Situational Interest of Fourth-Grade Children in Music at School

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to identify the characteristics of common elementary music class activities that elicit situational interest, the short-term interest that emerges spontaneously in learners when faced with environmental factors in an educational experience. An instrumental case study approach was employed, with 24 fourth-grade children serving as participants, at a school in which the researcher was the music teacher. Over a 4-month period of engagement, data were gathered through small-group interviews, writing experiences, one-item surveys, videotaped observations of class periods, and examination of material culture. Analysis based on open and focused coding processes revealed that lessons containing elements of novelty, kinesthetic activity, self-efficacy, challenge, and creativity led to increased situational interest. Incorporating these themes into music classroom activities may be a way to enhance children’s interest in the experiences, leading to more increased engagement and improved performance outcomes.

Keywords

situational interest motivation preference

Music educators have long been interested in identifying relevant music-making experiences in order to motivate students in classroom and ensemble settings. In elementary music classes, perhaps some of a child’s earliest formal interactions with music, it is particularly important to craft curricula that are both educationally sound and personally engaging, so that students develop skills and knowledge while also enjoying class, a combination that may make them likely to enroll in elective music classes in older grades (Harackiewicz, Barron, Tauer, & Elliott, 2002). The aim of this study was to identify characteristics of common music classroom activities that are interesting for elementary children.

The emergence of a burgeoning realm of research in general education on the nature of interest (e.g., Bergin, 1999; Dohn, 2011; Hidi & Renninger, 2006; Nolen, 2007; Palmer, 2004; Renninger & Hidi, 2002; Rotgans & Schmidt, 2011; Swarat, Ortony, & Revelle, 2012) offers a lens through which to view children’s motivation for learning music. Most motivational theories, such as self-determination theory and achievement goal theory, rely mainly on a cognitive framework to explain motivation, with affective response an outcome of the cognitive process (Hidi & Renninger, 2006). Interest differs from these theories in that affect and cognition both contribute to the level of interest, with the affective component generally describing the positive emotions that occur when engaging in an interesting task (Dohn, 2011; Hidi & Renninger, 2006). Affective response has been seen as an important part of one’s interaction with music endeavors (Austin, Renwick, & McPherson, 2006), and a motivational structure that incorporates affect into its explanatory framework provides a powerful means by which to understand the person–music interplay.

Interest is commonly divided into two main subcategories, individual interest and situational interest (Chen, Darst, & Pangrazi, 1999; Hidi & Renninger, 2006; Mitchell, 1993; Swarat et al., 2012). Individual interest refers to a relatively enduring preference for certain topics, subject areas, or activities, one that is slow to develop and, once established, difficult to alter (e.g., Ainley, Hillman, & Hidi, 2002; Bergin, 1999; Hidi & Renninger, 2006; Mitchell, 1993). High levels of individual interest have been found to correlate with educational benefits, including deeper critical thinking (Renninger & Hidi, 2002), improved memory (e.g., Ainley et al., 2002), and the willingness to persist in unfavorable learning conditions, such as tasks perceived to be boring (e.g., Renninger & Hidi, 2002). Each learner has his or her own relatively stable set of individual interests, and while some students will hold high levels of individual interest for music as a subject, others will not.

Situational interest, on the other hand, emerges out of the specific characteristics of the immediate environment and is therefore often temporary. It is generally the function of the surface level of learning activities, such as the content of the activity, the task itself, or the instructional style (Ainley et al., 2002; Bergin, 1999; Hidi & Renninger, 2006; Mitchell, 1993). Situational interests are less personal and more universal in scope, in that some tasks or learning environments are situationally interesting to most students experiencing a given lesson, regardless of their level of individual interest (Hidi & Renninger, 2006; Mitchell, 1993). Learning tasks that have been found to elicit situational interest include activities involving hands-on experiences (Dohn, 2011; Swarat et al., 2012), group work (Dohn, Madsen, & Malte, 2009; Palmer, 2004, 2009), novel or surprising content (Chen, Darst, & Pangrazi, 2001; Dohn, 2011; Dohn et al., 2009; Rotgans & Schmidt, 2011), and games and puzzles (Bergin, 1999; Mitchell, 1993; Rotgans & Schmidt, 2011). Educational environments high in situational interest can help students focus attention (McDaniel, Waddill, Finstad, & Bourg, 2000), increase task persistence (Ainley, Hidi, & Berndorff, 2002), and improve recall (Schraw, Bruning, & Svoboda, 1995), particularly for students with low levels of individual interest in the subject matter (Durik & Harackiewicz, 2007). In addition, repeated experiences high in situational interest may lead to increased individual interest (e.g., Bergin, 1999; Hidi & Renninger, 2006; Pressick-Kilborn & Walker, 2002). Although both individual and situational interest include affective and cognitive components, situational interest is more influenced by affect than cognition, whereas individual interest more heavily stresses the cognitive aspect (Hidi & Renninger, 2006).

