New Ventures in Integrated Teaching and Learning: Evidence for

NEW VENTURES IN INTEGRATEDTEACHING AND LEARNING:

WORKING TOWARD A MODEL OF GENERALSYMBOLIC LITERACY BASED ON THE GROWINGUNDERSTANDING OF FUNDAMENTAL LITERACY

SKILLS SHARED BETWEEN MUSIC AND LANGUAGE IN GRADES K-2

—————————————— by ——————————————

L A R R Y S C R I P P A N D D AV I D R E I D E R

with contributions from

GAIL BURNAFORDEducation Consultant, Florida Atlantic University, Music-in-Education National Consortium

ROD CONTRERASField Researcher and Data Collection Coordinator

PATRICK KEPPELNEC Research Center Publications Editor

TOM LAWRENCE AND NANCY WALMSLEYLiteracy Testing Coordinator and Advisors

JULIA KIM, ASHIMA SCRIPP, ANDY STETSON, FRED SIENKIEWICZ, AND RANDY WONGNEC Research Center Assistants

INTRODUCTIONMost public school communities are aware of research that argues for the value of hav-ing their students participate in a music learning program both for the sake of develop-ing their musical skills and for enhancing their learning capacities in general. However,many schools are not sure what measurable results or evidence of successful implemen-tation to expect from their particular music programs. Indeed, research so far has failedto provide stable conceptual frameworks for understanding (a) how learning transferworks across disciplines and (b) what particular aspects of music learning, and not justgeneral participation in arts programs, predicts learning in other disciplines, and why.

In the case of music integration programs such as the Music Ventures program exploredhere, the argument is made that authentic forms of music literacy can and should be learnedby every child because of the fundamental concepts that are shared between music andother forms of literacy. As is the case with effective language arts or mathematical education,a comprehensive music program eventually relies on the development of fully operationaland internalized symbol system skills that serve to represent form, content, concepts, andlearning processes associated with diverse aspects of the domain. The question investigatedin this study, relevant to any school that provides musical training for all students, can bestated as follows: As we measure students’ achievement in music literacy skill development –that is, the ability to perceive, read, analyze, compose, research, and reflect on music with gen-uine comprehension – does evidence of this ability also predict an increased understanding ofgeneral symbolic literacy skills that apply to other domains such as language arts?

Scripp & Reider/New Ventures Journal for Music-in-Education 2007 337

LARRY SCRIPP, PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR

FOR THE MUSIC VENTURES EVALUATION

AND RESEARCH PROJECT COMMISSIONED

BY THE INTERNATIONAL FOUNDATION FOR

MUSIC RESEARCH, IS THE FOUNDING

DIRECTOR OF NEC’S RESEARCH CENTER

FOR LEARNING THROUGH MUSIC.

DAVID REIDER, A FACULTY MEMBER OF THE

SCHOOL OF EDUCATION AT UNIVERSITY OF

MASSACHUSETTS IN BOSTON AND FOUNDER

OF EDUCATION DESIGN, SERVES AS BOTH A

RESEARCH ASSOCIATE AND AN EVALUATOR

FOR NEC’S MUSIC-IN-EDUCATION NATIONAL

CONSORTIUM PROJECTS.

LARRY SCRIPP AND DAVID REIDER ARE CUR-

RENTLY COLLABORATING ON THE SAN

FRANCISCO SYMPHONY’S KEEPING SCORE

PROJECT IN CALIFORNIA.

This pilot study began when a publicschool music specialist at a K-8 MagnetArts School and an elementary school thatwas challenged to improve its language lit-eracy program agreed to work together tounderstand how instruction and teacherprofessional development designed tointegrate the development of both musicand linguistic literacy skills would benefitlearning for all of its pupils. Working witha team coordinated by the Research Centerfor Learning Through Music at NewEngland Conservatory, the music/curricu-lum/professional development specialistand the Beaumont Elementary schoolagreed to a research and evaluation planthat would provide much needed descrip-tive and statistical evidence relevant to therelationship between music and languageliteracy skills for Grades K-2.

A B R I E F R E V I E W O F R E S E A R C HI N V E S T I G A T I N G T H ER E L A T I O N S H I P O F A R T SL E A R N I N G S K I L L S T OA C A D E M I C A C H I E V E M E N T

The investigation of the impact of musicliteracy skill development on language lit-eracy skills began with the positing of aconceptual framework for investigatingassumptions about the nature and validityof music-integrated learning and teaching.These assumptions are based on the gener-al hypothesis that the development of earlymusic and language integrated literacy skilldevelopment can be best understood andassessed in terms of fundamental conceptsand processes shared between bothdomains. Thus, the analytic framework forthis experimental study can be understoodin the context of past research focused onthe contribution of arts learning to thelearning process as a whole.

Evidence for the Broad Impact ofParticipation in Arts Learning Programson School Achievement

In 1999, for example, the Champions ofChange report1 illustrated several casestudies of how arts and arts-integratedlearning initiatives functioned as agents ofpositive change in public schools. Findingsfrom these studies forecasted a new role forarts and arts-integrated learning as ‘cur-

riculum partners with other subject disci-plines’ for the purpose of building thecapacity to learn for all students. Thesestudies detailed diverse conditions for artslearning and its impact on school culture(Burton, Horowitz & Abeles; Catterall, etal.), the contribution of arts learning inafter-school programs (Heath & Roach;Seidel), and the provision of descriptivedata that highlighted growing levels ofsophistication of a multitude of learningprocesses, competencies and dispositionsassociated with high involvement with artslearning. Although researchers providedevidence of how high participation in artslearning programs was linked with meas-ures of creative process (Burton, Horowitz& Abeles) or with general academicimprovement according to standardizedtest scores (Catterall & Waldorf; Catterall,Chapleau & Iwanaga), they did not includestatistical evidence of links between partic-ular arts learning skills, which would arguefor targeted curricular intervention pro-grams or assessments that would holdschools accountable for the contributionof high quality arts learning programs tothe overall quality of learning across sub-ject areas. Furthermore, while more recentresearch indicates that many school leaderscredit the arts for positive outcomes on testscores2, they offer little empirical evidencefor the specific contribution of discretearts learning skills or processes on literacylearning in other subject areas. Since manymusic educators and language reading spe-cialists, for example, do informally meas-ure specific aspects of skill development atvarious grade levels, music educators as awhole are left to wonder to what extent thisskill development is interrelated withlearning in other disciplines, especially

over time. Thus, for many schools moreevidence concerning the mutual benefits ofdeveloping both music learning skills andlanguage arts skills is needed in order toadvocate for music learning programs thatproduce learning outcomes that contributeto linguistic learning.

Evidence for Teaching for LearningTransfer Through the Arts as a Strategyfor School Change

In a recent publication on the role of thearts in education, Nick Rabkin [2005]reports in Putting the Arts in the Picture:Reframing Education in the 21st Centurythat arts-integration strategies are growingin sophistication and are thus becoming


AS WE MEASURE STUDENTS’ ACHIEVEMENT IN MUSIC

L ITERACY SKILL DEVELOPMENT. . . DOES EV IDENCE OF

THIS ABIL ITY ALSO PREDICT AN INCREASED

UNDERSTANDING OF GENERAL SYMBOLIC L ITERACY

SKILLS THAT APPLY TO OTHER DOMAINS SUCH AS

LANGUAGE ARTS?

Anne Fennell and Larry Scripp announced theMusic Ventures Study at the Research toPractice Education Summit in Washington,D.C. in July 2004 hosted by Secretary ofEducation Rod Paige.

comes is consistent with the circumstanceand premise of integrated learning. Giventhe complexity of public school learningenvironments, it may be counterproduc-tive to insist that any one form of musiclearning or skill development causes learn-ing in another subject. From the point ofview of this study, integrated learning canbe defined, taught, and understood as aninteraction among multiple, mutuallyreinforcing, skill sets when they sharecommon underlying principles or con-cepts. Thus, a one-way causal model ofdata analysis is not to be considered anappropriate framework for measuring theimpact of integrated teaching and learningin public schools.

The “two-way interactionist” positionadvocated here and in the Critical Linksreport9 suggests that improvement inlearning in either of two disciplines cat-alyzes, reinforces, and deepens learning inthe other. Academic performance is just aslikely to benefit from strong instructionin music, as music is likely to benefit fromstrong instruction in the academic sub-jects. Thus, the study of correlations

among skills in different disciplines canindicate the degree of association thatexists between these disciplines. Stepwiseregression analyses can pinpoint moreprecisely the ‘goodness of fit’ betweendata patterns that explain best the vari-ance between particular subskills in onediscipline and the predictability of its rela-tionship with another.

As a result of the findings reported in thiscase study, schools can embrace with con-fidence a music-integrated literacy cur-riculum and professional developmentprogram based on the learning of funda-mental concepts of general symbolic liter-acy shared between music and the lan-guage arts as a model for providing bothauthentic music and language literacyinstruction to all children in the early ele-mentary grades. From a public school pol-icy perspective, the shared fundamentalconcepts of literacy intrinsic to both musicand language classrooms can become animportant cornerstone of the music-infused interdisciplinary curriculum.

THE MUSIC VENTURESCASE STUDY RESEARCHMETHODOLOGYThe primary objective of the MusicVentures case study was to develop andexecute a comprehensive methodology[see RUBRICS CUBE System article andCase Study Reports in this section of theJournal] in order to evaluate sufficientlythe interrelationships between music andlanguage literacy learning in Grades K-2 ina public elementary school that has a highpercentage of English Language (EL)Learners (41%), an extremely high per-centage of low income families (97%), andno recent history of providing musicinstruction.

This case study report10 focuses on theimpact of the work of Anne Fennell, ahighly qualified music educator from theVista Academy of the Arts11, who devel-oped the Music Ventures music integrationcurriculum and served as the professionaldevelopment specialist at the BeaumontElementary School in Vista, California.The purpose of the Music Ventures pro-

gram was (a) to introduce authenticsequential music instruction into theBeaumont School and (b) to help class-room teachers incorporate music into theirclassroom practices as a strategy forenhancing early language literacy learning.

Interested in the impact of bringing a musicprogram into an elementary school for thepurpose of increasing the capacity of all stu-dents to learn both music and language lit-eracy skills, the entire faculty and staff of theschool supported and participated in theMusic Ventures program by (a) providingtime for teacher professional developmentin music and music-integrated teaching andlearning; (b) incorporating live and video-taped model lessons provided by a musicspecialist into classroom and learning cen-ter activities; and (c) agreeing to extensivedocumentation of teaching and learningpractices through teacher surveys, teacherinterviews, pre and post music skills testing,and a battery of literacy skills tests adaptedfor use across all three grade levels.

This report employs both program evalua-tion and research methodologies.Embedded in this evaluation, therefore, areresearch questions intended to generatenew information about the validity andimpact of music and music-integratedlearning as a literacy intervention strategyfor lower elementary grades:

(1)What is the nature and impact of musicliteracy skill instruction and learningwhen it is integrated into the K-2 corelanguage arts curriculum?

(2)To what extent do classroom teachersunderstand and support the nature ofmusic and music-integrated learningand its connections to the K-2 languagearts curriculum in the context of theMusic Ventures professional develop-ment program?

(3)How can a school that previously hadlimited access to formal music instruc-tion use the Music Ventures program asa way to document evidence of authen-tic and developmentally appropriate lev-els of learning in music for all students?

(4)To what extent does the level of studentmusic literacy skill learning correlate


viable, powerful agents of change in publicschools open to reinvestigating the essentialrole of the arts in public school education.Citing the work of the Music-in-EducationNational Consortium as a leading propo-nent of the arts for learning across the cur-riculum, Rabkin declares that

“We are in a position to extend this[arts and music integration] researchbecause, over the last fifteen years orso, a dedicated group of artists, educa-tors, and researchers has developedarts integration far beyond the workand research we examined in the early1990s. Serious evaluation studiescompleted in the last few years nowprovide strong answers to the ques-tions raised then. There is transfer.Students make substantial gains in thebasics. Student become betterthinkers, develop higher order skillsand deepen their engagement andtheir inclusion to learn. Arts integra-tion’s effects are significant for allkinds of students, but they may bemost substantial for low-achievingstudents.” (Ibid., p.8)

Standards Based Arts InstructionMandates Arts-Integrated Learning inPublic Schools

The importance of interdisciplinary con-nections between learning in music andother areas of the curriculum should notbe controversial. National and most stateand district standards for music educationargue for authentic, comprehensive, andinterdisciplinary learning in and throughmusic for all children at all grade levels.What should be controversial is that,despite research findings and the publicpresence of national standards, music hasyet to be accepted as a core ingredient ofpublic education in many communities3.This problem may stem from a lack of con-sensus among music educators on the pur-pose of music programs in schools. Somemusic teachers have been slow to embraceintegrated learning because it is seen asopposed to the ‘essentialist’ position thatmusic should only be taught for its ownsake and not for the sake of learning inother subjects. According to Rabkin, Hopeand others, the integrity of music-integrat-ed learning relies on the presence of music

learning for its own sake (e.g., symbol sys-tem skills, literature, etc.) in the curricu-lum, and music should never be taughtexclusively for the sake of learning in otherdisciplines. However, reading and writingaren’t just language arts skills, but rathergeneral symbolic skills that apply to readingand writing music, mathematical, and lin-guistic symbols, let alone to the ‘readingand creation’ of social or emotional situa-tions. Likewise, the learning of rhythm isnot exclusively a musical skill, since it doesrely on and is enriched by its application tomath, science, and design.

Music-Integrated Learning as a ‘Two-Way Street”

As a result of this ongoing and possiblypointless debate between the essentialist andinstrumental positions on arts learning,many educators are increasingly coming tothe conclusion that the forced choicebetween teaching music for its own sake orfor the sake of learning in other subjects isbased on a false dichotomy. If, for example,music integration is understood as a two-way street that reinforces learning in bothdisciplines, then music educators will needto see research that bridges the gap betweenthe essentialist and the instrumentalist posi-tions regarding music’s role in public educa-tion (Hope, 20004; Bamberger, 20005;Gardiner, 20006; Scripp, 20047). Thus, weargue here that Rabkin’s claims for the ben-efits of arts integration beg for further case

studies where particular strategies for musi-cal skill development and its integration intothe academic curriculum are held account-able to specific outcomes in both areas ofstudy. Perhaps most important to practi-tioners and policy makers, we believe thatthis research should be designed to demon-strate how the authentic, comprehensivemusic programs can function as catalysts forcognitive and social-emotional developmentacross disciplines, “especially when condi-tions for transfer are optimized by teachingto principles and processes that engage anddeepen learning across disciplines8.”

Assessing for Predictable InteractionAmong Learning Variables Consistentwith Aspects of Learning Transfer ofFundamental Concepts of LiteracyAcross Domains

Even with agreement on the purpose ofstudying the impact of music-integratedlearning in relation to language develop-ment, researchers may yet disagree on theinterpretation of the data collected. Forsome researchers, for example, the strongpresence of positive associations betweenlearning in music and other disciplines isinadequate evidence for extolling theimpact of music-integrated learningbecause it does not provide direct evi-dence for one-way, cause-and-effect trans-fer between one skill and another. Otherresearchers take a different view: evidenceof two-way links between learning out-


READING AND WRITING AREN’T JUST LANGUAGE ARTS

SKILLS, BUT RATHER GENERAL SYMBOLIC SKILLS

THAT APPLY TO READING AND WRITING MUSIC,

MATHEMATICAL, AND LINGUISTIC SYMBOLS, LET

ALONE TO THE ‘READING AND CREATION’ OF SOCIAL

OR EMOTIONAL SITUATIONS. LIKEWISE, THE LEARNING

OF RHYTHM IS NOT EXCLUSIVELY A MUSICAL SKILL,

SINCE IT DOES RELY ON AND IS ENRICHED BY ITS

APPLICATION TO MATH, SCIENCE, AND DESIGN.

FROM THE POINT OF

VIEW OF THIS STUDY,

INTEGRATED LEARNING

CAN BE DEF INED,

TAUGHT, AND

UNDERSTOOD AS AN

INTERACTION AMONG

MULTIPLE , MUTUALLY

REINFORCING, SKILL

SETS WHEN THEY SHARE

COMMON UNDERLYING

PRINCIPLES OR

CONCEPTS.

The profile ratings of the Music VenturesCurriculum Materials indicate its curricu-lar design is consonant with its goals ofmusic learning and integration with litera-cy skill development. That is, the curricu-lum itself (a) ensures its conceptual validi-ty by addressing authentic learningprocesses and concepts in both languagearts and music, and at the same time (b)ensures its practical validity by virtue of itsfocus on organizational clarity and teacheruser-friendliness.

Curriculum Implementation,Modeling, Guidance

The following inquiry questions addressedthe area of quality and relevance of class-room practices to the curriculum or pro-gram design:

• How do the Music Ventures curriculaor programs differ from what schoolsoffered in literacy instruction beforethe project?

• What kinds of support do teachersneed in order to understand highquality delivery of music instructionand teaching practices that will sup-port music integration interventionsin their classrooms?

The Music Ventures curriculum and pro-fessional development program differedconsiderably from what, on the average,schools like Beaumont offer in literacyinstruction. As reported by teachers, incor-porating music into the core language lit-eracy curriculum fundamental differencesinclude:

• the necessity for developing andassessing diverse elements of musicliteracy skills;

• the need for ‘teaching for transfer’strategies for teaching fundamentalskills and processes shared across con-trasting domains of literacy;

• the emphasis on the flexible inter-change of multiple modalities of liter-acy skill learning; and

• a wider range of class managementskills that include differentiatedinstruction, learning center activities,peer assessment, and large group cre-ative and guided inquiry processes.

