Urban Kindergarten Parents’ Beliefs about Exposure to Music and Art and Early Learning
- 1 Hunter College of the City University of New York, New York, USA
Abstract
Previous research over the past decade has demonstrated a strong relationship between children’s exposure to the arts and educational outcomes. The purpose of the present study was to examine low-income urban kindergarten parents’ beliefs concerning the relationship between music and art young children’s school performance, behavior, and participation in the arts. Parents of 215 children attending kindergarten in one of two Title 1 public schools in New York City completed a survey concerning their beliefs about the effects of music or art on their children’s learning. Of the 215 parents, 73 (45.2% with children receiving music) and (16.4% with children receiving art) completed the survey. The results revealed that parents in both groups perceived music and art as influencing academic skills, with all parents seeing improvement in children’s attention to detail. For children who received music training, parents observed an improvement in their children’s listening skills and pattern recognition. Parents ’ perceived the most significant improvement in their ability to recognize shapes for children who received art training. Findings from this study suggest the need for encouraging parents from low-income communities to support and advocate for their children to have exposure to the arts during the early childhood years.
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