Students’ Motivation for Classroom Music in Hungary: An Expectancy–Value Study Within the Kodály Tradition

Music holds a distinctive place in Hungarian culture, yet school music lessons are often perceived as less meaningful than other subjects. Building on McPherson and O’Neill's eight-country study, the present research introduces data from Hungary, a nation strongly associated with Zoltán Kodály's influential educational legacy. Grounded in expectancy–value theory, the study examined students’ motivation toward music in comparison with seven other school subjects (Hungarian language, mathematics, science, physical education, art, history, and foreign language) using a single-item measure for each expectancy–value component. A total of 4,073 students from Grades 5 to 12 (aged 10–19 years) participated. Results revealed that both competence beliefs and value components (interest, importance, usefulness) declined across grade levels, whereas perceived task difficulty remained low and stable for music. Girls and students engaged in extracurricular music activities reported significantly higher motivation than boys and non-music learners. Notably, the decline in music motivation in Hungary was steeper than that observed in the original eight-country comparison. This suggests that the motivational decrease cannot be explained by perceived difficulty but rather points to the weakening of value components within a changing social and cultural context. The findings underscore the need to revisit music pedagogy in Hungary and to adapt the Kodály tradition to contemporary learners’ motivational realities.