Teachers reported that the differences


with measures of language literacyskills? Are there specific subskill out-comes in music literacy that best pre-dict overall language literacy develop-ment? Are there specific subskill out-comes in language literacy that bestpredict overall music literacy develop-ment?

(5)Are there significant differencesbetween the way the Music Venturesprogram impacts English Language(EL) Learners and English Only (EO)Learners?

(6)In what ways does the level of class-room teachers’ response to professionaldevelopment sessions predict evidenceof music learning and its integrationinto the language arts curriculum?

P H A S E S O F T H E M U S I CV E N T U R E S P R O J E C T

The Music Ventures Project evolvedthrough two phases. The first phase (in2004) focused on a preliminary validityand feasibility assessment of the MusicVentures program for its curriculumdesign, professional development pro-gram, and capacity for data collection.Data collected in this phase were primarilyfrom observations of professional develop-ment sessions and classroom practicesassociated with the Music Ventures pro-gram and from informal interviews withAnne Fennell, the program director andauthor, and participants in the BeaumontElementary School.

The second phase of the project resulted inan extensive collection and analysis of datarelevant to the impact of the MusicVentures program. Based on the RUBRICSCUBE methodology described below, datacollected included four critical factors ofthe music-integrated literacy interventionprogram that resulted in:

(1)A profile analysis of the written curricu-lum design for its musical validity andits potential for enhancing languagelearning;

(2)An assessment of classroom teacherprofessional training and professionaldevelopment outcomes primarily

through the analysis of teacher self-evaluation surveys and interview pro-tocols that profiled attitudes and com-fort with curricular implementation ofthe Music Ventures lesson plans(n=16);

(3)Statistical evidence of student musiclearning outcomes through pre-postassessment of listening, performance,and music symbol system skills throughthe New England Conservatory MusicLiteracy Skills test adapted for this proj-ect (n=85); and

(4)Statistical evaluation of the relationshipbetween music literacy skill performancetasks and a battery of language literacyskill tests for all K-2 students (n=350).

The conditions for investigating the ques-tions stated above were optimized throughfour key quality-controlled elements of theMusic Ventures curriculum and profes-sional development program designed andimplemented by Anne Fennell, an experi-enced music specialist.12 These elements ofthe program served as the basis for meas-uring the impact of the music-integratedlanguage literacy instructional interven-tion at the Beaumont Elementary School:

(1)The presence of a highly specific andsequential framework of music lessonsand activities that provided ongoing,open-ended opportunities for K-2 stu-dents to learn musical perceptual, per-formance, and reflective thinking skillsthat support both musical and languageearly literacy skill development;

(2)The provision of ongoing professionaldevelopment sessions for classroomteachers in music and music-integratedinstruction throughout the academic yearin which the data collection took place;

(3)The creation of live and recordeddemonstrations of each phase of thesequence of Music Ventures classroommusic lessons as a resource for partici-pating teachers; and

(4)Guidance and facilitation of MusicVentures learning center activitiesdesigned to reinforce Music Venturesdemonstration sessions and to be

implemented by classroom teachersindependently.

RESULTS FROM THEMUSIC VENTURESCASE STUDY PROJECTFindings from the Music Ventures Studyfollow the structure and sequence of thedata collection strategies.

S T E P O N EAnalysis of Music VenturesCurriculum Design and ModelLessons as a Precondition forExamining Teacher ProfessionalDevelopment and Student LearningOutcomes

The Music Ventures Curriculum Design Profile

For many teachers interested in arts-inte-grated teaching, it is the lesson plans thatprovide clear criteria for the content andimplementation of an intervention pro-gram. For researchers, the lesson plans canserve as rigorous protocols for teachingmusic-integrated literacy skills; the teach-ers’ adherence to these protocols provides anecessary control for an experimentallearning intervention. However, fealty tothe lesson plans by classroom teachers isnot likely unless, as was the case with theMusic Ventures program, the teachers findthe materials and demonstration lessonsclearly articulated, sequenced logically, andadaptable to their classroom practices.

Rubric-based assessments were used toprofile the features of the Music Venturescurriculum materials and professionaldevelopment program for their relevanceto teaching fundamental concepts of musicliteracy and their transferability to lan-guage literacy concepts, as well as theirpractical utility for classroom teachers.

The results of the curriculum design rubricapplied to the Music Ventures curriculum[Figure 1], profiles the relative strengthsand weaknesses of 23 curriculum designfeatures relevant to any curriculum used inpublic schools.


Figure 1: A profile of Music Ventures curriculum factors rated according to the MIENC Curriculum Design Rubric. With respect to this profile, the researchand evaluation study focused most on issues of assessment, professional development, and meta-curricular aspects of the Music Ventures program.

The chart above [Figure4] provides a pro-file analysis of the Music Ventures demon-stration lessons from the point of view of27 factors in teaching adapted in referenceto the MIENC RUBRICS CUBE curricu-lum implementation assessment models.

The MIENC Curriculum ImplementationRubric was used to rate over twenty lessonvideos by Anne Fennell for degree of pres-ence of various factors of teaching lessonplans that provide a balanced look at highquality curriculum implementation. Fromthis profile analysis [Figure 4], teachers

and researchers could see, for example,that relatively less time is spent on studentwritten assessments or explicit reference tomath integration in these lessons. In con-trast, significantly more time is spent oneliciting positive student responses, enthu-siasm, classroom management skills, andexplicit adherence to the vocabulary andconcepts of the curriculum package. Mostimportantly, teachers were able to take thetime to witness demonstration lessons as astrategy for developing a common andcomprehensive understanding of teachingstrategies that optimize music and music-

integrated learning in elementary schoolclassrooms.

Summary of Curriculum Design andProfessional Development OutcomesAnalyses

The analyses of the curriculum materialsand their demonstration support the feasi-bility, reliability, and validity for using theMusic Ventures approach to teaching musicskills and the transferability of these skills tolanguage literacy concepts. Through the useof rating scales, the Music Ventures curricu-


between using conventional language liter-acy instruction and participating in amusic-integrated literacy program were atfirst intimidating. Thus, support for reflec-tion through conversation with the profes-sional development leader became anessential condition for program imple-mentation.

For example, a one-page letter from ateacher to the professional developmentleader [Figure 2] reveals how stimulating amusic integration curriculum can be forclassroom teachers who are constantlyfinding ways to improve the MusicVentures program in their classrooms. Aconstant stream of communication amongthe teachers and the professional develop-

ment leader created a culture of constanttinkering that resulted in ‘buy in’ fromteachers as they found new approaches toadapt music into the classroom suggestedby the Music Ventures program.

A critical indication of meeting standardsfor teacher implementation was the MusicVentures weekly log. This checklist[Figure 3] allowed the professional devel-opment specialist and researchers to tracethe progress and thoroughness of the pro-gram implementation.

Demonstration Lesson Ratings Profile

Fealty to the implementation guidelinesfor the Music Ventures curriculum was

for most teachers a challenge thatrequired modeling. The professionaldevelopment sessions did not, on theirown, assure the teachers that the MusicVentures curriculum could be successful-ly implemented in their classrooms.Therefore, Anne Fennell provided in-class workshops and a completesequence of Music Ventures demonstra-tion lesson recordings (1) to provideexpert guidance on the teaching of theconcepts and to demonstrate guidance inclass management, and (2) to create aresource for teachers to employ in theirclassrooms and/or to reflect on their ownchallenges in learning and teachingmusical content related to academiclearning standards.


V I G N E T T E 1 : P R O F E S S I O N A L D E V E L O P M E N T I N M U S I C I N T E G R AT I O N A S D I A L O G U E

This vignette is the first of four illustrations included in this

report from a Music Ventures program design, implementation

and teacher professional development portfolio.

During the course of program implementation reflection

through conversation with the professional development

leader is essential. A one-page letter from a teacher to the

professional development leader (included below) reveals how

stimulating a music integration curriculum can be for class-

room teachers who are constantly finding ways to improve the

Music Ventures program in their classrooms. By the process of

“review and link” of previous Music Ventures lessons, this

teacher begins to create moments of instruction and invention

through her reflective understanding of music stemming from

the Music Ventures program. A constant stream of communi-

cation among the teachers and the professional development

leader creates an ethos of constant dialogue and inquiry that

may seem to threaten the consistency of the program; howev-

er, to field-based researchers, this culture of constant tinkering

indicates ‘buy in’ from teachers as they find new approaches

to adapt music into the classroom suggested by the Music

Ventures program.

Figure 2: Sample communication between a classroom teacher and the Music Ventures professional development leader, Anne Fennell.Discourse and guided inquiry, focused on the incorporation of the music-integrated literacy lessons into classroom practices, invited Beaumontteachers to participate in the Music Ventures as action researchers.

Figure 3: Checklists were provided to help teachers keep trackof their implementation practices as participants in the MusicVentures program. Records of collaborative teaching, inde-pendent teaching, and the facilitation of centers activities areessential for establishing implementation standards for musicintegration programs.

Figure 4: Display of factors related toMusic Ventures demonstration lessonsand rated by teachers according to theMIENC Curriculum Design Rubric.Lessons that were well-managed,enthusiastic, personable, and engag-ing, and which adhered closely to thevocabulary and teaching for transferstrategies in the Music Ventures cur-riculum, were extremely useful to teach-ers participating in the professionaldevelopment program.

processes shared between music and lan-guage and the application of this under-standing through innovative multiplemodality approaches of literacy skill devel-opment and ‘teaching for transfer’ strate-gies into classroom practices.

Evidence of teacher reflective understand-ing of the Music Ventures program and itsimpact on teaching practices was collectedthrough several methods. Pre-post assess-ments of the evolution of teacher attitudesand comfort with music literacy skilldevelopment and the implementation ofthe music integration curriculum weregiven, using interview analysis, self-evalua-tion surveys, and professional assessmentsof teachers receiving one and two years ofthe professional development.

T E A C H E R I N T E R V I E WD A TA C O L L E C T I O N A N DA N A LY S I S

Interview data is a critical feature of thestudy because it provides a window ontothe practical aspects of program imple-mentation with regard to future replica-tion or adaptation in other schools.Teacher interview data analysis providesevidence of the impact of the MusicVentures professional development pro-gram on teachers’ attitudes toward, andunderstanding of, the goals and methodsof the Music Ventures project in theirschool. Coding and analysis of interviewtranscriptions, and later on, teacher sur-vey data, makes it possible to study intri-cate inter-relational aspects of the teach-ers’ reflective awareness and understand-ing of their roles in the Music Venturesproject in their classrooms.

Teacher interviews were conducted twiceduring the study period. A total of 16teachers teaching kindergarten, first, andsecond grades participated fully in theMusic Ventures program. Interviews werebased on a strict protocol and were digital-ly recorded, transcribed, and coded usingan emergent dimension analysis proce-dure. The interview protocol asked teach-ers about their understanding of the pro-gram, what they felt they were learning,how they felt about their own musicaldevelopment and abilities, classroom man-agement issues, collaboration, professional

development, and connections madebetween music and literacy.

A four-point integer scoring system wasused to categorize teachers’ responses, inaccordance with procedures used in otherparts of this study. Criteria for high andlow scores along each dimension includedboth frequency and depth, specifically forunprompted remarks.

Evidence of Teachers’ ReflectiveUnderstanding

The averaged interview topic ratings[Figure 5] provide a profile of the degree towhich classroom teachers can articulatetheir overall understanding of the MusicVentures program’s purpose, goals andstructure as articulated by the classroomteachers throughout the interview process.

Similar profiles of teacher interviewresponses provided clues about the profes-sional development outcomes that resultedfrom the Music Ventures program.

Analyses of sub topics such as understand-ing the premise of teaching for transfer formusic and language literacy, teacher view-points on program design and delivery,understanding, teacher response to utility ofcurriculum materials and appreciating pro-fessional development mentoring providedmultiple measures of professional develop-ment outcomes.

Evidence of Professional DevelopmentOutcomes

Teachers’ level of understanding of design,delivery, and quality of materials is a criticalfactor in the success of any intervention inelementary school classrooms. Responses tothe Music Ventures professional develop-ment materials and workshop sessions sug-gest, for example, that the first grade teach-ers were relatively less articulate about the‘Quality of Materials’ and ‘Quality of Designand Delivery’ of the professional develop-ment materials than they were about theirunderstanding of the connections betweenmusic and literacy illustrated previously. A


lum is a balanced, teacher friendly curricu-lum sample highly focused on one particu-lar form of integration; however, like mostcontemporary curricular examples chosenhere, Music Ventures supports broad princi-ples of learning that integrate diverse formsof modalities and approaches to learningthat can be used across disciplines.

The demonstration lessons provided bythe author of the Music Ventures programillustrated to teachers the principles andmanagement techniques of music andmusic-integrated instruction in the con-text of real classroom conditions. Teachersparticipating in the project were able toexperience and sometimes review exam-

ples of teaching faithful to the MusicVentures curriculum as they learned tosupport lessons and center activities intheir classrooms. Thus, baseline conditionsfor high quality program implementationwere established through curriculumdesign, modeled implementation, and par-ticipation in Anne Fennell’s teacher profes-sional development program.

From the above analysis of the curricularmaterials and professional developmentprogram, the researchers were able to deter-mine that the core focus of the MusicVentures project at the BeaumontElementary School is primarily musical andlanguage literacy skill development taking

place in general classrooms. The kinds ofmusic knowledge and skills the MusicVentures literacy learning strategies empha-size are intrinsically musical, yet strategical-ly connected to the essence of literacy skillsshared between music and language litera-cy. The difference in this approach frompurely music and language arts programs isthe degree of ‘teaching for transfer’ that isstressed from the very beginning of profes-sional development and throughout everylesson plan crafted and demonstrated in theMusic Ventures sequence. Every step of theway, music and language literacy integra-tion lessons mutually reinforced each otherthrough an emphasis on skill developmentbased on fundamental concepts combinedexplicitly in the processes of music listening,composing, and reading.

S T E P T W OAnalysis of Teacher ProfessionalTraining and ProfessionalDevelopment Outcomes as aPrerequisite for Evaluating StudentLearning Outcomes

The success of any sustainable interventionin public schools depends on (a) the qual-ity of teacher professional training for theintroduction of new skillsets and conceptsintended to solve problems relevant to themission of the school and (b) the assimila-tion of these concepts into classroom prac-tices through ongoing professional develop-ment that results in tangible evidence ofpositive transformation of teaching capac-ities and attitudes.

From the viewpoint of the BeaumontSchool community, the Music Venturesprogram is an intervention intended tofulfill (1) the school’s need to reinforce andenhance language literacy skill develop-ment for its English Only (EO) Learnersand English Language (EL) Learners inGrades K-2, and (2) the school’s desire toprovide access to formal musical instruc-tion for all students. The Music Venturesprogram is an innovative solution to bothneeds because it is aimed at the integrationof both language and music learningthrough literacy skill development in bothdomains. From this perspective, the MusicVentures intervention requires new levelsof teachers’ understanding of concepts and


Figure 5: A display of rank ordered ‘averaged teacher interview response ratings’ that reflectdegree of articulation or specificity of response to interview topics. Note that a cluster ofGrade 1 teachers rated lower than other grade levels with respect to the articulation of andpositive attitude toward the Music Ventures program. Follow-up analyses in the following charts(see Figures 6 and 8) reveal that it was in particular the program materials and their use inthe classroom that puzzled the first grade teachers the most.

In this rhythm-poetry (prosody) lesson, students are challenged to code the words for relativeduration values ( • -- — = short, long, longer = 1, 2, 3 beat durations) as a way to discov-er the accent patterns and eventually the meter of the words before setting them to music. The'big discovery' for the students and the classroom teachers was that the primary accent seemedto work best falling on the second word of each line! Note also that the students were the leastdecisive about the sixth line, which begs for a red line (long or two-beat designation) on eitherthe word "tell" or "him,” and, in either case, certainly on the word "all."

such programs. In future studies, a morerobust sample size of participation of teach-ers in professional development programsmay provide statistically significant evi-dence of the impact of differentiated levelsof reflective awareness or understanding ofmusic-integrated literacy programs on stu-dent performance in both domains.

T E A C H E R SS U R V E Y / P E R F O R M A N C EE V A L U A T I O N D A TAC O L L E C T I O N A N DA N A LY S I S

For the purpose of analysis, composite vari-ables representing regions of survey dataresults were created to organize the itemsinto the following four broad categories:

(1)Music Ventures Classroom ManagementFamiliarity and comfort with MusicVentures classroom management,materials, large group sessions, andsmall group centers activities.

(2)Diversity of Teaching Approaches,Processes, StandardsFamiliarity and comfort with diverseteaching approaches to interdisciplinarylearning and their possible compatibilitywith literacy instruction integratedwith music.

(3)Comfort with Music SkillsComfort with standards-based musiclearning fostered through the MusicVentures professional developmentprogram and its application to theclassroom.

(4)Comfort with Arts & Music-Integrated TeachingFamiliarity and comfort with all MusicVentures tasks designed to focus bothon music learning and its connectionwith language learning in a sequentialcurriculum of lesson plans aligned withmusic and language arts standards.

