An opportunity to develop respect and responsibility through a socio-musical program in a primary school: A case study

Abstract

Group music making has the potential to develop socio-emotional competences. This study describes how responsibility and respect—both of which are socio-emotional competences—were developed through a socio-musical program, called Musiquem, in a Spanish primary school. The research consisted of a case study with students from Grades 3 to 5 (aged from 9 to 11) carried out over 1 school year (2018–2019). The program was developed as a specific music project to create a string orchestra and was implemented by two specialists in the violin and cello working in collaboration with the teachers in the primary school. The study describes the characteristics of the activities carried out to develop respect and responsibility and the results suggest they have a positive impact on students’ development of these socio-emotional competences.

Keywords

group music practice primary education respect responsibility socio-emotional competences socio-musical program

Introduction

Making music in groups has the potential to develop socio-emotional competences throughout the lifespan, from childhood (Ilari, 2016) to adulthood (Creech et al., 2013). These competences include responsibility and respect (Jacobi, 2012).

The term competence first appeared in the professionalism field in the 1970s, in relation to the development of professional profiles. It refers to the skills and knowledge needed to practice a profession properly and, as such, it has a functional character (Lester, 2014). In this context, competence concerns the activities or functions that need to be performed and can be understood as “a personal set of habits that leads to more effective or superior job performance, an ability that adds clear economic value to the efforts of a person on the job” (Goleman, 1998, p. 16). The term emotional competence emerged from the construct emotional intelligence that Salovey and Mayer defined in 1990. Emotional intelligence is a psychological construct, while emotional competence refers to the way an individual interacts with their environment. In the same work environment context, Goleman (1995) understands emotional competence as the acquisition of personal and social skills that translate into outstanding performance. More recently, Damásio and Grupo Semente Educacao (2017) clarify that although emotional competences are linked to emotional intelligence, they go beyond the field of psychology and are a more wide-ranging construct, involving affective, cognitive, instructional, and behavioral domains. Different ways of referring to the concept of emotional competence can be found in the literature, with some authors referring to emotional competence while others prefer socio-emotional competence, in additional to uses of plural forms: emotional competences and socio-emotional competences (Bisquerra & Pérez, 2007).

The development of socio-emotional competences has been seen to foster individual well-being, improving performance in different areas of life (Goleman, 1995; Nelis et al., 2011). This may explain why the development of socio-emotional competences is seen as increasingly important in many different contexts, including educational settings (Fernández-Berrocal et al., 2017).

The research reported in this article illustrates how responsibility and respect—both of which are socio-emotional competences—may be developed through a socio-musical program. Both competences emerge as meaningful in the context of group musical performance, an issue that has received scant attention in the literature.

Respect and responsibility in group music performance

Group music training has been seen to support the development of socio-emotional competences (Schellenberg et al., 2015; Váradi, 2022). However, for the potential of group training to be fully achieved, this must be a pleasant experience (Hallam, 2010). Social relationships and the development of trust and respect have been found to be crucial for small musical groups to function properly (Davidson & Good, 2002). For this reason, performing music in groups should be encouraged as it requires specific social attitudes such as awareness of others and concern for their feelings, willingness to listen, being cooperative and committing to one another’s growth, and being respectful and responsible (Campayo-Muñoz et al. 2020, 2021; Campayo-Muñoz & Cabedo-Mas, 2017; Jacobi, 2012).

All of these are good reasons to incorporate musical practices into the school routine, to enhance both the school climate and socio-emotional learning approaches. To this end, active methodologies should ideally be introduced to encourage interaction among students from the beginning of their education (Mira-Galvañ & Gilar-Corbi, 2020). It is here that the primary school music class can offer an appropriate setting to foster socio-emotional competences, including respect and responsibility (Hallam, 2010). Strategies that can be used include identifying specific behaviors, modeling behaviors that are appropriate for students to learn, and devising positive reinforcement systems to reward students when they demonstrate them (Jacobi, 2012). Furthermore, the benefits of playing in a musical group could be reinforced by activities undertaken outside class, since they have been seen to promote student satisfaction, active participation, and a feeling of being useful (Vidulin, 2016).

