following the transition to secondary school?
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Frequently
played musical instruments |
Children's 'Top Ten'
There is a mismatch, most pronounced among boys, between the instruments children would like to play and what they actually play in Y6 and Y7. That is perhaps no more surprising than that the most popular instruments for boys are drums (25%) and electric guitar (24%). In practice, 9% and 3% respectively have their wish fulfilled!
The most popular instruments for girls are, in this order: piano, flute, keyboard, sax (presumably alto), drums, violin, clarinet, electric guitar, guitar and harp.
For boys: drums, electric guitar, keyboard, sax, piano, guitar, electric bass, bagpipes (2%), trumpet and flute. In this survey, no boy gets to play the bagpipes, the sax, the electric bass or the flute.
In practice, the recorder is top of the list of instruments actually played by girls and boys.
Instruments and gender differences following transition to secondary school
This section includes some of the most interesting discoveries in the research. The Practitioners Report includes a table which shows the number of children playing each instrument as their main instrument in their last year in primary school (Y6) and at the end of the first year (Y7) in secondary school.
| Overall,
42% of those originally playing instruments were still playing one
year later. Girls have more staying power than boys (48% as opposed
to 35%). The most marked gender differences appear for traditionally
"masculine" instruments. The number of girls playing those
instruments hardly drops from primary to secondary. But there is a
spectacular fall in boys playing these instruments, viz trumpet, drums
and guitar. The report draws attention to "the curious and initially paradoxical finding that boys who start traditionally 'feminine' or 'neutral' instruments at primary school are more likely to continue with them than boys who start traditionally 'masculine' instruments. However, on reflection this makes sense: boys taking-up 'feminine' instruments at primary school have accumulated considerable motivation and support to challenge gender-stereotypes, leading to greater long-term commitments." |
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Children's motivation for playing musical instruments
Competence belief and values: these are children's own evaluation (informed by feedback from parents, friends and teachers) of how good they are at playing an instrument. They also include how good they think they would be at playing a new instrument. Importantly, what children believe here has been shown to predict achievement, goals and the effort a child will put into an activity.
Values are associated with their levels of interest, importance and utility attached to playing an instrument; for example,
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"I find playing very boring/very interesting":
"For me, being good at playing an instrument is…not at all important/very important":
"When I get older, being able to play an instrument would be …not very useful/very useful".
In short, the higher children's competence beliefs and values, the more likely they are to play an instrument and continue playing after the change to secondary education.
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