Can songs really teach science?
Most people have an intuitive sense that songs help encode information. After all, you can probably remember the words to songs that you have not heard since childhood. Advertisers have been associating brands with tunes and phrases for years for this reason. There is not a great deal of research on the efficacy of using songs to teach science, but there is no shortage of wider research from neuroscience, psychology and sociology suggesting that it could be very effective. This is intended to be a brief run down of that research.
We know that music affects the brain in numerous ways, not least because brain scans of people listening to music show excitation in many different areas connected to language, emotion, and pattern recognition. It is perhaps unsurprising then that learning musical instruments correlates with increased literacy and numeracy skills and some instruments with better spatiotemporal reasoning too, skills that are all handy within science lessons. This is most likely because there are many overlapping, underlying brain processes; the musical scale is based upon ratios, chords take particular shapes linking to geometry, and tonal differences are important in our learning of language. The Mozart Effect is an observed phenomenon where people have a temporary boost in spatiotemporal reasoning after listening to certain types of music. This seems like a good reason to start a science lesson with a song although more research is needed to know if indeed it would have a significant effect on achievement.
When it comes to memory encoding and recall, skills that are essential in our exam obsessed education system, there are many reasons to believe that songs can be useful. Cognitive psychology tells us that having numerous associations with a piece of information helps a lot. Songs can do this by associating concepts with melody, rhythm, and rhyme. With a song you can even help students to embed information kinaesthetically by associating information to dance moves, and getting more movement into lessons is great for those students who struggle to focus for long periods at a time. We also know that memories are formed more strongly, when associated with stronger emotional responses and music can produce these responses far more effectively than a text book might. Chunking information is another known way to aid the storage and recall of memory. Songs do this very effectively by splitting information up into verses and choruses. Lastly, repetition is incredibly important for encoding of information. Students get annoyed if you repeat the same thing over and over again, but most people are happy to listen to songs more than once. If they weren’t nobody would go to concerts to hear songs they’ve heard before. Furthermore, once a song is in your head, your brain will often play it on repeat in what is known as an ear worm, meaning your students might be revising even if they actively do not want to!
Other learning theories also provide a good basis for using song in the science classroom. Multiple intelligences, suggests that there are numerous ways in which humans understand the world and Gardner, who originated the theory, highlighted seven: linguistic, logical-mathematical, visual-spacial, body-kinaesthetic, musical-rhythmic, interpersonal and intrapersonal. These are by no means exhaustive, but science teaching normally only utilises the first three or four. It is natural that some students have a greater ability to use some intelligences over others and there is no reason why they cannot all be used in a lesson. We want a diversity of thinking styles within the sciences, and this is perhaps an argument for incorporating song into the classroom, as singing together about science, can effectively utilise all of these intelligences simultaneously, giving every student a broader range of ways to access content making science more accessible for all.
For deep learning of scientific concepts, constructivist learning theory should also be taken into account, in which it is hypothesised that students construct their own understanding by assimilating new ideas into the schemas of how the world works that they already believe. Simply listening to or singing songs may not provide many opportunities for this, but lyrical analysis does. Thinking about whether lyrics are describing applications or explanations of scientific ideas, or suggesting other ways to structure the song that might make narrative sense force students to really grapple with the content in front of them and to construct new schemas. Writing lyrics is a great deal harder but as a result, it encourages deep learning by forcing students to construct their own understanding in a more intensive way.
Finally, recent studies have highlighted the difficulty of increasing diversity within science participation and that having higher ‘science capital’ is predicative of success and continued participation. Science capital is a broad term encompassing the scientific literacy, out-of-school experiences, attitudes, and social capital within the scientific community. In short, it helps if students can see science as being for them in the future so placing value on the cultural capital that students with low science capital bring to class have is a way to address the reproduction of inequality. Most students already have some kind of musical identity as a listener, so songs can help these students to feel like they have something to contribute and that they belong. And if a sense of belonging is important, it is no coincidence that most religions, football clubs and nationalities have their own songs. Singing together fosters a sense of community and belonging like nothing else.
These are just some of the reasons to bring songs into the classroom, but if nothing else, students like variety, and most like a music video or two to brighten up the lesson. By no means am I suggesting replacing traditional teaching with a purely song-based approach. Science involves practical skills, technical writing, and problem solving too, but making some time for song can save time later on by having students engaged, and allowing the information to stick.