Situational interest is of more immediate concern to most educators (Bergin, 1999). Students enter classrooms with well-developed individual interests, and while those interests evolve, such change occurs slowly and over long periods of time. In addition, it would be impractical for teachers to attempt to appeal to the individual interests of all students in a learning situation, due to the wide variation in individual interest. Situational interest, on the other hand, is common across most learners in a setting. For the teacher, changing the way students participate in tasks can increase situational interest for an entire class, ultimately leading to higher engagement and improved performance outcomes.

Researchers have explored the nature of situational interest in disciplines including science (e.g., Palmer, 2009), writing (e.g., Nolen, 2007), and physical education (e.g., Chen et al., 2001). In the field of music education, the most relevant studies do not use the term interest but rather use liking to describe students’ interest-related approaches toward school music classes and the specific activities of music courses and ensembles (e.g., Bowles, 1998; Hamlen & Shuell, 2006; Siebenaler, 1999). Liking refers to an affective state, so these studies are best seen under the situational aspect of the framework when alluding to elements of the immediate learning environment. Moreover, recent studies of situational interest have found that young learners often use the terms interest and liking with similar meanings in mind (Dohn, 2011; Frenzel, Pekrun, Dicke, & Goetz, 2012). In the elementary music class, tasks that have been found to generate high “liking” ratings include playing music games (Bowles, 1998), working with a partner (Bowles, 1998), participating in activities involving movement (Mizener, 1993; Temmerman, 2000), and performing on instruments (Bowles, 1998; Murphy & Brown, 1986), while music-reading activities were among those activities that were less favored (Bowles, 1998; Murphy & Brown, 1986). In the field of music education, the only study using interest theory revealed that allowing a beginning band student the opportunity to select repertoire enhanced her level of situational interest, causing her to practice more often and utilize more effective rehearsal strategies (Renwick & McPherson, 2002).

Some children enter music classes with high levels of individual interest in the discipline and are therefore likely to participate actively in class and to persist in music endeavors beyond their years in elementary school (Harackiewicz et al., 2002). Other children have lower levels of individual interest in music, which may result in more apathetic and disengaged behavior in the classroom. For teachers, identifying sources of situational interest in the learning environment and including the particularities of these interests into lesson plans can help create opportunities for students to participate more enthusiastically and cultivate increased knowledge and greater music skills as well as develop higher levels of individual interest toward the discipline. Thus, it is in the interest of music teachers to understand the situational interests of children in the upper elementary grades toward music class and to incorporate these interests into their curricular design.

This study was guided by one major question: What were the sources of situational interest for children in one fourth-grade music class? More specifically, in this instrumental case study I utilized qualitative techniques in order to identify the characteristics of situationally interesting activities during a typical series of classes, lasting nearly half of a school year.

Method

Instrumental case studies (Stake, 2005) are employed when “the researcher focuses on an issue or concern, then selects one bounded case to illustrate the issue” (Creswell, 2013, p. 99). The bounded case in the current study consisted of the 24 children from one intact fourth-grade class in the Pacific Northwest. I served as their music teacher. All students and their parents or guardians completed university-approved consent and assent forms. Fieldwork during the 4-month-long period of research comprised student self-reports (interviews, written reflections, and one-item surveys), observations, and an examination of material culture.

Self-Reports

Thirty-four semistructured interviews constituted a major portion of the fieldwork. These were conducted in three phases: six introductory interviews with children, 27 main interviews with children, and one interview with the classroom teacher. In the introductory phase, all children in the class were interviewed in groups of four, with each interview lasting approximately 10 min. The open-ended questioning had two basic queries (“What are the most and least interesting music class activities? Why?”), which were intended to create initial themes that would serve to provide initial lines of inquiry. In addition, the four-person interviews allowed me to identify specific children that were particularly willing to participate in discussion groups freely (Campbell, 2010; Creswell, 2013). Nine of these students, representing a range of ethnicities and ability levels, were selected as “children of focus” and were interviewed more often than the other students during the remainder of the fieldwork.

