Assessing Music Students’ Motivation Using the MUSIC Model of Academic Motivation Inventory

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the reliability and validity of using a motivation inventory with music students in upper-elementary, middle, and high school. We used the middle/high school version of the MUSIC Model of Academic Motivation Inventory to survey 93 students in the 5th to 12th grades in one school. Our analysis revealed the inventory produced reliable and valid scores on the five MUSIC scales (MUSIC is an acronym for empowerment, usefulness, success, interest, and caring). Findings provide empirical evidence to support the validity of the five-factor structure of the MUSIC Model of Motivation for music students. Thus, the inventory may be used by music teachers as a reliable means to assess students’ motivation-related perceptions. We provide several strategies that music teachers can consider in designing instruction to be consistent with each component of the MUSIC model, as well as possible implications.

Keywords

instructional practice motivation MUSIC Model of Motivation music teacher evaluation reliability validity

Music teachers and administrators in the United States are increasingly concerned with measuring student achievement and showing student growth as part of teacher evaluation. Several states mandate that educational administrators require measures of teaching effectiveness, such as students’ perceptions of teaching. These types of measures ask students about their teacher, their classwork, and/or how their teacher makes them feel. These measures are often administered to students in class; however, it can be difficult to measure students’ dispositions, attitudes, and perceptions through the use of paper-and-pencil questionnaires (Treven & McCroskey, 1997; Wilkerson & Lang, 2007). Students’ responses may be affected by a variety of factors: the timing of when they are asked to rate their teacher (e.g., whether the timing is close to a stressful testing period or not), the mood of the students, or the format of the questionnaire items (e.g., how response options are labeled). Furthermore, questionnaires are often created by teachers who may not know about or understand existing measures that have been shown to be important indicators of students’ motivation. In designing instruments for this purpose, it is critical to not only identify measures that assess students’ attitudes about music teaching practices but also to examine these measures for reliability and validity (Carmines & Zeller, 1979).

Reliability refers to the consistency of the scores produced by a measure, and a measure that is more reliable will give the same or similar results each time it is used. Reliability is one aspect of the validity of a measure, but there are other aspects to validity as well, such as whether the items represent all of the content intended to be assessed and whether the items measure what they purport to measure. It is impossible to prove whether a measure is valid or not; instead, researchers provide evidence for the validity of a measure for a particular use. The purpose of our study was to assess whether a multidimensional measure of students’ motivation produced reliable and valid scores when administered to 5th- to 12th-grade students in their music classes. If so, the measure could be useful to teachers interested in assessing students’ perceptions of their teaching.

Conceptual Framework

The MUSIC^SM model of motivation (Jones, 2009) was developed to provide instructors in any subject area with an overview of current motivation research and theories and to serve as an organizational guide when designing instruction to engage students in learning. MUSIC is an acronym for the five components of the MUSIC model because they categorize motivating teaching strategies into the following five groups: (a) eMpowerment, (b) Usefulness, (c) Success, (d) Interest, and (e) Caring. These teaching strategies can be used to foster students’ motivation in any subject area, not just music. The five key principles of the model are that instructors need to ensure that students (a) feel empowered by having the ability to make decisions about some aspects of their learning, (b) understand why what they are learning is useful for their short- or long-term goals, (c) believe that they can succeed if they put forth the effort required, (d) are interested in the content and instructional activities, and (e) believe that the instructor and others in the learning environment care about their learning and about them as a person (Jones, 2009; www.theMUSICmodel.com). When teachers implement instruction consistent with these principles, they are more likely to motivate students and engage them in the activities, which can lead to increased learning, achievement, and/or performance (Jones, 2009, 2015).

The MUSIC Model of Academic Motivation Inventory (Jones, 2012) measures the extent to which students perceive each of the five MUSIC components to be present in their learning environment. In the context of a music class, the definitions for each component are the degree to which a student perceives that

he or she has control of his or her environment in the class or band ensemble (empowerment),

music class is useful to his or her future (usefulness),

he or she can succeed at the music activity (success),

the instructional methods and activities are interesting (interest), and

the instructor cares about whether the student succeeds in music and cares about the students’ well-being (caring).

