dimensions of emotional intelligence. However, none of the work addresses the levels of emotional facilitation and understanding reported by Mayer and Salovey [ 87 ] in their model. This could be due to the fact that these are higher level skills with a higher level of complexity and abstraction that are beyond the developmental possibilities of infant and primary school students. Future work should explore the possibilities of developing these levels of emotional competence in school-age children.

In relation to the educational and formative benefits, the results indicate that music can play a role in triggering positive emotional states [ 75 , 76 , 77 ] and higher levels of motivation, concentration, and interest [ 63 , 66 , 69 , 70 , 82 ], which promotes learning in the classroom. It can also reduce the occurrence of negative emotional states such as anxiety and depression [ 86 ]. These benefits have been observed in relation to different school contents, such as improving deductive reasoning [ 77 ], creativity [ 75 ], graphic representation [ 76 ], reading [ 86 ], education in values [ 70 ], orthography [ 72 ], or instrumental practice [ 80 ].

These results are consistent with other research that has found music activities such as instrumental performance or improvisation stimulate cognitive processes [ 48 , 49 , 50 , 51 ], and that they are able to support learning in other disciplines. Johnson & Memmott [ 27 ], in a study of 4739 children, demonstrated the relationship between the quality of music instruction and academic performance on standardised tests in English and mathematics. For these authors, music is a very useful tool to support academic performance. On the other hand, Rickard et al. [ 28 ] conducted a study with 151 schoolchildren on the impact of school music programs on verbal and visual memory processes over a two-year period. The results revealed that schools with high-quality music programs performed better on standardized tests than students in schools with lower-quality music offerings.

Finally, in terms of socio-emotional benefits, the articles reviewed agree that both music training and music education can be beneficial for students’ social and emotional development [ 74 ], such as the fact that the use of music in educational and therapeutic processes [ 81 , 82 ] can have a positive impact on the development of social skills in which some kind of emotion comes into play, such as empathy, teamwork, the development of a pro-social attitude or self-esteem. Similarly, they can contribute to the reduction of negative socio-emotional attitudes such as depression, anxiety, aggression, inattention, defiant and oppositional behavior, or post-traumatic stress [ 71 , 73 , 83 ]. These benefits coincide with some of the challenges posed by today’s society, which requires social subjects with high intrapersonal and interpersonal skills that allow them to work in teams and adapt to change [ 1 , 20 , 21 ].

Specific educational programs that encourage the development of pro-social skills include participation in a drumming group [ 83 ], group musical performance [ 73 ], or training in singing through a specialist teacher who used her voice in the classroom [ 67 ]. These results seem to indicate that the use of music has the capacity to bring social-emotional benefits insofar as it is experiential and fosters personal relationships. This is consistent with some authors who point out that music often involves a series of social interactions that favor socio-emotional learning [ 55 , 56 , 57 ]. Moreover, it coincides with the ethnomusicological perspective that conceives of music as a socio-cultural phenomenon that requires cooperation and coordination [ 54 ]. This perspective would also contribute to broadening the theoretical basis that justifies the use of active methodologies in the classroom as opposed to more traditional models focused on theory, technique, and individual learning [ 89 , 90 , 91 , 92 ]. In further research, it would be useful to study not only the greater or lesser use of music, but also the methodology implemented. In this regard, the comparison between the effects produced by traditional, active, and critical pedagogical models would be a valuable contribution to the field of emotional education, as they could be used to guide teachers in their educational practices and to design both initial and ongoing professional training programs.

Regarding the different musical experiences, it was found that both exposure to music, musical entertainment, and musical therapy programs provide improvements in the emotional sphere.

5. Conclusions

This systematic review found that using music in the education of 3–12 year olds can have a positive effect on their emotional development. We first found that it can contribute to the development of emotional intelligence, especially with regard to emotional perception, expression, and regulation. The students that took part in activities using music were more capable of recognising and expressing their emotions and regulating their emotional states, such as aggression or anger. Secondly we found that music is capable of providing educational, formative, and socio-emotional benefits. In this regard its emotional impact can improve aspects such as deductive reasoning, creativity, graphic representation, reading, spelling, education in values, or practical instrumental skills. It can also boost attitudes such as sympathy, empathy, and other prosocial skills, and reduce anxiety, depression, and defiant attitudes. It is therefore recommended that music be incorporated into the different curricular levels, educational contexts, and areas of knowledge. Likewise, the establishment of educational policies aimed at guaranteeing universal access to musical training is suggested, as well as an increase in the presence and recognition of this discipline in formal educational contexts.