Evidence That Teachers Have IncreasedTheir Capacity to Integrate Music intothe Language Arts Curriculum

The baseline and follow-up survey resultsreported here [Figure 7] were used tomeasure the effectiveness of the profes-

sional development program as indicatedby both an increase in level of skill comfortand knowledge and, at the same time, adecrease in the ‘gap of understanding’among the teachers as a whole.

Evidence of professional development out-comes obtained from the comparisonbetween the baseline and the follow-upsurvey results suggests that teachers drewon both their emergent musical literacyskill development obtained in the MusicVentures program and their expandingknowledge of language literacy teachingmethods to understand and support theintegration of these subject areas in theirclassroom practice. Of particular interest

are the relatively strong gains in the surveyresults in teacher knowledge of diverseteaching methods13 featured in the MusicVentures program and their relationship toarts learning standards. This finding con-firms that the teachers expanded theirexpertise in their field of alternative teach-ing methods as they made the connectionof literacy to the arts and music.

What is particularly germane to the valid-ity of this music integration program isthat these teachers also significantlyimproved their knowledge of discretemusical skills and their confidence inusing these skills to complement literacyinstruction. Crucial to determining the


relative lack of articulation of the contentand purpose of the materials suggests that,from the teachers’ viewpoint, more clarifi-cation and modeling of the curriculummaterials may be needed to maximize theeffectiveness of the program.

Another important component of profes-sional development outcomes critical tothe implementation of the Music Venturesprogram is the teachers’ response to thequality and utility of the curriculum materi-als. Consistent and effective use of thematerials provides a critical level of qualitycontrol for the consistent and coherentapproach to program implementationshared across all grade levels. The data inFigure 6 indicate a wide discrepancy in theteachers’ ability or willingness to articulatethe utility of the program materials andapproaches in their classrooms. These dif-ferences may be present due to externalcircumstances such as the compatibility ofthe Music Ventures materials with the liter-acy curriculum structure or materials par-ticular to each grade level. The differencesmay also be due to personal teaching styleissues, such as previous use of centers

structures in classrooms or comfort levelwith large group management issues raisedby including music in the classroom.

Teachers’ reflections on the effectiveness ofongoing professional development instruc-tion provide evidence for the practicalvalidity of the Music Ventures program. Theteacher response to the professional devel-opment leadership is the highest ratedaspect of the program in the interview data.Furthermore, the levels of these responseswere distributed more or less equally acrossgrade levels, suggesting that the profession-al development instruction was initially themost valued aspect of the programs forteachers in all grade levels. This level ofresponse provides a strong indication thatthe Music Ventures program developedwith considerable attention given to estab-lishing support conditions for the class-room teachers necessary to the successfulimplementation of the program. This levelof support will have to be supplied by musicteachers in professional development rolesin future replication studies in order toinsure the validity and practicality of themusic integration programs achieved incollaboration with classroom teachers.

Overall, results of the interview analysisprovide useful information about the vari-

ability of teacher responses to the MusicVentures program. The teachers in thisstudy were most articulate or enthusiasticwhen talking about and applying their pro-fessional development experience to theirclassroom practices and less clear about theutility or application of the curriculummaterials. Thus, revisions in curricularmaterials or in professional training may belinked to a structural weakness in assess-ment practices identified in the previousanalysis of the curricular materials. Moreattention to documentation of studentwork and accompanying assessment rubricsmay help teachers better understand whatconstitutes evidence of high quality learn-ing outcomes of the Music Ventures pro-gram as the program is refined further.

The data presented here suggest also thatteacher interview responses provide infor-mation necessary for assessing the teachers’various levels of capacity for incorporatingmusic-integrated learning programs intotheir classroom practice. Since there are asyet no federal standards for certifying musicspecialists, classroom teachers, or the col-laboration of both teachers in terms of theirunderstanding and ability to ‘teach fortransfer’, collecting teacher interview datamay continue to be a useful prerequisite forpredicting and sustaining the success of


WHAT IS PARTICULARLY

GERMANE TO THE

VALIDITY OF THIS MUSIC

INTEGRATION PROGRAM

IS THAT THESE TEACHERS

ALSO SIGNIFICANTLY

IMPROVED THEIR

KNOWLEDGE OF DISCRETE

MUSICAL SKILLS AND

THEIR CONFIDENCE IN

USING THESE SKILLS TO

COMPLEMENT LITERACY

INSTRUCTION.

Figure 6: Data display of teacher ratings of the ‘quality and utility’ of Music Ventures materi-als. Here we can see that the first grade teachers who expressed less understanding of the pro-gram in general (Figure 5) show less appreciation for the materials and how they were to beused than do other grade level teachers. Later (see Figure 8) these same teachers registeredthe highest degree of gains in teacher survey responses measuring positive attitude and comfortwith various factors of knowing and teaching music integration lessons in their classrooms.

Figure 7: Display of overall gains in teacher survey attitude/musical skill ratings within the twoyears of the Music Ventures professional development program. The survey results suggest thatteachers acquired new skills and comfort with the program content and processes in the context oftheir ongoing professional development training and its application to their classrooms practices.

music skills and arts learning standardsare essential prerequisites for classroomteachers to embrace the integration ofmusic and language literacy instructionin academic classrooms.

(3)Knowledge of diverse teaching methodslinked with familiarity with arts learningstandards predicts positive articulationof teacher attitudes with regard to musicintegration classroom management.

(4)Awareness of alternative teachingapproaches, knowledge and experiencewith teaching through structuredinquiry or through fostering creativityappears to provide critical links to suc-cess with music-integrated teaching.

(5)Teacher and instructor evaluation ofskill acquisition authentic to musiclearning is linked to teacher comfortand constructive attitudes about the

goals of a music integration programfocused on literacy.

(6)Classroom teachers regard learning andteaching music literacy skills, and theknowing and teaching of music integra-tion skills focused on language literacy,as mutually reinforcing professionaldevelopment outcomes resulting fromthe Music Ventures program.

Overall, these findings suggest that asteachers gain fluency with demonstrablemusical skills, they take a proportionatelymore positive and productive view ofmusic integration. Thus, the extremelyhigh correlations detected in the teachersurvey between music skill acquisition andconfidence in music integration applica-tions signify a fundamental connectionbetween parallel processes and factors inlanguage and musical literacy skills. Asteachers learn to read, compose, and listenattentively to music for detail, theybecome more self-assured in the applica-tion of these skills to teaching language lit-eracy. Conversely, if teachers fail toprogress with their music literacy skills,they are much less likely to pursue con-nections between the two seemingly dis-parate sets of cognitive skills.

The chart presented in Figure 9 revealspervasive evidence that Music Venturesclassroom teachers regard each distinctlydifferent music skill as a potential tool forintegration with literacy studies, for themutual benefit of both music and lan-guage arts learning.

It is likely that the alignment of correlationsbetween musical skill and music integra-tion emanate directly from the teachers’professional development experience oflearning, watching, and supporting theMusic Ventures curriculum in professionaldevelopment sessions and in modeled les-son plans. Judging from the researchers’examination of materials and observationsof lessons, rhythm and timbre both servedas predominate entry points into the MusicVentures program, and the time spent onrhythm and timbre activities oftendemanded continuous creative responsesfrom the teachers and students alike.

Implications for the data displayed above


effectiveness of the professional develop-ment program, survey results indicatethat Beaumont teachers felt increasinglyconfident of their ability to make theMusic Ventures connections to their liter-acy instruction, although relatively lessconfident about managing the activitiesin their classrooms.

The baseline/follow-up (pre-post) surveydata gains displayed above provide statis-tically significant evidence (despite thesmall sample size) that the MusicVentures program has changed teachercapacity and attitudes in a relatively shortamount of time. Music Ventures teachersare now more confident in their abilitiesto teach music and to reinforce languageliteracy learning through music. If welater discover a significant positive rela-tionship between music and language lit-eracy student learning outcomes, it nowcan be linked in part to a teacher prepara-tion and implementation programdesigned to improve teachers’ music skillsand to provide music integration ‘teach-ing for transfer’ strategies throughout thecourse of the Music Ventures professionaldevelopment program.

Evidence That Teachers Have DifferentLevels of Comfort with Music-IntegratedLiteracy Teaching and Learning in theirClassrooms

The chart presented in Figure 8 displayshighly differentiated pre-post gains in sur-vey ratings and ratings provided by theprofessional development workshopleader, indicating individual differences inresponse to the Music Ventures program interms of understanding and comfort inimplementing the program. Surveyresponses are rank ordered by the ‘degreeof change’ in teacher attitudes expressed asgain/loss values.

Results displayed here suggest that thefunction or relevance of the MusicVentures program shifts according to gradelevel. Although the majority of teachersdemonstrate significant gains in surveyratings, the first grade teachers appear tohave transformed their practices the mostbased on the professional developmentprogram and teaching experiencesthroughout the final year of the project. Ifthis differential effect is replicated else-where, then it may turn out that, for exam-ple, the program is best designed for build-ing the capacity of first grade teachers to‘teach for transfer’ while reinforcing litera-cy skills through music skill development.Kindergarten teachers may be less inclinedto see the effect of the connection of musicliteracy skills to students just beginningformal instruction in language literacy.

Second grade teachers may perceive theMusic Ventures program more in terms ofbroadening their students’ understandingof literacy or using music-integrated liter-acy as an intervention for the populationof children at risk for failure. Note as wellthat the improvement in ratings did notoccur only with a small minority of teach-ers, another phenomenon worth investi-gating further in future studies.

Patterns of Correlation as Evidence forGrowing Understanding and Comfortwith Music Integrated Learning

From the viewpoint of the teachers, six pat-terns of correlation among teacher surveytopics and skill ratings provided informationcritical to understanding the growingcoherency of the program’s effectiveness overtwo years. Patterns of correlation amonginterview ratings revealed the following:

(1)A deep connection exists betweenteachers’ positive professional develop-ment experiences and their ability toarticulate their understanding of theconnections between, and the class-room management of, music and lan-guage literacy learning.

(2)Comfort and familiarity with discrete


OVERALL, THESE

FINDINGS SUGGEST THAT

AS TEACHERS GAIN

FLUENCY WITH

DEMONSTRABLE MUSICAL

SKILLS, THEY TAKE A

PROPORTIONATELY MORE

POSITIVE AND

PRODUCTIVE VIEW OF

MUSIC INTEGRATION.

Figure 8: Rank ordering of teacher professional development outcomes according to changes inthe average pre-post survey attitude responses and skill ratings. In this measure, it is clear thatthe first grade teachers, despite their initial doubts reflected in the interview ratings (Figures 5and 6), demonstrated the highest change toward positive attitudes about their professionaldevelopment and personal skill development.

Figure 9: Table of correlations between discrete music skill ratings and teacher self-evaluationattitude ratings. The pattern of correlation indicates that teacher comfort with teaching musicand music-integrated concepts and skills in the language literacy classroom is predicted best bytheir comfort with their own command of discrete musical skills.

At the Empresa Elementary Learning Laboratory School in Oceanside, CA, setting poetry tomusic is an ongoing problem-solving task for all students. In this example, students are con-sidering how two lines of poetry can be contrasted by the use of melodic contour. As they per-formed these rhythms with words and melodic contour, they discovered that the two lines ofpoetry contained unequal amounts of words, yet equal amounts of syllables.

of two independent, yet mutually rein-forcing aspects of what it means to under-stand deeply the nature of symbolic pro-cessing skills integrated across two subjectareas not usually addressed in publicschool classrooms.

P A T T E R N S O FC O R R E L A T I O N A M O N GF A C T O R S I N T H EI N T E R V I E W A N D T H ES U R V E Y D A TA

The table in Figure 10 presents a profile ofcorrelation data that compare levels ofsophistication of response in an interviewsetting with teachers’ self-evaluations of

their familiarity with concepts and skillsderived from the survey data. The predom-inance of non-significant correlationshighlights the independence of these twodata sources. However, the significant cor-relations that do exist draw attention tofactors relevant to the validity and efficacyof music-integrated instruction in elemen-tary school classrooms:

(1)A significant pattern of correlationexists between ‘comfort with musicintegration classroom management’and level of articulation of ‘responseto the Music Ventures professionaldevelopment programs’ derived frominterview data (top of third column).

The strong link between confidencewith classroom management and theability to articulate and reflect on thegoals of the professional developmentprogram is a desirable and necessaryoutcome for the validation of a highquality music integration program inpublic schools.

(2)The factor of creativity approaches sig-nificance in its relationship to under-standing of program design andresponse to professional developmentsessions and guidance (fourth row fromthe top). It is important to consider therole of creativity as a measure of under-standing when teachers are challengedto adopt new approaches to integrativelearning in their classrooms outside thepurview of their prior training.

(3)Articulation of the value and utility ofprofessional development experience istied directly to teacher positive self-eval-uation of knowledge and incorporationof arts and music-integrated teaching intheir classrooms (third column, thirdfrom the bottom). This linkage supportsthe assertion that professional develop-ment outcomes are best evaluated in theresults in the classroom.

(4)Furthermore, interview comments on‘making connections between musicand literacy’ are strongly associatedwith teacher ratings of knowledge anduse of diverse curriculum approaches,gains in discrete musical skills, particu-larly with regard to pitch, and teachers’knowledge of arts learning standardsand approaches.

Differences between One- and Two-YearTeacher Participation in the MusicVentures Program

As shown previously, the impact of theMusic Ventures program on the teachers’ability to articulate the principles andpractices in interviews is substantial, as istheir growing comfort and ability withmusic integration knowledge and skills onthe survey ratings. Yet, judging from thepatterns of correlation in the survey andinterview data, there are, with one excep-tion, virtually no distinctions betweenfirst- and second-year teachers.


are that (1) fostering creative responsesfrom learners, from the viewpoint of theteachers, appears to be an important con-nection to teaching and learning musicintegration and its relationship with litera-cy, and (2) the lack of creativity or inquiryin the other variables suggests that theMusic Ventures professional developmentprogram may need more creative applica-tion to pitch, melody, and dynamics tomake sure these musical dimensions areconnecting more substantially with litera-cy skill development.

Overall teacher survey results provide evi-dence for the impact of music-based pro-fessional development outcomes for ele-mentary school classroom teachers. Self-evaluation of attitudes and instructorevaluation of skill development showshow teacher attitudes are linked with theacquisition of specific music skills neces-sary for effective use of music integrationlessons focused on literacy. Thus, patternsof significant correlations seen here con-stitute evidence of professional develop-ment outcomes based on the interaction


During an interview, Music Ventures program director Anne Fennell reflected

on the purposes and objectives of the music-integrated curriculum as a strat-

egy for encouraging new forms of reflective practice on general symbolic lit-

eracy in language arts classrooms:

“I think about how can we build music skills with your children enough

so that they can perform other challenges. I want the child to be receiv-

ing an authentic and powerful music education in a classroom setting,

and I want that to be integrated learning, music standards and other aca-

demic standards combined.

“For example, a listening walk can produce a map of sounds that can be

described in pictures and words and abstract symbols - the sound of a fan,

airplane, the dog. Now you have a musical score, and someone else can

be the reader, the conductor, etc.

“Relating sounds to something concrete creates powers of association of

sound and symbol. Teachers can create ‘listening walls’ along with

their/word walls, or a letter sound associated with a sound card. How

could you associate sound cards with sight words? With math? Associate

a music dynamic card with a word?”

A sample Music Ventures activity sheet that challenges early elementary teachers and students to solve general symbolic literacy problems withmultiple symbol systems.

V I G N E T T E 2 : P U R P O S E S A N D O B J E C T I V E S O F M U S I C A N D L A N G U A G E L I T E R A C Y I N T E G R AT E D C U R R I C U L U M

Figure 10: Display of most significant correlations between Teacher Survey/Skill Ratings andInterview Response Ratings. Among the interview topics ‘making connections between musicand language literacy’ is most relevant to teaching attitudes and skill development. In order tomake these connections, teachers feel they rely most on their new ‘knowledge of discrete musicskills and arts integration standards & approaches,’ as well as on their ‘knowledge of alterna-tive teaching approaches’ such as structured inquiry.

In the Music Ventures program designed by Anne Fennell, students are challenged to connectrhythmic notation with words. In this example, students are grappling with the challenge of syl-lable accent patterns in words. Children discovered that in the name ‘Carissa,’ a rhythmicaccent in the second syllable was needed.

with colleagues from the Research Centerfor Learning Through Music at NewEngland Conservatory14. The MLST isdesigned to profile a rich array of authen-tic musical literacy skills suitable for K-5students. The test items challenge studentsto invent solutions to problems that rely onmultiple modalities and representations ofmusical perception, performance, andreflective thinking skills. Tasks are separat-ed into rhythm, pitch, and melodic skillareas and challenge students to expresstheir understanding of music with andwithout the use of symbolic and linguisticprocessing skills.

The scope and sequence of music literacyassessments closely follow in principle atrajectory of skill development required bypre-professional and professional musictraining programs15. The validity of itsapplication to the evaluation of the MusicVentures project is authenticated by (a)background research studies in early musi-cal symbolic development of preschoolersand early elementary grade level studies16

and (b) its specific application to early ele-mentary school settings17.

The Music Literacy Skills Test is dividedinto a sequence of tasks that pose progres-sively more complex problems for studentsto listen, read, perform, compose, anddetect errors with regard to rhythm, pitch,pitch interval, and melodic patterns. Eachitem includes an introductory set of mod-eled responses that allow students to solvemusical problems regardless of their previ-ous or current level of musical training.The Music Ventures adaptation of the testalso included parallel tasks [see tasks labeledB in Figure 12] that pose music problemsthat can be solved with either music or lin-guistic symbol systems. The experimentalprotocol was developed through pilot test-ing of students by both the designer of thetest (Larry Scripp) and the field test coordi-nator (Rod Contreras), who translated theinstructions into Spanish as was necessaryfor EL Learners18.

