NCU research points to reasons students fail music
Paul Clarke/Gleaner Writer
DESPITE THE country’s legacy in music, some secondary-school students are underperforming in music at the academic level, and researchers at the Northern Caribbean University (NCU) in Mandeville, Manchester, may have identified why.
Lead researcher Kadian Northover explained her findings as important in understanding the mindset of students, parents as well as the teachers.
“This study employed the ethnographic instrumental case study design in identifying the issues which surrounded the central phenomenon of underperformance in the music exams of the participants we studied,” she said.
Northover, a graduate student in the College of Education and Leadership at NCU, was among a group of researchers from the university who participated in a Gleaner Editors’ Forum at the newspaper’s North Street offices in Kingston last Thursday.
The primary aim of the research, she told
The Gleaner, was to garner from the selected students the underlying causes of their failure in the subject area, with the hope of effecting needed change.
Data was gathered using established qualitative data-collection methods, comprising questionnaires, focus groups and interviews.
“School X and Class X were sampled using the purposeful and critical sampling approach. The entire first form totals approximately 172 students. Prior knowledge revealed a failure of the majority of the first form to meet the school’s improvement target (SIP),” said Northover.
“And whereas Class X was critically sampled, an initial 30 parents, out of the sample class of 42, were approached. However, only nine consented for themselves and their child or ward to participate in the study,” she continued.
THE SAMPLE
Data was collected from key stakeholders (parents, students, and the teacher) using qualitative research methods. The data was corroborated using triangulation between sources.
The study showed that several factors may have led to the first-form students underperforming on their music examinations. These include, Northover said, students’ attitude, methodological issues, the transition from primary to high school, culture shock, parental influence or lack of parental involvement.
“We found, also, that there exists a teacherstudent relations issue. One young lady said that she was afraid to even talk to her teacher,” Northover stated.
She said that while the research may seem a simple exercise, it was a study that she is certain will bring about a change in fortunes for the first -form students, who will begin to see the real value of music even in other areas of school life.
“It is proven elsewhere that music has tangible value even in other subject areas, including mathematics and other sciences. It is one area that we take very serious at NCU and hope to leverage to the wider Jamaica and the world,” Northover stated.
“Not a lot of persons know that musicians are elite people, in that both sides of their brain work at the same time, especially where the piano is concerned. The pianist uses both sides of his brain simultaneously,” she said.
Northover explained that the research found that issues such as the student’s attitude, and the attitude of parents, towards the subject; the method of preparation for exams; how the class was being managed; and the relationship between the teacher and the student had an impact on the overall music achievement of students in first form.
The researchers identified that parental influence also played a part in academic achievement. Aspects of the teacher’s methodology also hindered student achievement.