Some music programs have engaged instrumental ensemble approaches to take advantage of the evidence-based benefits of playing music in groups to foster socio-emotional competences (Campayo-Muñoz & Cabedo-Mas, 2017; Ford, 2020; Hallam, 2015; Rabinowitch et al., 2013; Schellenberg et al., 2015; Williamson & Bonshor, 2019). Specifically, the study conducted by Ritblatt et al. (2013) in the United States reports that group music activities improved preschool children’s social skills, social cooperation, social interaction, and social independence. Another study, by Kirschner and Tomasello (2010), suggests that joint music making with 4-year-old children, including singing and dancing together, encourages children “to maintain a constant audiovisual representation of the collective intention and shared goal of vocalizing and moving together in time” (p. 362).

Bisquerra and Pérez (2007) define respect as the intention to accept and appreciate individual differences and to value the rights of other people. Thus, this socio-emotional competence encourages people to live together in harmony by promoting a situation where everyone can be themselves without imposing their own worldviews and values upon others (Uranga-Alvídrez et al., 2016). Studies show the potential of music to strengthen mutual respect in educational settings characterized by cultural and intellectual differences among students (Crawford, 2020; Martín et al., 2020; Odena & Scharf, 2022; Prest, 2020). Although the literature does not address the potential of making music together to foster respectis directly, it does analyze different aspects that may imply the development of respect, such as interpersonal bonding (Novembre et al., 2019), empathy (Haddon & Hutchinson, 2015), and social cohesion (Koelsch, 2010).

Group music practice requires coordination between the group members, which fosters interpersonal synchrony (Novembre et al., 2019; Rabinowitch, 2012). These cognitive abilities have been seen to promote psychological states that enhance empathy among the group members, since they have to learn to “read” the other to adapt their performance (Rabinowitch et al., 2013). In addition, group music training involves interaction, encouraging peers to collaborate in such a way where more accomplished peers can assist those who find a musical task difficult (Schellenberg et al., 2015). This kind of practice helps students to accept and respect that each person is different and has their own learning process, and further help each other in this process (Medel et al., 2020). Sharing concerns is another example of interaction in group music training. On one hand, individuals have to learn how to reach agreements on interpretative aspects by respecting their peers’ opinions and not imposing their own value criteria (Haddon & Hutchinson, 2015). On the other hand, students have the opportunity to express how they feel about their own musical learning process (Campayo-Muñoz et al., 2021). This kind of interaction promotes communication among peers (Ford, 2020). Murnighan and Conlon (1991) propose some strategies for resolving possible discrepancies over interpretative criteria, such as playing the musical piece according to several different criteria or handing over decision-making responsibility to the music group leader. Finally, interaction among members promotes friendship, which in turn increases enjoyment, a feeling of belonging, and mutual respect (Ford, 2020; Higgins, 2012).

Building upon previous studies, Bisquerra and Pérez (2007) summarize responsibility as the intention to engage in safe, healthy, and ethical behaviors, as well as to make safe, healthy, and ethical decisions. According to Fasano et al. (2019), survey studies have shown that playing in a musical group promotes the development of responsibility, among other aspects. Indeed, an orchestra is a community whose members are interdependent, since they all share responsibility while at the same time everyone is responsible for themselves (Rodríguez-Reinoso & Luna-Nemecio, 2022). Every performer is aware that they share a common objective and that what they do has an impact on the whole (Hallam, 2010).

Apart from cognitive training, playing in an orchestra requires the development of skills such as “the discipline to sit patiently in silence for the entire execution of a piece waiting for your turn, and sometimes not playing for several minutes” (Fasano et al., 2019, p. 2), connecting this work to dimensions of responsibility. Group music practice provides an opportunity to assess and share reflections about one’s own and others’ musical practice, which fosters a sense of responsibility for one’s own learning process (Hood, 2012). In addition, the potential of group music practice might be exploited to help students to reflect on their attitudes and behaviors during training, since responsibility entails being aware of one’s actions and their consequences, being able to identify errors, and proposing solutions (López, 2004). López (2004) provides some guidelines for playing in an orchestra that can foster responsibility, and which can also be applied in group music training: (a) setting achievable goals with the students and verifying compliance; (b) talking to the students about their achievements; (c) establishing limits and rules such as action procedures or how to take care of the instrument; (d) assigning duties or tasks; and (e) promoting structure and organization while the training sessions are taking place.

