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Abstract
Children’s attitudes towards music reflect the socializing practices of their family, parents, peers, school, and the society in which they live. The fact that the Malaysian school system has offered school music since 1983 with very few attempts to understand the impact of this subject among the children themselves highlights the need for investigations which can clarify the extent to which school music education has influenced children’s perceptions of learning music. The purpose of this dissertation was to examine the personal and external factors, which help shape Malaysian children’s valuing for the formal learning of music both in and out of school. Surveys of 1,060 primary school children aged 9 to 12, as well as interviews with a smaller sample of music learners, were undertaken to investigate children’s motivation to learn music. The Expectancy‐Value theory of Jacquelynne Eccles and Allan Wigfield acted as a framework to investigate motivational constructs dealing with ttainment, intrinsic interest, and utility values, in addition to the cost factor related to learning music. In the first part of the analyses, survey results were categorized according to the three main ethnic groups in Malaysia, subdivided into five ethnic‐religion groups (i.e., Malay Muslims, Chinese Buddhists, Chinese Christians, Indian Hindus and Indian Christians), musical experience (learners, non‐learners and those who had ceased learning) and gender. The second part of the analyses focused on the responses of 20 music learners in order to enrich the data obtained in the first part of the analyses.
Results revealed that most children, regardless of ethnicity, were intrinsically motivated to learn music in school. Moderately high perceptions of enjoyment and interest, as well as recognition for music’s utility value were prominent among all ethnic groups. However, most children, regardless of ethnicity, musical experience and gender did not perceive learning music in and out of school as having high attainment value, with a majority indicating moderately low responses for the importance of learning music. Differences among ethnic groups revealed that Chinese and Indian children perceived the utility value of musical training mor than Malay children, who were also more inclined to perceive learning music as difficult and involving more cost. Significant differences for gender also revealed that girls recognize more intrinsic and utility value of learning music bothin and outside school. An important implication arising from the study is the importance of music advocacy throughout Malaysian society. This thesis asserts the right of all Malaysian children to have access to a quality music education that assists in developin all of their potentials. However, it also recognizes that a great deal of work is needed in order to ensure that the discipline of music is more highly regardedwithin all sections of the Malaysian educational system.