Individualized Instruction, Student Achievement, and Dropout in an Urban Elementary Instrumental Music Program

Abstract

In this study involving fifth- and sixth-grade students in an urban school system, both individual instruction within instrumental music classrooms and student subject variables were examined for their influence on an audiovisual music reading test, a performance sight-reading test, and attrition from the music program. When compared to group instruction, individualized instruction resulted in significantly superior scores on the performance test for students of higher than normal academic reading skills. No other instructional interactions or main effects were found. Of the subject variables used in the analyses, only the students' academic reading achievement and socioeconomic status were able to account consistently for unique and nontrivial proportions of variance in the three dependent variables. Scores on the two measures of achievement and dropout were not predictable by race or sex, and the students' grade level was either a nonsignificant or minor factor in the analysis. Differences in teachers also had virtually no effect on student achievement or attrition.