Enhancing Soft Skills through Music Games
21 August 2024
10:30 - 11:00 hrs (GMT+7)
This research aimed to promote students’ soft skills using a collaborative learning approach in music classroom activities. Two hundred fifty participants were third-grade students in music class from Chulalongkorn University Demonstration Elementary School. Three types of activities were carefully assigned to seven classes of third-grade students throughout the period of four weeks. These activities are the following: 1) a group game, body percussion game, note grouping game 2) a pair game, body percussion game, inner hearing game and 3) an individual game, singing game, sight reading game. The data collecting tool used in this research was an observation form on soft skills that occurred during the activities, such as emotional intelligence and empathy, adaptability and flexibility, cultural intelligence and diversity consciousness, collaboration and teamwork, communication skills, and creativity, Qualitative data were analyzed using content analysis method.
The research results are as follows: on average, students’ soft skill behaviors were observed frequently across four times of activities. The findings demonstrated that the activities effectively facilitated third graders to express soft skills in various directions, such as emotional intelligence and empathy, adaptability and flexibility, cultural intelligence and diversity consciousness, collaboration and teamwork, communication skills, and creativity. Notably, the students’ relationships became more intricate and improved quality after the four sets of activities, indicating the holistic benefits of the study. The implications of this study can be applied to different age groups as well as different school settings.