Constructing a Differentiation System for Music Teaching Based on Multiple Intelligences and Learning Style Models
Online veröffentlicht: 19. März 2025
Eingereicht: 04. Okt. 2024
Akzeptiert: 29. Jan. 2025
DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/amns-2025-0505
Schlüsselwörter
© 2025 Bo Zhang, published by Sciendo
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Music teaching is a discipline that is both artistic and scientific. It involves music knowledge, music skills, music instruments, music appreciation and other aspects [1–3], and students have different music bases and interests as well as learning styles. In response to these differentiated needs, educators can adopt some strategies to enhance the effect of music teaching. Differentiated teaching can better meet the diverse needs of students, so that every student can actively participate in and benefit from music teaching. Differentiated teaching refers to the use of flexible and individualized teaching strategies and methods to meet the learning needs of different students according to their individual differences and learning characteristics [4]. Differentiated instruction is not a new teaching theory, and we can see the shadow of “differentiated instruction” in “teaching according to ability”. After all, students may have different levels of musical knowledge and skills. Some students may already have a high level of musical ability, while others may be new to music. Teachers can group or individualize students according to their level of proficiency to ensure that each student is provided with appropriate learning opportunities and challenges [5–7]. Differentiated teaching can encourage students to give free play to their own strengths and ideas through personal music creation and performance; it can provide a variety of musical styles and repertoire choices to fully meet the different aesthetic needs of students [8].
The birth of the Multiple Intelligences theory has laid a strong psychological and pedagogical foundation for the development of the theory of differentiated instruction. From the perspective of multiple intelligences theory, differentiated teaching is to start from the concept of “no bad students, only differences” in the current classroom teaching, comprehensively understand each student, pay full attention to the intellectual structure of each student, respect students’ intellectual differences, encourage, support, and guide students to develop potential strong intelligence, and promote the development of weak intelligence through the development of strong intelligence methods [9–10]. The theory of multiple intelligences emphasizes the diversity and relative independence of intelligences, and believes that there is no strict hierarchy among various intelligences, but they are independent and complementary to each other [11]. The theory also emphasizes the cultural and contextual nature of intelligence, which is considered to be the ability or creativity to solve problems in a particular cultural or social environment. This theory provides an important theoretical basis for understanding and respecting individual differences, as well as for implementing differentiated instruction in educational practice.
This paper begins with an in-depth discussion of the application of Multiple Intelligences Theory and Learning Styles Theory to differentiated instruction by collecting literature reviews and theoretical analyses. In this case, a differentiation system based on music teaching materials, teaching process, and teaching assessment was designed. By designing and practicing teaching cases in colleges and universities, the differentiated teaching strategies of this paper’s system are demonstrated in three stages: before, during, and after class. Finally, the feasibility of this system in music teaching is evaluated in light of the results of the teaching experiments, including students’ mastery of music theory knowledge, optimization of learning status, prediction of music ability, and satisfaction with teaching.
Music, logic-mathematics, language, space, body movement, interpersonal, introspection, and nature observation are the eight types of multiple intelligences [12]. An instructional system based on multiple intelligences is especially important when students from different majors have differentiated learning needs in music or other courses [13]. In fact, multiple intelligences have long been used in instructional design, and the literature [14] has analyzed the results of students’ multiple intelligences tests to design an educational program for a mathematics course to improve student performance. However, there are significant differences in the multiple intelligences of each individual [15] and teachers need to be aware of these differences when teaching music. Differentiated instruction under multiple intelligences improves students’ critical thinking [16] and strengthens the five types of intelligence: logical-mathematical, linguistic, bodily-motor, interpersonal, and introspective [17]. There was no such effect for musical intelligence, but it exists in everyone [18]. In addition, literature [19] shows that different multiple intelligence types prefer different teaching styles, like musical intelligence dominant students prefer sensory thinking teaching style. The teaching style in music education is also related to students’ learning style, so it is practical to differentiate music teaching according to students’ individual intelligence differences and learning style differences.
Intelligence is an ability to compute information, to process certain types of information, and to derive from human biology and human psychology. Multiple Intelligences [20] advocates that evaluation is a continuous development process, which focuses on exploring the superior intelligence of each student, but also recognizes individual differences and advocates a truthful and objective evaluation method. When evaluating students, student evaluation should be integrated with teaching, so that student evaluation is placed in a specific context, through a variety of methods and means, to assess the development of students’ multiple intelligences.
