What 27 studies say about student motivation in classroom music

Why this review matters for working directors

If you teach band or orchestra, you are technically not the classroom music teacher this review focuses on. But the students who walk into your rehearsal room also walk into general music classes, and many of them are making decisions about whether to continue based on how they feel about music across all of those experiences. More to the point, the findings about what demotivates students and what re-engages them translate directly to the ensemble setting.

This paper is also useful because it is honest about what the research base looks like right now. Most of the 27 studies relied on self-reported questionnaires, many had small or demographically narrow samples, and very few used longitudinal designs. Kiss et al. (2025) flag this directly as a limitation. So this is not a closed case. It is a field still building its evidence base, and the patterns that do emerge across studies are more credible for having appeared in multiple national contexts.

What the research actually measured

The 27 included studies came from 18 countries, with notable clusters in Australia, England, Cyprus, and Turkey. Sample sizes ranged from 24 students in a qualitative interview study to 24,143 across an eight-country international mapping exercise. Most studies focused on grades 5 through 12, with particular attention to the grade 7 transition, a period the authors note may be critical because of puberty's effects on boys' voices and overall engagement with school.

Almost all of the studies used questionnaires as their primary data collection method. That uniformity is worth noting for two reasons. First, it makes cross-study comparison easier. Second, it means all of these findings are based on what students say about their own motivation, not on observed behavior. Self-report data has real value and real limits. Students may underestimate or overestimate their own engagement, and questionnaires designed in one cultural context may land differently in another.

The international mapping exercise, which involved Brazil, China, Finland, Hong Kong, Israel, South Korea, Mexico, and the United States, used a shared instrument developed by McPherson and O'Neill (2010), grounded in expectancy-value theory. Several independent studies in the review also used adaptations of this same tool, which creates a useful baseline for comparison across countries.

Four frameworks, one pattern

Kiss et al. (2025) identified four distinct motivational frameworks across the 27 studies.

Ten of the 27 studies did not apply a named theoretical framework at all, which the authors note as a gap in the field's methodological consistency.

The gender gap that teachers can close

The most consistent finding across the reviewed literature is that girls tend to be more motivated toward classroom music than boys. This showed up in multiple forms: greater interest in the subject, higher enjoyment of lessons, stronger self-reported competence, more positive attitudes, higher values assigned to music, and a tendency to perceive music as easier.

Kiss et al. (2025) report that girls also enjoyed singing more than boys, though the authors note that many of these studies focused on grades 6 and 7, when boys' voices are changing, which may partly explain that particular gap.

Only one study found boys reporting higher values for music, and even that difference was not statistically significant. Two studies found no significant gender differences at all.

For directors in particular, this is worth sitting with. Boys in grades 6 and 7 are a high-risk group for dropout from band programs. If general music experiences during that same period are failing to meet their psychological needs, the decision to quit may be forming well before they ever tell you.

Motivation drops as students age, but not everywhere

Of the 18 studies that reported findings on age or grade-related differences, 14 found that motivation declines as students move from primary to secondary school. Primary school students tended to value music more, find it more interesting, and perceive it as less difficult. Secondary school students showed the reverse pattern across multiple countries: lower competence beliefs, reduced interest, and higher perceived difficulty.

The international mapping exercise found this pattern in China, Finland, Hong Kong, South Korea, the United States, and Israel. In Israel, music was the easiest subject for upper primary students and the hardest for upper secondary students, suggesting that something shifts between those age groups, either in what is expected of students, how the subject is taught, or simply how students re-evaluate their relationship with school subjects as they get older.

Brazil was the notable exception. Brazilian students showed increasing competence beliefs and values for music as they aged, alongside decreasing perceived difficulty. Kiss et al. (2025) suggest this may relate to context: at the time of the study, music education was not consistently available across Brazilian schools, so students who had it may have seen it as special or unusual.

South Africa was also an outlier, with students reporting high values for music, though the study there used a sample of grade 9 and 10 students who had chosen music as an elective, which means those students were self-selected for interest.

Two studies found no significant age-related decline. In one, students had an unusually high motivational profile to begin with, ranking music second out of 15 school subjects. In the other, Freer and Evans (2019) again found that when psychological needs were supported, students maintained higher motivation across age groups. The pattern here is consistent with the gender finding: environmental factors mediate what might otherwise look like inevitable decline.

For directors, the middle school transition is worth treating as a genuine inflection point. Students entering grade 7 are, on average, already starting to downgrade music's value relative to other subjects. That does not mean motivation is lost, but it does mean the window for intervention is earlier than most programs treat it.