All together, 28 music-integrated taskswere sequenced as follows:

All music literacy subskill categories [listedabove] were scored according to the same5-point scale rubric. The rubric system


As illustrated in Figure 11, the correlationbetween interview ratings and survey rat-ings is non-existent for one-year teachersin the program, while conversely, the cor-relation between survey and interview rat-ings for two-year teachers is extremely pos-itive (r=.9048, explaining over 81% of thevariance in levels).

This finding indicates that doubling theyears of professional developmenttraining—perhaps because ofrefinements added to the program in thesecond year of implementation—resultedin teachers’ ability to demonstratereflective understanding of the programprinciples and practices as addressed inthe interviews with the teacher surveytopic ratings.

Summing Up Teacher ProfessionalDevelopment Outcomes

The evidence presented so far has providedthe background information needed tounderstand how the Music Ventures pro-gram can establish replicable conditionsfor music-integrated instruction andlearning. The quality ratings of curriculumdesign, delivery, and materials, plus strongstatistical and qualitative evidence ofattaining significant teacher training andprofessional development outcomes, cannow be understood as defining optimalconditions for the implementation ofmusic-integrated literacy intervention inK-2 public elementary school classrooms.The curriculum design and demonstrationlessons effectively presented teachers withmaterials and teaching techniques focusedon music and music-integrated learningfocused on literacy in a way that is userfriendly to teachers. Interview and surveydata suggest that professional developmentoutcomes were positive for most teachers

in terms of their own expansion of musicconcepts and discrete musical skills.

Teacher survey data results suggest thatthose teachers who best understood andsupported the Music Ventures program intheir classrooms had far more comfort andfamiliarity with their new understandingof arts learning standards and musical lit-eracy skills than those who did not. Fromthe teachers’ viewpoint, learning discretemusical skills and a common vocabulary ofarts learning processes and standards areinextricably linked with success in teachingintegration strategies or management skillsin the Music Ventures program. In sum,classroom teachers appear to agree withthe music education specialist who led theprogram that incorporating and sustainingmusic-integrated learning into elementaryschool classrooms requires (a) the focus onspecific aspects of symbolic and auditoryprocessing skills shared between music andlanguage literacy, and (b) a rigorous andtransformational professional trainingprogram to guide that focus.

S T E P 3Analysis of Student LearningOutcomes Within the SeparateDomains of Music and LanguageLiteracy Skill Development

Having established assessment profiles forcurriculum design, curriculum implemen-tation, and teacher professional trainingand professional development outcomes,this section of the report now focuses onthe analysis of data collected from (1)music and music-integrated literacy skillassessments relevant to the experimentalmusic integration program and imple-mented according to a specific protocolapplicable to all Grades K-2, and (2) a bat-tery of language literacy standardized teststhat capture a comprehensive range of lan-guage literacy learning skills in each sepa-rate grade level (K, 1, 2).

T H E M U S I C L I T E R A C YS K I L L S T E S T ( M L S T )M E T H O D O L O G Y

Assessment of musical skill development isbased on the Music Literacy Skills Tests(MLST) first developed by Larry Scripp


Figure 11: The pattern of correlation indicates that the amount of time teachers spend participat-ing in the Music Ventures program strongly predicts the degree to which they can articulate theiroverall understanding of the principles and methods of the music-integrated literacy intervention.

Figure 12: The scope and sequence of 28 Music Literacy Skills Test (MLST) items administeredto all K-2 students. Note that B items provide opportunities for students to solve these musicliteracy skill tasks with words and not just abstract symbols.

THE QUALITY RATINGS OF CURRICULUM DESIGN,

DEL IVERY, AND MATERIALS , PLUS STRONG

STATISTICAL AND QUALITATIVE EV IDENCE OF

ATTAINING S IGNIF ICANT TEACHER TRAINING AND

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT OUTCOMES, CAN

NOW BE UNDERSTOOD AS DEF INING OPTIMAL

CONDITIONS FOR THE IMPLEMENTATION OF MUSIC-

INTEGRATED L ITERACY INTERVENTION IN K-2

PUBL IC ELEMENTARY SCHOOL CLASSROOMS.

THIS PATTERN OF IMPROVEMENT SUGGESTS THE

MUSIC L ITERACY SKILLS OF THE STUDENTS AT

BEAUMONT ELEMENTARY SCHOOL ARE PROGRESSING

AT A STATISTICALLY SIGNIFICANT AND SURPRISINGLY

STRONG RATE WITHIN ONLY HALF AN ACADEMIC

YEAR. THIS F INDING ESTABLISHES THE VALIDITY OF

AUTHENTIC SEQUENTIAL MUSIC INSTRUCTION

CONTAINED IN THE MUSIC VENTURES CURRICULUM

AS THE BASIS FOR FURTHER ANALYSIS OF MUSIC’S

INTEGRATION WITH LANGUAGE L ITERACY TEACHING

AND LEARNING OBJECTIVES.

or non-use of words or type of symbolicrepresentation. This finding is an impor-tant indication that the development ofmusical language literacy skills across awide array of musical problem-solvingtasks represents a stable and coherent bodyof musical understanding for all youngchildren regardless of level of formal musi-cal training.

Nonetheless, there is strong evidence for adisparity between English Only andEnglish Language Learners19 as the MusicVentures program proceeded into its sec-ond year (Grades 1-2). The chart present-ed in Figure 14 indicates that althougheach grade level improved significantly inthe pre-post cohort and the overall differ-ence in achievement can be linked to theyears of Music Ventures intervention, thereremain important differences between thedata for EO and EL Learners. It appearsfrom these data that students strugglingwith English language speaking skills—although positively engaged and improv-ing in music skill levels at the same rateacross grade levels as EO students—are lessable to succeed with Music Ventures tasksat the level of achievement that EO studentsdemonstrate. Thus, the chart below indi-cates that music learning outcomes relatedto the Music Ventures program for bothEO and EL learners are similar in kind, butdissimilar in the degree, of music learningliteracy skill acquisition.

L A N G U A G E L I T E R A C YA S S E S S M E N TI N S T R U M E N T S

The language literacy skill assessments areof paramount interest to this studybecause they not only provide contextualdata for understanding the level of literacyskill development and progress of the K-2students at the Beaumont ElementarySchool, but they also serve as a primarystudent learning outcome measure neededfor exploring links between music and lan-guage literacy learning.

At the Beaumont School grade levelassessments administered by classroomteachers and reading specialists weremade available for comparison withmusic literacy skill assessments.Unfortunately, many of the grade level


essentially measures consistency of accura-cy in the series of increasingly complexperformance tasks within each test item.Thus, the whole number ratings representcategorical boundaries ranging from noresponse or evidence of understanding of thetask to mastery of the tasks. The decimalratings in between the whole numbersallowed the testers to score with more reli-ability within the whole number ratings(see inter-rater reliability ratings below).Testers could adjust the pace of the test, butwere monitored carefully to ensure thatthey scored performance only according tothe criteria provided and not with anyregard for age or grade level.

Evidence of statistically significantgrowth in music literacy skill learningfor all students

The scatterplot in Figure 13 indicates per-formance differences in music literacy skilldevelopment scores over a five-monthperiod across grades K-2. As the chartdemonstrates, the average score gain [thehorizontal line on the chart] is close to .5within a five-point rating scale. This pat-tern of improvement suggests the musicliteracy skills of the students at BeaumontElementary School are progressing at a sta-tistically significant and surprisinglystrong rate within only half an academicyear. This finding establishes the validity of

authentic sequential music instructioncontained in the Music Ventures curricu-lum as the basis for further analysis ofmusic’s integration with language literacyteaching and learning objectives.

Despite relatively small sample sizes in thepre-post cohort, statistically significantlearning effects are present at every gradelevel with both rhythm and pitch tasks,even though rhythm skills outpace pitchskill development at a ratio of almost two-to-one. Categorical differences in studentperformance (from difficulty respondingin simple imitation tasks to achievingappropriate results in problem-solving,notation-based performance tasks) wereachieved in this case with no music

instruction except as offered by the MusicVentures activities and centers workdemonstrated by Anne Fennell and facili-tated by classroom teachers in the profes-sional development program. Thus, resultsreported here establish that the MusicVentures program met its instructionalgoal of producing music literacy relatedmusic learning outcomes at the BeaumontSchool, a critical step toward analyzing therelationship between music learning out-comes and language literacy outcomes pre-sented below.

Analyses across all music literacy learningvariables revealed that student perform-ance on multi-modal music literacy taskswas positively interrelated regardless of use


Figure 13: This scatterplot displays differences in pre-post Averaged Music Literacy CompositeSkill Ratings (within a 5-point scale). These data illustrate statistically significant learninggains of K-2 students in terms of music and music-integrated literacy learning outcomes in thelast five months of the Music Ventures project [n = 87; mean gain is .43 out of a 5 point scale;t-ratio + 13.49 p < .0001]. Evidence of significant progress with separate measures of musicliteracy skills and language literacy skills provides a valid basis for measuring the interactionbetween these two forms of literacy skill development.

Figure 14: Charting pre-post ratings of music literacy skill scores shows similar, statistically signif-icant music literacy skill level gains among both English Language (EL) and English Only (EO)Learners at all grade levels, especially with regard to pitch.

THE LANGUAGE L ITERACY SKILL ASSESSMENTS ARE

OF PARAMOUNT INTEREST TO THIS STUDY BECAUSE

THEY NOT ONLY PROVIDE CONTEXTUAL DATA FOR

UNDERSTANDING THE LEVEL OF L ITERACY SKILL

DEVELOPMENT AND PROGRESS OF THE K-2

STUDENTS AT THE BEAUMONT ELEMENTARY

SCHOOL, BUT THEY ALSO SERVE AS A PRIMARY

STUDENT LEARNING OUTCOME MEASURE NEEDED

FOR EXPLORING L INKS BETWEEN MUSIC AND

LANGUAGE L ITERACY LEARNING.

RESULTS REPORTED HERE

ESTABLISH THAT THE

MUSIC VENTURES

PROGRAM MET ITS

INSTRUCTIONAL GOAL

OF PRODUCING MUSIC

LITERACY RELATED

MUSIC LEARNING

OUTCOMES AT THE

BEAUMONT SCHOOL.

year’s exposure to the Music Ventures pro-gram, while students in Grade 1 and 2 bothreceived the same two-year exposure. Infuture studies, if evidence of more signifi-cant differences between second- andthird-year language literacy occurs, thenthese changes could be traced to increasedincidence in integrated music literacy skillbased on the Music Ventures program.

There is evidence that the initial gapbetween English Only (EO) Learners andEnglish Language (EL) Learners is closing

by Grade 2. When comparing perform-ance data between EO and EL studentcohorts, we should not be surprised thatthere are significant differences especiallyin the first two years of language instruc-tion (Kindergarten and first grade).However, the asterisks in the EL cohortindicate that, over time, the gap betweenthe EL Learners and the EO Learners isclosing, especially with regard to thePhoneme Segmentation tasks – tasks clear-ly designated for explicit reinforcement inthe Music Ventures curriculum [see foot-

notes in Figure 16]. The averageDIBELS/Bader Inventory score is clearlyclosing to within 10 percentile points byGrade 2. Particularly encouraging toBeaumont teachers are indications that theOral Reading Passage Rate gap between EOand EL learners has not increased through-out the K-2 grades. As we shall see below,the Music Ventures program may be linkedwith this finding as we test for the relation-ships between music and language literacyskill outcomes over time.

S T E P 4Analysis of the Relationship BetweenMusic and Language Literacy SkillOutcomes

So far we have determined that statisticallysignificant evidence of skill developmenthas taken place within the domains ofmusic and language literacy. Findings ofstrong patterns of prediction acrossdomain literacy variables in this step of theanalysis will bring important implicationsinto the purview of this study. These impli-cations can be divided into four maininquiry questions and their correspondingpoints of evidence needed for schools todecide to replicate innovative music inte-gration programs in their schools:


results were flawed in two ways: lack ofconsistency in sample size within the gradelevels and, in some cases, the presence ofceiling effects typical of end-of-year gradelevel assessments. Thus, in order to createlanguage literacy skill assessments compa-rable to the assessments used in the MusicVentures program across grade levels, theresearch team chose to develop a test bat-tery drawn from multiple sources thatwould best provide measures of basic skillsthat would be held constant across gradelevels20[see Figure 15]. With the adminis-tration of a consistent battery of languageliteracy assessments, the research team wasable to compare as precisely as possiblecomplementary profiles of music and lan-guage literacy development at theBeaumont Elementary School. The within-grade level test data were used as a com-parison with the cross-grade level results.

C R O S S - G R A D E L E V E LL A N G U A G E L I T E R A C YT E S T R E S U LT S

The DIBELS/Bader Language Literacy TestInventory provided the cross-grade measureof language literacy skill development out-comes for the Music Ventures program atthe Beaumont School. In contrast to thegrade level data, all measures—with the

exception of ‘Hear Letter Names’—werenormally distributed, and the sample sizeswere robust and consistent across grade lev-els. Analogous to music literacy skill datadisplays, the chart in Figure 16 displays com-parisons in performance at each grade levelfor each subskill measured in theDIBELS/Bader Inventory. The asterisks inthe English Language Learner (EL cohort)data display also convey which language lit-eracy skills the gap between EO and ELLearners is equal to or less than 10 percent-age points.

Several conclusions can be drawn from thedata display [Figure 16] above:

At the Beaumont School, improvement inbasic language literacy skills occurred inalmost every cross-grade level and gradelevel variable. A great majority of childrenare, on the average, improving significant-ly in a large array of specific literacy sub-skills at the Beaumont Elementary School.The exception to this trend is the variable‘Hear Letter Names’ that already ‘toppedoff ’ by the end of the Kindergarten test21. Infuture studies, the language literacy sub-skill patterns nearing a ceiling effect couldbe redesigned or replaced by other vari-ables to include more challenging exam-ples for the upper elementary grade levels.

Similar to the music literacy test results,patterns of significant change in lan-guage literacy skill performance suggestthat an interaction exists between expo-sure to the Music Ventures interventionand ongoing instruction in language lit-eracy. In cross-grade analysis of literacyskill development, educators can assumethat significant differences should obtainamong Grades K-2 due to years of lan-guage literacy skill instruction. However,analysis of variance (ANOVA) in these datareveals that significant differences in meanscores on the DIBELS/Bader are more like-ly to occur between Kindergarten andGrade 1, than between Grade 1 and Grade222. This finding coincides with the fact thatthe Kindergarten cohort received only one


PATTERNS OF

SIGNIF ICANT CHANGE IN

LANGUAGE L ITERACY

SKILL PERFORMANCE

SUGGEST THAT AN

INTERACTION EXISTS

BETWEEN EXPOSURE TO

THE MUSIC VENTURES

INTERVENTION AND

ONGOING INSTRUCTION

IN LANGUAGE L ITERACY.

Figure 15: A team of language literacy specialists created a list of cross-grade early languageliteracy tasks chosen from the DIBELS and Bader test inventories. This battery of tests helpedto measure language literacy skill development for Grades K-2 in parallel with the cross-gradeMusic Literacy Skills Test administered to all students at the Beaumont School.

Figure 16: Comparisons of DIBELS/Bader Language Literacy Inventory test results show that stu-dents in the Music Ventures project demonstrate statistically significant differences in language lit-eracy subskill scores across most grade levels. Analysis of the data reveals that EL Learners narrowthe gap in language literacy skills by the third grade (see asterisks in the lowest section of the table).

Anne Fennell encourages early elementaryschool students to develop invented represen-tations of letter sounds as part of MusicVentures music-language lessons. In this chartthe student employs a wide variety of icons inorder to capture differences in the performanceof letter sounds. Anne finds that the students'efforts to represent the sounds of lettersthrough iconic representations of lips, animalsor words, for example, helps them later on toconstruct a more stable and concrete under-standing of the seemingly arbitrary relation-ship of sounds to the set of abstract symbolsknown as the alphabet. Later on, students willcreate compositions through iconic symbolsthat can be translated back into letters.

In addition, the shape of the data indicatesagain that concepts and processes intrinsicto both music and language literacy aremutually reinforcing in that the correla-tion appears to get tighter as music literacyskills improve. Thus, in the context ofteaching for transfer across literacy skilldomains, as literacy skill in music devel-ops, it becomes increasingly linked to skilldevelopment in language literacy skills.

I N Q U I R Y 2To what extent do the separatepatterns of literacy development inmusic and language—and theinteraction between music andlanguage literacy development—differbetween English Only Learners andEnglish Language Learners?

Music-Language Literacy Finding 2: Thereis substantial evidence that the patternand sequence of music literacy skill devel-opment and its correlation with languageliteracy skills differs considerably betweenEnglish Only (EO) Learners and EnglishLanguage (EL) Learners, providing fur-ther insight into the nature of music-inte-grated learning and its interaction withlanguage literacy skill development.

As described earlier, all K-2 students weregiven a test for musical literacy and two dif-ferent test batteries for language literacyskills. The table in Figure 18 provides moredetail than the previous chart by displayingthe relationship between three compositemusic literacy skill scores (overall average,rhythm, and pitch literacy skill scores) andoverall scores from two language test batter-ies according to the designation of the lan-guage learner (EO or EL) and grade level.The chart also provides an index of the cor-relation between the within-grade andcross-grade language literacy test batteriesfor both EO and EL Learners in Grades K-2.