The MUSIC Inventory has been shown to produce valid scores with samples of undergraduate students in the United States (Jones & Skaggs, in press) and in a non-U.S. culture (Mohamed, Soliman, & Jones, 2013). A shortened and slightly modified version of the MUSIC Inventory has also been developed and is referred to as the middle/high school version (Jones, 2015). This middle/high school version has been shown to be valid for use with fifth-, sixth-, and seventh-grade students in science classes (Jones & Wilkins, 2013, 2015).

There are many advantages of the format of the middle/high school version of the MUSIC Inventory. First, all five scales are scored on the same 6-point Likert-type scale, which makes it easier for students to understand. Second, all five MUSIC Inventory scales have at least three items but no more than four items, which provides enough items to produce reliable scores (Lord & Novick, 1968) and yet allows the inventory to be short enough for students to complete it relatively quickly. Third, the MUSIC Inventory allows teachers to assess a broad variety of motivation perceptions because the MUSIC model is a multidimensional model that is not limited to one theoretical framework (e.g., attribution theory, self-efficacy theory, interest theories). Fourth, the organization of the inventory into five scales aligns with the five categories of teaching strategies in the MUSIC model of motivation. This alignment is important because teachers often pay attention to what is assessed, and the MUSIC Inventory assesses students’ perceptions that have been shown to be related to students’ motivation. Finally, the scores produced from the MUSIC Inventory can be used by instructors to improve their instruction because each MUSIC Inventory scale corresponds to one of five key MUSIC model principles.

For example, a teacher who scored low on the success component could reflect on why students do not perceive they can be successful in class, and could take steps to address this deficiency. To do so, she or he might make expectations clearer, adjust the challenge of activities closer to the abilities of the students, and/or give students more feedback about how they can improve their abilities (Jones, 2009). Thus, teachers have a direct measure of whether or not their teaching strategies are consistent with current motivation research and can then take steps to address their deficiencies and build on their strengths. These advantages of the MUSIC Inventory make it a practical tool that can be used quickly and easily by teachers.

Research Questions

Although the middle/high school version of the MUSIC Inventory has been shown to produce reliable and valid scores for students in science classes (Jones & Wilkins, 2013, 2015), it is unknown whether this inventory could produce reliable and valid scores for students in general music and band ensemble classes. Because the inventory was designed to measure students’ perceptions of any type of instructional setting and subject area, it should produce valid scores when administered to students in general music and band ensemble classes. To test this assertion, our research questions were the following:

Research Question 1: Does the middle/high school version of the MUSIC Inventory produce reliable and valid scores when administered to 5th- to 12th-grade students in their general music and band ensemble classes?

Research Question 2: Do the observed data from general music and band ensemble classes fit the MUSIC Model of Motivation?

Method

Participants and Procedure

After institutional review board approval was granted, we surveyed 93 students of one music teacher in one school in rural Virginia. Students were told the day before that the researcher would be coming to their class to give them a survey and that they would be given the opportunity to do other work if they did not want to participate in the anonymous survey. On the day of administration, after the description of the survey was read aloud, the students were given the choice to participate or not. All students in class that day elected to participate and complete the survey.

Participants were 54% male (n = 50) and 46% female (n = 43), and the following ethnicities were represented: 82% Caucasian (n = 76), 13% Other (n = 12), 4% Native American (n = 4), and 1% African American (n = 1). The music teacher taught fifth- and seventh-grade general music classes, as well as sixth- and seventh-grade band ensemble classes (40%, n = 37 total in middle school grades). Students in Grades 8 to 12 (60%, n = 56 in high school grades) were in a traditional band ensemble class. Participants completed the questionnaire in 1 day in less than 10 minutes of instructional time. A researcher administered the questionnaire using a script that was read to the class while the teacher was not in the room.

