Felicia Burkovskiy

Abstract

In recent years, television shows focused on the theme of singing have become a
pop culture phenomenon. Children and adolescents, often heavily influenced by pop
culture, make up a large percentage of the shows' viewers. The popularity of these shows
has had an impact on the field of music education with many educators noticing an
increase in student enrollment in choir and school music programs. This has been
dubbed "The Glee Effect."
Just what are specific impacts of "The Glee Effect?" If these shows can increase
student enrollment in choir, then should music educators embrace them? On the other
hand, if certain aspects of these shows can have a negative impact on our students, how
can we be aware of them and counteract those negatives through education? This study
seeks to explore the positive and negative effects of singing television shows.
In the literature reviewed for this project, authors focused on the perspective of
music educators regarding "The Glee Effect", but not on the perspective of students. One
of the main goals of this project was to go beyond what had already been researched in
the literature by deliberately including the perspective of choral students.
For this project, nearly four-hundred choral music teachers and students were
surveyed on the subject of singing television shows - their personal viewing habits of the
shows and their perception of the shows' impacts on music education. Ultimately, this
survey—having both a teacher response pool and a student response pool, strove to
receive input not only from music teachers about how they perceived the impact of
singing television shows on their students, but from choral students themselves.… (more)