In the second phase, the children were interviewed in groups of two for approximately 30 min. The children of focus were interviewed between three and five times over the remainder of the project, and the other children engaged in one additional interview. Each of these 27 main interviews consisted partly of questions relating to levels of interest in the most recent class they attended as well as one or more of the following: instant video revisiting, index card sorting, and member checking. See Table 1 for a summary of interview activities.

Table 1.

Overview of Interviews.

Number of interviews	Mode	Length	Interview topics (number of interviews)
6	Groups of 4	10 min	Overview of interesting activities
27	Pairs	25–35 min	Interest in most recent class activities (27)
			Instant video revisiting
			Video 1 (3)
			Video 2 (5)
			Video 3 (7)
			Index card sorting
			Song ranking (5)
			Activity ranking (5)
			Study activity ranking (5)
			Member checking (6)
1	Mr. Linton	60 min	Discussion of students

Note. Each interview contained more than one interview topic, so the total of the experiences is greater than the overall number of interviews.

Fifteen main interviews employed a form of “instant video revisiting” (Forman, 1999). In this process, a full 30-min class was video recorded, then edited into six to eight segments, each lasting between 45 and 90 s. During an interview, the pair of children watched each short clip, then engaged in discussion about their interest level in the particular activity. Three different lessons were edited and shown in interviews.

In 14 interviews, both children were provided with identical sets of index cards on which were written specific experiences of class. The topic for five of the activities was song titles (such as “Kye Kye Kule”), five interviews addressed specific class activities (such as playing drums), and five addressed activities of the study (such as having interviews with a partner). After each child individually sorted their cards by interest level, the children engaged in discussion with each other as they compared the similarities and differences in their rankings.

Six interviews at the end of fieldwork included member checking in which I told the children the results of my initial open coding. They commented on the themes and selected the themes they thought were “most true.” In addition, one interview was made with the students’ classroom teacher. This hour-long discussion covered topics such as the learning styles of specific students and his perspective on the themes that were emerging from the fieldwork.

Using interview protocols inspired by Spradley (1979), I posed a range of question types, including contrast questions (e.g., “What is more interesting to you, playing drums or preparing for performances? Why?”), experience questions (e.g., “Can you give me an example of a time that you were interested in . . . ?”), and questions asking the children to reflect on their classmates’ opinions (e.g., “What do you think the other kids in the class think of . . . ?”). Statements expressing cultural ignorance (e.g., “You know, I don’t really know how kids really feel since I’m not a kid”) and elaborating probes (“Tell me more about . . .”) were also regularly incorporated into the discussions.

The students participated in two other forms of self-reporting. All students engaged in six writing experiences in which they typed answers on a class set of iPads to the same question: “What made the previous activity interesting or not interesting?” (Palmer, 2009). In addition, 11 times over the course of the study, all children anonymously rated their interest in specific activities on a 5-point Likert-type scale anchored by the terms very boring and very interesting. The students used electronic “clickers” that sent the responses to a computer. The responses were used as a basis for further questioning during the interview process. Both the clicker and iPad writing experiences represented a range of common classroom activities, including playing drums, learning a folk dance, and practicing reading and writing music. I transcribed all self-reporting experiences verbatim, leading to 225 single-spaced pages of text.

Observations and Material Culture

Twenty-six consecutive classes were videotaped. For the video recordings of class periods, especially noteworthy were specific observable behaviors found to be indicative of high levels of interest, including greater eye contact for the item of interest (Reeve & Nix, 1997), a quicker rate of speech and wider range of frequency (Johnstone & Scherer, 2000), posture (i.e., an increase or decrease in slouching), and sonic production. While perceived student engagement often has served as a proxy for interest in classroom observations, some research has indicated that children may appear to be off task but are in fact mentally engaged in the activity (Swarat et al., 2012). Thus, the presence or absence of these factors served primarily to provide possible fodder for interviews and free-writes as well as to reinforce statements made by the students. Field noting occurred within 24 hr of the end of each class, leading to 48 pages of single-spaced text. Material culture (Tilley, 2006) examined included lesson plans from the previous 2 years, formal and informal assessments of the students, and the statement of purpose of the school and its music education program.

