Structured Joint Music–Movement Activities in Early Childhood Education: Associations With Teacher-Perceived Prosocial Behavior and Situational Peer Cooperation

Technical Summary: Structured Joint Music–Movement Activities in Early Childhood Education

Problem Statement
While developmental research suggests that collective musical engagement may foster socioemotional and prosocial development in children, the specific conditions governing these associations remain insufficiently understood. Existing literature presents inconsistent findings: some longitudinal and school-based studies report improvements in empathy and prosocial functioning following sustained group musical activities, while others yield null or inconsistent results. Consequently, the extent to which repeated collective joint musical engagement is associated with generalized prosocial functioning within naturalistic preschool settings remains unclear. Furthermore, there is a need to clarify patterns of association across different levels of analysis—specifically, between teacher-perceived generalized prosocial behavior and situationally observed cooperative behavior.

Methodology
The study employed a naturalistic quasi-experimental pre–post design involving N = 77 preschool children (34 girls, 43 boys; aged 4–6 years) from public early childhood education institutions in the Prešov Region, Slovakia. The sample excluded children with identified developmental disorders or sensory impairments that would interfere with rhythmic coordination.

• Intervention: Over an 8-week period, children participated in 12 structured collective joint music–movement sessions (approximately twice weekly, 5–7 minutes each). Activities included singing, body percussion, rhythmic synchronization, and coordinated movement, emphasizing shared timing and mutual responsiveness rather than individual performance. Sessions were conducted by regular classroom teachers without explicit instruction or reinforcement targeting prosocial behavior.
• Measures:
  1. Teacher-Perceived Prosocial Behavior: Assessed using the Questionnaire to Assess Perceptions of Prosocial Behavior in Preschool Children (QSPBPCH) at pre- and post-assessment. This 20-item instrument (Cronbach's α = .93) evaluates helping, sharing, comforting, and cooperation based on sustained naturalistic observation.
  2. Situational Cooperative Behavior: Evaluated via a structured joint-action task administered immediately following each music session. Children were paired in dyads to complete tasks requiring temporal coordination and mutual responsiveness. Behavior was recorded across 782 observational records, measuring responsiveness and successful joint task completion.
• Analysis: Statistical analyses included paired-samples t-tests for pre-post changes, Welch's t-tests for gender differences, and nonparametric tests (Chi-square, Mann–Whitney U) for observational data. Effect sizes were reported using Cohen's d and Cramér's φ. Analyses were conducted conservatively, interpreting findings as associative patterns rather than causal evidence due to the lack of randomization and an active control group.

Key Results

• Full Sample Analysis: At the full-sample level, participation in the music–movement activities was not associated with a statistically significant overall change in teacher-perceived prosocial behavior (QSPBPCH scores: t(76) = 1.34, p = .184, Cohen's d = 0.15).
• Gender-Stratified Analysis (Teacher Perception): Significant gender differences emerged.
  • Girls: Demonstrated a statistically significant increase in perceived prosocial behavior from pre- to post-assessment (t(33) = 2.92, p = .006, Cohen's d = 0.50), representing a medium effect.
  • Boys: Showed negligible and non-significant change (t(42) = −0.27, p = .790, Cohen's d = −0.04).
  • Between-Group: While no significant gender difference existed at pre-assessment (p = .160), girls scored significantly higher than boys at post-assessment (p < .001, Cohen's d = 1.09).
• Situational Cooperative Behavior (Observational Data):
  • Girls were significantly more likely than boys to achieve successful coordinated task completion (χ²(1, N = 782) = 4.07, p = .044, φ = .07).
  • Differences in responsiveness and composite cooperation scores favored girls descriptively but did not reach statistical significance (responsiveness: p = .067; composite score: p = .055).
  • Effect magnitudes for observational indicators were uniformly small (φ ≤ .07).

Key Contributions
The study's primary contribution lies in identifying gender-differentiated patterns in the association between collective joint musical engagement and prosocial functioning.

1. Conditional Associations: The findings challenge the notion of a universal, deterministic relationship between collective musical engagement and prosocial development, suggesting instead that these associations are conditional and shaped by individual developmental characteristics.
2. Convergent Evidence: The gender-differentiated pattern was observed across two methodologically distinct measures: a dispositional, teacher-reported instrument (QSPBPCH) and a situational, behavioral observation task. The convergence of girls showing higher responsiveness in both domains strengthens the empirical credibility of the finding, despite the modest effect sizes in the observational data.
3. Ecological Validity: By embedding the intervention within routine preschool activities and using regular teachers, the study provides ecologically valid data on the effects of repeated structured musical engagement in naturalistic settings, contrasting with short-term laboratory experiments.

Significance and Claims
The paper claims that structured collective joint music–movement activities constitute a socially embedded interactional context whose associations with prosocial functioning are neither universal nor equivalent across population subgroups.

• The concentration of significant associations among girls suggests that individual developmental characteristics (such as gender-related variability in responsiveness to affiliative and synchrony-based social contexts) shape the social consequences of collective musical engagement.
• The authors explicitly state that the findings do not support broad implementation claims for music activities as a universal tool for prosocial education. Instead, they suggest these activities may serve as a contextually appropriate complement to prosocial education in preschool settings, particularly when gender-differentiated responsiveness is acknowledged in program design.
• The study emphasizes that observed associations should be understood as context-embedded patterns warranting experimental follow-up rather than evidence of causal influence, citing the lack of an active non-musical control group and the quasi-experimental design as primary limitations. The authors call for future research employing randomization, active control conditions, and longitudinal multi-informant assessment to clarify the specific conditions under which these activities may be associated with prosocial functioning.