Since March 14, 2020, Spanish citizens have been confined to their homes due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Participating in musical activities has been associated with reduced anxiety and increased subjective wellbeing. The aim of this study is to analyze how Spanish citizens used music during the lockdown period. We also study perceptions of the impact music has in everyday life, in particular examining the respondents’ insights into the effects of listening to music in situations of isolation. The (...) study was conducted using the MUSIVID19 questionnaire administered to a total of 1868 Spanish citizens. The results indicate that during lockdown, respondents perceived an increase in the time they devoted to musical activities such as listening, singing, dancing or playing an instrument. The participants also reported using music to cope with the lockdown, finding that it helped them to relax, escape, raise their mood or keep them company. The findings suggest an improvement in their perception of the value of music in personal and social wellbeing during the lockdown. However, the study reveals significant differences in the use and perceptions of music according to respondents’ personal situations. Age and feelings of vulnerability may lead to more conservative uses of musical practice and to more moderate perceptions of the positive values of music. (shrink)

In recent years, there has been a growing interest in scholars and practitioners to explore the factors that lead to an improvement in Students’ psychological wellbeing. Due to the tough challenges faced by students during their academic life, severe issues of stress, anxiety, and other mental health issues emerge, which affect their academic performance and have a long-lasting impact on their future careers. The pandemic accelerates the stress levels, anxiety, and mental issues of students. The main purpose of this study (...) was to explore how music education impacts on Students’ psychological wellbeing and academic performance. This study also investigates the mediating effect of self-esteem and self-efficacy. To the best of our knowledge, there has been little to no study exploring the relationship of music education on the psychological wellbeing and performance of students, especially from the perspective of Asian countries. This study was conducted in undergraduate and graduate institutions of China. This study was quantitative in nature and data were collected from 319 respondents. The structural equation modeling technique was employed for data analysis. Results reveal that music education has a significant positive impact on psychological wellbeing, which improves Students’ academic performance. Moreover, psychological wellbeing also has a significant and positive impact on Students’ academic performance. Self-efficacy and self-esteem significantly mediate the relationship between music education and psychological wellbeing. The findings of this study open new avenues for future research in music education and psychological wellbeing. This study suggests that the policymakers and practitioners should make such policies that encourage educational institutes to adopt music education to improve the psychological wellbeing of students. (shrink)

In this contribution, we draw on findings from a non-formal, community music project to elaborate on the relationship between the concept ofeudaimonia, as defined by Seligman, the interactive dimensions of collective free improvisation, and the concept of collaborative creativity. The project revolves around The Ostend Street Orkestra (TOSO), a music ensemble within which homeless adults and individuals with a psychiatric or alcohol/drug related background engage in collective musical improvisation. Between 2017 and 2019 data was collected through open interviews and video (...) recordings of rehearsals and performances. Participant data was analyzed through inductive analysis based on the principles of grounded theory. One interesting finding was the discrepancy in the participant interviews between social relationships indicative of a negative affect about social group interaction versus strong feelings of group coherence and belonging. Video recordings of performances and rehearsals showed clear enjoyment and pleasure while playing music. Alongside verbal reflection through one-on-one interviews video recordings and analysis of moment-to moment observations should be used, in order to capture the complexity of community music projects with homeless people. The initial open coding was aligned with the five elements of the PERMA model. Overall, we observed more focus on Relationship (sense of belonging), Engagement (flow in rehearsals and performances) and Meaning (belonging to something greater than yourself) and less on Positive Emotion and Accomplishment (goal setting). (shrink)

The onset of the Covid-19 pandemic has disrupted the lives of families in the United States and across the world, impacting parent mental health and stress, and in turn, the parent-child relationship. Music is a common parent-child activity and has been found to positively impact relationships, but little is known about music’s role in parent-child interactions during a pandemic. The current study utilized an online questionnaire to assess the use of music in the home of young children and their parents (...) in the United States and Canada during Covid-19 and its relationship with parents’ affective attachment with their child. Musical activity was high for both parents and children. Parents reported using music for both emotion regulation and to socially connect with their children. Parent-child musical engagement was associated with parent-child attachment, controlling for relevant parent variables including parent distress, efficacy, education, and parent-child engagement in non-musical activities. These results indicate that music may be an effective tool for building and maintaining parent-child relationships during a period of uncertainty and change. (shrink)