Coding

The cumulative data were reviewed repeatedly in iterative fashion. The initial reading of the data used an open coding strategy (Emerson, Fretz, & Shaw, 2011), in which all possible themes and patterns were identified. Potential themes were not preidentified, in order to capture as broad a range of initial codes as possible (Emerson et al., 2011). After 12 possible themes emerged during open coding, I reengaged with the data using a focused coding approach, making four passes through the full data set, each time with three potential themes in mind. During these readings, I identified all possible connections to each theme, designated subthemes, and noted emerging relationships between the themes (Emerson et al., 2011). Some potential themes were discarded due to their relative infrequency. Validity was addressed through triangulation of all field experiences (Stake, 2005) as well as member checking (Lincoln & Guba, 1985), in which the students were consulted on my understanding of their stated and perceived interests. Two outside researchers examined portions of the written data in order to provide an external check of the coding categories (Creswell, 2013).

Teacher as Researcher

I acted as a participant-observer (Creswell, 2013), serving as the children’s music teacher as well as the researcher. Teachers have used their own students as subjects in research in both interest (e.g., Palmer, 2004) and music education (e.g., Abril, 2007; Bartolome, 2013). Issues that emerge when adults interview children, such as the desire on the part of children to please adults (Wyness, 2006), only can be exacerbated when the adult also serves as their teacher. In order to mitigate this power dynamic, the students were interviewed in small groups rather than individually (Holmes, 1998; Wyness, 2006). I remained seated during interviews to minimize the size discrepancy between adults and children that can represent the power imbalance (Wyness, 2006). The interviews took place not in the music room (a space in which I was seen as the “man in charge”) but in a smaller room off one of the kindergarten classrooms, and I typically sat in a small chair intended for kindergarteners, while the interviewees sat in adult-sized chairs. Further, all of my daily reflections included explicit attention to the impact that my role as a teacher might have played on my interpretation of events (Portelli, 2008). Finally, the children repeatedly were informed that it was their opinions and feelings that were the most important aspect of this project and that I would be advocating for teachers to incorporate their interests into the music classroom (Fontana & Frey, 2005; Spradley, 1979). Two times during the project, tapes of the interviews were shown to other researchers in an attempt to identify any inhibiting behaviors on my part.

The benefits of the teacher-researcher role included accessibility in terms of setting up interviews outside normal class time and an immediate understanding of the history, culture, and politics of the school (Robson, 2002), a history that may have led to a comfort level with the interview process on the part of the students from the beginning of the project. In addition, serving as the teacher during the data collection process allowed for flexibility in terms of lesson design. As themes emerged during the data collection, lesson plans were modified slightly in order to further investigate an idea or theme. For example, the introductory interviews suggested that children were not interested in activities targeting music literacy but highly interested in activities in which they exercised creativity and worked in groups. In a bid to explore these potential themes further, I created an activity where the children worked in small groups to create ways to practice music literacy skills.

Context

St. George’s School (names of the school and students are pseudonyms) resides in a major city in the northwestern United States, close to the downtown business and retail core. A parochial school in the Catholic tradition, St. George’s serves 610 students in kindergarten through eighth grade, one quarter of whom are students of color. The annual tuition fee is $9,000, with 23% of the students receiving financial aid. Visually, the children at St. George’s have a certain homogeneity because of both the uniforms they are required to wear and the fact that they appear well groomed, with neatly combed hair and shirts tucked in. To the occasional dismay of their teachers, the children’s orderly appearance does not mean that the school spaces are always quiet and studious; a gentle (or not-so-gentle) reminder from teachers to remain quiet or stop running in the halls is not uncommon.

The 24 students of Mr. Linton’s fourth-grade class represented slightly more diversity than the school as a whole. Four students were the children of immigrants (from the Philippines, India, Poland, and Australia), one girl was born in China and adopted by two lesbian mothers, two boys were African American, one girl identified as part Native American, and two children held biracial heritage. When asked to describe his class, Mr. Linton commented that it was “an interesting mix of some really scholarly-type kids, and then . . . four or five really high energy [kids who] struggle with self-control. . . . [In addition], there are two or three kids with really heavy attention issues.” A second-grade teacher, when she saw the group of students walking through the halls, mentioned to me that there were a number of challenging students in the class, saying, “How did that class list get put together?” My experience of the class was that they had a moderate skill level compared to the other two fourth-grade classes I taught, with some enthusiastic, capable singers and bright students but others who were less consistent performers. They were also in many ways the most challenging of the fourth-grade classes, typically entering the music classroom full of energy, and while sometimes that led to exciting opportunities for engaged learning experiences, at other times I had to employ more classroom management tools in an attempt to channel their focus.