In addition, the two independent measuresof language literacy skill developmentreveal the striking difference in the patternof correlation between music and languageliteracy skills depending on the learnerdesignation (EO or EL), the grade level ofthe student, and the type of language liter-acy tests administered.

In general, it appears that English Only(EO) Learners’ music literacy performanceassessments are much more likely to becorrelated to within-grade language litera-cy skill assessments (Figure 18, column 2]than are English Language (EL) Learners’assessments. This finding indicates that theconnection between music and languageliteracy skill tasks supported by the MusicVentures program is clearer to studentsmore experienced with speaking Englishproficiently than those who are learningEnglish in school.

However, a closer examination of the cross-

grade language literacy skill [Figure 18, col-umn 3] outcomes tells a different story.That is, when tests are administered moreconsistently and the tasks are held constantacross grade levels, we are able to see ELLearners closing the ‘correlation gap’ [seethe fourth row in italics at the bottom ofeach grade level] with EO Learners as thegrade level progresses. Whereas analysis ofthe cross-grade DIBELS/Bader inventoriesadministered by the research field team dis-cerned the increasingly strong relationshipbetween music and language literacy skilldevelopment over time for EL Learners,analysis of the grade level literacy tests


I N Q U I R Y 1To what extent does the overall level ofstudent music skill learning predictsuccess in early elementary schoollanguage literacy skill development?

Music-Language Literacy Finding 1: Thereis broad and highly significant statisticalevidence that the level of music andmusic-integrated literacy skills is posi-tively linked with a broad battery of indi-cators of language literacy skills.

In the scatterplot in Figure 17, the patternof overall performance outcomes in lan-guage literacy skills is fitted against overallmusic literacy skill outcomes from data col-lected from 344 students more or lessequally distributed across three grade lev-els. The literacy skill data is based on thepercentage of correct responses from a bat-tery of tests chosen from the DIBELS/Baderinventories, and the music literacy skill datais calibrated to a 5-point scale rubric (bothdescribed earlier). As described earlier, thesame music test and the same languagetests were given to all K-2 students.

The scatterplot reveals a general look at thepositive and statistically significant link

(F-ratio = 184.20 p <.0001) between musicand language literacy skills for most K-2students participating in the MusicVentures program. Regardless of gradelevel, the preponderance of students whoachieve high levels of accuracy or fluency invarious measures of music literacy skillsafter one or two years of the Music Venturesprogram are more likely to be able todemonstrate high levels of language litera-cy skill development. Conversely, those stu-dents unable to perform well on music lit-eracy tasks are more likely not to performwell on language literacy tasks. The shapeof the data points suggests a strong (yet farfrom a one-to-one) correlation betweenthe two domains of literacy skills. That is,the correlation explains approximately35%, (r2=.35) and not 100% of the overallvariance between music and language liter-acy skill performance.

The results displayed in the chart [Figure17] are crucial to the determination of a

strong and positive relationship betweenmusic and language literacy skill develop-ment. The interpretation of these resultswarrants one or more of the following con-clusions:

(1)the level of music literacy skill develop-ment resulting from an interventionpredicts performance on language liter-acy tests;

(2)the simultaneous and positive interac-tion of music and language literacyinstruction is mutually beneficial toboth domains of study; and/or

(3)evidence of correlations between literacyskill development, from the point of viewof the conceptual framework of music-integrated learning identified here, isconsistent with the notion that there arebasic fundamental literacy skills sharedbetween music and language literacy, yetthey are not identical skill sets.


Figure 17: This scatterplot maps the relationship between (y axis) language literacy skill per-formance (percent accuracy/fluency rate) based on DIBELS/Bader Test Inventories and (x axis)the Music Literacy Skill Test ratings (averaged within a 5-point scale) administered to all stu-dents at the Beaumont Elementary School [n=344]. These data illustrate the strong positivelink [r=.59] between music and language literacy skills in the context of the Music Venturesmusic integration program [r2=.35; ANOVA F-ratio = 184.20 p <.0001].

THERE IS BROAD AND

HIGHLY S IGNIF ICANT

STATISTICAL EV IDENCE

THAT THE LEVEL OF

MUSIC AND MUSIC-

INTEGRATED L ITERACY

SKILLS IS POSIT IVELY

L INKED WITH A BROAD

BATTERY OF INDICATORS

OF LANGUAGE

L ITERACY SKILLS

Figure 18: The pattern of significant correlations between (a) music literacy composite skills and(b) two different language literacy test batteries. Results displayed in the table suggest that theDIBELS/Bader battery is far more related to music literacy subskills than the grade level bench-marked tests, especially for EL Learners.

musical literacy skills into rhythm andpitch skills reveals that both types of musicskills are associated with the overall musicliteracy skill development in terms of theircorrelation with language literacy skilldevelopment. Thus, the combination ofrhythm and pitch tasks in classroom les-sons appears to reinforce a commonunderstanding between overall music andlanguage literacy skill processes.

Music-Language Literacy Finding 3:Further analysis of differences in pat-terns of correlation between music andlanguage literacy skill developmentaccording to the designation of languagelearner indicates that the gap between EOand EL Learners is closing according totheir grade level progress.

The second table in this section [Figure 19]summarizes grade level differencesbetween English Only Learners andEnglish Language Learners (column 1) interms of:

(1)mean scores and gain scores resultingfrom Music Literacy Skill Tests(columns 2-3);

(2)mean scores and gain scores resultingfrom DIBELS/Bader measures of lan-guage literacy skill development(columns 4-5);

(3)measures of correlation and gains inthe correlations between the music andlanguage literacy skill tests (columns 6-7); and

(4)the differential between EO and ELLearners23 (the third row under eachgrade level).

More detailed analysis of the data displayabove can be organized in three ways:

(1)Music Literacy Mean Scores Show NoSignificant Gap in the Rate ofImprovement Over Time Between ELand EO Learners. At first, the meanscores resulting from Music LiteracySkill Tests (column 2) indicate that, asreported earlier, a significant gap existsbetween English Only (EO) andEnglish Language (EL) Learnersthroughout the two years of the MusicVentures program in all three gradelevels. However, there is no significantdifference in the rate of gains betweenEO and EL Learners in terms of musicskill development across grade levels(column 4).

(2)Language Literacy Mean ScoresIndicate that the Achievement GapBetween English Only Learners andEnglish Language Learners isNarrowing Significantly According toGrade Level. In Kindergarten, the dif-ference in accuracy or fluency of lan-guage literacy subskills is 13%, whereasby Grade 3 the difference is reduced to7% (column 7). Furthermore, the rateof gain for English Language Learnerssignificantly outpaces the English OnlyLearners (by 10% from K to Grade 1; by14% from Grade 1 to Grade 2) (column9). This chart confirms that, in the con-text of the Music Ventures programmusic literacy outcomes, the patterns ofimprovement in language literacy skilldevelopment favor EL Learners as theynarrow the gap between the initial dif-ferences with EO Learners over time.

(3)The Patterns of CorrelationBetween Music and LanguageLiteracy Mean Scores Point Toward Significantly StrongerRelationships Between These TwoDomains of Symbolic Literacy withEvery Advancing Grade Level. InKindergarten, significant correlationsbetween music and language only existfor English Only Learners. Later on, thegap between EL and EO Learners in the


administered by the school did not.Without giving the same test across gradelevels and insisting on standardized admin-istrative procedures with high levels ofinter-rater reliability, these findings wouldhave remained undetected.

Also of note are differences in the corre-lation between the two language testbatteries that at first depended on theorientation of the language learner.Although English Only (EO) student

performance on both language literacytests were highly correlated, EnglishLanguage (EL) Learners’ test perform-ance on the two language literacy testswere not. This finding indicates that forEL students, performance on one set ofliteracy skill tests did not predict per-formance on the other, thus revealing alack of an initial understanding of theliteracy connections between music andlanguage arts. Thus, in this study thecross-grade adaptation of the DIBELS/

Bader inventories appear to be an appro-priate tool for capturing literacy skills inrelation to music. This is because as ELLearners’ language literacy skillsimprove, the language literacy tests ofhighly specific subskills held constantacross grade levels are more likely toreveal connections with similarly config-ured music literacy subskills as theydevelop for any population of students.

Finally, breaking down the assessment of


V I G N E T T E 3 : F O C U S I N G O N T H E I N T E R P L AY O F R H Y T H M A N D S P E E C H

Anne Fennell’s professional development program embeds the interplay of rhythm and speech, expression and melody, and vowels

and tone color, in simple tasks that are engaging to classroom teachers and children alike. As one participant describes it,

“Anne had us look about four lines of a poem and think about how these words suggested sound imagery. At first no one

seemed to understand what that could possibly mean. It was intimidating at first, because the first reaction to her questions

was that words already have sounds. Teachers demonstrate the phonemes of words all the time in our classes, how they com-

bine or how they can be segmented. But we had never thought that these sounds had color or texture or sense of melody to

them that would bring to mind a certain imagery or character of the words. Little by little, through guided inquiry and our grad-

ual willingness to open up our collective imagination, we were able to match the words with sounds and perform what we

thought was a tone poem. By the end of this exhaustive yet stimulating process, we clapped loudly at our creativity and our

success of making music with words!”

During the completion of this task, moments of shared inquiry between the guide and the teachers became more and more fre-

quent. At one point, Anne Fennell asked the participants what they thought about doing this activity with their children, and one

teacher replied, “I see now that rhythmic speech is so important – it’s about fluidity [and] tracking, and with special needs children,

the rhythm just isn’t there.”

The key role Anne Fennell played during the professional development session was to demonstrate to the participants how to adapt

the difficulty and pace of each task. In fact, the effectiveness with which she dealt with the teachers’ initial embarrassment as they

struggled with the tasks modeled how the teachers could include all children in the music-integrated learning.

Of particular interest to teachers was the relationship

between the quality of focus and pace of the activities.

Soon they all discovered that the increased pace of the

tasks didn’t suggest less accuracy in performance, but

rather a measure of more focused engagement with the

materials:

“The activity seemed to go carefully and quickly at

the same time. I think this happens because we seem

to be doing so many things at once when we com-

bine music with words or instruments, and we have

to figure out ways to invent and perform our musical

performance maps.”

Anne Fennell’s demonstration lessons illustrate the translation of speech into rhythm and the setting of text to rhythm as a guided inquiry intothe music composition process. Later on, the tasks can be focused on accent, dynamics, and melodic contour.

Figure 19: Data display of differences by grade level between EO Learners and EL Learners interms of both mean score gains and correlations between tests of music and language literacyskill development. Note that differences in the degree of correlation between the literacy testsin music and language with respect to EO and EL Learners narrows over time (column 6-7, 10-11, Grades 1 and 2).

In this study, stepwise regression tech-niques24 were employed to determine whichspecific factors best fit with overall patternsof music and language literacy skill devel-opment. A progression of findings basedregression data displays are listed below.

Regression Analysis Finding 1: Analysis ofthe data as a whole (all K-2 students atonce) reveals that the notation-basedrhythm tasks best predict overall earlylanguage literacy skill development.

Considering the K-2 population as awhole, stepwise regression of the aggregatedata reveals that the level of rhythm litera-cy skill performance is the primary predic-tive factor of language literacy skill devel-opment [Figure 21, column 2].Furthermore, it is the composite rhythmnotation tasks (averaged across reading,dictation, and error detection), and notnon-notational rhythm tasks (finding thebeat, repeating clapping patterns) that bestpredict overall language literacy develop-ment for all students.

In addition, the data displayed belowdemonstrate that rhythm literacy perform-ance emerges as the skill set most highlyassociated with early language literacydevelopment, especially for EL students.This was expected, as prior musical cogni-tive development research in young chil-dren’s representations of music has shownthat rhythm skills most often precede thosethat involve pitch in terms of performance,perception, and reflective thinking skills.24

The later emergence of pitch is due to theadded complexity of adding a second cog-nitive dimension to rhythm. That is, pitchtasks inevitably involve the rhythmicaspects of the timing and ordering, where-as rhythm tasks need not engage pitchaspects whatsoever.

Regression Analysis Finding 2: Analysisof music literacy skill outcome dataaccording to grade level suggests a devel-opmental view of music’s literacy skilllink with overall language literacy skillachievement.

Findings distilled from the display inFigure 22 indicate that

(1)notation-based and linguistic-integrated


‘degree of correlation’ between musicand language literacy skills is reducedsignificantly between Grade 1 andGrade 2 (columns 11, 13).

These three findings provide evidence forthe positive interaction between music andlanguage skill development over time forboth English Only and English LanguageLearning K-2 students. These findings areconsistent with the premise of the MusicVentures program that inextricable com-monalities between music and languageliteracy are mutually reinforced through‘teaching for transfer’ in early elementarygrades. Keeping measures of music andlanguage literacy constant across threegrade levels, results in this study indicatethat as both language and music skillincrease, the relationship between theseskills grows stronger and the gap narrowsbetween EO and EL Learners progressivelyover time. Taking into account that theMusic Ventures program was only imple-mented for two years at the Beaumont

School, we may project with some confi-dence that these effects would be evengreater with ongoing Music Venturesinstruction.

Furthermore, the results shown in the tablebelow suggest the possibility that languageand music literacy skill outcomes arelinked more strongly to each other thanthe two measures of literacy within thedomain of language arts, especially forEnglish Language Learners [Figure 20].

Considering student outcomes for ‘all stu-dents’, for example, the correlation betweenmusic and the DIBELS/Bader Inventory isvery strong across Grades K-1. By Grade 2,however, the two Grade level tests in lan-guage literacy appear to be unrelated to themusic literacy skill outcomes.

When looking at the breakdown of scores byEnglish Only (EO) and English Language(EL) Learners, we see that the lack of correla-tion between language and music literacyskills primarily is linked to the initial disad-vantage of those students who come toschool not speaking English. That is, the sta-tistically significant correlation betweenmusical and language literacy skills for EOLearners is delayed until Grades 1 and 2 (andonly apparent with respect to theDIBELS/Bader assessments). This deferredcorrelation can stand as proxy for the belatedunderstanding of fundamental concepts andprocesses shared between these two domainsby English Language Learners. Thankfully,the gap between the EL and EO students isnarrowed completely after participating inthe Music Ventures program for two years.Unfortunately for the English Language (EL)Learners, however, this determination wouldhave gone undetected by conventional test-ing practices that include neither a longitudi-nal music literacy skills assessment nor across-grade language literacy skill testdesigned to measure basic concepts sharedbetween these two domains.

I N Q U I R Y 3To what extent do particular musicliteracy subskills predict overall languageliteracy skill development over time? Towhat extent do particular languageliteracy subskills predict overall musicliteracy skill development over time?


THESE F INDINGS ARE

CONSISTENT WITH THE

PREMISE OF THE MUSIC

VENTURES PROGRAM

THAT INEXTRICABLE

COMMONALIT IES

BETWEEN MUSIC AND

LANGUAGE L ITERACY ARE

MUTUALLY RE INFORCED

THROUGH ‘TEACHING

FOR TRANSFER’ IN EARLY

ELEMENTARY GRADES.

Figure 21: This table identifies significant regression variables fitted between music literacycomposite skills and overall DIBELS/Bader Language Literacy Test outcomes when combining allgrade levels (K-2). In this calculation it appears that music rhythm literacy skills best predictlanguage literacy skill achievement, especially for EO students (music skill factors 4 and 6).

Figure 20: A comparison of statistically significant correlations between music literacy skill out-comes and two types of language literacy skill outcomes suggests striking differences in the patternof correlation between EL and EO Learners. For EO Learners all tests are intercorrelated, where-as for EL Learners these tests are not significantly linked, except for the connection between musicliteracy skills and the DIBELS/Bader in Grades 1 and 2 (third column, last two rows). Note thatoverall, results from the Music Literacy Skill Test correlate more highly with the DIBELS test scoresthan results from the DIBELS test score correlate with the grade specific language literacy tests.

At the Empresa School, the 'Music Center" is a corner of the second grade classroom where studentscan choose one or two of a large variety of percussion instruments to perform rhythm patternsequences posted on the wall or written on scrolls stored in plastic folders. Children are also challengedto explore 'multiple ways' of coding rhythms, dynamics, or the contours of word or letter pronuncia-tion through inventive use of large and small dots, question marks, exclamation points, and periods.

of language literacy skill development for allstudents. In Kindergarten, no one musicsubskill predicts language literacy develop-ment more than another. Later on, however,several strong indicators of interactionbetween discrete musical task outcomes andlanguage literacy skill development emergethat provide a new window onto the devel-opmental order of integrated skill learning.

The music literacy tasks were structured intheir order of sophistication and coordina-tion of problem-solving skills needed tosolve the pitch or rhythm problems posed.In light of the development order of themusic tasks in terms of complexity, thechart below suggests also that as discretemusic literacy skills grow in complexity,they emerge as strong predictors of lan-

guage literacy outcomes as studentsprogress through grade levels.

In the chart displayed here, we find, forexample, that reading or writing rhythmpatterns [Figure 23, Skills 3-4] or theability to detect deviations from therhythm notation [Skill 5] are more pre-dictive of overall language literacy skillsin later grades than simply being able tofind the beat or clap back rhythms ‘byear.’ Likewise, the ability to sightsing andspot errors in the performance of notat-ed pitch patterns [Skills 5, 9-11] is morepredictive than the ability to match pitchor sing melodies without notation. Thus,the ability to work with diverse kinds ofmusical symbol systems at a high level ofcognitive complexity—reading notationand spotting errors in performance atthe same time—emerges as the signifi-cant connection point between musicand language literacy skill developmentin Grades 1-2.