What separates music learners from everyone else

Half the reviewed studies compared students who had music instruction outside of school (private lessons, extracurricular ensembles, conservatory programs) with students whose only music exposure was classroom instruction. The findings were consistent across countries: students with outside music experience were more engaged in classroom music, more interested in the subject, and assigned it higher value.

The boost was not limited to music, either. Kiss et al. (2025) report that students engaged in extracurricular music often showed higher motivational profiles across other academic subjects as well, a finding that appeared in studies from Australia, Cyprus, Finland, Israel, Mexico, and the United States.

No study found that students without outside music experience were more motivated than their peers who studied music privately. The direction of the finding was uniform, even if the explanations varied.

Two studies did not find significant differences between music learners and non-music learners, but both had methodological constraints. In one, only 21.6% of participants were music learners, limiting comparisons. In the other, by Janurik et al. (2023), outside instrumental training did not significantly predict musical self-concept, suggesting that individual differences may matter more than the simple fact of taking lessons.

How students rank music against other subjects

The international mapping exercise produced some uncomfortable data here. Across most countries, students ranked music near the bottom in perceived importance and usefulness, while often ranking it near the top in enjoyment and interest. That mismatch tells you something important: students can genuinely like music while simultaneously believing it does not matter.

The reasons are partly structural. Kiss et al. (2025) identify parental pressure as a major factor: in educational systems where college entrance is highly competitive, families push students toward subjects that appear on high-stakes tests. Music does not appear on those tests. School curricula reinforce this perception by treating music as a supplementary subject rather than a core one.

Brazil and South Africa were partial exceptions. Brazilian students showed higher competence beliefs and values for music relative to other subjects, and South African students rated music as the most enjoyable elective and third in perceived importance, though both contexts had selection effects that likely inflated these results.

The practical implication is that motivation in music is always operating against a cultural headwind in most school systems. Students are getting messages from home and from the curriculum structure that music is less important than other things they could be doing. Teachers who want to address motivation cannot pretend that context does not exist.

What students actually enjoy in music class

Several of the reviewed studies asked students directly what they liked and disliked about music lessons. The findings were consistent enough to be useful.

Students preferred practical and creative tasks. Composing their own music was among the most frequently cited favorites, appearing across multiple English studies (Kokotsaki, 2016, 2017; Kokotsaki and Whitford, 2023; Whitford and Kokotsaki, 2024) and in Cyprus (Stavrou and Papageorgi, 2021). Making music with peers, working in groups or pairs, and having access to instruments also came up repeatedly. Listening to contemporary or popular music ranked highly, and students wanted to be able to perform those songs themselves.

Written and theoretical work was the least popular category by a wide margin. Students reported disliking notation work, disliking working in silence, and feeling anxious about performing in front of others. The pattern holds across multiple countries and age groups.

This does not mean music theory is useless or should be abandoned. It means that how theory is introduced and practiced matters for motivation, and that theory taught in isolation from creative application is especially likely to disengage students.

What teachers can do with all of this

Kiss et al. (2025) are explicit on one point: enhancing student motivation in music is largely the teacher's responsibility. Not entirely, given the structural and cultural factors involved, but the evidence consistently points to teacher behavior as the most controllable lever.

Several specific strategies appear across the studies:

• Communicate the value of music clearly and repeatedly. Students in most countries do not arrive with a strong sense of music's importance. Teachers who explicitly connect music to personal development, transferable skills, and lifelong engagement are countering a default assumption that music is less important than math or language arts. This is not about cheerleading. It is about making the case with specifics.

• Build a need-supportive classroom. Studies grounded in SDT (Freer and Evans, 2018, 2019; Kingsford-Smith and Evans, 2021) found that when teachers gave students real choices, helped them feel competent rather than embarrassed, and built genuine relational connections in the classroom, motivation improved across all demographic groups. The gender gap and the age-related decline were both smaller in need-supportive environments.

• Design lessons around active participation. The preference for practical, collaborative, and creative tasks over written and theoretical work is consistent enough to treat as a reliable finding. Students who compose, play with peers, and choose music are more engaged than students who copy notation or fill out worksheets.

• Stay attuned to cultural context. McCarthy et al. (2019) found that teaching style influences students' attitudes, and Arriaga Sanz and Madariaga Orbea (2014) found that integrating contemporary and culturally relevant music into lessons improved motivation. What students hear at home and in their social lives matters. Lessons that connect to those experiences land differently than lessons that ignore them.

• Pay attention to grade 7. Multiple studies across countries point to the middle school transition as the period when motivation starts to erode. This is not coincidence. Voice changes, identity formation, social realignment, and increased parental focus on academic performance all converge at roughly the same time. Directors who work with grade 6 to 8 students are operating in the window where early intervention is still possible.