At the time of the study, I was in my 15th year of teaching elementary school music. The 30-min class periods typically consisted of four to six activities with a range of objectives. The curriculum during the period of research included beginning units on Ghanaian drumming and the recorder as well as continued skill development in music literacy, xylophone playing, in-tune singing, composition, and part-work (i.e., singing canons and partner songs). Most class periods included a singing game or folk dance, and during the last month, the students prepared and performed in an all-school spring concert, in which they sang an up-tempo song composed in sea shanty style.

Themes of Situational Interest at Play in the Music Classroom

Novelty

Audrey (after the first day of a recorder unit):

I think that it’s just different, and once we get used to it, it will be sort of regular.

Repeatedly, the fourth-grade boys and girls both showed and expressed a greater interest in repertoire and activities that were new and exhibited fading interest in experiences that were overly familiar. With regard to vocal music, Leah summed up many students’ comments when she said, “I . . . like learning new songs in music class. . . . After a while I get really tired of the old songs.” Learning new solfège notes and playing instruments were seen as interesting to the children in part because, as Sam reasoned, “you get to learn new songs.” Conversely, if repertoire was repeated too often, students stated that their interest began to lag. When asked about learning songs to perform at all-school performances, Luke noted that it was interesting at first, but “when we do them over and over . . . it starts to get boring.” Anna complained that a particular canon was “deadly” after all the repetitions of it, declaring, “Like at the beginning we learned it, and then we did a ton of stuff with it, like hand signs, and finger staff, and like solfège.” Indeed, in addition to the different types of literacy work Anna mentioned, the students had sung the song in canon and had composed new verses, first as a whole class and later in small groups.

In addition to pieces of repertoire, the young students stated that specific types of learning experiences were interesting because of their novelty. Joe thought that the drums were “fun because you never heard them before,” and to Anna, singing in another language was “kind of interesting because it’s fun and new and fresh—because it’s different. Usually, we’ll sing in our own language.” Furthermore, when old activities were given a new twist, or common skills were addressed in new ways, the fourth graders’ interest was often heightened. For instance, in a Filipino improvisatory game, I initially served as the leader, but once a child took on the role, Anna declared, “I like it when a person [i.e., a student rather than the teacher] leads it, I don’t like the normal thing. I like it when we lead it, because it’s something new . . . and we have to pay attention.” Other novelty-related aspects of learning experiences that elicited interest on part of the children included activities involving humor or an element of surprise.

The reverse occurred as well, such that the children regarded some activities as less interesting because they occurred too often. For example, solfège was used as a tool to teach music literacy, with students gradually gaining working knowledge of greater combinations of notes, practicing the newest melodic element over multiple classes. To many students, the time spent practicing the new solfège notes became tiresome. Matthew said, “Well, I [like it] when you learn a different letter [i.e., solfège note] . . . but when you don’t for a really long time, like 6 months, it gets kind of boring, because we’ve already done this,” and Lucy wrote that the “least interesting thing in music class I think is when we do the number staff or say the notes” because “we have done it a LOT before and to keep doing it again and again some times [sic] isn’t very interesting any more.” Repeated forms of practicing literacy skills have been advocated as a means by which to improve competence (Campbell & Scott-Kassner, 2010), but such repetition may come at a price in terms of student interest. Similarly, an 8-week recorder unit evoked enthusiastic interest at the beginning, but such interest declined for many students over time.

Novelty of activities has been found to elicit situational interest in subjects such as science (Palmer, 2004, 2009) and physical education (Chen et al., 1999, 2001). Research on listening preferences, on the other hand, typically has indicated that familiarity correlates with preference (e.g., Hamlen & Shuell, 2006). In a study of songs that children perform, Siebenaler (1999) found that children’s preference ratings of songs increased after they had sung the songs in class. However, the students practiced the song for 10 min during one class period, whereas in this project the children engaged with the same music material over multiple classes. The current study did not address listening preferences but showed that children’s interest level is more immediately enhanced by the presence of new music material that they themselves produce with their bodies or voices.

Kinesthetic Activity

Daniel M.:

You know, because we’re kids, we like to be active, instead of just sitting there, saying sol-la-do. And you notice how all of us, most of the time, are moving around, not sitting still.

