Incorporating Music Into The Economics Classroom: A Comparison Of Two Teaching Methods

Abstract

There is always something mysterious about music as it affects us so powerfully. This paper looks at the role of music in enhancing students' understanding of economic concepts, such as money and inflation. Music lyrics were used as a source for teaching some economic concepts to a group of Office Management (OM) students. A quiz was given to test the students’ knowledge of these concepts. A comparison of marks was made with another group of Quantity Surveying (QS) students who were taught the same economic concepts but without promoting music integration in the classroom. Both groups of students were given the same quiz and both groups were taking Principles of Economics, a course for non-business majors. There was a difference in learning outcomes between the two groups of students. Students learning economic concepts in music recorded a higher value of mean and mode in their results compared with the other group of students who were taught the same economic concepts without music as a resource. The t-test result did not show any significant difference between male and female students. The quiz results are not affected by gender factor. The same conclusion also applied to the stream factor. The t-test result did not show any significant difference between science and arts stream students, hence the quiz results are not affected by stream factor. This study shows that music incorporated into the classroom can help students understand concepts better and the quiz results seem to give support to the theoretical claim that music helps students concentrate better.