International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health Review Effects of the Educational Use of Music on 3- to 12-Year-Old Children’s Emotional Development: A Systematic Review José Salvador Blasco-Magraner 1 , Gloria Bernabe-Valero 2,* , Pablo Marín-Liébana 1 and Carmen Moret-Tatay 2 1 Department of Teaching of Musical, Visual and Corporal Expression, Faculty of Teacher Training, Universitat de València, 46010 Valencia, Spain; [email protected] (J.S.B.-M.); [email protected] (P.M.-L.) 2 Faculty of Psychology, Universidad Católica de Valencia “San Vicente Mártir”, 46001 Valencia, Spain; [email protected] * Correspondence: [email protected] Abstract: Interest in the study of emotions in education has grown in recent years. Some of our modern challenges, such as constantly adapting to new scenarios or the need for team work have justified the introduction of emotional competence into educational systems, while diverse studies confirm the relationship between music and emotional intelligence, so that the former could be used as a tool to develop the latter. The aim of this work was to examine the evidence for positive effects of music on the emotions of 3- to 12-year-old children, to which end a systematic review was carried out. Two reviewers independently evaluated 424 studies that were identified in MEDLINE, Psycinfo, and CINAHL databases, in order to determine whether they met the stated inclusion criteria. A Citation: Blasco-Magraner, J.S.; total of 26 articles were selected for review. The results suggest several beneficial effects of music on Bernabe-Valero, G.; Marín-Liébana, P.; Moret-Tatay, C. Effects of the children’s development, such as greater emotional intelligence, academic performance, and prosocial Educational Use of Music on 3- to skills. It can therefore be concluded that music should be used in school settings, not only as an 12-Year-Old Children’s Emotional important subject in itself, but also as an educational tool within other subjects. Development: A Systematic Review. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2021, Keywords: emotional education; music education; school environment; systematic review 18, 3668. https://doi.org/10.3390/ ijerph18073668 Academic Editors: Simona De Stasio 1. Introduction and Carmen Berenguer The study of emotions is a subject that has raised researchers’ interest, being extended to fields ranging from philosophy, education, or psychology to health sciences. Regarding Received: 4 March 2021 the field of education, a century ago John Dewey pointed out the importance of the social Accepted: 29 March 2021 and emotional nature of the classroom and the relationship between social processes and Published: 1 April 2021 learning [1]. However, the increase in the study of emotions in the area of education during the last two decades has given rise to a more humanistic, holistic, and socio- Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral emotional approach to educational activity [2]. Salovey & Mayer [3] were the first to with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affil- define emotional intelligence as “the ability to monitor one’s own or others’ feelings and iations. emotions, to discriminate among them and to use this information and to guide one’s thinking and actions”. Since then, a large number of programs have emerged aiming to help educators prevent problem behaviours and to promote children’s health and character development [4]. In 1994, the Collaborative to Advance Social and Emotional Learning (CASEL) was created, an organisation whose aim was to promote and implement social Copyright: © 2021 by the authors. and emotional learning as an integral part of teaching in schools. [5]. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. UNESCO s well-known Report of the International Commission on Education for This article is an open access article ´ distributed under the terms and the 21st Century, entitled Learning: The Treasure Within [6], established four pillars on conditions of the Creative Commons which the new education of the 21st century was based: learning to know, learning to do, Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// learning to live together, and learning to be. The last two are closely related to emotional creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ intelligence. Since then, research on the importance of emotional education in the field 4.0/). of education has not stopped growing in different scientific disciplines, especially in Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2021, 18, 3668. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18073668 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/ijerph Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2021, 18, 3668 2 of 29 Psychology, Neurosciences and Behavioral Sciences [7]. Thus, for example, in the field of psychology there is a wide variety of works that address the study of emotions in the educational context from different topics, such as the importance of emotional competence in the classroom [8,9]; emotions and emotional regulation in the classroom [10,11]; or the importance of goals in the emotional experience of academic failure [12]. The field of neuroscience has produced numerous studies on the development of emotional regulation and the possible implications for education [13]; as well as the implications of affective and social neuroscience for educational theory [14–16]. Lastly, in the Behavioral Sciences, one can find studies as diverse as the essential characteristics of educational programs for students with emotional and behavioral disorders [17] or the professional preparation for teachers to effectively implement evidence-based practices for students with Emotional Disabilities [18]. The reasons for the significant increase in research on the relevance of emotional edu- cation in the specific educational contexts have been, in part, the fast and relentless global technological and economic and social changes which have created previously unimag- inable pressures and challenges on the younger population, especially on children [19]. Moreover, the new challenges posed by today’s society demand future professionals who are able to learn constantly by working in a team [20], which is a challenge in interpersonal emotional management. It is therefore necessary to have eminently social individuals with a high capacity to adapt to the constant changes that today’s society demands [21]. For this reason, the educational systems of the most developed countries include in their educational programs the development of individual’s emotional competencies [22]. Social and emotional education is defined as “the educational process by which an individual develops intrapersonal and interpersonal competence and resilience skills in social, emo- tional and academic domains through curricular, embedded, relational and contextual approaches” [1] and all children should develop it in order to achieve full and integral personal formation. What role does music education play in emotional development? In recent years, music education has gained special relevance as part of the curricula of compulsory education in most Western countries [23], both for its learning benefits in itself [24–26], as well as for its ability to promote the learning of other disciplines [27,28]. Music has a remarkable capacity to express, transmit, and evoke various emotions and affections in human beings [29,30], regardless of their nationality or culture [31]. In the last two decades the research on music and its ability to generate emotions in humans has been systematized [32–38]. Numerous studies affirm the ability of music to trigger physiological responses, such as changes in the heart rate, skin temperature, and conductance, respiration and hormone secretion [39–43]. Other studies claim that music aids emotional regulation [44–47] and some have shown that music stimulates the cognitive aspect [48–51]. Ultimately, music is described as multidimensional and researchers have categorised it by its arousal properties, emotional quality, and structural characteristics [52]. The link between music and emotion has contributed to the value of music as a discipline that can be implemented in formal education to develop students’ emotional competence [2,53]. One of the advantages of musical activities is that they mostly require collective participation, which requires cooperation and coordination on the part of the members of a society [54], making them useful tools for the advancement of socioemotional development. In addition, the social interactions required for music-making offer many opportunities for students to develop their abilities to evaluate their own feelings and at the same time try to relate constructively to the feelings of others [55]. According to Pellitteri [56] there are five ways in which music education and social-emotional learning are complementary: music can be used as an emotional stimulus; it can be an aesthetic experience; it can be used for relaxation and imagery; music-making is a form of self- expression; and music-making can be a form of group experience [57]. Music education thus has a strong impact on children and young people´s intellectual, social, and personal development and therefore on pupils´ psychological well-being [58,59]. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2021, 18, 3668 3 of 29 To our knowledge, no systematic review has been carried out on how the educational use of music affects the emotional development of children between 3 and 12 years of age. In order to answer this question, a systematic review was carried out to obtain as many studies as possible