When children were engaged in learning experiences in which they were physically active, their interest increased. The first set of interviews began with one open-ended question: “What are the most interesting activities in music class?” Without exception, the first answer from all children involved movement. In a free-write, Lucy mentioned her interest in an active singing game, writing, “I love that activity! It’s so fun to do the movements. The reason I like it is because it’s so active. . . . I love to be active so when we get to play games like this I love it.” While fourth graders stated that virtually all the singing games were interesting, those that contained more vigorous movement were more interesting than those with only a moderate extent of activity. When discussing a seated beat-passing game from Israel, Joe said, “I actually like the games more where you stand,” and Lucy added, “I like the moving-around games.” The students also felt that sedentary activities could be made more interesting if movement were added. For example, when asked about a canon, Audrey said, “I mean, the song is good, but if you added . . . a movement or something it would be more fun.”

The videotaped observations typically showed the children fully engaged during segments with high levels of activity, with shifts from less active learning experiences to more active ones leading to higher levels of verbal expression and eye contact directed toward the bustle of the learning experience. When reviewing their performance for the end-of-year concert, I found that attention was low—some children were playing with their shoelaces or fingernails, while others were staring off into the distance, seemingly at nothing. When the lesson shifted into an active singing game, the children threw themselves into the activity with vigor, singing strongly and excitedly while playing a rock-scissors-paper game with a partner. This is in line with previous research, which has shown that music class activities containing movement were the most preferred music class activities by preschoolers (Temmerman, 2000) and that children in third through sixth grade preferred games that involved more movement over those with less (Mizener, 1993).

In addition to singing games, the movement experience afforded by playing instruments led to increased levels of interest for the fourth graders. Daniel M. noted, “I like sports and moving, so drumming kind of exercises my arms while I do it,” while in a separate interview, Parker averred, “Every time you play an instrument . . . you use some kind of muscle . . . like in the xylophones, you have to use your arm muscles.” Class videos also show the children demonstrating a high degree of engagement when performing on instruments, actively striking drums, blowing recorders, or sounding out songs on xylophones. Playing instruments typically involves physical movement that is less active than many of the singing games referenced, with the activity restricted to movement of arms and hands. A steady stream of research has indicated that interest is enhanced through hands-on activities for preservice teachers (Palmer, 2004), college students (Dohn et al., 2009), high school students (Dohn, 2011; Palmer, 2009), and middle school students (Swarat et al., 2012). Hands-on, in these cases, typically has referred to science experiments in which the participants’ feet remain stationary but they manipulate materials with their hands, activities that are similar to playing instruments. The current study extends the findings in terms of the age of the students (elementary) and the subject (music).

Self-Efficacy and Challenge

Leah:

I won that game once! I think . . . when you’re really good at something, it helps boost your self-esteem. [But] the people who were not as good at recorders, they were like probably not going to try.

When the fourth graders believed that they were likely to be successful, they described a level of interest that was higher than experiences where they anticipated failure. For example, when asked about Joe, the classroom teacher noted, “Well, hard work is not his strong point,” a perspective I found accurate. In music class, the exception to this pattern of disengagement came when playing xylophones. Joe participated fully in xylophone activities and demonstrated deft skills, with the ability to easily pick out known songs “by ear” and the physical dexterity to master the more challenging rhythmic patterns posed by some of the music material. Joe was among the first to show off his mallet proficiency, demonstrating to the class how to play a particularly difficult part, a satisfied smile on his face. When rating the interest level of a variety of common music class activities, Joe placed “playing xylophones” at the top, because, as he emphatically stated in an interview, “I think I’m good at it.” On the other hand, Joe perceived his singing prowess to be not quite as strong (and he was right; in my evaluations I found only one assessment in which he had sung in tune for the whole year). The videos regularly show Joe with a closed mouth during singing activities, staring vacantly into space. When he sorted index cards of activities by interest level, Joe ranked singing-based experiences lower than many other activities “because I stink at singing also.” For Joe, like many of the students, the success he experienced affected his interest level in the activity.

In interest theory, issues of competence usually are considered most relevant to individual interest (e.g., Bergin, 1999), since one’s self-efficacy tends to be slow to evolve and change. However, some research has indicated that children’s perceptions of their competence for a specific classroom activity influences their situational interest as well (Chen & Darst, 2002; Schraw, Flowerday, & Lehman, 2001). For example, in studies on reading, it has been found that ease of comprehension contributed to elementary children’s situational interest (Schraw et al., 1995); skill at the task level bred positive interest. In the current study, students’ self-assessments of competence also influenced their stated and observed interest in specific activities of the music class.