Questionnaire

The questionnaire consisted of 21 items: the 18-item middle/high school version of the MUSIC Model of Academic Motivation Inventory (Jones, 2012; referred to in this article as the MUSIC Inventory) and 3 demographic items (i.e., gender, class grade, and ethnicity). We used the directions and items for the MUSIC Inventory that are provided in Jones (2012), except that we replaced the word “science” in each item with the word “music.” Students responded to the MUSIC Inventory items on a 6-point Likert-type scale with the following descriptors: 1 (strongly disagree), 2 (disagree), 3 (somewhat disagree), 4 (somewhat agree), 5 (agree), and 6 (strongly agree). The MUSIC Inventory consisted of the following number of items for each component: four items for empowerment (e.g., “I have choices in what I am allowed to do in music class”), three items for usefulness (e.g., “In general, music class work is useful to me”), four items for success (e.g., “I am confident that I can succeed in music class work”), three items for interest (e.g., “The music class work is interesting to me”), and four items for caring (e.g., “My music teacher cares about how well I do in music class”).

Results

To test the reliability and validity of the MUSIC Inventory and whether our data fit the model, we conducted a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) using structural equation modeling techniques. Figure 1 shows the model we tested. The CFA allowed us to examine the extent to which the 18 MUSIC Inventory items fit with their corresponding MUSIC component (e.g., the empowerment items should fit with the empowerment component). Each MUSIC Inventory item is shown in a rectangle in Figure 1. The straight arrows from each MUSIC component to the item indicate that we tested whether the item fit with that component. For example, the model tested whether the first empowerment item (M1) fit with the empowerment component. The circles to the right of the items (e.g., me1) show the error variance attributed to each item. It is normal for each item to have error, and the CFA uses the error as part of the statistical analysis. The large curved arrows to the left of each MUSIC component show that we anticipated the MUSIC components would be correlated (as latent factors, not observed), as other researchers have documented (Jones & Wilkins, 2013, 2015). That is, we anticipated that empowerment would be correlated with usefulness, success, interest, and caring. If the model shown in Figure 1 fit the data, it would provide evidence that we can observe that students perceive the five MUSIC model components separately in general music and band ensemble classes, and, thus, that teachers can measure these five perceptions and design teaching strategies related to each.

Figure 1.

The items in the middle/high school version of the MUSIC^SM Model of Academic Motivation Inventory (Jones, 2012) hypothesized as a five-factor structure comprising empowerment, usefulness, success, interest, and caring.

To gauge the fit of the model, we used several fit indices because there is no one test to determine whether data fit a model or not. The indices we used were the comparative fit index (CFI), the standardized root mean square residual (SRMR), and the root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA). The CFI varies between 0 and 1 with values closer to 1 indicating better fit and values above .95 representing good fit (Hu & Bentler, 1999). The CFI was .961, which indicated a good fit. The SRMR also varies between 0 and 1, but values closer to 0 indicate better fit. SRMR values less than .10 represent reasonable fit (Kline, 2005), and we found that SRMR was .067, which indicated a reasonable fit. The RMSEA also varies between 0 and 1 with values closer to 0 indicating better fit. RMSEA values less than .08 indicate reasonable fit, and we found that RMSEA was .065 for our model, which indicated a reasonable fit (Browne & Cudeck, 1993; Byrne, 2001; Kline, 2005). In addition, all coefficients for the items shown in Figure 1 were statistically significant, which indicated consistency with what we theoretically expected. Taken together, all of these results provided evidence that our model fit the data.

To corroborate our findings and to estimate the reliability of the scales, we calculated the correlations between all of the items in each of the MUSIC components. For example, the four items that measure empowerment should all be significantly correlated with one another because they are all supposed to measure empowerment. Cronbach’s alpha values range from 0 to 1 and can be used to assess the degree to which the items in a scale are correlated with one another (values closer to 1 indicate a higher degree of correlation among the items). We found the Cronbach’s alpha values for the items in the MUSIC Inventory to be excellent or good according to the criteria by Kline (2005) for which alpha values greater than .9 are excellent and those between .7 and .9 are good (eMpowerment α = .73, Usefulness α = .86, Success α = .92, Interest α = .91, Caring α = .92).