As we have illustrated, respect and responsibility are two socio-emotional competences that are central to group music practice. Nevertheless, these two competences are not often specifically addressed in the literature on music education settings. To shed more light on this issue, this article describes and analyses a socio-musical program that was designed to create a string orchestra in a Spanish primary school class and explicitly aimed to promote students’ socio-emotional competences (Macián-González et al., 2020).

Method

Context: The school and the Musiquem program

This case study evaluates a socio-musical program called Musiquem, developed in a Spanish primary school during the 2018 to 2019 school year. It was established by a group of researchers at University Jaume I of Castellón, of which the authors of this article are affilliated with, and developed together with primary school teachers in response to a needs analysis of the school (Arriaga-Sanz et al., 2021). The Mestre Canós school, in the city of Castellón, is inherently intercultural, has a large population of students deemed at risk of social and economic exclusion, and suffers from an image of neglect compared with other schools in the city.

The activities within the classroom were developed collaboratively between the teachers in the school and two resident musician-teachers, a violinist and a cellist, who programmed each of the sessions and facilitated the activities together with the teachers. The collaboration between the primary teachers and the resident musicians was a key aspect of the program (Macián-González et al., 2020). The program took place during school hours as part of the school curriculum, and as such was a compulsory activity for third- to fifth-grade students for 2 hours per week. The program included learning to play musical instruments (Macián-González et al., 2020), together with activities involving group cohesion, emotional education, corporal expression, and conflict resolution, all enacted through musical practice. The students did not have their own instruments, but were provided these by the school. As these were shared among the students, unfortunately they could not always take their instruments home for practice. The project schedule included concerts and artistic interventions in public spaces in the city, centers for the elderly, health centers, and various associations based in the school’s neighborhood. The community activities were devised as service-learning initiatives in which music making was part of the process (Chiva-Bartoll et al., 2020).

Like other similar socio-musical projects, performing in the Musiquem string orchestra was considered to be a way to learn to play an instrument and be active members of the community. However, we highlight three of Musiquem’s aspects that differed from those of most other socio-musical projects. First, the activities were developed during school hours, together with the primary school teachers; therefore, they connected the activities, content, and acquired knowledge and skills with those of other subjects such as mathematics, languages, or sciences. Second, the project was compulsory for all students; they did not voluntarily participate. Third, all of the activities aimed to develop service-learning in which primary school students worked together with certain people in the community.

Some of the didactic strategies used were: (a) attending to students’ diversity through differentiated didactic actions and by fostering peer learning (Macián-González et al., 2020); (b) maintaining a ratio of one facilitator to 10 students (usually three facilitators for every 20–25 students) in the classroom as recommended by Schulte (2004); (c) communicating with students through positive expressions (Muñiz, 2016); and (d) verbalizing what students felt, to learn how to flow from negative to positive emotional states and achieve emotional balance—this was important because the negative emotional impacts we have to deal with in life are more numerous and intense than the positive ones, and we need tools to cope with them (Bisquerra, 2016). These strategies were executed through a collaborative methodology that promoted aspects such as communication, reflection, and conflict resolution. In fact, the majority of the activities were intended to encourage students to help one another in the learning process. To enhance positive coexistence during the sessions, the facilitators, together with the students, decided to collaboratively discuss, agree on, and establish a set of rules that should guide daily interactions in Musiquem. The rules were intended to maintain respect and care for oneself, one’s instrument, and the group.

Given that group music practice can foster social transformation, Musiquem explored various dimensions related to social enhancement, including social cohesion and positive coexistence, among others. However, as social development occurs together with personal enhancement (Campayo-Muñoz et al., 2020), in this project, variables related to this latter aspect, such as motivation (Arriaga et al., 2022) and psychological well-being (Giráldez-Hayes et al., 2022) were also explored. Furthermore, we analyzed a wide range of socio-emotional competencies that the literature relates to music practice in a group, such as active listening, cooperation, and empathy (Campayo-Muñoz et al., 2021; Rabinowitch et al., 2013). Respect and responsibility were two socio-emotional competences that emerged as important aspects in ensuring the effectiveness of group music practice in this particular case.

