Problem of Teaching and Learning of Music as a Subject in Junior Secondary Schools, Ondo, Nigeria

This study examined factors responsible for ineffective teaching and learning of music education in some selected secondary school in Ondo West Local Government Area of Ondo State. A descriptive research design was adopted for the study and the research instrument was a structured and a well validated questionnaire which was administered on one hundred and fifty respondents, randomly selected for the study. Data collected were analyzed and interpreted using percentages. The results obtained, revealed that there were few professional music teachers in the school and also poor teaching strategies, unfavorable school learning environment, inadequate of modern musical instruments among others are responsible for ineffective teaching of music education in the Junior Secondary Schools. This study concluded that for music education to thrive and fulfill its mission as a vocational subject by making student to be self reliant after graduation, the government and school administrators should ensure adequate provision of relevant learning materials (musical instruments) also, employment of qualified music personnel and training and retraining programmes should also be put in place for music teachers in order to improve their level of professionalism.


Introduction
There is no doubt that music immerses one's mind, touches emotions, the sense of feeling and affects other sense of thought.Nigerian culture has a universal myth in which we see emotion as more complex and obscure than intellect.Indeed, emotion might be "deeper" in some sense of prior evolution, but there is need to understand the role of music to emotional stability.Research findings affirmed that music provides solutions to the problems of universal laws of thought, that both memory and thinking interact and grow together, Hylton (2002), Edward Fredkin (2004), suggested that listening to music might exercise some innate map-making mechanism in the brain.The puzzle of music's repetitiousness propounded by Dickson(1997), compared music to the way rodents explore new places; as first they go one way a little, then back to home.They do it again a few times, and then go a little further.They try small digressions, but frequently return to base.Music might portray this building process, or even exercise those very parts of the mind.Music provides an opportunity for students to participate on a social level through group activities.These increased social opportunities possibly affect students' social self-concepts.However, Murdock (1998), found that music students differed significantly from non-music students regarding social self-concept.Okafor ( 2005) ,equally explained the significance of

Statement of Problem
Music can improve the child' abilities in learning and other non musical tasks, As Pruett ( 2004) explains, the many intrinsic benefits to music education include being disciplined, learning a skill, being part of the music world, managing performance, being part of something you can be proud of, and even struggling with a less than perfect teacher.It also enriches his or her appetite for things that bring you pleasure and for the friends you meet.While parents may hope that enrolling their children in a music programme will make them academically promising.Also, that music will provide the child required skill in musical education

Research Questions
The following questions are raised to guide the investigation a) How do the music students perceive their music teachers?b) How adequate in terms of quality and quantity are resources for effective teaching and learning of music in the schools?c) What is the level of support given by the school teachers and the parents towards effective teaching and learning of music in schools?

Literature review
When discussing African music, the term "traditional music" is used to refer to the characteristics of the concept of traditional music.African music prior to the colonization of the continent by European countries, which was most widespread during the late nineteenth century.This precolonial period was full of social changes and dynamism.Great African empires and kingdoms rose and fell, many of their traditions and cultures still prevalent to this day throughout African villages.Also Arabian influence on the music of North Africa, which gives it a separate and distinct style, this discussion will be focused on the music of Sub-Saharan Africa, which shares many characteristics from region to region.A great deal of African traditional music as it occurred in African life and culture throughout the years, was performed by full-time musicians.
Although the terms "traditional music" and "folk music" are often used interchangeably in the literature describing this type of music, the term "traditional music" is more accurate, because some of it belongs to court music or sacral music traditions, therefore the term "folk music" is not always appropriate.Despite their diversity, traditional African musical forms share some common traits.The emphasis is placed more strongly on rhythms than on melody and harmony.Repetition is used as an organizing principle on top of which improvisation is built.African music is mostly performed by groups of musicians, frequently employing polyphony, polyrhythm, and a conversational style of music and interlocking.(Fredking,2004).

Rhythmic Structure
Rhythm is the most distinguishing characteristic of African music tradition.Four basic elements characterize African rhythmic structure.They are an equal pulse base, a metric time arrangement, a specific organizing principle unifying a diversity of simultaneous rhythmic patterns together, and an exact starting point for rhythmic groupings.