At this point, we had shown that the MUSIC Inventory demonstrated acceptable reliability and validity and our data fit the model; therefore, it was appropriate to use the inventory as intended by averaging the items in each MUSIC scale to create a single scale score for each component. For example, we averaged the four empowerment items to use as a measure of students’ perceptions of empowerment. The results shown in Table 1 indicate that students rated their perceptions of success the highest, followed by caring and interest. Students rated their perceptions of empowerment and usefulness the lowest. The mean scores were also similar across gender (p < .05).

Table 1.

Mean Scores of the MUSIC Inventory Scales.

MUSIC Scale	N	M	SD
eMpowerment	93	4.00	1.00
Usefulness	93	4.00	1.35
Success	93	5.10	1.15
Interest	93	4.20	1.43
Caring	93	4.50	1.37

Discussion

Reliability and Validity of the MUSIC Inventory Scores

The purpose of this study was to determine whether the MUSIC Inventory produced reliable and valid scores when administered to 5th- to 12th-grade students in their general music and band ensemble classes and to determine if our data fit the model. The fit indices produced from the CFA provided evidence that the model fit as hypothesized according to the MUSIC Model of Motivation (Jones, 2009). This finding shows that the five components of the MUSIC model are distinct and indicates that students can perceive these five components differently. Therefore, we believe that all five components should be measured by teachers, especially given that the components have been found to be related to students’ motivation and engagement (see Jones, 2009).

Because the scores from the MUSIC Inventory correspond to motivating teaching strategies, teachers can use the results to consider strategies they may use to improve their instruction and increase their scores. As an example, the teacher in our study could think about whether there was anything he could do to address students’ lower perceptions of empowerment, usefulness, and interest (because students’ scores were lower on these scales). It is a reasonably simple process for teachers to generate a set of scores for themselves to gauge students’ perceptions by administering the inventory. General suggestions for addressing the MUSIC components are provided in other sources (e.g., Jones, 2009; Jones, Watson, Rakes, & Akalin, 2013; see www.theMUSICmodel.com); however, not many suggestions have been provided that are specific to music teachers. Therefore, in the next section, we provide some examples of strategies that music teachers could use to increase students’ perceptions of the MUSIC model components.

Teaching Strategies Consistent With the MUSIC Model

To design teaching strategies to increase their empowerment score on the MUSIC Inventory, teachers can give students choices over repertoire. The new National Standards (see http://www.nafme.org/my-classroom/standards/core-music-standards/) include “select” as a process component in both the Performing and Responding strands. Students are asked to select music for a specific purpose or context and select works to perform based on their interest, knowledge, technical skill, and context. Allowing students to choose solo material, specific excerpts to practice, and their warm-up material or to have some input into the order of works to be rehearsed within a music class may also improve their perceptions of how much empowerment they have in their class.

To design instruction to target the usefulness component of the MUSIC model, teachers can explain to students both the musical and nonmusical skills that participation in music may promote as they relate to their current and future goals. For example, immediate musical skills learned in the classroom can help students perform well in an upcoming concert; specifically, the scales learned in a technical warm-up will allow them to play a piece of repertoire. Other skills such as waiting your turn, being a good collaborator and communicator, arriving on time, and working creatively with others are examples of the Learning and Innovation Skills promoted by the 21st Century Learning outcomes (see http://www.p21.org/our-work/p21-framework). Teachers can illustrate how their classroom environments can help students learn these necessary life and later career skills.