Participants

The 54 children (26 girls and 28 boys) who took part in the project were aged from 9 to 12 years old. Approximately 50% of them were Spanish; the rest were Hispanic (12%), Asian (12%), and Romanian (25%). The socioeconomic and sociocultural status of childrens families was medium-low. Of the total project participants, 18 participated in the research study through six focus groups using a quota sample based on the following criteria: gender, cultural diversity, and academic performance. Thus, different perspectives and voices came together to better understand the overall effect of the educational experience. Supporting this data from students themselves, four primary teachers and the two resident musicians were also interviewed.

Ethical clearance was given by University Jaume I, with reference number CD/89/2022. The ethical standards of confidentiality, authorization from the families and the school, and safe storage of participants’ data were strictly observed. Names have been changed to guarantee the anonymity of all participants.

Data collection and analysis

Various instruments were used to collect qualitative data:

Teacher’s diary: at the end of the lesson, the specialists running the program wrote down objective observations of the most meaningful events that took place during the musical training (Pérez, 2007).

Interviews: a series of semi-structured interviews were conducted at the end of the program. The participants interviewed were (a) the students who were involved in the study, (b) their teachers, and (c) the two resident musicians.

Data from teacher diaries and the transcribed interviews were analyzed qualitatively. Initially, the researchers explored which socio-emotional competences were reinforced by the project implementation. After an inductive coding process, the researchers decided to focus on the socio-emotional competences of respect and responsibility, since they predominated throughout the implementation and were deemed important for enhancing group music practice. The data were analyzed following a hybrid approach of thematic analysis (Xu & Zammit, 2020), combining inductive and deductive coding and theme development through “bottom-up” and “top-down” approaches to identify themes. Underpinned by a constructivist epistemology (Stevens, 2007), the inductive theme development allowed the researchers to focus on the two categories mentioned—respect and responsibility—and apply deductive data analysis. As thematic analysis is not tied to a particular theoretical or epistemological perspective, it was considered the best option to identify, analyze, and interpret patterns of meaning (Clarke & Braun, 2017) in the students’ reflections and comments on their experience. The researchers assume that there is no single truth or reality, and that knowledge is socially constructed (Willig, 2012).

Results

Results illustrate how Musiquem’s activities based on group music practice helped to develop respect and responsibility among the students. Given the different nature of the activities used inside and outside the classroom, the results are reported according to these two didactic modalities.

Classroom activities

To ensure the smooth running of the musical training, the students were informed about (a) the structure of the musical activities they would take part in, and (b) the nature of their participation. The need to respect each person’s turn to participate emerged as an essential aspect in the success of these didactic strategies:

Laura (resident musician, cellist):

We usually begin by telling [the students] what we are going to do, we explain what the activity consists of. Sometimes explanations were given to a small group and sometimes to the whole class. If students have to participate actively in the activity, we encourage them to respect turns and find the right moment to speak instead of raising their hands to do this. When they have to play, we separate the violins and cellos for technical reasons, but most of the time they have to play together. If something has to be explained to the violin students, the cello students listen and vice versa.

Teacher’s diary:

To play a pizzicato with violin and cello we proceeded in this way: everyone sits on chairs arranged in a circle. Anyone who stands up without respecting the agreed order won’t play. Students will stand up in pairs. The turn will be given according to the seating order, starting each instrument from one side. Once they have played an instrument, they have to sit back on the chair and wait for their turn to play the following instrument (January 14, 2019).

Some of the Musiquem activities consisted of creating spaces so the students could express themselves and reflect on the conflicts and misunderstandings that arose during the lesson. This kind of didactic resource gave the students the opportunity to develop respect through being aware of the appropriate moments to speak:

Teacher’s diary:

Almost all the students took part in the discussion and communicated well. In some cases, students raised their hand to talk, but when one answered a classmate without raising her hand, we pointed it out as an example of good communication because she had waited for a moment when the group was silent (January 30, 2019).

