Revista Argentina de Clínica Psicológica 2020, Vol. XXIX, N°1, 1064-1069
DOI: 10.24205/03276716.2020.150 1064
AN EVALUATION S
YSTEM FOR THE INFLUENCE OF MODERN P
OP
MUSIC TEACHING ON STUDENTS
’
PSYCHOLOGY IN
NEW MEDIA
E
NVIRONMENT
Yanxia Shang
*Abstract
With the proliferation of new media, modern pop music has already penetrated into the life of music students. The music industry is calling for including modern pop music into music education. In this paper, a questionnaire survey is carried out among 600 non-music majors from three universities in Anhui Province, China. Based on the survey results, the author analyzed the current situation of modern pop music pedagogy. Then, the psychological theory was introduced to the music pedagogy, creating an evaluation system of how
modern pop music teaching influences the students’ psychology in new media environment. The established
system was applied for comparative analysis of survey data. The results show that there is room to improve the modern pop music teaching system; for college students, modern pop music helps to alleviate the psychological stress, ease mental illness, and develop sound personality and lofty sentiments. The research results highlight the necessity to introduce and improve modern pop music education in universities.
Key words: Modern Pop Music, Teaching, Students’ Psychology, New Media.
Received: 13-02-19 | Accepted: 16-08-19
INTRODUCTION
In the world of new media, modern pop music spreads to the winds remarkably. It has been inseparable from plublic life (Sakamoto, Miura, Sakamoto et al., 2000). As a special social group, students in universities hold advanced thoughts, follow fashions, and have certain independent ability to distinguish things (Romans, 2010). Now, they face greater psychological stresses such as entrance examination and employment, so easily will they be spoiled by social evils, thus spreading to their future development. Modern pop music has always been the big part of the music life of students, which influences the music teaching. There has been a concensus in the music industry that it is necessary and
Shenyang Conservatory of Music, Modern music school, Shenyang 110168, China.
E-Mail: [email protected]
feasible to include the modern pop music into the music teaching system (Buxton, 1986). Then, how the students’ psychological health is subjected to the modern pop music teaching has also become the focus of people’s concern.
It has been widely acknowledged that music plays a modulation effect on human emotions (Simpson, Reynolds, Light et al., 2008). Wang Jinyun (Guerin, Guerin, Tedmanson et al. 2011) has proved that music plays an active effect on the psychological modulation of students. Liu Zhigang (Sharp, Hargrove, Johnson et al. 2006) stated that it was necessary to improve the music education effect by which students' sound personality could be developed. Wan Yisi (Lenette, 2015) expounded on the basis of personal practice that music education can help students actively blend in the life of collectivity, regain confidence and happiness. In particular, it could play a huge effect on the psychological modulation of students. Beugel (McCaffrey, Edwards, & Fannon, 2011) believed that music teaching would exert an important influence
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on mental health development of students in education process. It is found in the summary that although domestic and foreign scholars have yielded fruitful results in the study of music keeping mental health of students, there are less studies focusing on the psychological influence of modern pop music teaching on students (North & Hargreaves, 1998).
For these findings, this paper dispreads an empirical study on how students' psychology is subjected to the modern pop music teaching in the context of new media. First, the questionnaire survey is combined to conclude current development and existing challenges in the modern pop music pedagogy in universities, based on which, the modern pop music teaching experiment is designed and implemented. The SCL-90 self-rating scale scores made before and after the experiment are statistically analyzed by the comparison. The teaching experiment results show that the modern pop music can beat students' psychological stress and contribute to auxiliary treatment of mental illness, develop students' sound personality and edify their lofty sentiments.
SURVEY ON MODERN POP MUSIC TEACHING SITUATION
600 students in non-music majors, chosen from three universities in Anhui Province (200 students per school) as the survey subjects, the questionnaire survey and interviews are combined to investigate and analyze the attitudes the students hold towards the modern pop music and the development of this music realm in universities.
Figure 1
.
Do you like modern pop music?
Students’ attitudes towards the modern pop
music
(1) Do they like the modern pop music? As shown in Figure 1, the findings about whether students like modern pop music show that, only 1.1% of students
said they dislike the modern pop music, and 86.5% of students like or rather like it.