Although the children were more interested when they believed that they were likely to be successful, work that was too easy impacted their situational interest as well. For example, a singing game from the Philippines grew more complex over successive class periods. Bryan, when ranking songs, initially placed the activity low in his ratings because “it’s, like, repetitive.” However, “if we’re talking about the new kind [in which the children performed a six-part beat-keeping canon], it would be like up here . . . because it was more challenging.” During one class period, I noted that being the final person in the movement canon would probably be “a pretty big challenge,” and almost every hand shot up, indicating interest in taking it on. According to Daniel M., this was because “always keeping track of what you’re trying to do is just weird but hard but fun,” and Parker agreed, noting, “I would probably be last, because I like the challenge things.”

Csikszentmihalyi (1975) addressed issues of optimal challenge, maintaining that the experience that he called “flow” occurs when “opportunities for action are in balance with the actor’s skills; . . . when skills are greater than opportunities for using them, the state of boredom results”; but if “opportunities are too demanding for his capabilities, the resulting stress is experienced as anxiety” (p. 49). In music education, Barrett and Smigiel (2007) found that “a desire for challenge” (p. 39) was a major reason that children chose to participate in elective music activities. Some interest research has shown that experiences of challenge positively impact situational interest (Chen et al., 1999; Paris, Yambor, & Packard, 1998), while others have made a contradictory finding (Chen et al., 2001). Chen et al. (2001) proposed that initial success with a new activity may be important in order to encourage initial interest and that challenge perhaps should occur later. For the children in the current study, challenges that appeared achievable enhanced interest in the immediate learning experience, whether or not they were associated with new undertakings.

Creativity

Parker:

I liked [making up verses to] “When I First Came to This Land” . . . because everyone is creative, and they have their own ideas that they can share.

When activities incorporated aspects of creativity, the fourth graders often became more engaged in the class activities and stated that their interest was heightened. For example, one assignment required that the students compose new verses to a known song in small groups. As they worked, the sounds of excited conversations and song renditions layered on top of each other, as the children endeavored to create their verses and decide which versions to perform for the class. Matthew, a child who spent more time in the principal’s office than any other child in the fourth grade, was highly engaged when working in a whole-class context, calling out ideas as we worked (“Can we make new ones? ‘Big fat luger?’”). When working in small groups, too, he emerged as an enthusiastic leader, ensuring that his group had verses to share and drawing pictures on the board to represent their textual inventions. Rarely in the school day did Matthew demonstrate this type of leadership, but the opportunity for creativity was motivating for him. Sam represented the views of the students, stating, “I liked making it up . . . to get to be creative.”

Other activities identified by the children as interesting that incorporated creativity included student-initiated exploration on classroom instruments, such as trilling sounds on recorder (“Hey, listen to this cool sound!”), and opportunities to create movements to accompany a song. In addition, when creativity was incorporated into activities with less desirable objectives, interest often was heightened. For example, when the children worked in groups to invent an activity to practice music literacy skills (an objective deemed uninteresting by the children), engagement was high, as children called to me (Daniel: “We have the two best ideas ever!” Sam: “Mr. Roberts, we have a really good one!”). In the writing experience that followed the activity, creativity emerged as a singularly positive aspect, with comments such as “I liked thinking of ideas to make things more fun” and “The last activity . . . was interesting to me because the class actually had the chance to bring together their ideas to think of a new game and the class can make their own ideas in music.”

Literature on situational interest has not addressed issues of creativity directly. However, offering children choices in their learning has been found to elicit interest (Palmer, 2009; Renwick & McPherson, 2002; Schraw et al., 2001) due to an increased sense of ownership over the activity (Schraw et al., 2001). When the students composed their own song texts or created activities in order to practice music literacy skills, they were provided with more choice than would be given often in music class. In addition, interest researchers have identified active learning to be a source of situational interest (Rotgans & Schmidt, 2011; Schraw et al., 2001). Typically, active learning has referred to the level of physical activity (Dohn, 2011; Swarat et al., 2012), but some literature has shown that learning experiences that require particularly active mental work to be situationally interesting as well (Rotgans & Schmidt, 2011; Schraw et al., 2001). The creative activities in the current study may be seen as mentally active. When creating movements to accompany a song, one child wrote, “I really do like it . . . it is mind activating and very fun,” and when writing about the experience of creating activities targeting music literacy, one student typed, “I thought it was fun because our minds were active.”

Discussion and Possibilities for Future Study

Four themes emerged from the exploration of the fourth grader’s situational interest in the elementary music class: novelty, kinesthetic activity, self-efficacy and challenge, and creativity. Although each theme is presented separately in the study, the themes often worked in tandem, in overlapping fashion, to contribute to children’s interest in a particular activity. For example, I had the following exchange with Anna and Sam regarding the sources of their interest when composing verses to a known song:

CR:

But for you, Sam, you were kind of interested in [that song], huh?

