This study aimed to promote social and emotional learning (SEL) in middle school music classes by designing and implementing a classroom concert project based on the RULER approach. To this end, prior research on emotional education and SEL, as well a...
This study aimed to promote social and emotional learning (SEL) in middle school music classes by designing and implementing a classroom concert project based on the RULER approach. To this end, prior research on emotional education and SEL, as well as project-based learning, was reviewed. The general procedures of classroom concert activities presented in the 2022 revised music curriculum and middle school music textbooks were analyzed, and an eight-stage project curriculum was designed by integrating the five components and tools of RULER into the flow of music instruction. The program was implemented over nine class periods with second-year male students at a middle school in Incheon, and data were collected from 86 students who provided consent. The students’ social-emotional and musical responses observed during implementation were analyzed qualitatively. Based on the four domains of the Korean SEL framework and an additional music-related domain, four analytic categories were established for interpretation: emotion recognition and understanding, conflict and resolution, collaboration and community experience, and musical expression and communication.
The findings are as follows. First, through emotion-vocabulary exploration and Mood Meter–based activities linking emotion and music, students showed an expanding pattern of emotion recognition and understanding. As they expressed emotions with more nuanced vocabulary and interpreted them in relation to musical elements, emotion understanding was observed to broaden into musical thinking. Cases were also identified in which students attempted to regulate their emotions and developed strategies that could be used in emotionally challenging moments. Second, although actual conflicts occurred during group activities, responses related to relational competence were observed, including attempts to resolve problems through dialogue by applying the Blueprint and Meta-Moment. Students tended to pause and respond by recalling their “best self,” and greater consideration of others’ emotions was increasingly observed. Third, planning and completing a performance centered on emotion was associated with an increasing pattern of collaboration and community experience. During rehearsals and performances, an emotional climate of encouraging peers and accepting mistakes was formed, which was accompanied by a growing recognition of community values through the pursuit of shared goals. Fourth, selecting and performing pieces based on emotion interpretation was related to patterns of deepened musical expressiveness and understanding of musical elements, and positive responses regarding musical expression and communication were identified.
This study is meaningful in that it implemented a RULER-based classroom concert project in an actual middle school setting and examined how emotion-centered SEL can be enacted in music classes. In particular, it extends previous work that has primarily relied on the CASEL five competencies or remained at the level of proposing programs by designing and implementing an integrated instructional model that combines music education with the Korean SEL framework. Overall, the RULER-based classroom concert project elicited positive responses across students’ social-emotional competencies and musical competencies, with especially notable responses in the relational and community domains. However, due to the short-term nature of the project, there were limitations in discussing long-term changes in the mental-health domain. Finally, the study reaffirms that music, grounded in its emotional and artistic characteristics, is a suitable subject for realizing SEL. The classroom concert project enabled students to interpret and embody group-selected emotions through music; for adolescents who may find it difficult to express emotions verbally, music functioned as a channel for expressing and sharing inner states. Moreover, music activities that allow diverse presentation formats suggest potential contributions to expanding SEL experiences by individualizing and diversifying learners’ expression.
This study is expected to be extended through application studies involving diverse regions, grade levels, and student populations, as well as through integrative research that combines music education with SEL program strategies.
Keywords: Social and Emotional Learning(SEL), RULER approach, classroom concert, project-based learning, Korean SEL framework