(2) What kind of content does your favorite modern pop music mostly express? As shown in Figure 2, the results from the survey on what modern pop music tracks the students like express are listed. The top three are love (73.5%), friendship (62.6%) and inspiration (56.8%) music tracks. In addition, kinship tracks also account for about 50%. Based on the interview results, we learn that the contents of the modern pop music tracks as the students like mostly involve the students’ moods at that time. For example, freshmen at enrollment have more choices for friendship and kinship music. Some students are more eager for love and success, so that they choose music tracks that represents love and inspiration in line with the development features of students (Tomcho, Foels, Walter et al., 2015).
Figure 2
.
What kind of content do you like
most modern pop music?
Figure 3
.
The purpose of listenning to
modern pop music
1.1% 12.4% 42.2%
44.3%
I really like it Like General Dislike
10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80
Other Patriotic Inspirational Friendship
Family Love
0 20 40 60 80 100
Other Fashion Express
feelings Relieve
stress Relax
AN EVALUATION SYSTEM FOR THE INFLUENCE OF MODERN POP MUSIC TEACHING ON STUDENTS’ PSYCHOLOGY IN NEW MEDIA ENVIRONMENT 1066
(3) Purpose of enjoying modern pop music. As shown in Figure 3, the top three tracks that students enjoy themselves are relaxed, emotion-eliciting and stress-relieved types, accounting for 85.6%, 42.5% and 41.8%, respectively.
(4) Students expect what the modern pop music teaching involves? Students love modern pop music, and often choose to enjoy it in various singing contest and leisure activities (Carpentier, Knobloch-Westerwick, & Blumhoff, 2017). Therefore, they hope that teachers can analyze musical structure in modern pop music teaching, and focus more on some music singing methods. In addition, 42.6% of students also hope that teachers can analyze the content and theme of modern pop music, in order to better understand the emotions and sights that music will express, as shown in Figure 4.
Figure 4
.
Want the music teaching in
modern pop music involves what
Development situation of modern pop music in universities
(1) Which music classes have been set up? As shown in Table 1, the music classes set up in universities have been counted up. All universities have set up music classes at a small scale, most of which take the Chinese national music and Western classical music as the mainstays.
Table 1.
What music lessons are offered by the
school?
Music content
Chinese national music
Western classical music
Modern pop music
Not opened
Proportion 89.8% 92.5% 18.3% 0
(2) True feelings in the music classroom teaching process. As shown in Figure 5, the students
experience the true feelings in the music classroom teaching process. Only 15% of students said they are interested in the music teaching process, while more than half of the students think it just so so. Another 33% feel that the music classroom teaching is very boring. Based on the interviews, it is known that the music classroom teaching is nothing but teacher teaching and music appreciation, while the teaching content is not the type students like. Additionally, students rarely have the opportunity to participate in these classes, so that they often lack of interest in music classroom teaching.
Figure 5
.
Real feelings about the music
classroom teaching process
(3) Do you like the modern pop music set up in universities? As shown in Figure 6, whether students like the modern pop music the university now offers. Only 8.3% of students express their preference for the modern pop music set up in universities, and 27.2% do not like it; those who think it just so so reach 64.5%.
Figure 6
.
Do you like the modern pop music
that the school now offers?
0 20 40 60 80
Other Content topic analysis Curved structure
analysis Singing method
introduction
7%
8%
53%
32%
Very bored General I really like it
Like and willing to participate
27.2%
64.5%
8.3% Like General Dislike
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(4) Why they don’t like the modern pop music set up in universities. As shown in Figure 7, there are the reasons why students do not like the modern pop music offered by the universities. It is mostly because the tracks are too outdated and the melody is not good, accounting for 54.3% and 26.7%, respectively.
Figure 7
.
The reason why I don’t
like the
modern pop music that the school opens
Analysis of survey results
It is known from the above findings that modern pop music has a mass audience, especially among students, because students love it more. As they think, modern pop music can overcome their emotional stress when listening to it. They hope to learn the singing method of modern pop music from music lessons, in order to understand what’s content and theme the music will express. In the music courses currently offered by universities, modern pop music as percentage of the total classes is so less that students have not recognized it due to lack of chance of participate in it and outdated music content.
EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS OF INFLUENCE OF MODERN POP MUSIC TEACHING ON STUDENTS' PSYCHOLOGY IN NEW MEDIA CONTEXT
According to the above findings, modern pop music can alleviate the psychology stress of students, but have a little influence on students’ psychology since these classes offered by universities do not involve those students expect. To demonstrate what are the implications the modern pop music teaching has on students’ psychology in the context of new media, here designs and implements the modern music teaching in this context.