Most of the limitations encountered in this study were due to the considerable heterogeneity in the different studies selected, which made it difficult to integrate them into a single framework. All the studies used different independent variables, such as musical listening, entertainment, or music therapy, and different dependent variables such as different emotional effects or in the development of socio-emotional skills. We therefore had to integrate and synthesize the information into a scheme to make sense of the results. However, our double approach to structuring the results (first by the socio-emotional effects and then by the musical variables) allowed us to better structure them, although it was a difficult and complex task.

We should first of all point out that the studies came from different disciplines such as musical education, music psychology, music teaching, music therapy, etc., and thus different researchers used their own theories, methods, nomenclatures, and instruments, which made it difficult to combine the results in a common language. The second difficulty was the lack of a classification with a wide consensus of positive emotions or emotional skills. Psychology is known to classically study psychopathology and has classified the universally accepted diverse psychological disorders (e.g., Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V) [ 93 ] and the International Classification of Diseases (CIE10) [ 94 ]). These serve as a guide to researchers who can compare their results using these classifications. However, until the emergence of Positive Psychology in the first decade of the 21st century this discipline had not focused on the positive aspects of human existence, so that there were still no official classifications of the positive emotional sphere that were generally accepted by all researchers

The present work aimed to find positive emotional aspects, and although we used studies from the year 2000 these were not based on a common taxonomy regarding the measurement and classification of these effects. However, we had serious difficulty in integrating the results into a common scheme, although we got some support from Mayer & Salovey’s Theory of Emotional Intelligence [ 87 ], which includes different emotional facets and skills and is widely recognized in scientific fields. Thirdly, we should point out that there are overlaps and covariances among the dependent variables (e.g., if we improve emotional recognition the socio-emotional skills will probably also improve) and in the independent variables (e.g., musical entertainment programs include listening and music therapy). This makes it difficult to ascertain the relations between the variables and alerts us to the need for a more experimental approach in this field that uses common categories to construct more solid knowledge.

Fourthly, we were not able to extract solid syntheses and conclusions from homogenous groups in diverse variables of interest (e.g., specific ages, music styles, different levels of empirical evidence) due to the lack of appropriate studies. We opted for a generic search in order to deal with the wide range of papers. A narrower search would have provided greater precision with more homogeneous results but less information, counting on a small number of papers for the systematic review. We therefore consider that our approach achieved a balance between information and precision, since it allowed us to draw a map of the present situation and integrate this information into a joint scheme.

The wide fragmentation of the papers is an indication of the relatively recent emergence of this field of study, which associates music education with its emotional effects. However, we consider that studies such as this will allow us to detect the obstacles and deficiencies in order to go on constructing the basis of a common language to improve the comparison of the results and the advances in clarifying the empirical evidence in relation to the effects of musical education in the socio-emotional area.

Author Contributions

Conceptualization, J.S.B.-M., G.B.-V., and P.M.-L.; methodology, J.S.B.-M., P.M.-L., and C.M.-T.; investigation, J.S.B.-M., G.B.-V. and P.M.-L.; data curation, J.S.B.-M., C.M.-T. and P.M.-L.; writing—original draft preparation, J.S.B.-M., G.B.-V. and P.M.-L.; writing—review and editing, J.S.B.-M.; P.M.-L., and G.B.-V.; supervision, G.B.-V., and C.M.-T. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

This work was funded by the Faculty of Psychology of the Catholic University of Valencia San Vicente Mártir under Grant (number 2021-198-001).

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Why Do People Make Music?

In a new study, researchers found universal features of songs across many cultures, suggesting that music evolved in our distant ancestors.

A research team that comprised musicologists, psychologists, linguists, evolutionary biologists and professional musicians recorded songs in 55 languages to find that songs share certain features not found in speech. Credit... Album/Alamy

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By Carl Zimmer

• May 15, 2024

Music baffled Charles Darwin. Mankind’s ability to produce and enjoy melodies, he wrote in 1874, “must be ranked amongst the most mysterious with which he is endowed.”