Multiple intelligences mainly include: linguistic intelligence, mathematical and logical intelligence, spatial intelligence, musical intelligence, physical-motor intelligence, interpersonal intelligence, self-knowledge intelligence, natural observation intelligence and existential intelligence. The relationships among the intelligences are as follows: As far as the concept and nature of intelligence are concerned, each intelligence maintains a relatively independent relationship with little or no influence on each other. The structure of each individual’s intelligence consists of a variety of intelligences with different degrees of development, which gives the individual a diversified and individualized character and makes each individual unique. All the intelligences cooperate and complement each other as the basis for the formation of a complete individual intelligence, so there will not be a person completely missing a certain intelligence, but at most the development of intelligence is not sound. Intelligence has nothing to do with morality. Each intelligence has a dual nature, and it is only a matter of thought whether it contributes to society or destroys it. Several intelligences are equally important.
Learning styles [21] refer to the preferred ways of perceiving and processing information developed by individual learners during the learning process. Differentiated teaching refers to classroom teaching in which teachers intervene in the instructional process in a planned way, and teachers focus on the differences between students in order to achieve the purpose of maximizing the potential of students according to their learning styles. Differentiated instruction in music under the guidance of learning styles theory refers to the process of planned intervention instruction by teachers in music teaching. In this process, teachers focus on the differences between students in order to achieve the goal of maximizing students’ potential based on their preferred ways of perceiving and processing information that have been developed through the long-term learning process. Three aspects are emphasized in this connotation.
First, attention is paid to students’ learning styles. Learning style is an important factor affecting teaching, teachers need to have some exposure to learning style theory before teaching, and try to use the relevant theories to carry out music differentiated teaching under the guidance of learning styles. In class teaching, the number of students is large, teachers need to differentiate between the types of student styles and clarify the types of student learning styles.
Secondly, give full play to the role of teachers’ guidance intervention. In the whole teaching, teachers are required to reorganize the teaching content, refine the teaching objectives, optimize the teaching process, enrich the teaching evaluation, consider the physical environment, and create a good psychological environment, etc. The whole process requires the planned and organized guidance of teachers, who must coordinate the relationship between the teaching content and the students.
Finally, the variability of students’ learning styles. Students’ learning styles change gradually with learning, so learning style theory guided by music differentiated teaching requires teachers to long-term tracking surveys, for different students learning styles can provide targeted, differentiated teaching.
Learning materials are various media that carry learning content, which is an integrated design and blend of media and content. Learning materials can be videos, songs, images and so on. Learning materials come in various forms, covering the whole process from before to after class. Under the guiding principle of differentiated teaching, teachers need to give full consideration to the differences of students when developing teaching materials.
In addition to textbooks, exercise books and assessment papers, which are mainly paper-based, teachers need to actively use multiple media to create differentiated teaching materials for students.
Take, for example, the teaching materials for the pre-study section. The first is to give students a guidebook, which usually includes music learning objectives, important and difficult points, and guided practice, etc. The guidebook is usually in paper form, with some marking and highlighting according to the individual differences of the students. The second type is to record short videos of music pre-study explanations, i.e. to highlight the key points in the lesson plans in the form of videos. Through the video, the teacher can visualize for each student what he or she needs to focus on.
The teaching and learning process is the most important stage in students’ comprehension and digestion of content, and it is during this stage that teachers need to facilitate students’ ability to comprehend and master what they have learned and to put that knowledge to use. In music classes, which are already full of objective differences, music teachers need to design instructional objectives before the semester begins in order to meet the differentiated learning needs of their students.
For example, lower level music students may begin with Music Module 1, Songs of Labor, and approach the content of Module 2, A Collection of Minor Keys, if there is room for learning. While higher level students can start to prepare for the teaching of Module 3 “Songs of the Mountain” after reviewing the above content. Setting up differentiated teaching contents for students at different levels stimulates students’ interest in music teaching without delaying the teaching progress.
In an intelligent teaching ecosystem, student iPads and hardware facilities such as MAXHUBs are highly utilized in the Chinese classroom. Students often need to use tablets to complete classroom tasks or unit projects, etc. Teachers use MAXHUBs for writing and playing classroom materials.
