Early and intensive music education in disadvantaged neighbourhoods
Early and intensive music education in disadvantaged neighbourhoods
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CRIS Scientific Seminar 2022-2023
Friday, 17th March 2023, 11:30 am
Sciences Po (1, place Saint-Thomas-d'Aquin) - Room K008
Early and intensive music education in disadvantaged neighbourhoods:
what impacts, for whom? Evidence from a quasi-experiment
Julie Pereira
PhD Student, Sciences Po - CRIS
This presentation explores the impact of a music education program on the development of cognitive abilities of young students aged 4-7 years.
This program, implemented in a set of 40 pre-elementary schools located in disadvantaged areas of Val d'Oise, relies on regular violin training during standard school hours.
The main rationale for this project is based on the widespread belief — though unequally backed by the scientific literature — that learning a musical instrument improves general cognitive skills.
Based on a quasi-experimental research design combining entropy balancing and multilevel mixed effects models, two main results already emerge midway into the program.
- First, the program has a substantial impact on some specific skills related to fine motricity and reading, as well as perceived conscientiousness ; while displaying no significant impact on other outcomes.
- Second, the magnitude of this impact varies according to students' social background: maximum for students from low SES backgrounds, and minimal for students from higher SES backgrounds.
Evidence gathered from this study show mixed results regarding the impact of arts education in general, and instrumental musical training in particular, on educational inequalities. On one hand, cognitive near transfer has been demonstrated, especially for the most socially disadvantaged students, which tend to confirm DiMaggio’s cultural mobility theory. However, on the other hand, our research does not show any evidence of far transfer, to numeracy or logic for example.
These results thus suggest that benefits from such arts education programs could be limited to a set of skills closely related to the specific skills being trained.