All human societies made music, and yet, for Darwin, it seemed to offer no advantage to our survival. He speculated that music evolved as a way to win over potential mates. Our “half-human ancestors,” as he called them, “aroused each other’s ardent passions during their courtship and rivalry.”

Other Victorian scientists were skeptical. William James brushed off Darwin’s idea, arguing that music is simply a byproduct of how our minds work — a “mere incidental peculiarity of the nervous system.”

That debate continues to this day. Some researchers are developing new evolutionary explanations for music. Others maintain that music is a cultural invention, like writing, that did not need natural selection to come into existence.

In recent years, scientists have investigated these ideas with big data. They have analyzed the acoustic properties of thousands of songs recorded in dozens of cultures. On Wednesday, a team of 75 researchers published a more personal investigation of music . For the study, all of the researchers sang songs from their own cultures.

The team, which comprised musicologists, psychologists, linguists, evolutionary biologists and professional musicians, recorded songs in 55 languages, including Arabic, Balinese, Basque, Cherokee, Maori, Ukrainian and Yoruba. Across cultures, the researchers found, songs share certain features not found in speech, suggesting that Darwin might have been right: Despite its diversity today, music might have evolved in our distant ancestors.

“It shows us that there may be really something that is universal to all humans that cannot simply be explained by culture,” said Daniela Sammler, a neuroscientist at the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics in Frankfurt who was not involved in the study.

Databases of songs collected by ethnomusicologists sometimes lack important details. It can also be hard for researchers to make sense of the structure and lyrics of songs from other cultures. Computers, likewise, are not very good at recognizing many features of music.

“We thought we should involve the insiders,” said Yuto Ozaki, who earned his doctorate at Keio University in Japan by helping to lead the project.

Dr. Ozaki’s colleague, Patrick Savage, took on the job of recruiting the singers. “It was a combination of the network I’d already built up through the first decade of my career along with going to conferences and making small talk and meeting people,” said Dr. Savage, now a musicologist at the University of Auckland.

All of the team members picked traditional songs from their cultures to record.

Asabanabushi Song (Amami Island, Japan)

Petara Song (Brazil)

Éiníní Song (Ireland)

In addition to singing, they recited the lyrics of the songs without a melody so that the team could later compare the music and speech. And for a further point of comparison, the researchers played their songs on a wide range of instruments, including sitars and melodicas.

Petara on Bamboo Flute (Brazil)

In each recording, the researchers measured six features, such as pitch and tempo. Despite their variety, all of the songs shared a number of features that set them apart from speech. The pitch was higher and more stable, for example, and the tempo was slower.

Dr. Sammler cautioned that the singers in the new study were mostly academics, and that the songs they chose might have introduced some bias into the research. “It’s essentially academics singing material that may not be representative,” she said.

But she also noted that another study , not yet published in a scientific journal, came to a similar conclusion. In that study, researchers analyzed songs from 18 languages and pinpointed many of the same features.

It’s possible that songs have distinct features because they have a special role in human communication separate from speech, said Aniruddh Patel, a psychologist at Tufts University who was not involved in the study. What’s more, our brains appear to be sensitive to those features. In 2022, Dr. Patel pointed out, researchers discovered human neurons that only responded to singing — not speech or music played on instruments.

“There is something distinctive about song all around the world as an acoustic signal that perhaps our brains have become attuned to over evolutionary time,” Dr. Patel said.

What sort of evolutionary benefit would come from that signal is still a matter of debate.

“Maybe music was needed to improve group cohesion,” Dr. Ozaki said. Singing in choruses, sharing rhythms and melodies, could have brought people together whether as a community or in preparation for a battle.

But Dr. Sammler didn’t think that the new study ruled out other roles for music, such as helping parents bond with their children . “It could support a lot of theories,” she said.

Audio courtesy of Patrick Savage. Songs by Marin Naruse, Tutushamum Puri Teyxokawa and Tadhg Ó Meachair. Instrumental by Tutushamum Puri Teyxokawa.

Carl Zimmer covers news about science for The Times and writes the Origins column . More about Carl Zimmer

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Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Challenges to musical and organizational growth in small rural community high school instrumental music programs in georgia.