Texture
African music, from the communal nature of African society, is marked by the simultaneous sounding of two or more pitches.Melody and rhythm are interwoven within this dense structure of various instrumental and metric combinations.Ornamental devices, either vocal or instrumental, are commonly used to create additional layers, providing a richer density to the texture.Another important feature of African music is its related movements or body percussion, such as hand clapping, foot stamping, and dance.Body movement is strongly encouraged by this type of music.(Murdock, 1998) African music is often used to transmit messages and ideas; and to record and recount historical events.Consequently, the meaning of the texts and their relation to the music especially important.Musician from the northern Nigerian Hausa ethnic group plays a two stringed 'harp' made from half a calabash (gourd) covered in skin.(Murdock 1998).
The composition of African music employs polyphony.Polyphony is defined as the composition of multiple simultaneously sounding and rhythmically independent parts.In such a composition, the originating melody carries given more importance than the resultant harmony.The Zulu choral music of South Africa is an example of vocal polyphony.When this music is performed, individual voices will enter at different moments in a cyclic and continuous manner, giving rise to a complex and constantly shifting texture (Murdock, 1998).
Most African composition is based on the repetition of a musical unit.It is that repetition that holds together the other musical units of the composition.These other unit are structured with great freedom relative to the first unit, producing their own rhythmic pattern that coincides only occasionally with that of the other units and with the basic pulse.For example, in the mbira music of the Shona people of Zimbabwe, a repeated pattern is established by the interaction of various parts, and the musician develops an improvisation out of this core pattern.(Fredking, 2004) The call and response is a form of music composition wherein a vocalist or instrumentalist will sing or play a phrase and another vocalist or instrumentalist will answer with another phrase creating a lively exchange.
Hocketing is the sharing of rhythmic or melodic lines between two or more players, one part resting while the other part performs a note or notes.An essential element of hocketing is integration-the working together and interlocking of the parts.In a more general sense, fast alternation short groups of notes between voices, instruments and timbres is a key element in the polyphonic and polyrhythmic structure that is distinctive to much of the music in sub-Saharan Africa, (Prueff,2004)

Musical Instruments
Besides using the voice, which has been developed to use various techniques such as complex melisma and yodel, a wide variety of musical instruments are used in African music.Elmina, Ghana.A West African man plays the kora, an African chordophone, of the resonator bow type.These include a wide array of drums.Drums used in African traditional music include tama talking drums, Bougarabou and djembe in West Africa, water drums in Central and West Africa, and the different types of ngoma drums (pronounced by some "engoma") in Central and Southern Africa Besides the numerous drums, African percussion instruments can be divided into two broad categories: Instruments with rhythmic functions and instruments with melodic functions.Large gongs, twin gongs, slit gongs, and ritual gongs; rattles and foot rattle; woodblocks, bells, and double bells are examples of instruments with rhythmic functions.Other percussion instruments used for rhythmic parts include shakers, such as the kosika, rainsticks, and Woodsticks.The melodic instruments include string instruments, (musical bows, different types of harps and harp-like instruments like the Kora as well as fiddles), many types of xylophone and lamellophone such as the mbira and different types of wind instrument like flutes and trumpets.(Pruth,2004) A more specific classification can be made by categorizing them into groups namely, chordophones, idiophones, aerophones and membraphones, following the Hornbostel-Sachs system of classification for musical instruments.