A wide range of countries decided to go into lockdown to contain the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic of 2020, a setting separating people and restricting their movements. We investigated how musicians dealt with this sudden restriction in mobility. Responses of 234 people were collected. The majority of respondents (95%) resided in Belgium or the Netherlands. Results indicated a decrease of 79% of live music making in social settings during lockdown compared with before lockdown. In contrast, an increase of 264% was (...) demonstrated for online joint music making. However, results showed that most respondents were largely or even completely unaccustomed with specialized platforms for online joint music making (e.g., JamKazam, Jamulus). Respondents reported to mostly use well-known video-conferencing platforms such as Zoom and Skype when playing together virtually. However, when such video-conferencing platforms were used, they were often not employed for synchronized playing and were generally reported to insufficiently deal with latency issues. Furthermore, respondents depending on music making as their main source of income explored online real-time methods significantly more than those relying on other income sources. Results also demonstrated an increase of 93% in the use of alternative remote joint music-making methods (e.g., recording parts separately and subsequently circulating these digital recordings). All in all, results of this study provide a more in-depth view on joint music making during the first weeks of lockdown induced by the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020, and demonstrate users’ perceptions of performance and usability of online real-time platforms as well as alternative methods for musical interaction. (shrink)

Digital systems are reshaping how we engage with music as a sounding dimension of cultural life that is capable of being transformed into a commodity. At the same time, as we increasingly engage through digital media with each other and with virtual others, attributes of music that underpin our capacity to interact communicatively are disregarded or overlooked within those media. Even before the advent of technologies of music reproduction, music was susceptible to assimilation into economic acts of exchange. What is (...) new in the digital world is the way in which modes of engagement with music are themselves being absorbed into an economy built on the datafication of virtual acts and the digital shadows of casual preferences. But music is more than just sounds that are culturally sanctioned as musical. Music is manifested as behaviours, and in interactive behaviour. Music is participatory as well as presentational, and in the participatory mode—involving collective, non-specialist, interactive real-time music-making—has significant individual and social consequences. Yet music as real-time participation is largely absent from the virtual world, with potential social costs that remain to be understood. Moreover, our everyday, face-to-face communicative—conversational—interactions are imbued with patterns between interlocutors that are musical, in that they share features with what we are happy to describe as “music”. These features are presently lacking in digital systems designed to subserve communicative functions, and this paper will consider the significant implications for our interactions with machines to which their successful incorporation into voice–user interfaces would give rise. (shrink)

Worldwide, children face adverse childhood experiences, being exposed to risks ranging from, exposure to political violence and forced migration over the deleterious effects of climate change, to unsafe cultural practices. As a consequence, children that seek refuge or migrate to European countries are extremely vulnerable, often struggling with integration in school, peer community, and their broader social circle. This multifaceted struggle can derive from external factors, such as the adaptation process and contact with other children, or internal factors such as (...) the fears and trauma that every child carries within them since they departed from their homeland. To bounce, grow, connect, and create in both adversity and opportunity, children need to build resilience, i.e., the capacity of an individual to maintain stable psychological functioning throughout the course of adversity. On the one hand, building resilience requires developing a set of individual skills, such as self-control, emotion regulation, self-esteem, and agency. On the other hand, building resilience involves developing social skills, connection, and close relationships. In this theoretical contribution, we review and map existing research to argue that activities based on the combination of music and movement has a strong potential to intensively build resilience. First, we connect the concepts of resilience and eudaimonia, based on the protective factors and key components of resilience. Then we discuss how music and movement, separately, may contribute to building resilience. Next, drawing on the basic mechanisms of musical sense-making, we argue that through combining music and movement, children engage in empowering musical sense-making processes that support building resilience, and in this way, support them to grow together and deeply experience eudaimonic values such as self-awareness, confidence and self-esteem, personal autonomy, connection, belonging, and bonding. Finally, we connect theory to practice. Based on the presented theoretical elaborations and on the authors’ experience as practitioners, we propose a set of guiding principles for the design of movement-based musical activities that foster the internal and external factors necessary to build resilience. (shrink)

