The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of integrated music appreciation activities on young children's emotional quotient, or EQ. The following hypotheses were formulated:
1. A preschooler group that is engaged in integrated music appr...
The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of integrated music appreciation activities on young children's emotional quotient, or EQ. The following hypotheses were formulated:
1. A preschooler group that is engaged in integrated music appreciation activities might have a better emotional quotient than the other preschooler group that is engaged in regular music appreciation activities.
2. Young children's emotional quotient might be different according to gender.
The subjects in this study were 50 young children at the age of 5 in Western age, who attended K kindergarten in Pyeongchon-dong, Anyang. An experimental group and a control group were set up with 25 children each. The experimental group participated in integrated music appreciation activities for six weeks, twice a week, and the control group just listened to music and had a talk. Before the experiment, pretest was conducted to see whether or not the two groups were equivalent, and it's found that there was no significant gap between the two groups in emotional quotient. After the experiment was implemented for six weeks, posttest was carried out in the same way as the pretest.
The instrument used in this study was Baron and Parker(2000)'s Emotional Quotient Inventory, or EQI, which was modified by Lee Yeoung-seok, Lee Jeong-hwa and Kim Mi-hyeong(2001) to be valid and adapted by the Future Early Childhood Education Research Institute (2001) to fit in Korean circumstances. After pretest was conducted, the experiment was fulfilled, which was followed by posttest. For data handling, SPSS Windows 10.0 program was employed, and two-way ANCOVA was utilized by setting the pretest results as a covariable.
The findings of the study were as follows:
First, as for the effect of the integrated music appreciation activities on emotional quotient, the experimental group got higher scores in EQ than the control group that just listened to music.
Second, the gender of the preschoolers made no difference to their EQ. This implied that the integrated music appreciation activities had the same effect on both boys and girls.
Third, among EQ subfactors, there was no significant gap in emotional awareness. If the integrated music appreciation activities are fulfilled as part of regular curriculum, it will serve to improve emotional awareness.
In the future, students should learn music in an integrated manner, instead of merely listening to music, by inquiring, singing, making a physical expression and playing musical instruments. The attempt by this study is expected to serve as an opportunity for kindergarten to offer more efficient and diverse education to preschoolers.