Impact of Music Education in Developing Numeracy Skills
Historically, it has long been assumed that there is a strong connection between music and mathematics .Musicians playing from notation are constantly required to adopt quasimathematical processes to sub-divide beats and turn rhythmic notation into sound.However, this type of activity is not related to all aspects of mathematics.Transfer is only likely to occur when the skills required are 'near'.This is supported by a recent study which showed that children receiving instruction on rhythm instruments scored higher on part-whole mathematics problems than those receiving piano and singing instruction (Rauscher et al., 2004).
Research exploring the relationships between mathematics and active musical engagement has had mixed results.For instance, investigated the impact of a music programme on the mathematics achievement of preschool children.The group of children involved in musical activities scored higher on a mathematics achievement test than the control group, although home musical background may have been a confounding factor.researching the impact of an arts programme also found that participating children performed better in mathematics than those who did not, those participating the longest having the highest scores overall.A study using a national US data base also found positive effects for engagement with music. .using the NELS:88 data compared low socio-economic status students who exhibited high math proficiency in the 12th grade and found that 33% were involved in instrumental music compared with 15% who were not involved.Focusing on children learning to play an instrument, Haley (2001), found that those who had studied an instrument prior to 4th grade had higher scores in mathematics than those in other groups.However, Rafferty (2003), found no effect of the Music Spatial-Temporal Maths Program on the mathematics achievement of second graders.The contradictory outcomes of the research might be explained by the types of musical activities engaged in and the length of time spent.
Addressing these issues, Cheek and Smith (1999), examined whether the type of music training was related to mathematics achievement in 8th grade.Those who had two or more years of private lessons had higher scores, while those learning keyboard instruments had higher scores than those learning other instruments.Length of engagement were considered by Whitehead ( 2001) ,who found that middle and high school students who were placed in high, moderate and no treatment groups for music instruction differed in mathematics gains, the high involvement children showing the greatest gains.Overall, the evidence suggests that active engagement with music can improve mathematical performance, but the nature of this relationship, the kinds of musical training needed to realise the effect, the length of time required and the specific types of mathematical problems which are affected need further investigation.
One of the first studies to consider the role of music in children's intellectual development was undertaken by Hurwitz et al. (1975).First-grade children were assigned to one of two groups.An experimental group received Kodaly music lessons for five days each week for seven months, a control group did not.At the end of the study, the experimental group scored significantly higher than the control group on three of five sequencing tasks and four of five spatial tasks.No statistically significant differences were found for verbal measures, although the children in the experimental group had higher reading achievement scores than those in the control group which were maintained after two academic years.
Other research has focused on more general manifestations of intelligence.Bilhartz et al. (2000) studied the relationship between participation in a structured music curriculum and cognitive development in 4-6 year olds.Half of the children participated in a 30 week 75 minute weekly parent-involved music curriculum.Following this, children were tested with 6 sub-tests of the Stanford-Binet intelligence test and the Young Child Music Skills Assessment test.There were significant gains for the music group on the music test and the Stanford-Binet Bead Memory subtest.Adopting a cross sectional approach, Schlaug et al. ( 2005) compared 9-11 year old instrumentalists with an average of 4 years training with controls.They showed that the instrumental group performed significantly better than the control group on musical audiation, left hand index finger tapping rate, and the vocabulary subtest of the WISC-III.Strong nonsignificant trends were seen in the phonemic awareness test, Raven's Progressive Matrices, and the Key Math test.Schellenberg (2004), randomly assigned a large sample of children to four different groups, two of which received music lessons (standard keyboard, Kodaly voice) for a year, the control groups receiving instruction in a non-musical artistic activity (drama) or no lessons.All four groups exhibited increases in IQ as would be expected over the time period but the music groups had reliably larger increases in full scale IQ with an effect size of .35.Children in the control groups had average increases of 4.3 points while the music groups had increases of 7 points.On all but 2 of the 12 subtests the music group had larger increases than control groups.Catterall and Rauscher (2008), argue that the gains seen in more general IQ are likely to be the result of specific gains in visual-spatial intelligence but there may also be effects related to enhanced development of language and literacy skills.
A key issue arising from this research is what kinds of musical activity bring about change in particular kinds of intellectual development and why.? The research reported above has been based on children's participation in a variety of musical activities, some offering a broad musical education, others focused more closely on instrumental tuition.To begin to address these questions, Rauscher et al. (2007), explored the impact of different types of musical activity in at risk preschool children.Five groups received piano, singing, rhythm, computer or no instruction for two years.The three music groups scored higher following instruction than the control groups on mental imagery tasks but the scores of the rhythm group were significantly higher than all other groups on tasks requiring temporal cognition and mathematical ability.The findings from this study suggest that it is rhythmic training which is important for the development of temporal cognition and mathematics ( Rauscher, 2009), while developing enhanced perceptual skills in relation to pitch and melody supports language development, although rhythm emerges as important in relation to literacy.Overall, taking these findings together it would appear that active engagement with making music can have an impact on intellectual development.What requires further research is the specific types of musical participation which develop skills which transfer automatically to other areas and what are the common features of these skills.

