Therapeutic uses of music and anxiety level in teachers in times of pandemic – pilot study

During the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been an increase in anxiety and distress in many populations. They particularly affected selected professional groups, e.g. teachers. Among the strategies for coping with anxiety and stress, interventions using music as a tool to reduce tension are showing promising results. For the purpose of this study, a therapeutic intervention protocol using various music-based activities was constructed. A pilot study was carried out to initially assess the effectiveness of the intervention, and – on the other hand – to check the feasibility of the proposed experiment in terms of methodology and practice. The study involved 13 participants (n = 13); a mixed study design with a triple-repeated measures was used (the GAD-7 Generalized Anxiety Questionnaire). The results were interpreted both in an individualized and experimental perspective, with a statistical analysis (ANOVA, Student’s t-test). They suggest that the original musical intervention contributed to the reduction of the level of anxiety in the time course. Due to the size of the sample and the pilot design of the study, the results should be treated with caution.

Polish and foreign educational research on emotions is constantly developing. Scientific research conducted in schools and public libraries has not yet focused on the emotions felt by children in libraries. The article aims to reflect on the library as an educational space with its own emotional climate and to analyse the results of the pilot study and the primary version of the School Library Emotional Climate Questionnaire tool used in it. The study was conducted in a public primary school in Poland between April 2023 and June 2023 and 57 respondents took part. The study’s conclusions emphasise the importance of research on the emotional climate of libraries in developing solutions to improve the quality of functioning of this educational space.