Besides affirming the general trends of pre-dictive factors for music for all students,differences between the student cohorts inthe chart reveal a surprising degree of tasksensitivity for English Language (EL)Learners that did not surface in the aver-aged or composite variables [Figure 23,column 4]. For example, the integration ofwords and numbers with singing pitch pat-terns [Skill 10] surfaced as a significanttask predictor for language literacy skilldevelopment for Grade K-1 EL students.These data also revealed for the first timethe possibility that purely performancedata, such as clapping back increasinglycomplex rhythm patterns for EO Learners,may signal new associations for music andliteracy once earlier associations with lan-guage are ironed out [column 3, Grade 2,Skill 1]. Overall, these fine-grained differ-ences between English Only and EnglishLanguage Learners suggest the value ofbeing alert to different entry points intothe process of understanding of music’sconnection to language literacy.

Regression Analysis Finding 4: Analysis ofthe data as a whole (all K-2 students atonce) reveals that the language subskilltasks most analogous with music literacyskills best predict overall early music liter-acy skill development.


rhythm tasks are the most present lan-guage literacy predictors across the pro-gression of grade levels for all students;

(2)pitch literacy skill, with and withoutnotation skills, emerges as a significant,though less predictive measure for lan-guage literacy for all students across allgrade levels; and

(3)by the first grade, the presence orabsence of words affects the predictivevalue of rhythm literacy skills accordingto the language learning designation ofthe students.

The first finding based on grade level analy-sis [Figure 22, column 2-4, rows 3,4,6 allgrades] confirms rhythm to be the mostpresent language literacy predictor acrossthe progression of grade levels for all learn-ers. However, the presence of pitch as a pre-dictor for language skill development for AllLearners [column 2, rows 10-11], the sec-ond finding, suggests that pitch literacyskills also can provide a significant link withlanguage literacy skills in later grade levels.

The third finding indicates that the abilityto integrate words into the rhythmic taskresponses becomes more predictive of gen-eral language literacy skills over time forEO Learners (Grades 1-2). From a devel-opmental perspective, it appears the EOLearners have already understood the con-nection of rhythm to word segmentationas a concept shared between the twodomains of literacy. For English Language(EL) Learners, however, the rhythm taskswithout words best predict a strong associ-ation with English language literacy skilldevelopment in Grades 1-2, suggestingthat an understanding of underlying prin-ciples of rhythmic literacy skills themselves(segmentation, grouping, parts and whole)is overall a better early predictor of lan-guage literacy skill development than theinitial ability to employ word reading skillswhile performing rhythm tasks.

As EL Learners gain proficiency in Englishby Grade 2, the ability to integrate rhythmskills with words is most highly predictive ofGrade 2 language literacy skills when look-ing at the data based on all students averagedtogether [Figure 22, column 2, Grade 2, row4]. Based on the relatively delayed level of

music and language literacy skill perform-ance for English Language Learners, we canconclude that the difference in the ability tointegrate words with music can be seen asdevelopmentally ordered.

Regression Analysis Finding 3: GradeLevel Analysis of music literacy subskilllearning outcomes suggests that theincreasing level of complexity of specificmusic literacy tasks responses predictsoverall language literacy outcomes.

The stepwise regression of discrete musicliteracy subskill outcomes fitted to overallmeasures of language literacy test scoresprovides a more detailed view of the devel-opmental aspects of the fit between musicand language literacy skill learning trajec-tories over time [Figure 23].

When paring down the analysis to discreterather than composite or averaged musicliteracy task performance in Kindergarten,for example, there are no major predictors


Figure 22: Significant regression variables fitted between music literacy composite skills and over-all DIBELS/Bader Language Literacy Test outcomes are displayed at each grade level. This morefine-grained analysis detects a shift toward “Rhythm Integrated with Words” as a major predictorof language literacy skills for EO Learners.

Figure 23: The display captures a progression of discrete music literacy subskill variables asthey become more predictive of overall levels of language literacy skill development acrossGrades K-2. According to this chart, a shift occurs by the end of first grade as strong associ-ations between music and language literacy increase with the improved performance on bothmusic and language literacy tasks.

lessons sequenced throughout the MusicVentures curriculum. Language literacytasks not as linked across literacy domains— word list fluency and semantic cloze,for example — do not show up here asmajor predictors of understanding ofmusic literacy tasks.

Thus, the regression analysis of Grades K-2 as a whole provides a first draft picture ofthe primary links between discrete lan-guage literacy subskills and overall level ofmusic literacy skill achievement. Evidenceof these relationships is consistent with the

premise that fundamental concepts andprocesses shared between language andmusic literacy account for their mutualreinforcement in the context of music andmusic-integrated teaching and learning.

Regression Analysis Finding 5: Grade levelanalysis of language literacy subskilllearning outcomes suggests that a devel-opmental progression of a cognitive com-plexity of the language literacy tasks bestpredict overall music literacy outcomes.

In the previous analysis, Grades K-2 were

analyzed as a whole population regardlessof grade level or language learner designa-tion. The chart in Figure 25 suggests that afocus on grade level language literacy skilldevelopment provides a much clearer viewof the developmental links between dis-crete measures of language and overallmusic literacy skill development. Grade bygrade, the predictive linguistic factors ofphoneme segmentation, auditory discrim-ination, and oral reading tasks predictoverall music literacy skills according to aprogression of growing cognitive complex-ity for all students [Figure 25; Skills 5-7].

Figure 25 suggests that Kindergarten stu-dents in the first year of the Music Venturesprogram have a very different understand-ing of the fit of literacy skills with musicliteracy task performance than students inGrades 1-2. In Kindergarten, all studentsare more apt to understand the music tasksin terms of pre-reading skills having to dowith auditory perception skills andphoneme segmentation fluency [Figure 25,K, Column 2, Skills 4-5]. From the per-spective of the Music Ventures curriculumand professional development program,phoneme segmentation and auditory dis-crimination in language literacy drawupon analogous musical skills of rhythmicunderstanding (beat segmentation, group-ings) and pitch awareness (discriminationof auditory and phonemic qualities ofinstrumental and vocal melodic patterns).For all students in Grade 1 and 2 [Column2, Skills 7-8], the relatively higher level ofsophistication required for oral readingand semantic fluency tasks are linked withoverall music literacy skill processes.

For English Only Learners, the most con-stant predictor of music literacy scoresacross the progression of oral reading skillsis oral reading proficiency. It is as if the moreliterate English Only Learners can alreadymake the connection between general oralreading and music literacy skills inKindergarten, while the English LanguageLearners are connected to music readingtasks through language pre-reading skills;only later on in first grade do EL Learnersshift their attention to the more comprehen-sive aspects of reading. This delay in makinghigher order language literacy connectionsto music processes appears to be synchro-nous with EL students’ lower mean scores


Given the ‘interactionist’ or ‘two-way learn-ing transfer’ view of the music integrationlearning outcomes described in the intro-duction of this study, the analysis of stu-dent outcomes would be incomplete with-out probing the predictive power of dis-

crete language literacy subskill variables onmusic literacy development. Questionsrarely, if ever, addressed in public schoolsyet investigated in this study include: Whatlanguage literacy subskills most contributeto overall music literacy skill development?

To what extent do the language skills mostpredictive of musical skills resemble skillsrequired for musical literacy skill processes?

The investigation of this ‘reverse’ causallink analysis is demonstrated in the chartin Figure 24. Considering all grade levelsat once, stepwise regression ofthe aggregate data reveals that for all K-2 learners, auditory discrimination,phoneme fluency, and oral reading ratesare most closely linked with overall musicliteracy skill development [Figure 24;Skills 4,6,7]. This finding is an importantaffirmation of the premise of the MusicVentures curriculum and professionaldevelopment program — i.e., that it is pri-marily these processing skills that musicbest reinforces in integrated instruction.The connection between auditory dis-crimination and pitch timbre discrimina-tion is stressed in professional develop-ment music-integration sessions andclassroom tasks. Phoneme segmentationand rhythmic division of beats are con-stantly in play, as students in class and inlearning center activities are challenged toset text to music. Critical reading and dic-tation of rhythm passages are constantlyfeatured in demonstration and follow-up


V I G N E T T E 4 : P E R F O R M A N C E A S E V I D E N C E O F U N D E R S TA N D I N G

Incorporating music integration teaching and

learning into the elementary school classroom

requires establishing a classroom culture of per-

formance as evidence of understanding. In

demonstration lesson sessions, teachers see

that students are challenged constantly to

demonstrate performance understanding of

both new elements of the lesson plan and its

synthesis with previous instruction. In the cen-

ters activities, students made ‘xylophone or

clapping’ pieces using varied long/short pat-

terns learned in the previous lesson. In effect,

the demonstration lesson shows that students

do not just experience music integration con-

cepts in a linear fashion; rather, there is con-

stant ‘play’ in the system as children learn to

explore musical literacy concepts in the lan-

guage literacy classroom.

Anne and a collaborating classroom teacher encourage the students to compose rhythm instruments with new cards for rests, musical silence, to beinterspersed with long-short rhythm patterns. Later on, students explain their compositions to their classmates and teachers and then perform them.

Figure 24: The analysis of factors fitted between 9 DIBELS/Bader early literacy subskills and aver-aged music literacy outcomes across combined grade levels suggests that the abilities to discrimi-nate beginnings and endings of words, to parse syllables, and to read passages are most alignedwith overall music reading skill.

Figure 25: Grade level analysis determining the most significant regression factors fittedbetween 9 DIBELS/Bader early literacy subskills and averaged music literacy outcomes suggeststhat, as grade level progresses, correlations between music and language literacy task resultsdiffer according to the level of sophistication of the literacy tasks.

grade level and the cross-grade level languageliteracy test results, and (2) music literacy testresults and language literacy test results fromboth types of language literacy tests.

The categorization of individual classroomperformance from this chart can be under-stood as four types of profiles:

(1)Top Left: HIGH correlations betweentwo different language literacy tests andHIGH correlation between music andlanguage literacy.

[This category suggests that literacyskills in both domains (music and lan-guage) are predictive, integrated, andmutually reinforcing.]

(2)Bottom Left: HIGH correlations betweentwo language literacy tests and a LOW(non-significant) correlation betweenmusic and language literacy.


and weaker patterns of correlation reportedearlier, especially as indicated in Grades K-1.

The analysis of differences between typesof literacy learners provides diagnosticvalue for the Music Ventures program fordetermining differentiated forms of lan-guage literacy instruction. For example,the data presented above suggest thatteachers implementing music/language lit-eracy interventions in the future would dowell to differentiate instruction for EnglishLanguage Learners by ‘teaching for trans-fer’ between auditory discrimination andphoneme segmentation skills beforeexpecting the students to understand theconnection between reading oral passagesand solving music literacy skill tasks.

I N Q U I R Y 4What is the relationship between MusicVentures professional developmentoutcomes and classroom studentperformance? Do classroom studentlearning outcomes reveal significantdifferences in the degree of integrationbetween language and music literacyskill development?

The final inquiry concerns the possibleinfluence of teacher professional develop-ment outcomes with student learning out-comes in music and language literacy. Forthe most part, the questions raised in thisinquiry require either a much more precisemeasure of differences among teachers or amuch larger sample size than was availablein this study. Whereas nearly the entirepopulation of K-2 students provided alarge enough sample size to determine sig-nificant differences in most of the resultspresented here25, the maximum sample sizefor classroom performance data analysiswas 16. Thus, most comparisons betweenteacher professional development out-comes and their classroom outcomes werestatistically insignificant, either due to thelack of statistical power and effect size ofthe teacher outcomes, or to the fact that nosuch relationship existed in the MusicVentures program.

Nonetheless, the individual classroom pro-files of the relationships between languageand music literacy skill tests provide an

intriguing glimpse of differences betweenclassroom performance with respect to themusic-integrated goals of the Music Venturesproject. In Figure 26, we can determine thefollowing general trend: English Language(EL) Learner classrooms are less likely todemonstrate high correlations among themusic and language literacy student perform-ance outcomes. This finding corroboratesgrade level analysis reported previously.

Regression Analysis Finding 6:Difference in the Degree of Correlationbetween Music and Language LiteracySkill Development in ‘Classroom byClassroom’ Analysis RepresentsQualitatively Different Levels ofIntegrated Learning and Teaching.

From the point of view of music-integratedlearning outcomes, Figure 26 indicates thatdespite broad, school-wide evidence of

strong correlations between music and lan-guage literacy outcomes, there are highlysignificant differences in individual class-room performance. ‘Kindergarten class-room C,’ ‘Grade 1 classroom A,’ and ‘Grade2 classroom D’ illustrate extremely strongrelationships among all forms of literacy,indicating a very high standard for integrat-ed understanding of multiple literacies sup-ported by the Music Ventures curriculumand professional development program.Other classrooms register no statistical evi-dence of music literacy learning connec-tions with language literacy. Some EnglishLanguage Learner (EL) classes register highcorrelations among literacy scores, andsome do not.

The chart in Figure 27 summarizes howteacher classroom performance can be cate-gorized according to the relative strength andsignificance of correlation between (1) the


Figure 26: Data display of differences by grade level between EO Learners and EL Learners interms of both mean score gains and correlations between tests of music and language literacyskill development. Note that differences in the degree of correlation between the literacy tests inmusic and language with respect to EO and EL Learners narrows over time (column 6-7, 10-11,Grades 1 and 2).

Figure 27: A comparison of statistically significant correlations between music literacy skill out-comes and two types of language literacy skill outcomes suggests striking differences in the patternof correlation between EL and EO Learners. For EO Learners all tests are intercorrelated, where-as for EL Learners these tests are not significantly linked, except for the connection between musicliteracy skills and the DIBELS/Bader in Grades 1 and 2 (third column, last two rows). Note thatoverall, results from the Music Literacy Skill Test correlate more highly with the DIBELS test scoresthan results from the DIBELS test score correlate with the grade specific language literacy tests.

Music and classroom teachers often worry about the validity of music-integrated teaching in their classroom and centers activities.

Anne Fennell’s demonstration lessons in the teachers’ classrooms illustrate how music literacy skills can be taught and reinforced by

teachers both for the sake of the skills themselves

and for the purpose of their integration with lan-

guage literacy concepts and processes. After one

demonstration lesson, Anne was asked to differenti-

ate between teaching a music lesson at Beaumont

from the approach she takes when she teaches at the

Vista Academy Magnet School for the Arts.

“There really is no difference. I teach my profes-

sional development lessons to the teachers and

the demonstration lessons to the children the

same way I would if I were teaching at the

Academy. The difference here is that it is collab-

orative teaching and the emphasis is on integra-

tion. But, in order to teach music integration, you

have to teach music authentically by focusing on

processes – listening, performing, reading, and

writing – that also can be seen by the classroom

teachers as connected to the teaching of lan-

guage literacy as well.”

Anne Fennell working with group composition processes with language literacy challenged children. After observing this lesson, RodneyGoldenberg, former Principal of the Vista Arts Academy and now Principal of the Empresa Elementary School in Oceanside, comments that“To understand the potential for music-integrated learning in public schools for all students, parents and educators need to see to what extentliteracy challenged students challenge themselves through music reading exercises in the Music Ventures program.”

V I G N E T T E 5 : R E F L E C T I O N O N T H E VA L I D I T Y O F M U S I C L I T E R A C Y S K I L L D E V E L O P M E N TA S A TO O L F O R T E A C H I N G A N D L E A R N I N G G E N E R A L S Y M B O L I C L I T E R A C Y

Ventures curriculum and professionaldevelopment program broadened aware-ness of language literacy skill achievementat the Beaumont Elementary School toinclude concepts shared with music literacyskill development.

From this theoretical perspective, resultsfrom patterns of correlation and fromregression analyses of student learningoutcomes constitute evidence that the inte-gration of music and language learning lit-

eracy instruction involves shared under-standing of fundamental concepts andprocesses such as

• analogous elements of literacy(notes/intervals/melodies analogousto letters/words/sentences; sung andspoken phonemes; phrases and pas-sages; compositions and stories, etc.);

• parallel decoding processes (analo-gous translation of discrete symbol tosound, sound to symbol, segmenta-tion, grouping of sounds, etc.);

• auditory perception discriminationskills (discrimination of vocal andinstrumental timbre/articulation ofsound analogous to discrimination ofvowels/consonants, sound segmenta-tion, pattern recognition, error detec-tion); and

• internalization of literacy processes(silent hearing of music analogous tosilent comprehension of text).

The study also points out that the success ofmusic’s integration with language literacyskill development is dependent on emerg-ing literacy skill expertise that can be meas-ured and interpreted as an understanding ofinterdisciplinary cognition through analo-gous concepts and processes developed inboth domains. In the Music Ventures pro-gram, teachers and students can take advan-tage of music learning as an alternativemodel of literacy skill development thatoffers a unique contribution to a broaderand deeper view of general symbol literacy.

(2)To what extent do classroom teachersunderstand and support the nature ofmusic and music-integrated learningand its connections to the K-2 languagearts curriculum in the context of theMusic Ventures professional develop-ment program?