To design instruction for the success component of the MUSIC model, it is important that students believe they can succeed if they put forward effort. Teachers need to know the frustration threshold for each of their students and then provide musical experiences that challenge them appropriately. It is beneficial for students to understand their teacher’s expectations, so sharing these expectations with students in multiple ways is important. Practice competitions or pass-off sheets displayed on bulletin boards are obvious examples, but to encourage students who may not be “winning,” teachers must find each student’s area of strength and provide feedback often, as improvement occurs. In terms of actual instruction, chunking material into manageable sections helps students find success in at least one section of the music being performed. Additionally, when asking students to problem-solve musical issues, the “think-pair-share” strategy allows students to think about a question, pair with another student, and then share with the entire class. The students get a chance to learn from a peer and feel successful in sharing their paired answer.

To address the interest component, teachers can present an unusual question that might pique students’ curiosity to find the answer. In some cases, teachers may want to provide students with time in class or out of class to search for answers on the Internet. For ensemble settings, it can be useful to share why a piece is interesting to the teacher and allow students to explore personal questions they have about the music. For example, teachers can take time to ask students, “Does this piece have new elements, and if so, can you identify them in your music?” or “Does it include notation that you have not seen before?” Additionally, students are more interested in the content when they can choose the content that is most interesting to them and, as we note above, can also empower them. Giving students variety in their repertoire is a simple strategy to get them interested. Instructionally, teachers must also be interested and enthusiastic about the material—even the warm-up drills and scales. Teachers can ask questions such as “What would music sound like if we didn’t use formal scale patterns?” Giving students time to respond and explore their answers can increase their interest in using scales as part of their repertoire. Finally, changing either seating arrangements or the order of a rehearsal plan is an obvious way to interest students, but teachers need to be aware that students with special needs may find changes to regular routines stressful. Teachers should communicate with these students ahead of time about changes to previously learned procedures to reduce anxiety.

To address the caring component, teachers can learn about students’ interests and successes in music class, as well as activities outside of music class, showing concern about how students are doing in other classes or with their academic goals. Caring is demonstrated in many ways, and caring about students does not mean that teachers should enter into nonprofessional relationships with students. Instead, teachers should provide assistance for students when they need it and be available when possible. Teachers can acknowledge other student accomplishments (e.g., sport team achievements) and illustrate to students that they are recognized for putting forth effort in music class as well.

Implications

The MUSIC Inventory can be used in a variety of ways to improve music instruction. The inventory can be used at any time during the school year as a formative assessment to gauge students’ perceptions. Using the inventory earlier in the school year allows teachers to consider changes to their instruction before persistent motivation problems occur and also provides baseline information that teachers might use to guide and structure their own development. The inventory can also be used near the end of a school year as a summative assessment to examine students’ perceptions of the entire school year. In addition to using the results for their own use to improve instruction, teachers can share the results with administrators or others who may be interested in their effectiveness. For example, teachers could use the results to demonstrate changes over time.

Although the wording of the MUSIC Inventory is aimed at the class level (e.g., The music class work is interesting to me.), Jones (2015) noted that it is possible to reword the items to assess students’ perceptions of a particular activity or lesson (e.g., The activity was interesting to me.). Doing so would allow teachers to focus the assessment on particular activities: either activities or lessons that they had used in the past or new activities that they want to try.

Logistically, handing out a hard copy of the inventory during a class may be the simplest for most teachers. However, that requires the teachers to input the responses into an electronic form, such as a spreadsheet, to compute the averages for each MUSIC scale. Teachers may consider finding a student who could help in inputting the inventory results into an electronic format. Another option is to create an online survey in which students can input their responses directly. These results can then be directly imported into a spreadsheet. The potential difficulty with this method is that students must have access to a computer or possibly a phone or tablet. But once teachers enter the inventory items into an online survey, they can continue to use the inventory as a template over and over again.

Teachers could complement the results of the inventory with short open-ended items to explore more specifically what students are thinking. For example, teachers could ask students, “What could be changed in this class to make it more useful to you?” (Jones, 2015) or “What did you find interesting about that activity?” The questions can be tailored to whatever the teacher wants to know about a particular MUSIC component. Teachers can also ask students these questions verbally, either formally or more informally, before or after class. Responses to these types of questions often provide teachers with insight beyond what is available through the inventory results alone.