Teacher’s diary:

At the end of the lesson, I had a talk with the two students who showed disruptive behaviour during the lesson in order to help them reflect on their attitude. Both of them became aware of how their behaviour annoyed the rest of their classmates. However, one student didn’t want to collaborate in the reflection; he didn’t speak during the talk. For this reason, I asked him to write a letter where he could reflect about the experience. He had to answer the following questions: What happened? Why did it happen? What would he improve? What could he do to achieve it? (March 25, 2019).

Another way of fostering responsibility was encouraging compliance with Musiquem’s rules to participate in the project:

Teacher’s diary:

She didn’t participate in the instrumental lesson last week because of her disruptive behaviour. This fact helped her reflect on the consequences of her attitude, and this week, she is calmer and more focused on what she has to do. Today, she tried not to bother her classmates (January 17, 2019).

In addition, students were encouraged to assess each session, their attitudes, and the whole group performance during class. At the end of each session, they had to choose one of the three stickers (green, yellow, and red) for each of the three aspects that they had to evaluate. They then had to display their selected stickers on a chart posted on a wall of the classroom. It helped them to be aware of their attitudes:

Laura (resident musician, cellist):

How has your behaviour been this month? Remember the stickers.

Pedro (student):

I think I have improved, but I still have to get better.

Laura:

Get better at what?

Pedro:

Sometimes, I continue playing my instrument when you tell us to stop playing, and sometimes, I talk to my classmates, and we interrupt the lesson.

Laura:

If you are aware of this, why do you do it?

Pedro:

Because sometimes, I don’t realize that I’m bothering [the class] until you explain it to me.

The resident musicians fostered collaboration among peers in such a way that more capable students helped peers who had difficulties with some musical tasks. To this end, peer tutoring (Fernández-Barros et al., 2022) was a frequently employed learning strategy. During the sessions, students acted as tutors and were also supervised by their peers, which helped them recognize others’ efforts and develop relationships based on equality:

Mario (student):

I learnt from the Musiquem teacher that when a classmate is not so good at playing, we have to help them because they are making an effort to try it.

Rocío (student):

Sometimes there are friends who play better than me but I don’t get angry about that. If one plays better than me I ask them for help or I ask them what they do to play so well. If a child plays worse I can give them advice.

These students’ desirable attitudes were previously promoted by collaborative activities:

Teacher’s diary:

Students responded well to this peer-tutoring activity. The activity consisted of reviewing how to hold the instrument and the bow in pairs and in turns, so that when a student held the instrument and the bow, the other checked whether it was correctly done and if not, helped him/her correct it. All this was supervised by us (February 18, 2019).

Intrinsic to the Musiquem program was the notion that sessions could be paused if necessary to help students to learn about their own responsibility in the conflicts that arose during the lessons:

Laura (resident musician, cellist):

We think that this is a [good] investment of time; if you solve the conflicts that arise during the lessons, you won’t have to waste time solving them in the future because the students will have developed their own resources and responsibility to do so. I think that most teachers find it difficult to understand this concept of stopping the lesson and investing time in talking about the conflict, since they are overwhelmed by the objectives they have to reach in each lesson. However, we don’t have this pressure in Musiquem, which is a more easy-going, relaxed subject than others.

Teacher’s diary:

When Daniel was about to sit down, Julio took the chair away from him, and Daniel fell to the ground. I had to stop the lesson and sort out the conflict. It was very difficult to talk to Julio in the beginning because he didn’t respect others’ turn to speak. Finally, I believe that Julio and the rest of the students became aware of how dangerous this kind of action could be since a classmate could be seriously injured (January 21, 2019).

The chance to have access to a string instrument was quite a motivating factor for the students and was useful for developing responsibility, since they had to respect a series of rules when they used them:

Teacher’s diary:

We divided them into violins and cellos in two different classes. We told them that they had to wash their hands in case their hands were dirty, and from then on they had to do this when they attended Musiquem lessons (February 15, 2019).