Creativity
Researchers have paid less attention to the impact of music on creativity than other types of learning.Simpson (1969) studying 173 high school music and 45 non-music students found that the music students scored higher on several elements of the Guildford's tests of creativity.Wolff (1979), studied the effects of 30 minutes of daily music instruction for an entire year on first graders.Those participating exhibited significant increases in creativity and in perceptual motor skills compared with controls.Kalmar (1998), studied the effects of singing and musical group play twice weekly for three years on pre-school children of 3-4 years of age and found that these children scored higher than controls on creativity,?had higher levels of abstraction, and showed greater creativity in improvised puppet play.They also demonstrated better motor development.High school and university music students scored higher on tests of creativity than none music majors, this being particularly marked in those with more than 10 years of music education (Hamann et al., 1990).A further study compared music students with those whose experiences included theatrical and visual arts.The music students exhibited greater creativity than controls but no effects were found for the visual arts.The greater the number of units of music classes the greater the creativity (Hamann et al., 1991).Other major national reports on the arts have emphasized their importance in developing a range of transferable skills including those related to creativity and critical thinking (NACCCE, 1999).

Educational Benefits of Music Education
Making music involves more than the voice or fingers playing an instrument; a child learning about music has to tap into multiple skill sets, often simultaneously.For instance, people use their ears and eyes, as well as large and small muscles, says Kenneth Guilmartin ( 2003), cofounder of Music Together, an early childhood music development program for infants through kindergarteners that involves parents or caregivers in the classes."Musiclearning supports all learning.Not that Mozart makes you smarter, but it's a very integrating, stimulating pastime or activity, {Ivan, 2003} Language Development "When we look at children ages two to nine, one of the breakthroughs in that area is music's benefit for language development, which is so important at that stage,".While children come into the world ready to decode sounds and words, music education helps enhance those natural abilities."Growing up in a musically rich environment is often advantageous for children's language development," (Luehrisen 1998) she added that those inborn capacities need to be "reinforced, practiced, celebrated," which can be done at home or in a more formal music education setting.According to the Children's Music Workshop, the effect of music education on language development can be seen in the brain."Recent studies have clearly indicated that musical training physically develops the part of the left side of the brain known to be involved with processing language, and can actually wire the brain's circuits in specific ways.Linking familiar songs to new information can also help imprint information on young minds," the group claims.
A study by E. Glenn Schellenberg at the University of Toronto at Mississauga, as published in a 2004 issue of Psychological Science, found a small increase in the intelligence quotient of six-year-olds who were given weekly voice and piano lessons.Schellenberg provided nine months of piano and voice lessons to a dozen six-year-olds, drama lessons (to see if exposure to arts in general versus just music had an effect) to a second group of six-year-olds, and no lessons to a third group.The children's intelligence quotient were tested before entering the first grade, then again before entering the second grade.

Effects of Music on Physical Development, Health and Wellbeing
Rhythmic accompaniment to physical education enhances the development of physical skills.Learning to play an instrument enhances fine motor co-ordination.There may be particular health benefits for singing in relation to the immune system, breathing, adopting good posture, improved mood, and stress reduction.The research has been carried out with adults but these benefits could equally apply to children.The power of music: its impact on the intellectual, social and personal development of children and young people is indispensable.
Recent advances in the study of the brain have enabled us to enhance our understanding of the way that active engagement with music influences other development.Although our knowledge of the way the brain works is still in its infancy some of the fundamental processes involved in learning have been established simultaneously (Murdock,1998).Information processing is undertaken largely through interactions between them, each having approximately a thousand connections with other neurons.When we learn there are changes in the growth of axons and dendrites and the number of synapses connecting neurons, a process known as synaptogenisis.When an event is important enough or is repeated sufficiently often synapses and neurons fire repeatedly indicating that this event is worth remembering In this way changes in the efficacy of existing connections are made.As learning continues and particular activities are engaged with over time myelinisation takes place.This involves an increase in the coating of the axon of each neuron which improves insulation and makes the established connections more efficient.Pruning also occurs, a process which reduces the number of synaptic connections, enabling fine-tuning of functioning.Through combinations of these processes, which occur over different time scales, the cerebral cortex self-organizes in response to external stimuli and the individual's learning activities (Pantev et al., 2003).