Evidence of pre-post professional develop-ment outcomes suggests that teachers candraw on their growing comfort and familiar-ity with musical literacy skills and their priorextensive knowledge of language literacyteaching to understand and support the inte-gration of these subject areas in their class-room practice. Of particular interest are the

relatively strong gains in teacher knowledgeof diverse teaching methods and their rela-tionship to arts standards. This finding con-firms that the teachers improved most intheir field of primary expertise, knowledge ofteaching, and its connection to the arts andmusic. What is particularly germane to thevalidity of the Music Ventures intervention isthat these teachers significantly improvedtheir knowledge of discrete musical skills andtheir confidence in using these skills to com-plement literacy instruction, a result crucialto determining the effectiveness of the pro-fessional development program.

Analysis of professional development out-comes also indicates that persuading expe-rienced classroom teachers to invest in theMusic Ventures program requires a careful-ly crafted, user-friendly curriculum andconsiderable guidance from music educa-tors before conventional literacy instructionpractices can be enhanced through music.Differentiated modes of literacy teachingand learning is the process by which theMusic Ventures program defines and makesdiscrete musical skills available for use bythe classroom language teacher. Through aperiod of guided investigation, general sym-bolic literacy skills become understood asconcepts and processes that can be synthe-sized into literacy processes grounded bythe encoding and decoding of symbolsshared between music and language. Thus,phonemic awareness, auditory discrimina-tion, sound segmentation, syntax, form,oral reading comprehension — and theircounterparts in music literacy skill develop-ment — are all examples of a graduatedscale of cognitive processes that can becomemore richly understood when defined bothlinguistically and musically in literacyinstruction. In the Music Ventures program,music literacy skills function as ‘cognates’for deeper understanding of language, andvice versa, linguistic skills become cognatesfor a large range of musical capacities.

(3)To what extent can a school that previ-ously had limited access to formal musicinstruction use the Music Ventures pro-gram as a way to document evidence ofauthentic and developmentally appro-priate levels of learning in music for allstudents?

Results from this study show that the


[This category suggests that literacyskills are cohesive and stable within thedomain of language yet are not relatedto, integrated with, or predictive ofmusic literacy skill development.]

(3)Top Right: LOW (non-significant) cor-relations between the two language lit-eracy tests and a HIGH correlationbetween music and language literacy.

[This category suggests that two meas-ures of language literacy skills areunstable and unpredictive of oneanother, yet are related to, integratedwith, and predictive of music literacyskill development.]

(4)Bottom Right: LOW (non-significant)correlations between the two languageliteracy tests and LOW (non-signifi-cant) correlation between music andlanguage literacy.

[This category suggests that two meas-ures of language literacy skills areunstable and unpredictive of oneanother, and that language and musicliteracy skill development are not relat-ed to, integrated with, or predictive ofeach other.]

Many questions are raised through the pro-file analysis [Figures 26-27] of the relation-ship between two domains of literacylearning in the early elementary schoolclassroom. Why are there enormous differ-ences in correlations between music andlanguage literacy learning among class-rooms? Is there a connection betweenteacher attitudes, skills, professional train-ing or professional development outcomesthat may account for these discrepancies?Do indications of ‘high correlation’ inlearning result from particular ‘teaching fortransfer’ strategies, skills, or attitudes of theteacher? Given the choice, under what con-ditions would administrators, teachers, andparents prefer that students understand lit-eracy through the integration of bothmusic and language literacy instruction?

The significant differences in levels of inte-gration derived from the student outcomesreported here are relevant to future meas-ures of school accountability. Rather thanholding school communities accountable

only to standards of language literacyachievement or improvement, the resultsfrom student music and language literacytests suggest that communities can respon-sibly choose to invest in high standards ofmusic-integrated literacy teaching andlearning for the benefit of all students. Notonly can classroom teachers use music-integrated literacy instruction to reinforcelanguage literacy concepts and processes intheir classrooms, but music teachers canuse language literacy skills to gain insightinto the development of music literacyskills. Students ultimately benefit from afar deeper and multi-dimensional under-standing of general symbolic literacy skillsthrough music’s intersections with lan-guage skill development.

The high quality professional developmentand rigorous assessments of multiple litera-cies across grade levels as demonstrated inthis study strongly suggest that we can expect‘teaching for transfer’ across dual forms ofliteracy systems to emerge as an importantalternative to the more narrow forms ofinstruction that may be failing to engagemany of our public school students today.Based on the results of this study, more fieldresearch will be needed to refine the imple-mentation of programs similar to the MusicVentures program before proceeding for-ward with district-wide implementation,particularly in the area of (a) teacher profes-sional development outcomes and their rela-tion to classroom performance; (b) longitu-dinal research on the stages of literacy skilldevelopment for both EO and EL Learners;

(c) the collection and rigorous assessment ofmusic-integrated literacy work samples; and(d) the creation of music-integrated literacyskill interventions designed to maximizeopportunities for English Language Learnerswho need to overcome their delay in lan-guage literacy skill development.

SUMMARY ANDIMPLICATIONS S U M M A R Y A N DI M P L I C A T I O N S O F T H EP R O G R A M R E S U LT S I NR E L A T I O N T O T H EG U I D I N G R E S E A R C HQ U E S T I O N S

(1)What is the nature and impact of musicliteracy skill instruction and learningwhen it is integrated into the K-2 corelanguage arts curriculum?

The results from the Music Ventures pro-gram provide evidence for a compellingmodel of music- and language-integratedliteracy teaching and learning. This model isbased on the premise that music and lan-guage literacy skill development depends onthe growing understanding of fundamentalskills and processes shared between thesetwo domains of symbolic literacy. Althoughthe representation, meaning, and modalitiesof expression are commonly thought to bedifferent between music and language liter-acy in public schools today, the Music


EVIDENCE OF PRE-POST PROFESSIONAL

DEVELOPMENT OUTCOMES SUGGESTS THAT

TEACHERS CAN DRAW ON THEIR GROWING COMFORT

AND FAMILIARITY WITH MUSICAL L ITERACY SKILLS

AND THEIR PRIOR EXTENSIVE KNOWLEDGE OF

LANGUAGE L ITERACY TEACHING TO UNDERSTAND

AND SUPPORT THE INTEGRATION OF THESE SUBJECT

AREAS IN THEIR CLASSROOM PRACTICE. ANALYSIS OF

PROFESSIONAL

DEVELOPMENT

OUTCOMES ALSO

INDICATES THAT

PERSUADING

EXPERIENCED

CLASSROOM TEACHERS

TO INVEST IN THE MUSIC

VENTURES PROGRAM

REQUIRES A CAREFULLY

CRAFTED, USER-

FRIENDLY CURRICULUM

AND CONSIDERABLE

GUIDANCE FROM MUSIC

EDUCATORS BEFORE

CONVENTIONAL

L ITERACY INSTRUCTION

PRACTICES CAN BE

ENHANCED THROUGH

MUSIC.

sequence of music literacy skill developmentand its correlation with language literacyskills differs considerably between EnglishOnly (EO) Learners and English Language(EL) Learners for music and language litera-cy skill development, a disparity that pro-vides further insight into the nature ofmusic-integrated learning and its interactionwith language literacy skill development.

Analysis of music literacy test results, forexample, provides extensive evidence thatEL Learners are more likely at first to lagbehind EO Learners in their musical litera-cy skill achievement, although bothcohorts improve to a similar extent overtime. The difference in music literacy per-formance outcomes became germane tothis study because it demonstrated to par-ticipants in this project that the literacyskill challenge for EL students in music,much like the challenge they face inEnglish language literacy, is a matter ofestablishing a cohesive and interrelatedunderstanding of the symbol systems. That

is, students delayed in their developmentof formal knowledge of literacy skills inEnglish are initially less likely to under-stand relationships among musical literacyskills as well.

Yet results from this study reveal that asthe level of music literacy skill learningincreases, it more likely predicts the levelof language literacy achievement overtime, especially for EO students at first,and later on for EL Learners. Thus, clos-ing the gap between EO and EL Learnersin the context of a music-integrated liter-acy program is dependent on the positiveinteraction of skills in both music andlanguage learning. For students initiallylimited in their English language skills,there will be a delay in the measurableimpact associated with music integration.This deferred correlation can now beunderstood as evidence for the belatedunderstanding of fundamental conceptsand processes shared between these twodomains by EL Learners.

Fortunately, results from the MusicVentures reported here indicate that sub-stantial progress toward closing the gapbetween the learning cohorts is achievedby the second grade. In future studies,therefore, researchers should look moreclosely at when, how, and under what con-ditions music integration strategies canhelp EL learners close the literacy gapsooner. Based on information from thisstudy, teachers implementing music/lan-guage literacy interventions in the futurewould do well to target differentiatedinstruction for EL Learners toward ‘teach-ing for transfer’ between music notationtasks and auditory discrimination orphoneme segmentation skills beforeexpecting the students to make the con-nection between reading oral passages andsolving music literacy skill tasks.

(6)In what ways does the level of classroomteachers’ response to professional devel-opment sessions predict evidence of musiclearning and its integration into the lan-guage arts curriculum?

Results from this study indicate that the


Music Ventures curriculum and profes-sional development program succeeds inproviding a music-integrated languageliteracy intervention as an effective strat-egy for fostering authentic and develop-mentally appropriate music and languageliteracy skills for all students. The align-ment of the Music Ventures programwith national standards of teaching liter-acy skills is possible in this contextbecause (a) the curriculum is modeledand supported by a highly qualifiedmusic and music integration professionaldevelopment specialist; (b) the curricu-lum is geared toward teaching fundamen-tal concepts shared between both musicand language literacy skills; and (c) mostclassroom teachers were willing to takethe time to become familiar and comfort-able with arts learning standards,inquiry-based teaching methods, creativ-ity strategies, music integration ‘teachingfor transfer’ techniques, and, mostimportantly, the personal acquisition ofdiscrete musical literacy skills in order toincorporate music effectively into theirclassroom language literacy instruction.

(4)To what extent does the level of studentmusic literacy skill learning correlatewith measures of language literacy skills?Are there specific subskill variables inmusic literacy outcomes that best predictoverall language literacy development?

Are there specific subskill outcomes inlanguage literacy that best predict overallmusic literacy development?

From the point of view of this study,music’s contribution to language literacyskills in schools depended on support forand evidence of music literacy skill devel-opment for its own sake. Of critical impor-tance, therefore, was the determination ofpositive pre-post gains in ratings for musi-cal rhythm and pitch literacy skills for allstudents within all grade levels that indi-cated substantial music literacy skill learn-ing had taken place in the context of theMusic Ventures program. Positive interre-lationships among a diverse set of musicand language literacy skills representedadditional substantive and cohesive meas-ures of musical understanding related tothe Music Ventures program.

Strong and pervasive evidence for the sta-tistical connection between music and lan-guage literacy skill development was cru-cial to the validation of the music-integrat-ed model of general symbolic literacy.Thus, evidence of strong patterns of corre-lation between music and language literacyskill variables across grade levels for all stu-dents becomes a necessary, if not suffi-cient, validation for the incorporation ofmusic-integrated literacy programs intothe core elementary school curriculum.

Determining which music subskills best pre-dict overall language literacy skill develop-ment and which language skills best predictoverall music literacy development is criticalto the application of this study toward diag-nosing cross-domain literacy skill problemsand providing targeted interventionsdesigned to address those problems.

Detailed results from regression analysis ofmusic literacy skill outcomes revealed that (a)the notation-based rhythm tasks best pre-dict overall early language literacy skilldevelopment in the context of the MusicVentures program, and (b) the level of com-plexity of the music literacy tasks predictsoverall language literacy outcomes accord-ing to grade level. Thus, notation-rich andcognitively challenging music reading, writ-ing, and error detection skills are most like-ly to predict overall language literacy skilldevelopment in later grade levels.

Detailed results from the regression analy-sis of language literacy skill outcomesrevealed that the language tasks most anal-ogous to music literacy best predict overallmusic literacy skill development. That is,phoneme segmentation and auditory per-ception skills were most clearly linked withmusic development in the early grades, andthe association of oral reading skills wasbest matched to the more advanced aspectsof music literacy processes in later grades.What is not linked as closely across literacydomains — word list fluency and semanticcloze tasks, for example — proved not topredict skilled performance of music litera-cy tasks at any grade level.

Overall, results from patterns of correla-tion and regression analysis provide amuch clearer view of the developmentallinks between discrete measures of lan-guage and overall music literacy skill devel-opment. Grade by grade, the emergentorder of early language literacy skill devel-opment is matched closely with the pro-gression of growing cognitive complexitiesof musical skill development.

(5)Are there significant differences betweenthe way the Music Ventures programimpacts English Language (EL) Learnersand English Only (EO) Learners?

This study reveals that the pattern and


RESULTS FROM THIS STUDY REVEAL THAT AS THE

LEVEL OF MUSIC L ITERACY SKILL LEARNING

INCREASES, IT MORE L IKELY PREDICTS THE LEVEL OF

LANGUAGE L ITERACY ACHIEVEMENT OVER T IME,

ESPECIALLY FOR EO STUDENTS AT F IRST, AND LATER

ON FOR EL LEARNERS. THUS, CLOSING THE GAP

BETWEEN EO AND EL LEARNERS IN THE CONTEXT OF

A MUSIC- INTEGRATED L ITERACY PROGRAM IS

DEPENDENT ON THE POSIT IVE INTERACTION OF

SKILLS IN BOTH MUSIC AND LANGUAGE LEARNING.

TEACHER PROFESSIONAL

DEVELOPMENT IN THE

AREAS OF MUSIC-

INTEGRATED TEACHING

OR ‘TEACHING FOR

TRANSFER’ STRATEGIES

APPLIED TO MUSIC

LITERACY MAY ESTABLISH

NEW STANDARDS OF

ACCOUNTABILITY FOR

MUSIC-INTEGRATED

INSTRUCTION IN PUBLIC

SCHOOLS IN THE FUTURE. At Empresa Elementary in Oceanside, CA, a MIENC Learning Laboratory School, students arechallenged to read rhythm patterns displayed on the walls of the classroom. As studentsprogress, they can perform larger and larger segments of the entire rhythmic composition, bothindividually and in groups.

disciplines, as in the case of language lit-eracy demonstrated here. Classroomteachers or music teachers who responsi-bly reinforce music-integrated literacyskill development in their classrooms bylearning music skills for themselves andby learning to ‘teach for transfer’ acrossthese disciplines are signaling to students,parents, and administrators the value ofmusic’s deep connection to other literacydomains. By showing that music andmusic integration builds on the capacityto learn within all children, music’s role ineducation evolves into a place of centralimportance for public schools.

Limitations and Next Steps

Ultimately the Music Ventures casestudy is most concerned with the poten-tial for school improvement throughstrong music and music integration pro-grams. As a point of departure for fur-ther dissemination, this report summa-rizes the results of a single pilot studythat demonstrates the power and effica-cy of innovative music integrationschool intervention programs that arealigned with the national standards ofmusic and language arts learning andcan be evaluated through rigorous datacollection and assessment methods. Theconceptual power of music integrationlies in the pluralization of literacyprocesses away from a fixed, separate, ornarrow concept of language decodingskills toward a deeper and broader viewof literacy based on multiple, mutuallyreinforcing, symbol system skillsthrough music. The efficacy of thisresearch-based program lies in its

demonstrated practical significance forteacher professional development pro-grams and as a curriculum that benefitsall students in a low income or predom-inantly EL Learner populated school.

As a pilot study, this report serves as a pre-liminary blueprint for dissemination ofmusic-integrated language literacy pro-grams in public elementary schools alreadycommitted to the value of music’s role inthe core curriculum. Only by overcomingseveral limitations of this study willresearchers be able to validate further thepossible success of music and language lit-eracy integration as a strategy for large-scale school reform. Limitations of thisstudy have defined the following needs:

• More longitudinal data to study thelong-term effects of music-integratedliteracy in the upper elementary gradesand to determine its relationship tostandardized achievement tests.

• A larger sample size of teachers to meas-ure significant effects of professionaldevelopment outcomes on school cul-ture and student performance.

• The development of specific interven-tions for severely challenged students atrisk for literacy failure in order toensure music integration strategies donot exclude learners who may need thebenefits of this program the most.

• An expanded range of literacy integra-tions to include math, science, other artforms, and issues of social-emotionaldevelopment.

• Continued refinement and develop-ment of curricular materials andassessment instruments for multipleliteracies beyond K-2 that includemeasures of arts literacy processes out-side of music.

• The study of the process of disseminationand sustainability of music-integrated lit-eracy both locally and nationally.

• The creation of a national professionaldevelopment team to provide materi-als, service and consultations with pub-lic school communities wishing toincorporate music and music-integrat-ed literacy programs in their schools.

• Collection, assessment, and dissemina-tion of a wide range of student worksamples related to music-integratedcurriculum.

• The creation of innovative assessmentsthat require multiple symbol systems tosolve problems.

Organizations such as the Music-in-Education National Consortium and itspartnership organizations29 are supportingthe work of schools interested in becoming‘learning laboratories’ for expanding thepresence of music and music-integratedteaching, learning, and assessment prac-tices, so that other schools will benefitfrom the research reported here.Implications for follow-up studies includeplans for further development of musicand music integration programs, based onthe principles and practices associatedwith the Music Ventures project, to be dis-


personal and classroom incorporation ofmusic literacy skills into literacy instruc-tion practices are crucial factors for thevalidity and the replicability of a high qual-ity music-integrated literacy intervention.Yet ratings of teacher attitudes and successwith music integration were highly vari-able according to evidence of their atti-tudes and comfort with music literacyskills revealed in teacher surveys and inter-views. Unfortunately the small sample sizeof teacher data most likely prevented anydetermination of a significant relationshipbetween professional development out-comes and classroom performance.