Teacher’s diary:

After the conflict we had last week, we asked students to reflect on what happened and on their own attitudes towards it, as well as to submit a brief essay that included their own reflections. Today, some students did not bring their reflections. We repeated that they wouldn’t get their instrument until they brought the material required. We also explained the agreed behaviour guidelines and how individual commitments make the whole group grow (February 1, 2019).

Moreover, the resident musicians, together with the teachers, stressed the importance of each person being responsible for their own attitudes for the orchestra performance to be successful:

Elena (teacher):

We spend part of the time trying to make students aware that it’s not about how one person performs, but how we all perform together. In an orchestra, however well an individual plays, if we aren’t all working together the orchestra won’t perform well.

Another activity for fostering students’ responsibility consisted of giving them charge of a violin called “the traveling instrument,” which they each took turns to take home. The students could play the instrument at home and show it to anyone they wanted. When the students gave the instrument back, they had to reflect on how being responsible for the instrument had made them feel, what their parents had said, and what they had done with it, and share these reflections with their peers. In addition, students were assigned a series of tasks to take responsibility for their instruments:

Teacher’s diary:

We have been very strict with the need to take care of the instruments. To this end, we proposed a series of tasks for students to complete: clean the instrument when the lesson is finished, loosen the violin bow, and put the violin back in its case (January 16, 2019).

Activities developed outside the classroom

A set of activities conducted outside the classroom aimed to provide students with opportunities to (a) share with people the results of their musical work, (b) experience different ways to play music, and (c) develop socio-emotional competencies (Giráldez-Hayes et al., 2022). These included concerts in public spaces in the city, in the city concert hall, in centers for the elderly, and in health centers (as part of the service-learning activities), and a seminar with a visual artist who visited the school, encouraged students to engage in artistic interventions in public, and facilitated a public intervention or batucada style concert [a substyle of samba, African-influenced Brazilian percussive style of music]. These activities increased students’ respect for their teachers and peers and their responsibility as a participant in the musical activities:

Laura (resident musician, cellist):

Generally, all of them are more attentive of each other than before. Also, I have noticed a change in attitude. They respect each other more after the artist’s visit and the concert.

Miguel (resident musician, violin):

They are very closely connected with each other. I think they respect us as people more than before, they admire us more.

Interviewer:

Do you think this is because of the concert in the auditorium?

Laura:

It has coincided with it. I don’t think this has happened as a consequence of the artist’s visit.

Miguel:

In particular cases of children who have disruptive behaviour, they had a more responsible attitude while they were in the auditorium. The typical child who wouldn’t stop whispering at the back. . .

Discussion

The purpose of this study was to describe how Musiquem activities, which were based on group music practice, specifically fostered students’ respect and responsibility. Although Musiquem activities were not deliberately intended to develop respect and responsibility, these two categories clearly emerged in the data analysis as key aspects in Musiquem’s activities, including the following:

(a) Taking advantage of a situation when conflict arises to encourage students to sort it out. The results showed that asking students for written reflections on their behaviors during the lessons or temporarily stopping a rehearsal when conflict arose was a usual strategy during musical performance lessons. This allowed students to express how they felt and explore their level of responsibility for the conflicts or misunderstandings. It also provided an opportunity to listen and respect peers’ perceptions of the conflicts so as to reach an agreement (Haddon & Hutchinson, 2015).

(b) Fostering collaboration among peers to accomplish their shared purpose: the success of the entire orchestra (Hallam, 2010; Hood, 2012). Students became aware of this aspect illustrated by noting that (according to an interviewed teacher, Elena) in order for the orchestra to perform well, “it’s not about how one person performs but how we all perform together”. Thus, students were encouraged to learn from their peers through collaborative activities instead of competing with them and comparing themselves to one another, which helped to nurture friendship and confidence among the group. In such a supportive context, students who presented difficulties in a musical task learned to ask their peers for help, while more advanced students tended to assist their classmates when they needed it. An example of a student who encountered this issue was Mario, who said that he “learnt from the Musiquem teacher that when some classmates are not so good in playing, we have to help them because they are making an effort to try it”. This scenario helped students to develop respect for their classmates and their learning processes (Schellenberg et al., 2015).

