The correlation between music aptitude and mathematical achievements of students. A case study of six individual students from a High School in Johannesburg, South Africa

Abstract or Introduction

A gap existed in the literature focusing on research overall between music aptitude and mathematical achievement within a South African context. The purpose of the study was to investigate the effect of music aptitude on mathematical achievement and to evaluate the most appropriate instruments for measuring musical talents and juxtaposing them with mathematical achievement using Gordon's AMMA tool to establish the connection between musical acumen and mathematical achievement in randomly selected learners. This study presented data that is now available for use by other researchers. The researcher used exploratory designs to generalise, assess, and test qualitative exploratory results, and to see if they could be generalised to a sample and a population as outlined in this dissertation. This research was evaluated in both qualitative and quantitative phases. The researcher focussed on how students of different ages, gender, intelligence levels, and musical abilities reacted to the AMMA (music aptitude test).

The researcher was intrigued to see that most of the music students in the secondary school could compose with ease without prior knowledge of composition thus demonstrating an excellent theoretical background, which was prevalent in his discussions with colleagues. Having studied the previous school curriculum, they were exposed to since their childhood in primary school, the researcher could not find any relevant material linked to composition, form, structure or even analysis. Conversations with colleagues in the mathematical department revealed that the same students were doing extremely well academically in their mathematical subjects. This raised further questions for the researcher; was this merely a coincidence or was this increase in academic achievement due to the impact of their music studies?

Most parents in the community encouraged their children to attend private schools and went out of their way financially to provide for a good education reinforcing good will and intentions to foster a brighter future for these learners. For students to achieve excellent results, aptitude played a prominent role in their musical development.