Let me make mathematics and music together: A meta-analysis of the causal role of music interventions on mathematics achievement

Abstract

This research aims to conduct a fixed-effects meta-analysis to unpack the causal role of music interventions on mathematics achievement. Findings indicated that music interventions had a small to moderate positive effect on mathematics achievement (N = 77,595, k = 245, g = 0.36, p < 0.01, 95% CI [0.34, 0.38]). Mathematics skills, instructional mathematical content, types of music interventions, and age were significant moderators, whereas development status was not a significant moderator for this meta-analysis. The most crucial result was that studies using music-mathematics integrated intervention produced a large effect size. This study can be considered interesting in terms of revealing that a significantly strong and positive transfer in mathematics learning was only achieved when used mathematics and music together in the learning environment. Consequently, the current research is regarded to have laid some groundwork for further meta-analytic investigations as it provides detailed, up-to-date, and useful evidence on this issue.