Sing About Science: Leveraging the Power of Music to Improve Science Education

• In Event: Innovations in Science Education

Abstract

“Edutainment” such as educational music and videos has prompted both excitement and skepticism in the educational community. We assessed the impact of music videos with science-based lyrics on content knowledge among more than 500 participants at five K-12/family science outreach events. Most music videos, including plain lyrics-only versions, were followed by statistically significant improvements on questions about material covered in the videos, while performance on “bonus questions” not covered by the videos did not improve. Video-specific improvement was observed for questions that tested for genuine comprehension as well as basic knowledge (levels 2 and 1 of Bloom’s taxonomy, respectively). The findings from this study contribute to a broader dialogue on promising new pedagogical strategies in science education.

Authors

• Katie Davis, University of Washington

• Gregory John Crowther, University of Washington