Study: 90081

Practice Guide

Review Details

Reviewed: March 2022

No statistically significant positive
findings

Meets WWC standards with reservations

For:

Practice Guide (findings for Music and movement intervention that supports language skills)

Using:

Rating:

Meets WWC standards with reservations because it uses a cluster quasi-experimental design that provides evidence of effects on clusters by demonstrating that the analytic sample of individuals is representative of the clusters and satisfying the baseline equivalence requirement for the clusters in the analytic intervention and comparison groups.

This review may not reflect the full body of research evidence for this intervention.

Evidence Tier rating based solely on this study. This intervention may achieve a higher tier when combined with the full body of evidence.

Findings

Language outcomes—Indeterminate effect found for the domain
Outcome measure	Comparison	Period	Sample	Intervention mean	Comparison mean	Significant?	Improvement index	Evidence tier
Adaptive Language Inventory (ALI)	Music and movement intervention that supports language skills vs. Business as usual	0 Days	Full sample; 181 students	3.49	3.30	No	--
Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-III	Music and movement intervention that supports language skills vs. Business as usual	0 Days	Full sample; 184 students	55.12	55.67	No	--

Evidence Tier rating based solely on this study. This intervention may achieve a higher tier when combined with the full body of evidence.

Sample Characteristics

Characteristics of study sample as reported by study author.

Female: 50%
Male: 50%
Rural, Suburban, Urban
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Kentucky, North Carolina, New York

Race
Black		63%
Other or unknown		18%
White		19%

Ethnicity
Hispanic		9%
Not Hispanic or Latino		91%

Study Details

Setting

The study took place in Head Start classrooms in three sites - a suburban area of North Carolina, a rural area of Kentucky, and an urban area of New York.

Study sample

The sample consisted of 50% female students and 50% male. The average age of students in the study was 53 months of age at pretest. Sixty-three percent of the children were African American, 19% were Caucasian, 9% were Latino, and 9% were of other races.

Intervention Group

Classrooms in the intervention group received the music and movement intervention delivered by an early childhood music educator 2 days a week for 30 min each time throughout the Head Start program year. In addition, the teachers in these classrooms were asked to incorporate two of the curriculum activities twice a week, and the materials were left in the classroom for use by children during free choice and center times. Each lessons had 10 separate activities that included gross motor activities and quiet activities. The activities targeted language development, rhyming, expressive language, and listening. Most of the activities involved talking to the child about the song/activity, singing, or asking questions about the song or activity.

Comparison Group

The students in the comparison condition received their business-as-usual curriculum and received no supplemental lessons.

Support for implementation

The development and provision of the intervention was overseen by an early childhood music educator who founded and directed two early childhood music companies. The two additional intervention music teachers codeveloped the intervention.

Effects of a Preschool Music and Movement Curriculum on Children's Language Skills [Music and movement intervention that supports language skills vs. business as usual]