Taking the first 10-minute preview test of the music class as an example, the teacher invites the students to write the most impressive points on MAXHUB when they preview or when they are reading the text, and then ask questions to the students about the points written by the students, integrate some exercises on the tutorial into the questions, observe the students’ understanding and the difficulty of these points, and at the same time make some modifications and save the content written on the MAXHUB, as a thinking sketch completed by everyone. At the end of this session, the saved content will be sent to the student’s tablet for easy comparison and learning. This is the need to combine the use of equipment in the intelligent community to achieve differentiated teaching.
Differentiated instruction is often based on a variety of learning activities, and in a smart ecology, these activities often carry a smart goal orientation, i.e., the development of smart skills through a good experience with the advantages of the environment and the support of technology. Music teachers need to design activities that inspire students to use their systematic knowledge for expression or presentation, most notably in the projects that follow the end of each subject. At the end of the semester, music classes in the high level band also organize singing competitions to allow students to demonstrate the musical skills they have learned.
Because the process of teaching is so varied, the music classroom is rich in evaluation mechanisms. Even in the case of relatively standardized test papers, teachers do not simply give a score as the result. Instead, there is a table of evaluation dimensions at the top of each evaluation section, which lists evaluation criteria such as “clarity of intonation,” against which teachers select a grade that matches the student’s response. The final results of the test paper are also presented in the form of grades with detailed explanations and suggestions for the students and their parents.
Assessment in music classes is guided by a data-driven assessment model, in which the music teacher creates an assessment kit for each student that summarizes data about the student’s Chinese language class. The data in this case do not simply refer to relatively visual numbers or grades derived from the assessment, but also include the teacher’s qualitative evaluation of the student’s performance in the classroom, multidimensional analyses of the student’s production of the project, and evaluation of the student’s ability to express themselves, among other things. The assessment kits are updated on an ongoing basis. The assessment kits are continuously updated and change in response to student dynamics. Based on the changes in the data, teachers assess students’ strengths and weaknesses, progress and lagging behind, possible assessment scores or grades, and learning strengths, etc., and determine whether additional support is needed for the students.
The music differentiated teaching system based on multiple intelligences and learning styles was constructed above. In order to test the teaching effect and feasibility of the system, this section will be based on the constructed teaching system for the design and implementation of music teaching cases, and experiments by designing teaching research programs.
The pre-course stage of music differentiated teaching is mainly to have an in-depth understanding of the students in the class being taught, and based on the differences in understanding as a realistic basis for lesson preparation, the construction of the resource library, the recording of microclasses, and the design of the teaching task list. Learner analysis In the part of learner analysis, the study is based on the elements of learner analysis in “How Differentiation is Implemented: The Design and Implementation of Multi-Level Teaching Programs in Classes”, which analyzes the learners mainly from the three aspects of knowledge base, learning interest, and learning ability, and takes the results of the analysis as an important basis for lesson preparation. Multi-level Teaching Objective Formulation According to the analysis of learners, multi-level teaching objectives will be formulated, and the delineation of multi-level student learning objectives is mainly based on the initial ability, learning interest and learning ability of students as a criterion for delineation. The differential stratification of learners is variable and not static. The students who have very solid foundation, high learning interest level and strong learning ability are divided into students with academic excellence, the students who have average foundation, certain learning interest and learning ability are divided into students with potential excellence, and the students who do not have a solid foundation, lack of learning interest and weak learning ability are divided into students who are struggling, and the division of the students is implicit and only serves as a reference for the teachers to prepare the lessons. For different levels of students need to develop different learning objectives, so that different students in their own ability to get on the basis of improvement. Multi-level teaching content design The design of teaching content mainly includes the construction of the teaching resource library and the design of the teaching task list. For the design of the music teaching resource library, microcourse teaching videos of different levels of difficulty are selected, and these microcourse videos contain different grades of content, so that students can learn according to their own needs.
Through the first half of the classroom students on the designated content of independent study, students have an overall understanding of the relevant knowledge and awareness, in the second half of the classroom is a very important stage of the lesson, the classroom to the classroom internalization of the expansion of the stage, in this stage, students encountered difficulties and doubts in independent study teacher will be discussed, exchanged and answered. In addition, through the class to expand the activity list, to promote the application of knowledge, will learn the knowledge applied to practical problem solving, so that the consolidation of knowledge learned, and promote the internalization of knowledge.