There were, however, statistically signifi-cant differences among individual teachersin terms of classroom performance asmeasured by ‘degrees of correlation’between music and language arts learning.Although it was found that EO classroomsgenerally demonstrate a higher ‘degree ofcorrelation’ between music and languageliteracy skills, nonetheless there wereinstances of extraordinary evidence ofintegrated learning in individual class-rooms with a relatively low percentage ofEL students. Thus, teacher professionaldevelopment in the areas of music-inte-grated teaching or ‘teaching for transfer’strategies applied to music literacy may

establish new standards of accountabilityfor music-integrated instruction in publicschools in the future.

F U R T H E R I M P L I C A T I O N SF O R R E S E A R C H A N DP O L I C Y I N T H E F I E L D O FM U S I C - I N T E G R A T E DL E A R N I N G

The importance and practical significanceof the Music Ventures music integrationprogram in the final analysis will be judgedby its contribution to the fields of musicand general education research and policy.From this perspective, we will discuss sev-eral major implications of the MusicVentures study.

New Research Methodologies

This case study demonstrates the effective-ness of more comprehensive researchmethodologies needed to explore theevolving and increasingly complex field ofmusic-integrated learning in public schoolprograms26. The evaluation of the MusicVentures program employed a comprehen-sive methodology that allowed educatorsto understand the inter-relationshipsamong multiple program and learningvariables from diverse perspectives.Analyses of curriculum design, curriculumimplementation, and teacher professionaldevelopment assessment rubrics providedthe contextual data needed for under-standing the relationships between studentparticipation in the Music Ventures pro-gram and test results in both music andlanguage literacy skills. This multiple per-spective approach is important because, asargued in the Critical LinksCompendium,27 studies that take place outof, or else ignore, the complexities ofschool environments provide little practi-cal significance for application of researchfindings into public school classrooms.Thus, this study advances a theoretical aswell as practical model of investigating theimpact of music and music-integratedlearning on overall school performance.

Music-Integrative Learning asMutually Beneficial to Each Domain

This pilot study suggests strongly thatmusic instruction integrated with early

elementary language arts learning is bestunderstood as a two-way street. Evidenceof significant correlations from this studysupports a general principle of music inte-gration; i.e., that music and language liter-acy skill development in young childrenappear to draw on shared fundamentalconcepts and learning processes embeddedin both disciplines.28

However, supporters of music education inschools cannot use this study to claim thatexposure to music instruction teaches lan-guage literacy skills directly. Nor can theyclaim that music integration programs willenhance performance on literacy tests forstudents regardless of the level of studentmusic literacy skill development. Onlywhen students progress in their music lit-eracy skill development does the correla-tion between the two literacy domainsemerge or increase, especially for studentsclassified as English Language Learners.Conversely, only when students possess afunctional understanding of language lit-eracy processes will music integrationinstruction take effect. Thus, this studyprovides considerable support for teachingmusical literacy skills in elementaryschools, not only for the sake of improvingmusical understanding, but for the sake ofreinforcing or enhancing general symbolicliteracy skills across the curriculum.

Rethinking Music’s Role in PublicEducation

Findings from this study hold implicationsfor resolving contesting stances regardingthe value and purpose of music educationin public schools. Music educators, class-room teachers, parents and administratorssometimes argue that music should betaught only for its own sake. In this study,we voice the claim that learning resultingfrom genuine and comprehensive engage-ment in music learning intrinsically — andperhaps inextricably — involves interdisci-plinary thinking and learning processesthat can be used to enhance understandingof concepts shared with other forms of cog-nition and social-emotional development.

Thus, this study supports the notion thatmusic should be taught both for its ownsake and for the sake of learning transfer,reinforcement, or enhancement across


BY SHOWING THAT

MUSIC AND MUSIC

INTEGRATION BUILDS

ON THE CAPACITY TO

LEARN WITHIN ALL

CHILDREN, MUSIC’S

ROLE IN EDUCATION

EVOLVES INTO A PLACE

OF CENTRAL

IMPORTANCE FOR

PUBLIC SCHOOLS.

ORGANIZATIONS SUCH AS THE MUSIC- IN-EDUCATION NATIONAL CONSORTIUM

AND ITS PARTNERSHIP ORGANIZATIONS ARE SUPPORTING THE WORK OF

SCHOOLS INTERESTED IN BECOMING ‘LEARNING LABORATORIES ’ FOR

EXPANDING THE PRESENCE OF MUSIC AND MUSIC- INTEGRATED TEACHING,

LEARNING, AND ASSESSMENT PRACTICES, SO THAT OTHER SCHOOLS WILL

BENEF IT FROM THE RESEARCH REPORTED HERE.


seminated to schools with classroomteachers and full-time music teachers whowill work together to find the optimal bal-ance between music instruction for its ownsake and for the sake of its integration withearly language and math skills. Of primaryconcern will be the development of (a)practical program assessment rubrics thatprovide more sensitive measures of profes-sional development outcomes for teacherswho participate in the program in schools,and (b) the design of music integrationintervention strategies that will benefitEnglish Language Learners in their aca-demic studies in the early elementaryschool grade levels.

Follow-up experiments with regard to thisstudy should therefore focus on theexpanding roles and responsibilities ofmusic teachers as curriculum, assessment,and action research agents for innovationin schools. The need for innovative curric-ula and assessment practices based onmusic integration can start with music.Language literacy choirs and creating opera

in schools, for example, in which studentslearn to sing while they speak English, willtake on new significance for communitieswho see music learning as a two-way bene-fit for literacy challenged children’s learn-ing and social-emotional development.Continued innovative curriculum designand teaching and assessment that willaddress the challenge of integrating tradi-tional music skills such as ensemble per-formance, composing and improvisationcan contribute to a better understanding of‘optimal conditions’ needed to integrate lit-eracy in language, math, and music learn-ing in our public schools. Music and music-integrated learning, coupled with moreextensive measures of cognitive and social-emotional development factors affectingyoung children’s abilities and attitudes aslearners, will be able to demonstrate withincreased clarity and predictability that allstudents can benefit from music-integratedlearning beyond what has been demon-strated initially here in the two-year pilotstudy of the Music Ventures project inVista, California. ¶


1 Champions of Change: The Impact of the Arts on Learning (Fiske, Ed.) 1999; aep-arts.org.2 Sevenson, L. & Deasy, R. (2005). Third Space: When Learning Matters (aep-arts.org).3 Herbert, Douglas (2004), “Finding the Will and the Way To Make the Arts a Core Subject: Thirty Years of Mixed Progress.” The State Education Standard,

vol. 4, No. 4, Washington DC: National Association of State Boards of Education.4 Hope, Sam The Integrity of Music Integration, in the Journal for Learning Through Music vol.1, [2000; Music-in-Education.org].5 Bamberger, Jeanne. Music, Math, and Science: Towards an Integrated Curriculum in the Journal for Learning Through Music vol.1, [2000; Music-in-

Education.org].6 Gardiner, Martin, Music, Learning, and Behavior: A Case for Mental Stretching in the Journal for Learning Through Music vol.1, [2000; Music-in-

Education.org].7 Scripp, Larry Overview of Research on Music and Learning in Critical Links: Learning in the Arts and Student Academic and Social Development report [Deasy,

Ed., 2004; aep-arts.org].8 Ibid.9 Ibid.10 Results from this pilot project now serve as a case study model for future implementation of music-integrated literacy programs throughout the Music-in-

Education National Consortium’s network of laboratory school programs.11 Full-time Music Director, Music Educator of the Year award from the State of California, state and professional certification.12 Anne Fennell, the creator of the Music Ventures program and its professional development provider, serves as the full-time music director at the Vista

Magnet School for the Arts and has received the Music Educator of the Year award from the State of California.13 In particular ‘structured inquiry’ and the facilitation of creative processes in the context of literacy instruction.14 Results from previous studies can be examined in Scripp, L. (2003) Critical Links, Next Steps: An Evolving Conception of Music and Learning in Public

School Education in Journal for Learning Through Music (music-in-education.org).15 Scripp, L. & Davidson, L. (1994). Giftedness and professional training: the impact of music reading skills on musical development of conservatory students.

In R. Subotnik & K. Arnold (Eds.), In Beyond Terman: Contemporary Longitudinal Studies of Giftedness and Talent (186-211). New Jersey: Ablex Publishing

Corporation.16 Davidson, L. & Scripp, L. (1988a). Young children’s musical representations: windows on music cognition. In John Sloboda (Ed.), Generative Processes in

Music. Oxford: Oxford University Press; Davidson, L. & Scripp, L. (1992). Surveying the coordinates of cognitive skills in music. In Colwell, R. (Ed.)

Handbook for Research in Music Teaching and Learning. MENC publication, Macmillan Publishing Company.17 Scripp, L., (2003). Critical Links, Next Steps: An Evolving Conception of Music and Learning in Public School Education in Scripp & Keppel, Eds., Journal

for Learning Through Music (New England Conservatory), Boston, MA (pp. 28-31).

18 EL Learners is an abbreviation for English Language Learners (otherwise known as Limited English Proficiency or English Second Language Learners) who

are receiving remediation service.19 EO Learners (English Only Learners) designates students who speak English fluently. As previously indicated EL Learners is an abbreviation for English

Language Learners, otherwise known as Limited English Proficiency or English Second Language Learners who are receiving remediation services.20 With the assistance of Nancy Walmsley and Tom Lawrence, reading specialists in the Vista School District.21 Note that in Figure V-20 ‘Hear Letter Names’ shows no significant differences in test performance among all grade levels as indicated by (K-2) in the col-

umn to the far right.22 Note well that, in Figure V-20 the indication ‘(K)(1-2)’ in the final column on the right indicates that there is a significant difference in test performance

only between and Grades 1-2.23 Note that the calculation is the EO score minus the EL score; thus a minus score indicates the difference favors the EL Learners.24 Stepwise regression procedures as outlined in Sall, J., Creighton, L. & Lehman, A. (2005), A Guide to Statistics and Data Analysis Using JMP Software (SAS),

Brooks/Cole-Thomson, CA.25 Davidson & Scripp (1992). Surveying the Coordinates of Musical Development in Colwell, R. (Ed.), The Handbook for Research on Music Teaching and

Learning, Schirmer Press.26 For DIBELS/Bader and Music Literacy Skill Tests: All K-2 n = 349; EO cohort n = 205 ; EL cohort n = 144.27 The RUBRICS CUBE Program Evaluation System, described earlier in this Journal and used as a guideline for the evaluation design of this study, outlines

the need for multiple layers of data collection in school-based research by the Music-in-Education National Consortium’s Laboratory School Network.28 Ibid.29 See Critical Links essay previously cited and other articles by Jeanne Bamberger, Larry Scripp, Martin Gardiner in the Journal for Learning Through Music

(volume I, II) (music-in-education.org)30 Metropolitan Opera Guild (New York), Chicago Arts Partnerships in Education, Music in Schools Today (San Francisco), Learning Through Music Consulting

Group, Los Angeles Music Center, New England Conservatory, Georgia State University, Florida Atlantic University and their public school partners.

R E F E R E N C E S

Burton, J., Horowitz, R. & Abeles, H. (2000). Learning in and through the arts: the question of transfer. In E. Fiske (Ed.), Champions ofChange: The Impact of the Arts on Learning, 228-257. Washington, D.C.: The Arts Education Partnership and the President’sCommittee on the Arts and the Humanities.

Burnaford, G., Aprill, A., & Weiss, C. (Eds.) (2001). Renaissance in the Classroom: Arts Integration and Meaningful Learning. NewJersey: Erlbaum Associates, Publishers.

Butzlaff, R. (2000). “Can Music Be Used to Teach Reading.” Journal of Research in Music Education, 44, (2).

Catterall, J. (2002). The arts and the transfer of learning. In Deasy, D. (Ed.), Critical Links: Learning in the Arts and Student Academicand Social Development (151-157). Washington, D.C.: Arts Education Partnership. [aep-arts.org].

Corbett, D., McKenney, M., Noblit, G. & Wilson, B. (2001). The A+ Schools Program: School, Community, Teacher, and Student Effects.Report #6 in a series of seven Policy Reports Summarizing the Four-Year Pilot of A+ Schools in North Carolina. Winston-Salem, NC:Kenan Institute of the Arts.

Dillon, Sam (2006). Schools Cut Back Subjects to Push Reading and Math. New York Times, March, 2006.

Deasy D. (Ed.), (2002). Critical Links: Learning in the Arts and Student Academic and Social Development. Washington, D.C. : ArtsEducation Partnership (http://www.aep-arts.org).

Fiske, E. (Ed.), (2000). Champions of Change: The Impact of the Arts on Learning. Washington, D.C.: The Arts Education Partnershipand the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities.

Fogarty, R., Perkins, D. & Barell, J. (1992). How to Teach for Transfer, Palatine, Illinois, Skylight Publishing.

Graziano, A., Peterson, M. & Shaw, G. L. (1999). Enhanced learning of proportional math through music training and spatial-temporaltraining. Neurological Research, 21, 139-152.

FOLLOW-UP EXPERIMENTS

WITH REGARD TO THIS

STUDY SHOULD

THEREFORE FOCUS ON

THE EXPANDING ROLES

AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF

MUSIC TEACHERS AS

CURRICULUM,

ASSESSMENT, AND

ACTION RESEARCH

AGENTS FOR INNOVATION

IN SCHOOLS.

Scripp & Reider/New Ventures Journal for Music-in-Education 2007 380Scripp & Reider/New Ventures Journal for Music-in-Education 2007 379

Herbert, Douglas (2004). “Finding the Will and the Way To Make the Arts a Core Subject: Thirty Years of Mixed Progress.” The StateEducation Standard, Vol 4, No. 4, Washington DC: National Association of State Boards of Education.

Hetland, L. (2000 a). “Listening to Music Enhances Spatial-Temporal Reasoning: Evidence for the “Mozart Effect.” Journal of Researchin Music Education, 44, (2),

Hetland, L. (2000 b). “Learning to Make Music Enhances Spatial Reasoning.” Journal of Research in Music Education, 44, (2).

Hope, S. (2000). The Integrity of Music Integration, in the Journal for Learning Through Music vol. 1.

Perkins, D. & Solomon, G. (1988). Teaching for Transfer. Educational Leadership.

Perkins, D. & Solomon, G. (1984). Rocky Roads to Transfer: Rethinking Mechanisms of a Neglected Phenomenon.

Rabkin, N. & Redmond, R. (2004). Putting the Arts in the Picture: Reframing Education in the 21st Century, Columbia College Chicago.

Rabkin N. & Redmond, R. (2006). The Arts Make a Difference, Education Leadership (February).

Rauscher, F., Shaw G., Levine, L., Wright., Dennis, W., & Newcomb, R. (Neurological Research, 1997). “Music Training Causes Long-term Enhancement of Preschool Children’s Spatial-Temporal Reasoning.”

Rauscher. F. & Zupan, M. (Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 2000). “Classroom Keyboard Instruction Improves KindergartenChildren’s Spatial-Temporal Performance: A Field Experiment.”

Scripp, L. (2002). An Overview of Research on Music and Learning. In Deasy, D. (Ed.), Critical Links: Learning in the Arts and StudentAcademic and Social Development. Washington, D.C. : Arts Education Partnership.

Scripp, L., Davidson, L., & Keppel, P. (2000). Journal for Learning Through Music issue: Why Integrate Music Across the ElementarySchool Curriculum? [nec-musicined.org].

Scripp, L. & Keppel, P. (2003). Journal for Learning Through Music issue: What Makes Music Work for Public Education: InnovativePrograms and Research from a National Perspective? [nec-musicined.org].

Scripp, L. (2003). Critical Links, Next Steps: An Evolving Conception of Music and Learning in Public School Education in Scripp &Keppel, Eds., Journal for Learning Through Music (New England Conservatory), Boston, MA (pp. 28-31).

Scripp, L. & Subotnik, R. (2003). Dual directions for innovation in music: Integrating conceptions of giftedness into general education-al practice and enhancing innovation on the part of musically gifted students. In L. Shavinina, (Ed.) International Handbook onInnovation, Elsevier Science Services, Pergamon.

Scripp, L. (2002). Overview of Research on Music and Learning in Critical Links: Learning in the Arts and Student Academic and SocialDevelopment report [Deasy, Ed., 2004; aep-arts.org].

Standley, J. M. (1996). A meta-analysis on the effects of music as reinforcement for education /therapy objectives. Journal of Researchin Music Education, 44, (2), 105-33.

Vaughn, K. (2000). Music and mathematics: modest support for the oft-claimed relationship. The Journal of Aesthetic Education, 34,(3-4), 149-166.

R E F E R E N C E S

The musical rhythm pattern wall at MIENC LLSN School Empresa Elementary in Oceanside, California, is musically analogous to 'word walls'seen in many elementary schools. The 'wall' challenges students to internalize literacy processes inherent in language learning, while integratingthese processes with their parallel musical counterpart, such as silent hearing (of music) vs. silent comprehension (of text). Empresa studentswork daily to make connections between speech and rhythm, providing evidence that understanding shared fundamental concepts between liter-acy and musical language can be enforced through initiatives like the Music Ventures professional development program led by Anne Fennell.

Documents

New Ventures in Integrated Teaching and Learning: Evidence for