William Kenneth Garrett , Liberty University Follow

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Thomas Goddard

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Recommended Citation

Garrett, William Kenneth, "Challenges To Musical and Organizational Growth in Small Rural Community High School Instrumental Music Programs in Georgia" (2024). Doctoral Dissertations and Projects . 5560. https://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/doctoral/5560

Rural school instrumental programs are commonly categorized as small and struggling. Teaching in these programs is often considered a stepping-stone for music educators. Despite common challenges such as limited or less educated staff, underdeveloped musicians, and a lack of resources, some rural programs have found inventive solutions to combat the obstacles of rural schools and grow successful band programs. There is a need to address the obstacles of being a high school band director whose program is growing or needs to improve regarding student participation and musicianship in this setting. This qualitative research study seeks to uncover similar challenges current high school band directors face when increasing or attempting to develop their programs musically and organizationally in small rural communities in Georgia. Existing literature combined with a research survey will emphasize high school directors’ specific challenges in these settings. The solutions they report will also be published. The results of the research survey suggest that although there are many trials in teaching in these situations, music and organizational growth can still be found. The study has implications for current or future band directors, as it will fill a gap in the literature about the challenges facing high school band directors in Georgia regarding organizational and musical growth. By reading about how current directors overcome difficulties, other directors may be encouraged to grow similarly. Furthermore, the writing of this study could embolden additional research into the hardships of other teaching aspects in small-rural school settings by this or other authors.

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Revolutionizing education: Democracy Quest VR will take students on historic journey

A new virtual reality experience is one step closer to bringing history to life in secondary-education classrooms across the U.S.

Democracy Quest, a free educational resource being developed by the Center on Representative Government at Indiana University, was recently tested by IU Columbus students. Democracy Quest aims to increase the constitutional knowledge and civic-mindedness of students in sixth grade, and even in adults.

Democracy Quest will offer five learning modules focused on pivotal moments in U.S. history. Each fully realized world will be complete with characters to interact with, learn from and assist. Led by IU’s Stephanie Serriere and Elizabeth R. Osborn , the new experience had its first trial with students at the Columbus Learning Center on April 25. Serriere’s education students, as well as IU Columbus history students, were invited to participate in the trial.

“From 1700s Philadelphia through navigating the government of today, we are so excited to introduce students to major U.S. turning points in each of our virtual reality modules,” said Osborn, director of education for the IU Center on Representative Government. “The Constitution is in the history books, but what about the woman business owner who wasn’t invited to the Constitutional Convention? How do these proceedings affect her? Will she be better off with the new laws in action than she was before? Well, thanks to Democracy Quest, we can ask her.”

According to a recent study , for every $50 the U.S. government spends on STEM education, only 5 cents is spent on civic education. Osborn and Serriere hope Democracy Quest is a vital tool to mitigate this disparity. Civics education includes not only how governments are created but also how they are run today.

“Supporting civics education is paramount to handing down this ideal of democracy to the next generation,” said Serriere, professor of social studies education. “We hope we’ve found an innovative way to do that.”

Established in 1999, the Center on Representative Government was developed by former congressman Lee Hamilton as a nonpartisan, educational institution to create programs that inform, inspire and motivate students and to encourage civic participation to help prepare the next generation of citizens. Supported by a three-year, $5.7 million cooperative agreement award from the United States Department of Defense, Democracy Quest supports that mission.

Democracy Quest is building content about U.S. history, government, civics and law to help students develop critical-thinking skills through primary-source analysis and demonstrate that each individual has an opportunity to influence the trajectory of our country’s success. In a culminating activity, students who are taught a module will then work in a project-based learning environment to identify and develop alternative solutions to problems that can then be applied to similar situations they might face in the workplace and in their communities.

When the first module of Democracy Quest is complete, users will experience the Articles of Confederation and the Philadelphia national convention like never before. Students will be tasked with meeting five new virtual-reality characters — each a conglomeration of related experiences to present the perspectives of those not invited to the proceedings. Each encounter will also include interactive components to gamify the experience.