Post-lesson stage is an important stage for teachers to test the teaching effect of the lesson, whether the basic learning objectives of the lesson have been achieved, and whether the students at each level have reached the level they should master are all to be statistically analyzed and verified in the post-lesson stage.
The first step is to collect the classroom observation scales from the teachers who come to listen to the lesson and ask them for their opinions, and record the teachers’ opinions as part of the analysis and reference. Secondly, the students’ learning and teaching task sheets were collected and analyzed, and verified by the completion of the independent learning task sheets and the internalization and expansion tasks. Further, the teacher will make a teacher’s evaluation based on the students’ completion and their self-evaluation of the learning in the lesson. Finally, the teacher will make a comprehensive evaluation based on the students’ learning performance, teachers’ comments and classroom observation records, as well as the completion of the teaching task list and extension task list.
This study selected a college of art music majors to conduct educational experiments, and in order to test the teaching effect of the selected music 1 (CK) class and music 2 (T) class for educational experiments, in order to more objectively quantify the effect of the teaching, but also the experimental class and the control class of the pre- and post-tests, but also use the classroom observation method of the micro perspective of the classroom performance of the students to record and analyze the classroom performance, and after the class in order to understand the students’ After the class, a questionnaire was designed to understand the students’ interest in music teaching, motivation, learning attitude, learning ability, and their views on this teaching method, and to understand the students’ degree of recognition of this teaching method. Through the insertion, the musical ability of the students in both classes was controlled at the same level and each class had 50 students.Class CK was taught the traditional music teaching mode, while class T was taught the differentiated teaching based on the multiple intelligences and learning styles model constructed in this paper.
The questionnaire was divided into 5 levels of “not at all”, “not very agreeable”, “uncertain”, “somewhat consistent” and “completely compliant”, with positive scoring of 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 respectively. Respondents only need to choose the corresponding option according to their actual situation.
In order to test the knowledge of music theory mastered by the students of the control class and the experimental class before the teaching experiment, the students of the two classes were tested on their theoretical performance before the class, and the test questions were objective, the questionnaire used before and after the experiment was the same, and the students were not informed of the correct answers and scores after the test, totaling 100 points.
The statistical results of the students’ performance on the music theory test in the two classes before and after the teaching are shown in Table 1 below.The distribution of the students’ performance in the two classes after the teaching is shown in Figure 1. Combined with the charts, it can be seen that the average scores of the control class and the experimental class in the pre-test of music theory knowledge were 73.64 and 73.57 respectively, and the P value of the significance index was 0.996, which was greater than 0.05, indicating that there was no significant difference between the two classes before the teaching and could be used as an experimental study. At the end of the semester, the two classes of students in the music theory knowledge of the back side of the statistics, the data in the table shows that the experimental class back side of the average score is significantly higher than the control class, the two classes were 82.68, 77.12, and the P-value of 0.000, less than 0.001, which indicates that the two classes of students back side of the results of the emergence of significant differences. And combined with the distribution of students’ scores in the two classes in the figure, students’ scores in the experimental class are mostly distributed between 80 and 90 points, while the majority of students in the control class score 76 to 83 points, which makes the average scores of the two classes have significant differences. In summary, the music teaching under the differentiation system constructed in this paper can greatly improve students’ mastery of music theory knowledge.
The distribution of student scores in the two classes after teaching
The students participate in the results of the music theory test
| Clsss | Mean value | P value | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pre-test | CK | 73.64 | 0.996 |
| T | 73.57 | ||
| Post-test | CK | 77.12 | 0.000 |
| T | 82.68 |
At the end of the teaching experiment, this section designed a questionnaire survey on the feedback of music differentiated teaching information, mainly to analyze the two classes of students in depth on their interest in music learning, motivation, learning attitudes, and learning ability. The results of the recovered questionnaires were managed in Office Excel, and the data were processed and analyzed through SPSS20.0 statistical software.
The results of the feedback questionnaire on differentiated instruction in the music classroom are shown in Figure 2. As can be seen from the figure, most of the students in CK class mainly focused on scores 2 and 3 for several indicators, while most of them in T class were distributed in scores 4 and 5. By comparing and analyzing the means of the teaching data of Class CK and Class T, in Class CK, the sample means of students’ interest in music learning, motivation to learn, attitude to learn, and ability to learn were 2.74, 2.64, 2.88, and 2.86, respectively.In Class T, the sample means of these four aspects were all improved, with 3.94, 3.96, 4.12, and 3.84, respectively.This indicates that differentiated instruction has a positive and positive impact on the music classroom teaching has a positive and effective impact. Students’ interest in music learning, learning attitude, learning motivation and learning ability have been effectively improved, especially learning attitude and learning motivation have been greatly improved.
