Music as a Societal Impact on Learning, Emotion, Behavior, and Conformity

Jasmine Dozier, Social Studies, Cochrane Collegiate Academy

Curriculum Unit (pdf)

Synopsis

This unit on Music’s impact on society will use a plethora of critical thinking strategies for students to explore music through socially scientific lens.  With Psychology being the scientific study of behavior and mental processes, students will use the psychological perspectives and research skills learned to study human behavior, emotion, and behavior through the impact of music as a social construct.  Student will also use scientific methods to research coding, theme, language, and underlying message of songs as they can influence and make a social change amongst human beings. Students will begin with an introduction of themselves through song and music.  This will capture their engagement and get them to understand how music affects almost every sense of the world including the human brain.  This curriculum unit will not last for only one unit, it will consist of “mini-units” within each unit to chunk and build upon the scientific skills that students have already focused on, so as not to diminish their learning.   Students will use song, music, and poetry to study its effect on human beings and society as a whole. There will be multiple performance tasks for students to complete as they make their way through the “mini-units” while considering society as a whole and the human brain alone. At the end of the unit, students will have to create a soundtrack to one of the sub-units on learning/cognition/memory, identity/personality, motivation/emotion, or consciousness.  Students will have to include research, lyrical messages, tempo, psychological concepts, and any other musical or scientific elements necessary to create this soundtrack.   This final project will include a presentation with use of digital tools.