While the IU students tested a more minimal version on April 26, they did get to experience its potential at work. They navigated a simple maze, threw objects into a target and pulled a series of levers to move a ball from one side of a puzzle to the other. Each session ran for about 15 minutes — the target time for the finished version — and users who made it through the testing environment’s challenges were rewarded with a detailed old Philadelphia neighborhood to walk around in. While the graphics were still simple, they saw the promise of what was to come.

Onsite participants said they were pleased with the virtual reality experience and excited about its future. Many were education majors who could see the potential of a fully realized Democracy Quest and were looking forward to the finished version.

Jazzlynn Yeadon, an IU Columbus junior majoring in education, said she really enjoyed the experience, including the mini-games used to engage players and navigate the overall game.

“This could be very beneficial in my future classroom,” Yeadon said. “Kids are already so tech savvy, I can see this engaging them much more than reading a chapter in a social studies text book.”

To bring this virtual world to life, the IU team is conducting ongoing research to ensure historical accuracy in each module. Osborn serves as the chief historian and is leading their curriculum team, which includes graduate students like School of Education doctoral student Mariah Pol. They have been researching primary and secondary historical sources from the Library of Congress and other places to capture less well-known perspectives to then adapt this information into a rare or never-been-done-before methodology. Users can experience this information as if it were firsthand knowledge and discover historic details, down to even the accurate font used in the printing press.

They collaborate with Half Full Nelson , a game development company owned by IU alumnus Andrew Nelson, to engineer the virtual reality experience. Half Full Nelson has worked with the Center on Representative Government for over 10 years, creating numerous civic education materials that are used in schools nationwide. Nelson and his creative team, including game designer and artist Matt Madeira, are working closely with the IU team to ensure historical accuracy.

The team is just as interested in what comes after a user’s experience in the VR world as they are with the time spent inside. Through testing, they hope to determine whether the experience increases students’ knowledge of history and principles of democracy, while also determining their likelihood for future civic engagement. A research team led by Serriere, which includes doctoral student Kyle O’Brien and other graduate students, will also measure how the Democracy Quest materials impact teaching methods. The goal is to ultimately measure students’ recognition of diverse perspectives, empathy for diverse perspectives, and knowledge of principles of democracy and historical content.

The team is targeting Oct. 1 for the launch of the one full Democracy Quest module focused on the Philadelphia national convention. Production of the other four modules will occur during the next two years.

“It’s one thing to read about history, but it’s something else to be immersed in a more realistic experience of it: to see the sights, meet the people not necessarily involved with the decisions, but those still affected by them, especially voices not always centralized,” Serriere said. “Democracy Quest offers a new perspective on how U.S. government came to be, and students will hopefully use this understanding to enrich their own lives and the lives of others.”

Dan Melnick

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New core facility will advance biomedical, ag sciences research.

May 9, 2024 · 7 min read

New core facility will advance biomedical, ag sciences research

A new University of Nebraska–Lincoln core research facility shows promise to revolutionize how Nebraska scientists understand molecular foundations and bolster the university’s expertise in the biomedical and agricultural sciences.

The CryoEM Core Facility houses the state’s first cryo-electron microscope, and it is one of just a handful in the region. CryoEM microscopy is a powerful imaging technique that enables researchers to observe biological molecules, complexes and cells at near-atomic resolution.

Although the technology has existed for several decades, advancements in recent years have turned it into a leading tool for research in drug discovery and development, plant biology, infectious diseases, pathology, animal science and more.

Cryo-EM technology enables biological samples to be cooled to cryogenic temperatures — at least negative 153 degrees Celsius. This ultra-cold environment preserves the structure and function of biological specimens more effectively than traditional methods, making cryo-EM ideal for preserving proteins and providing a stable, controlled environment for working with biological samples.

UNL’s CryoEM Core Facility began operations March 19, with eight research groups already using the core. It is expected to strengthen UNL’s research collaborations with the other University of Nebraska institutions and attract new partnerships with other universities and companies across the Midwest, said Sherri Jones, interim vice chancellor for research and economic development.

“We are paving the way for transformative discoveries and research that advance the state of Nebraska, the nation and the world. … This is just the beginning of discoveries to come,” Jones said during a May 6 grand opening celebration.