In many countries, life expectancy has increased considerably in past years, and the importance of finding ways to ensure good levels of wellbeing through aging has become more important than ever. Arts based interventions are promising in this respect, and the literature suggests that musical activities can reduce isolation and anxiety and foster feelings of achievement and self-confidence. The present study examined the effects of group music making programs on the health and wellbeing of nursing home residents in Southern Switzerland. (...) A team of professional and student musicians delivered 10 weekly music sessions in four nursing homes, focusing on singing, rhythm-based activities with percussion instruments, and listening to short, live performances. 22 participants (16 women and 6 men, aged 72-95 years, mean 83.6, SD ± 6.9) were recruited to take part in the study and were interviewed after the last music session. The data were analyzed with thematic analysis to investigate how residents experienced group music making and its effects. The findings show that the music programs were beneficial for residents’ wellbeing. Music plays an important role in their lives, both in their pasts and presently, and being involved in musical activities offers engagement and novelty in daily life, providing learning opportunities and facilitating interpersonal relationships. Moreover, these results were due to interactions with the musicians involved. Residents particularly appreciated the opportunity to listen to live performances as part of the sessions. This study suggests that nursing home residents value music and that music based interventions play an important and direct role in enhancing their wellbeing. (shrink)

Studies have shown that teachers’ wellbeing has a positive effect on teachers’ learning quality and learners’ performance. Nevertheless, teaching is a stressful and exhausting profession at all academic level with special difficulties about the nature of language education. Tension and fear are still classic challenges in learning, though the concepts such as hope and optimism are core issues in assisting teachers to feel happy during instruction and work longer. The present review makes efforts to provide the most current confirmation on (...) the interface of hope and optimism with educational issues since they are progressively documented as significant emotional capitals for educational success, job growth, and presentation. It is worth mentioning that the current review of research can benefit educational administrations, and other stakeholders and officials in the educational community to contemplate the functions of constructive emotions in the process of learning to decrease and even diminish stress and apprehension that consequently lead to flourishing. (shrink)

This paper presents a model for the implementation of educational activities involving musical improvisation that is based on a review of the literature on the psychology of music. Psychology of music is a complex field of research in which quantitative and qualitative methods have been employed involving participants ranging from novices to expert performers. The cognitive research has been analyzed to propose a pedagogical approach to the development of processes rather than products that focus on an expert’s use of improvisation. (...) The intention is to delineate a reflective approach that goes beyond the mere instruction of some current practices of teaching improvisation in jazz pedagogy. The review highlights that improvisation is a complex, multidimensional act that involves creative and performance behaviors in real-time in addition to processes such as sensory and perceptual encoding, motor control, performance monitoring, and memory storage and recall. Educational applications for the following processes are outlined: anticipation, use of repertoire, emotive communication, feedback, and flow. These characteristics are discussed in relation to the design of a pedagogical approach to musical improvisation based on reflection and metacognition development. (shrink)

This review strives to shed light on the related studies on the relationship between English as a Foreign Language teachers' personality traits, communication strategies, and their work engagement. The positive correlation between teachers' personality traits and work engagement has been confirmed in the review of the literature. Furthermore, studies have proved the relationship between teachers' communication strategies and personality traits. No studies have been done on the direct relationship between teachers' communication strategies and work engagement. However, the studies showed that (...) some factors, such as teacher self-efficacy and willingness to communicate, can mediate the relationship between teachers' communication strategies and work engagement. To improve the language teaching quality, the pedagogical implications are explained in the end. Some suggestions for further research are provided to expand the literature about teachers' communication strategies, work engagement, and personality traits. (shrink)