The results of the questionnaire on the feedback of the music class
Simple linear regression analysis [22] involves only one independent variable, which is mainly used to deal with the linear relationship between a dependent variable and an independent variable, to establish a linear model relationship between the variables, to simplify the complex problem, as long as to find out the most essential factors in it, which is conducive to the exploration of the essential nature of things, and to focus on solving the main aspects of the contradiction.
From the point of view of differentiated music classroom teaching, the teaching effectiveness is obviously improved, but what are the factors that affect the effectiveness of differentiated teaching the most, which factor is most able to affect the performance of students’ musical ability needs to be further explored. To this end, this section investigates this through linear regression modeling.
Table 2 shows the regression analysis of differential instructional feedback and musical ability. According to the analysis of the data in the table, the fit of the model responds to the model’s ability to explain the data, and the larger the R-square, the stronger the model’s explanatory power, and the R-square of this study is 0.365, which means that the explanatory power of the data is 36.5%. In addition, there is a significant relationship between students’ musical ability and their music learning status, and it passes the test of significance at the 0.001 level, and the correlation coefficient responds to the size of the influence relationship. In this section of the study, the size of the influence relationship is in the order of learning attitude (0.521), learning interest (0.417), learning ability (0.316) and learning purpose (0.264), that is, for every unit increase in the learning status of the students, their musical ability rises accordingly from 0.264 to 0.521.According to the coefficients of the model of the regression analysis model can be derived from the regression equation of the model:
Regression analysis of teaching feedback and music level
| Variable | Music level | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Regression coefficient | Standard error | Significance | |
| (constants) | 0.325* | 0.113 | 0.041 |
| Interest | 0.417*** | 0.065 | 0.000 |
| Purpose | 0.264*** | 0.041 | 0.000 |
| Attitude | 0.521*** | 0.069 | 0.000 |
| Ability | 0.316*** | 0.087 | 0.000 |
| R2 | 0.365 | ||
| F | 19.846 | ||
denotes significant at the 0.001 level
At the end of the semester, a satisfaction survey was done on the students of the experimental class to investigate the students’ satisfaction with the differentiated system of music teaching since the semester has passed. A total of 50 questionnaires were sent out in this section and 50 valid questionnaires were returned. The satisfaction survey was conducted in five levels, namely, teaching materials, teaching content, teaching process, teaching assessment, and teaching effect, with each level having five questions reflecting the content of that level. The recovered questionnaires processed the ratings of each level to provide a comprehensive evaluation of the satisfaction of the music teaching differentiation system constructed in this paper.
Figure 3 shows the results of the survey on the evaluation of students’ satisfaction with music differentiated teaching. The survey results show that more than 80% of the students’ satisfaction with the differentiation system constructed in this paper is between 4 and 5 points. Through data processing, the average satisfaction of this differentiated system in teaching materials, teaching content, teaching process, teaching assessment and teaching effect is 4.41, 4.60, 4.53, 4.17, 4.58, in that order.It can be seen that the system constructed in this paper obtains higher ratings in terms of the teaching content, the teaching process and the teaching effect. It shows that the implementation of the system in music classroom can improve the teaching effect by adjusting the teaching content and teaching process.
The results of the evaluation of the evaluation of music differentiation
This study constructed a music teaching differentiation system based on the model of multiple intelligences and learning styles. The system was applied to an art college, and by setting up an experimental class and a control class for teaching experiments, the effect of this paper’s system on music teaching was analyzed and evaluated to provide a data basis for the differentiated teaching model. After the teaching, the average music theory scores of the experimental group and the control group were 82.68 and 77.12 respectively, and the P value was 0.000, showing significant differences. After the teaching experiment, the learning interest, learning attitude, learning motivation and learning ability of the experimental class were significantly improved, and the sample mean values ranged from 3.84 to 4.12. One unit increase in learning interest, learning attitude, learning motivation and learning ability can improve students’ music ability at 0.001 level by 0.264~0.521. The music teaching differentiation system constructed in this paper has gained a high degree of student satisfaction and has practical value.