Inspired by a growing body of research suggesting that music lessons are associated with greater academic outcomes (Hallam and Rogers, 2016; Gill, 2020), this independent project explores the hypothesis that learning to play a musical instrument develops self-regulated learning, empowering students with a greater sense of autonomy over their education.
Mannion and McAllister (2020) describe self-regulated learning as a combination of “inherently multifaced concepts” overlapping with theories that include metacognition (Flavell, 1979), self-regulation (Zimmerman, 2000; Zimmerman and Schunk, 2011), self- efficacy (Bandura, 1997) and self-determination (Ryan and Deci, 2017).

This research opens with a rationale highlighting the importance of self-regulated learning within the current educational context. The research is informed by a literature review exploring the development of self-regulated learning in music lessons, examining the pedagogical impact of experiences of self-efficacy and autonomy. A methodology for a pilot study is presented, assessing an intervention designed to complement existing music lessons. Due to the Covid Pandemic the pilot study was not implemented. Addressing the potential to scale up the project, a proposal to extend the intervention to provide guidance to develop self-regulated learning lessons within the new music curriculum (DfE. 2021) is explored. The comparative educational notion of borrowing is used to assess a German intervention for the provision of instrumental lessons to school children. This portfolio of tasks concludes with an examination of potential benefits of the pilot study, and proposed extended project, highlighting the goal of addressing the disparity of opportunity to learn a musical instrument experienced by children from disadvantaged backgrounds.