The effects of creating activities on the learning of selected musical concepts and students' learning attitudes

This study investigated the effects of creative musical activities on Taiwanese students' learning of musical concepts. It also evaluated whether the author-designed creating activities were feasible based on students' opinions, their abilities to perform tasks, and teachers' abilities to teach the activities.;The methodology was a quasi-experimental, pretest-posttest control group design, which employed a random assignment to one of three instructional approaches of three pre-existing intact classes from each of two participating music teachers. The first approach incorporated creating, listening, moving, performing, analyzing, and reading activities. The second approach incorporated similar activities except for the creating activities. The third approach was a traditional one and functioned as a control for the experiment. A total of 206 seventh-grade participants received music instruction for six weeks, two 45-minute sessions per week.;Students' recall abilities and their abilities to apply learned skills to analyzing music were assessed through a pre- and posttest of listening. Results showed that creating activities in the first approach significantly developed these two types of abilities in both males and females. However, the development of learning-transfer abilities did not occur when students were taught by the other two approaches. The second approach improved only female students' performance and only on the recall tasks. Students taught by the traditional approach did not improve either of the recall or application abilities. Instructed by the first approach, students with no outside musical training developed both types of abilities, but students who had outside training only developed recall abilities. Students' feedback, collected through questionnaires, showed that creating activities increased students' preference for some activities, significantly contributed to students' musicianship, and increased students' interest in learning music. Teachers' journals indicated that students were able to conduct creating lessons with the given strategies. Students' better achievement, positive attitudes, and enjoyment in creating activities encouraged teachers to continue teaching creating activities and to seek related in-service training opportunities.;Teaching creating activities was concluded to be an effective way of teaching music because it crucially developed abilities to transfer learning and because students enjoyed it. However, music teachers seemed to need more related pedagogical training.