There are currently three national cryo-electron microscopy centers in the United States, in California, Oregon and New York. UNL has already launched a partnership and training pipeline with one of those centers — the Pacific Northwest Center for Cryo-EM — which is expected to bolster UNL’s connection to national labs in the future.

Mark Button, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, said the official grand opening marked “a great day for the advancement of science in the state of Nebraska.”

Button, along with other college and unit leaders, emphasized that teamwork was the key ingredient in opening the facility.

In September 2021, the Nebraska Center for Integrated Biomolecular Communication, known as CIBC, identified a need for cryo-EM capabilities to expand the university’s biomedical research capacity. Jim Takacs, professor emeritus of chemistry and then-director of CIBC, offered to allocate funding from the center’s National Institutes of Health Centers of Biomedical Research Excellence award to jump-start the effort.

From there, the Office of Research and Economic Development surveyed the campus to understand which research groups would use cryo-EM instrumentation if it became available. The Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources’ Agricultural Research Division; College of Arts and Sciences; and College of Engineering indicated strong interest and provided financial support.

“What makes UNL a special place is that we are able to bring people together to do great things that can’t be done by any group alone,” Button said.

Lance Pérez, dean of the College of Engineering, said Wei Niu is an example of a faculty member who will use cryo-EM to advance her research program. Niu, associate professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, is developing enzymes for building manmade molecules for use in industrial and commercial chemicals. She is using clean energy sources instead of the petroleum-based products that are typically used as raw materials.

Nebraska “punches way above its weight and can do big things” when faculty from across disciplines work together, Pérez said.

Other examples of how Husker researchers plan to leverage the core facility:

• Shi-Hua Xiang, associate professor of veterinary medicine and biomedical sciences and a member of the Nebraska Center for Virology, is developing inhibitor drugs to treat the Ebola virus. CryoEM can help virologists visualize how drugs structurally bind to receptors, which could lead to significant advancements in drug design and development.
• Joseph Yesselman, assistant professor of chemistry, designs three-dimensional RNA nanostructures and nanomachines. CryoEM can be used to resolve RNA nanostructures at atomic-level resolutions. His lab is already collecting preliminary data on one of the structures it is studying.
• Kurt Piepenbrink, assistant professor of food science and technology, studies how bacteria use extracellular structures to interact with their environment. Piepenbrink plans to work with the CryoEM Core Facility to determine the structural and functional relationships for large biomolecular complexes, especially those that are not compatible with traditional determination techniques such as X-ray crystallography and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy.

Tala Awada, associate dean and associate director of the Agricultural Research Division, said cryo-EM capabilities would expand ARD’s research capacity in plant and animal health, while supporting training of the next generation of scientists and innovators.

“It is a testament to the faculty’s vision … and the campus rallied around them,” she said.

The Nebraska Center for Biotechnology provides day-to-day oversight and management of the core facility. In addition to CryoEM, the center houses four other core facilities and has a track record of success in managing life sciences research cores, said Jen Nelson, assistant vice chancellor for research and research integrity officer.

Center director Daniel Schachtman and Shelly Cutsor, director of research finance and information systems, oversaw renovation of the Ken Morrison Life Sciences Research Center, where the core facility is housed. The renovation opened space for high-throughput equipment, including a 200kV Glacios Cryo-EM Transmission Electron Microscope, a Falcon4i electron detector camera, aberration-free image shift and fringe-free imaging.

To store the massive amounts of data generated, Schachtman’s team worked closely with the Holland Computing Center and the University of Nebraska’s Information Technology Services to develop a sophisticated system for data storage and processing.

Schachtman also hired the core facility’s first director, Eduardo Romero Camacho, who joined the university in 2022 and had a pivotal role in the Morrison Center renovation and equipment installation.

Jiantao Guo, professor of chemistry and CIBC director; Mark Wilson, professor of biochemistry; and Limei Zhang, associate professor of biochemistry, provided scientific vision and oversight throughout the project. The CIBC External Advisory Committee shared input on how to establish the core facility, including instrumentation and staffing.

Jones thanked the university leaders who supported the project.

“Acquiring cutting-edge equipment is part of UNL’s role as the state’s Big Ten research institution. Equipment investments are crucial to positioning our faculty for grants and awards success; recruiting talented researchers and students; and offering our students high-quality research experiences.”

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