Sam:

Yeah.

CR:

Do you know what it is about it that makes it interesting to you?

Sam:

No, not really . . . I just . . . I like making it up.

CR:

Making up the verses?

Sam:

Yeah.

Anna:

I like making up the verses more because we like—

Sam:

(cutting her off) Get to be creative.

Anna:

Yeah, and like—

Sam:

(cutting her off) Get to work with our friends.

Anna:

Yeah, and it’s like not the same exact song.

This exchange highlights three reasons the activity was interesting: the creative skills they were able to employ, the ability to work with friends in groups, and the novelty of the final product. Authors of previous research have also suggested that multiple themes contribute to the situational interest within a specific activity (e.g., Mitchell, 1993; Schraw et al., 1995). Swarat et al. (2012) noted,

In a single lesson, students typically interact with several elements of the learning environment they are in. Thus their interest (or lack of it) might well be a reaction to a combination of (some or all) elements. This means that research examining only individual elements might not do justice to the kind of complexity that governs student interest in actual classrooms. (p. 3)

In the current study, some students were able to articulate the multiple themes that contributed to situational interest. For example, Anna spoke to the level of interest that new activities captured for her: “ I . . . also like doing things that are challenging, and doing new challenging things, if these things are smushed together, to do new things that are challenging—that’s fun.”

Some researchers have identified specific sources of situational interest as more interesting than others (Chen et al., 1999, 2001; Palmer, 2009; Schraw et al., 1995). For example, Palmer (2009) determined the main source of situational interest for high school science classes to be novelty, although choice, physical activity, and social involvement also contributed to the students’ interest. During the last six interviews, I provided the children with index cards on which were written the set of initial themes that emerged during the transcription process. Each child ranked the themes. In their diverse responses, no theme emerged as appreciably more compelling to the students than others.

When queried about the reasons that they found some learning situations more interesting, students made oblique references to the sonic qualities of the music material (e.g., Charity said, “It has a good rhythm”). These comments were often difficult to understand, as it appeared that the children did not possess vocabulary to describe what caught their interest about the music excerpts. When Charity was asked to explain what was interesting about the rhythm, she said, “I don’t know, it just . . .” and then proceeded to wiggle her body in a way that appeared to have meaning to her but did not to me. In the study, I minimized leading questions, which in this case might have allowed for further examination of her interest in syncopation or faster tempi. Additional study could investigate the effect of specific sonic properties of the music that children perform (rather than listen to) on their situational interest.

The fourth-grade children in the current study used the terms interest and liking interchangeably. In the literature, interest and liking are conceived to be separate but related constructs (Iran-Nejad, 1987). However, age-related limitations on verbal acuity may affect they ways in which they understand and express the idea (Dohn, 2011). Further interviews with students might elaborate on this theme to better understand the difference between children’s understanding of the two terms.

Research on interest in nonmusic settings has identified academic benefits of learning environments that are high in situational interest, such as increased task persistence (e.g., Ainley et al., 2002) and higher levels of focus (e.g., McDaniel et al., 2000). Authors of additional research could determine the effect of learning experiences high in situational interest on music learning outcomes. For example, children could rate the interestingness of two known songs, and their singing accuracy on each song could be compared. Further, interest has been seen by some researchers as partly situative (Nolen, 2007; Pressick-Kilborn & Walker, 2002), in which interest evolves due to the particularities of specific social contexts. While the findings of the current study align with much of the research on situational interest, further study with other groups of children representing different ages and levels of diversity could help support the broader applicability of the current findings.

Most music teachers have state-mandated objectives and national standards around which they base their curriculum, some of which are more interesting to students than others. Altering the way that these standards are addressed by incorporating aspects of creativity, kinesthetic activity, optimal challenge and success, and novelty into activities may be a way to increase the situational interest in the specific learning experiences. For example, novelty can be incorporated into lessons by including a range of objectives within each class, practicing known skills in atypical ways, and including a range of repertoire. Such experiences ultimately may lead to more enthusiastic learners who make higher achievements in music while participating with increased enthusiasm and joy.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Author Biography

J. Christopher Roberts is affiliate assistant professor at the University of Washington. His research interests include children’s music cultures, world music pedagogy, and the nature of children’s interest in music.

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