Factors affecting the motivation of Hong Kong primary school students in composing music

This study reports students' motivation changes after they were guided to compose. A total of 582 students in five primary schools responded to a set of pre- and post-activity questionnaires before and after participating in composing activities. A univariate ANOVA and a series of repeated measures ANOVAs were used to compare the mean scores before and after the composing activities to measure the different levels of student perception towards music composition. Results suggested that students' gender and their instrumental learning experience were two factors that significantly affected the motivational changes. In general, boys and non-instrumentalists had a significantly lower level of motivation than girls and instrumentalists. However, after experiencing the composing activities, boys had significantly elevated their self-efficacy, while non-instrumentalists had increased their self-efficacy, intrinsic value, utility value and expectancy. Copyright © 2008 International Society for Music Education.