The relationship between attitudes towards music and achievement

This paper focuses on attitude towards Music and achievement in primary school. The author attempted to establish the existence of the relationship between pupils' attitude towards music and achievement in their end of year music assessment. It is based on a study that sought to: identify pupils' most prevalent attitudes towards Music; establish whether pupils' attitudes towards Music were related to their achievement, and the extent to which the attitudes were correlated to achievement. Pupils' most prevalent positive attitudes were centred on the teachers’ methodology or the approach they adopted in their teaching. Negative attitudes touched on the teachers’ self-concept as well as their attitudes towards their efforts to learn music. Teachers’ inability to play music instruments was also an issue that created negative attitude basically because of lack of adequate exposure. This paper concluded that pupils were generally sensitive to the impression the Music teacher held on their efforts towards music. Majority of the pupils were positively inclined towards Music. Findings showed that there is a positive correlation between pupils' attitude towards music and their achievement. The author recommends further research to establish existence and influence of other variables that contribute to music instruction and learning.