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Version 1.3 – Updated November 2024

Background music

Overview

  • Influence: Background music
  • Domain: Teaching Strategies
  • Sub-Domain: Instructional strategies
  • Potential to Accelerate Student Achievement: Likely to have a small positive impact
  • Influence Definition: This relates to playing background music while students are working. Most often it involves low-decibel, instrumental/non-popular background music with an intention to decrease pulse rate, improve classroom behavior, and improve performance on learning tasks.

Evidence

  • Number of meta-analyses: 2
  • Number of studies: 79
  • Number of students: 3,104
  • Number of effects: 79
  • Weighted mean effect size: 0.08
  • Robustness index: 2

Meta-Analyses

Meta-Analyses
Journal Title Author First Author's Country Article Name Year Published Variable Number of Studies Number of Students Number of Effects Effect Size
Journal of Aesthetic Education Hetland USA Listening to music enhances spatial-temporal reasoning: Evidence for the" Mozart Effect". 2000 Listening to music 36 0 36 0.23
Psychology of Music Kampfe, Sedlmeier, & Renkewitz Germany The impact of background music on adult listeners: A meta-analysis 2011 Music as background 43 3,104 43 -0.04
TOTAL/AVERAGE 79 3,104 79 0.10
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