Effects of Music Education on Preschool Children
Geoghegan and Mitchelmore (1996) investigated the effects of a music program on the Mathematics achievement of preschool children.The researchers found that there was a difference in mathematics achievement between the music group and the non-music group.The group of children who were involved in the music program scored higher on the mathematics achievement test than the children who had not been involved in the music program and had a limited musical background.Further analysis revealed that the difference in mathematics achievement may have been a result of the children's home musical background rather than the music program itself.

Elementary School Children
A two-year study by Gardiner et al. (1996), investigated the effects of a music and visual-arts curriculum on the academic achievement of first-graders.Students who participated in the arts curriculum had test scores below those of the non-arts curriculum students at the beginning of the school year; however, after seven months the arts curriculum students had higher scores on mathematics achievement.At the beginning of the following year, students were retested and the researchers found that the students who participated in the arts curriculum were still ahead of their peers in mathematics achievement.After a second year of treatment, the arts-curriculum students continued to have higher mathematics achievement scores.The researchers also found that the percentage of students at or above grade level in second-grade mathematics was the highest for those students who participated in the arts curriculum for two years, less for those students who participated for only one year, and lowest for those students who did not participate in the arts curriculum.Haley (2001), investigated the effects of participating in an instrumental music program (Bandor orchestra) on the academic achievement of fourth-grade children.The children were placed into three groups: Group A consisted of children who had studied an instrument prior to the introduction of band and orchestra in fourth grade; Group B consisted of children just beginning to study an instrument; and Group C consisted of children with no experience in instrumental instruction.Data indicated that students who had studied an instrument prior to fourth grade had higher scores in mathematics achievement than those students in the other groups.
Rafferty (2003), investigated the effect of the Music Spatial-Temporal (MST) Math Programon mathematics achievement of second graders.Students who participated in the MST received piano lessons in addition to their regular classroom activities.No significant effects of the MST on the mathematics achievement of second graders were found.Whitehead (2001), examined the effect of music instruction (Orff-Schulwerk) on math scores of middle and high school students.Subjects were randomly placed into three groups: full treatment (which received music instruction for 50 minutes five times per week), limited treatment (which received 50 minutes of instruction once a week), and no treatment (which received no music instruction).After twenty weeks, the full treatment group showed a higher level of significant gain in mathematics than the other two groups.The limited treatment group showed limited mathematics improvement and the no treatment group had the lowest score in mathematics improvement.
A study by Rauscher and Zupan (2000), investigated the effects of classroom music instruction on spatial-temporal reasoning of kindergarten students.Students were assigned to one of two groups: keyboard instruction or no music.After four months of treatment, the keyboard group scored significantly higher on the spatial-temporal tasks than the no music group.The researchers found that after eight months of treatment, the keyboard group still scored significantly higher than the no music group and the difference between groups was much greater.Cheek (1999), examined whether the type of music training is related to the mathematic achievement levels of eighth-grade students.In addition to collecting student data on the lower Tests of Basic Skills (ITBS), Cheek surveyed students about their music background including: type of musical instrument, number of years of school music lessons, number of years of private lessons, and demographics.No significant difference was found between the ITBS mathematics scores of students who did and did not receive private music lessons.However, students with two or more years of private lessons had a significantly higher mean mathematics score than students with no private lessons.Furthermore, students who had keyboard lessons had significantly higher ITBS mathematics scores than students who had music lessons on other instruments.
Many music educators have called for music to be integrated into the instruction of the whole child (Adair-Hauser, 1994;Fox, 2000;Lonich, 1994;Trimble, 1994).Unfortunately, there is very little research that identifies the specific effects of music in an integrated approach.Most of the research literature involves integrated instruction involving more arts than just music recognizing that in these cases it is impossible to separate out the specific contributions of music, the results are generally favourable for language instruction.Fourth grade students who participated in SAMPLE (Suggested Activities of Music and Poetry for Language Enrichment) outperformed students in a traditional class on language mechanics and total language (Hudspeth, 1986).Matthews (2001), determined that integrated arts (dance, music, drama, and visual arts) instruction improved reading performance for fifth, but not third or fourth grade students.Three studies that integrated music and not the other arts provided contrary evidence to the foregoing.In one study, first graders received music instruction integrated with whole language instruction (Miller, 1995).No significant differences were found between the musicintegrated classes and other control classes.Fourth and sixth grade students received music or no-music language arts instruction (Weisskoff, 1981).The music group studied lyrics and played language games with lyrics from popular/rock music, but there was no significant effect on task performance.In another study, one intact fifth grade class received integrated music and reading and the other had no music integration (Andrews, 1997).Interestingly, all three studies reported an improvement in motivation or attitude in spite of the lack of effect on language arts skills.