Teaching design and implementation
(1) Teaching design. In the choice of teaching content, first, modern pop music should be in line with the mastery of basic music knowledge and mental health development of students. The healthy and instructive works that are popular and classic are recommended to students (Jakubowski and Müllensiefen, 2013), while some vulgar and inferior works are also required to compare them to lead students to form a positive aesthetic psychology (Long, 2014).
Here, music classes are divided into music appreciation, singing and creation modules (Furnham & Bradley, 1997). In the music appreciation module, teachers can play more classic or popular music tracks for students, let them exchange what are the artistic conception and musical effects they express. Then the teachers make comments. Modern pop music is very popular among students. In the music singing module, music teachers can tell students to freely sing their favorite pop music tracks according to their own preferences, discuss with students whether there are positive or negative emotions expressed in music, and study music singing techniques, whilst teachers also select appropriate tracks to instruct students about music knowledge and singing techniques. Teachers also intrigue the students' interests in learning with small music singing contests. Music creation can elicit one's emotions to some extent. In this module, students can cover and re-create the original pop music according to their singing features, creative thinking and current moods, while the teacher acts as an audience and instructor to give them appropriate guidance for creative songs.
(2) Teaching implementation. The class under the test adopts the traditional teaching model for music other than modern pop music course before the test, and students in this class are measured by the SCL-90 psychology self-rating scale (Kellaris & Kent, 1993). After the semester of the trial teaching, these students are re-measured by the SCL-90 psychology self-rating scale after the test. Then, test results before and after the trial teaching are statistically and comparatively analyzed.
Test results
As known from the statistical analysis of pre-test results, the students in the class under the test can be divided into four types: A, B, C, and D. Among them, students C and D do not have obvious psychological symptoms; students A have anxiety, depression, inferiority and other psychological symptoms; students B have anxiety, terror and other
0 10 20 30 40 50 60
Other reasons Can't learn
music knowledge Outdated
song The lyrics are not good Melody is
AN EVALUATION SYSTEM FOR THE INFLUENCE OF MODERN POP MUSIC TEACHING ON STUDENTS’ PSYCHOLOGY IN NEW MEDIA ENVIRONMENT 1068
psychological symptoms. Figure 8 shows the SCL-90 self-rating scale scores made by the four types of students before the trial teaching.
Figure 8
.
Four types of students scored on
the SCL-90 self-rating scale before t teaching
experiment
Figure 9
.
Four types of students scored on
the SCL-90 self-rating scale after teaching
experiments
As shown in Figure 8 and Figure 9, it is known from the pre- and post-test results that the SCL-90 self-rating scale scores made by both students A and
B are significantly improved after a semester of modern pop music learning. Among them, "terror" scores of students A and B drop most; students A drop from 2.99 to 1.61 points, a decrease of 1.38, and students B debase from 2.94 to 1.32, a decrease of 1.62. The "somzatization", “paranoia”, “depression” and “hostility” of students A all drop below 1.5, and for students B, except for anxiety (1.51 points),, the rest of factor scores are less than 1.5. The scores of the students C and D are also lower than those before the test, which implies that modern pop music teaching also played a psychological modulation effect on students.
As the survey results show, modern pop music can effectively modulate the psychological emotions of students. Based on the questionnaire survey and interviews, it is found that modern pop music can beat the psychological stress of students, help treat mental illness, develop students' healthy personality and edify their lofty sentiments.
CONCLUSION
(1) The questionnaire survey shows that the modern pop music has been more popular among students. Most students believe that modern pop music can help beat their psychological stress. However, there are much less modern pop music courses set up in universities, and obsolete content makes less students involve. It has not been recognized by students; hence the intended teaching objectives would never be reached.
(2) To explore what’s the psychological influence of modern pop music teaching on students in the context of new media, this paper designs a modern pop music teaching model that consists of music appreciation, music singing and music creation modules based on the questionnaire survey.
(3) The comparative analysis is made to analyze how the students’ psychology responds to the modern pop music teaching. The findings show that modern pop music can relieve the psychological stress of students, help them treat mental illness, develop their healthy personality and edify their lofty sentiment.
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