Conclusion

This study provides preliminary empirical evidence to support the reliability and validity of the scores produced by the middle/high school version of the MUSIC Inventory for use with students in general music and band ensemble classes. This version of the MUSIC Inventory could be useful to teachers and researchers interested in assessing the effects of instruction on students’ motivation-related beliefs about music classes. Because instructional strategies can be categorized into one or more of the MUSIC model components, it is possible to assess the effectiveness of music teachers related to each MUSIC component. Results of the MUSIC Inventory can be used to redesign instruction by targeting specific MUSIC model components, instead of simply trying to increase students’ overall “motivation.” Thus, the MUSIC model and the MUSIC Inventory can help instructors who are not experts in the field of motivation to remember many of the key principles that motivation researchers and teachers have discovered. Given these strengths, the MUSIC Inventory may be a useful tool for teachers and administrators interested in increasing student motivation and learning.

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

References

Browne

M. W.

Cudeck

(1993). Alternative ways of assessing model fit. In Bollen

K. A.

Long

J. S.

(Eds.), Testing structural equation models (pp. 445–455). Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

Byrne

B. M.

(2001). Structural equation modeling with AMOS: Basic concepts, applications, and programming. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Carmines

E. G.

Zeller

R. A.

(1979). Reliability and validity assessment (Sage University Paper Series on Quantitative Applications in the Social Sciences, 07–017). Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

L. T.

Bentler

P. M.

(1999). Cutoff criteria for fit indices in covariance structure analysis: Conventional criteria versus new alternatives. Structural Equation Modeling, 6, 1–55. doi:10.1080/10705519909540118

Jones

B. D.

(2009). Motivating students to engage in learning: The MUSIC Model of Academic Motivation. International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, 21, 272–285.

Jones

B. D.

(2012). User guide for assessing the components of the MUSIC Model of Academic Motivation. Retrieved from http://www.MotivatingStudents.info

Jones

B. D.

(2015). User guide for assessing the components of the MUSIC Model of Motivation. Retrieved from http://www.theMUSICmodel.com

Jones

B. D.

Skaggs

G. E.

(in press). Measuring students’ motivation: Validity evidence for the MUSIC Model of Academic Motivation Inventory. International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.

Jones

B. D.

Watson

J. M.

Rakes

Akalin

(2013). Factors that impact students’ motivation in an online course: Using the MUSIC model of Academic Motivation. Journal of Teaching and Learning With Technology, 1, 42–58.

10.

Jones

B. D.

Wilkins

J. L. M.

(2013, May). Validity evidence for the use of a motivation inventory with middle school students. Poster presented at the annual meeting of the Society for the Study of Motivation, Washington, DC.

11.

Jones

B. D.

Wilkins

J. L. M.

(2015, February). More validity evidence for the use of the MUSIC Model of Academic Motivation Inventory with upper-elementary and middle school students. Poster presented at the annual meeting of the Eastern Educational Research Association, Sarasota, FL.

12.

Kline

R. B.

(2005). Principles and practice of structural equation modeling. New York, NY: Guilford Press.

13.

Lord

F. M.

Novick

M. R.

(1968). Statistical theories of mental test scores. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.

14.

Mohamed

H. E.

Soliman

M. H.

Jones

B. D.

(2013). A cross-cultural validation of the MUSIC model of academic motivation and its associated inventory among Egyptian university students. Journal of Counseling Quarterly Journal, 36, 2–14.

15.

Treven

J. J.

McCroskey

J. C.

(1997). The relationship of perceived teacher caring with student learning and teacher evaluation. Communication Education, 46, 1–9. doi:0.1080/03634529709379069

16.

Wilkerson

J. R.

Lang

W. S.

(2007). Assessing teacher dispositions: Five standards-based steps to valid measurement using the DAATS model. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.