Methodology
The study was carried out in fire random selected public junior secondary schools in Ondo west local government area of Ondo state the respondent consisted of one hundred and fifty music student in the sample public junior secondary schools and their music teachers.relevant date were collected by means of structure questionnaires tittled music hearing and learning questionnaire The content end face validity was determined by experts in tests and measurement of Adeyemi College of Education Ondo.While its reliability was established mostly test-retest method.A correlation coefficient of 0.86 obtained from the two tests verify product moment correlation formula indicate that the institution is reliable.
Data were analysed using it simple percentages.On the basis of formulated research questions for the study.The results are presented in tables as follows:

Results
Research question-to be addressed Table1 students' perception of their music teachers explicate that there in some of the school visited there are no separate class room available for music as a subject ,41 (27.33%) strongly disagreed, 57 (38%) disagreed respectively while just 10 (6.66%) of the respondents strongly agreed,42 (28%) agreed as well.,In 50 (33.33%)strongly agreed, 34(22.66%)agreed,37 (24.66%) strongly disagreed, while 29 (19.33%) of the respondents disagreed that there are few students during the music class.In 31 students representing (20.66%) strongly agreed, 69 (46%) agreed, 30 (20%) strongly disagreed, while 21 (13.33%)disagreed that friends influence their interest in learning music a school subject.

Discussion of Findings
Findings from table one indicated that teacher's attitude has great influence on the effective teaching of music as a school subject.Ivan (2003), opined that teachers attitudinal disposition influence students interest in learning music education.Findings from table two revealed ways of promoting students interest in music as a school subject.Anderson (1996), argued that parental support and community involvement in providing relevant learning music materials and equipment stimulate student interest in the subject matter.In another perspective, teachers teaching strategies has great influence on effective teaching of music education as a school subject.Joahnne (2001), lamented that adoption of ideal teaching methods do not only enable students to develop good learning habits towards the subject matter, but also help them to have improved academic attainment.Equally, peer influence and school environment has effects on effective teaching of music as a school subject.Supporting this view, Leneth (1996) , posited that school, location in terms of pollution free environment, hygienic classrooms environment goes a long way in enhancing students academic performance in music as a school subject.

Conclusion
Based on the findings of this research work, the following conclusions are drawn; Music education develops perceptual, language and literacy skills as well as developing child ability of writing and reading.But several challenging tackling the teaching and learning of the said subject are lack of regular recruitment of music education teachers into Junior Secondary Schools which has hampers effective teaching of music as a subject, non provision of relevant music learning materials and equipment affect smooth teaching of music education, in conducive and serene learning environment to motioned but few hamper effective teaching of music teaching in Nigerian secondary school.However, both the school administrators and government should ensure adequate provision of relevant learning materials for music as a subject in secondary school level, training and retraining programmes is also imperative for music teachers in order to improve their level of professionalism.

Recommendations
The successful implementation and execution of music education programme rests largely on the readiness of government to address the lapses responsible for ineffective teaching of music education so far identified.It is therefore recommend that: (i) Adequate fund should be provided for the execution of music programme and should be effectively utilized and monitored.(ii) Adequate music learning equipment and facilities should be provided (iii) Adequate qualified and skilled music teachers should be recruited (iv) Teachers should be exposed to frequent training and re-training programme (v) Conducive learning environment should be provided by the government (vi) Government should ensure constant review of the music learning contents (vii) Music teachers should endeavor to adopt suitable method of teaching music subject.