(c) Taking charge of a task, which stimulated responsibility (López, 2004). Students were in charge of a series of tasks—cleaning the instrument, loosening the bow, and putting the instrument away in its case—to be responsible for their instruments. These kinds of tasks had to be performed whenever the instrument was used; therefore, this practice promoted the development of good habits regarding the use of the instrument. The students were also encouraged to borrow a string instrument and take it home for a week to play it, show it to their parents, and take care of it. In this case, the student who borrowed the instrument had greater responsibility during that week than the rest of their peers. However, given that the students were the protagonists in this activity, they would likely perceive it as fun and exciting, which in turn would have a positive impact on their responsibility (Cecchini et al., 2003).

(d) Establishing rules to ensure students participated during the activities and the lessons ran smoothly. Setting limits and adapting to them together as a group proved to be effective as a way of learning to respect taking turns for speaking and to observe the most suitable moment to speak, or waiting for instructions about what to do while other classmates were receiving instructions. This was an exercise in both demonstrating respect and assuming responsibility (Fasano et al., 2019; López, 2004). Moreover, our results showed that resident musicians acknowledged the students who followed these rules through positive feedback. These kinds of practices allowed the students to set an example to their peers and enabled the resident musicians to reinforce the positive attitude of those who complied with the rules.

(f) Proposing musical activities both inside and outside the classroom promoted students’ socialization and motivation to be committed to their music studies (Vidulin, 2016). The results suggested that the opportunity to work in different settings may have enhanced the relationships among classmates and between students and teachers. These sorts of practices also improved students’ attitudes, especially of those who tended to show disruptive behavior in the classroom. This might be related to the ways in which learning outside the classroom was seen to be a pleasant experience for students, providing benefits such as freedom, autonomy, and authenticity (Waite, 2011).

Although group music practice has the potential to develop socio-emotional competences in general (Schellenberg et al., 2015), and respect and responsibility in particular (Jacobi, 2012), the way that Musiquem was designed prioritized activities that reinforced aspects related to socio-emotional competences in taking advantage of the benefits of music performance (Campayo-Muñoz et al., 2020). Our findings support existing literature suggesting that respect and responsibility are two socio-emotional competences that can support effective group music practice. In addition, we observed that these competences are bidirectional: on one hand, they emerged as two key aspects for successful group music practice (Ford, 2020; Rabinowitch et al., 2013), and on the other, group music training was an excellent forum for developing students’ respect and responsibility (Fasano et al., 2019; Jacobi, 2012).

This study illustrates that group music practice is a useful vehicle for programs designed to develop respect and responsibility, but it should be noted this implementation worked for one particular case. However, given (a) the positive results regarding the development of respect and responsibility among students, (b) the importance of these competences for group music training, and (c) the limited literature on this topic, similar proposals, and research should be undertaken in this direction at different educational levels and schools.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

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

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (grant number PID2020-116198GB-I00).

ORCID iDs

Emilia Campayo-Muñoz

Alberto Cabedo-Mas

Author biographies

Emilia Campayo-Muñoz is currently working as a Lecturer in Music Education at the Complutense University of Madrid, Spain. She earned a Master’s degree in Music at the Polytechnic University of Valencia. Afterwards, she obtained her PhD at the University of Castellón, Spain. She has several publications in international and national books and refereed journals about music education and the development of emotional skills. She is a member of the editorial of Eufonía: Didáctica de la Música.

Laura Cuervo-Calvo is a lecturer in Music Education at the Complutense University of Madrid, Spain. She earned her PhD in Musicology at the same university. She has published in several national and international books and refereed journals. Her publications revolve around service-learning methodology and on musical stimulation and teaching and its impact on the different educational levels. She is editor of the Complutense Electronic Jounral of Research on Music Education.

Alberto Cabedo-Mas is an associate professor of Music Education at the University Jaume I of Castellón, Spain. He earned a Master’s degree in Peace Studies, Conflict, and Development at the Univesity of Castellón, Spain, where he also earned his PhD. He is the author of several articles in international and national books and refereed journals. He is co-director of the journal Eufonía: Didáctica de la Música and serves on the editorial board of several national and international scholarly journals.

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