Music as one of the creative arts offers an ideal vehicle to implement alternative teaching and learning strategies, including the implementation of purposeful but playful pedagogies that are increasingly being acknowledged as the most appropriate way of teaching young children. However, within higher educational institutions, it is becoming more difficult to develop sufficient content knowledge and confidence in student teachers to teach playfully through music. Students being unaware of playful music strategies favour ‘desk bound’ methodologies.
This article explores a music intervention aimed to deepen students’ understanding of and ability to teach playfully through music and reflects on a shift in students’ understandings and perceptions in response to the intervention.
This article reports on the first 2 years of a music intervention programme which was offered to second-year early childhood education students studying for their BEd degree.
The research design is both qualitative and quantitative in nature. It explores how students experience challenges with music education and to explain the nature of these challenges. We outline a music intervention programme designed to deepen student teachers’ understanding, ability and confidence to teach playfully through music. We made use of questionnaires, interviews and observations to explore the success of this intervention programme.
These showed that students’ were positive, showing that students deepened their insights and increased their confidence to teach playfully through music.
In conclusion, the authors show that well-considered music education offers a viable way to enhance a playful approach to teaching and learning in the early years.
The creative arts offer innovative opportunities not only for study within the arts, but also as a catalyst for alternative playful pedagogies in a wide range of contexts. This is particularly true for early childhood education (ECE) where there is strong consensus that young children learn best through playful approaches towards teaching and learning (Moyles
Despite this heightened awareness about the value of play-based learning and teaching, young children are being increasingly immersed in more formal teaching programmes where the emphasis is on paper and pencil representations (Wits School of Education
To teach successfully through music requires teachers to have insight into both music content and methodologies (Shulman & Shulman
The reasons are twofold. Firstly, during informal discussions with student teachers, most reported that they had few or no meaningful music education lessons while at school. Secondly, within the South African context, changes to teacher education programmes at a national and university level have resulted in less time being allocated to methodological subjects such as the creative arts (DHET
Consequently, pre-service teachers are not sufficiently developing their pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) (Neiss
We concluded that a music intervention programme designed to deepen student understanding, ability and confidence to teach playfully through music was the answer. This article reports on the first 2 years of an intervention programme which was offered to second-year ECE students studying for their BEd degree. The article, therefore, explores the effect of the music intervention aimed to deepen students’ understanding of and ability to teach playfully through music. Furthermore, it reflects on a shift in students’ understandings and perceptions in response to the intervention.
The research component of the project was framed by the following questions:
Before the music intervention:
What was students’ understanding of music and in what music-making endeavours had they participated? How did they view the value of music for young children and their learning? How competent and confident did students feel they were to incorporate music as a teaching strategy?
After the music intervention:
How had students’ understanding of music shifted? How did they now view the value of music for young children and their [children’s] learning? How did they now view their competence and confidence to incorporate music as a playful teaching strategy?
Music is a natural and important part of young children’s growth and development. Early interaction with music positively affects the quality of children’s lives. Successful experiences in music help all children bond emotionally and intellectually with others through creative expression in song, rhythmic movement and listening experiences (National Association for Music Education [US]
Early engagement with music sharpens the brain’s early encoding of linguistic sound; thus, musical experiences in the early years can enhance the acquisition of language, which in turn positively influences reading ability (Hallam
In 2012, Brandt, Gebrian and Slevc published one of the most comprehensive studies to date on music and early language acquisition. In reviewing 255 studies, they proposed a new definition of
According to Wood (
The ways in which early childhood professionals make provision for play and playful approaches to learning and teaching, how they design play/learning environments, and all the pedagogical decisions, techniques and strategies they use to enhance learning and teaching through play. (p. 27)
This approach, underpinned by a socio-cultural perspective, recognises children as powerful players in their own learning. They are viewed as capable, competent and unique human beings who are able to make and co-construct meaning together with responsive adults such as the teacher, to develop increasingly complex forms of knowledge, skills and understanding (Fleer, Anning & Cullen
Children’s interests remain central to curriculum planning while the subject disciplines enrich and extend their learning. Co-construction requires that teachers, for example, find out more about content knowledge, know how to set out stimulating learning environments and make provision for playful approaches to learning and teaching (Jordan
Music education, which demands an insightful understanding of the discipline and an interactive approach with the children, becomes an important strategy to further playful approaches to teaching and learning in ECE. As Pramling-Samuelson and Asplund-Carlsson (
Teachers teach as they were taught (Kagan
In 2013, we planned and developed a 7-week interactive music programme. This programme was rooted in the widely accepted and appraised pedagogies of Orff
when teacher educators provide opportunities for students to create, perform, and respond to music, they are better positioned to provide meaningful, enriching musical experiences for their students. (p.38)
Responding to, performing and creating music were important aspects of our intervention programme. Further, from the outset the programme was continually informed and adapted by student responses. Together with the lecturers, students were encouraged to co-construct their knowledge and understandings of the music concepts through continual practical application: experimenting and creating new ways of expressing their understanding of each concept through movement, playing and singing. Thereafter, they would create new activities for children to experience the concept, and teaching aids to visually represent the essence of the concept. This included graphic notation of newly composed simple pentatonic melodies for rhymes and rhythm game cards. Students would play their rhythm compositions on a range of percussion instruments each student was required to design and make.
Together with the lecturers, students were encouraged to co-construct their knowledge and understandings of the music concepts through exploring music pedagogies in a playful way.
We continually stressed this playful approach. Just as young children are sensorimotor learners (Piaget
After the first intervention, based on reflective consideration and student feedback, we resolved that ‘less was more’ and, in the second-year of the intervention (2014), focused on only three music concepts, namely beat, rhythm and pitch.
A great focus was placed on singing as this is the most important and assessable form of music-making for children (Kodàly, in Houlahan & Tacka
Once students had been familiarised with and had practically engaged with the music concepts, they were expected to consolidate their newly acquired skills and knowledge by designing their own music activities appropriate for young children. Activities had to include singing children’s songs, storytelling through music, rhythm exercises and teaching one simple song. Students were expected to work in groups and to present these activities to their peers.
Guidelines were provided and specific activities were allocated to each group to prevent repetition. To build their levels of confidence, original student work was strongly encouraged. The process was carefully scaffolded, and lecturers were available for consultation throughout the process. Certain periods were assigned specifically to support the students in their planning process. During the presentations, students seemed pleasantly surprised by their own and peers’ capabilities to develop and facilitate meaningful, experiential music activities. After each group presentation, through a process of collaborative reflection between the presenters, their peers and lecturers, a range of alternative activities were considered. This collaboration was a highlight in the programme. In the process all participants had the opportunity to experience and evaluate the efficacy of old and new activities. The approach of requiring students to reflect and then create their own movements and rhythms and rhymes after engagement with each music concept in the programme seemed to have been a constructive strategy.
The class unanimously decided to share their presentations with each other enabling all of them to increase their collection of music resources. These resources enabled students to increase their repertoire of teaching strategies and material. Students reported that this was extremely helpful during their teaching experience
The research design is informed by pragmatic knowledge claims where we were interested in determining numerical data and exploring the reasons behind the responses. Thus, this study was both quantitative and qualitative in nature. According to Creswell (
There were two reasons for adopting a mixed-method research design. Firstly, we wanted to verify our initial premise (based on our informal conversations with students) that most have not had any meaningful music-making experiences. This required the collection of numerical data through questionnaires. Secondly, there was a qualitative element. According to Merriam and Tisdell (
We adopted a sequential process for data gathering beginning with quantitative data collection. Students were invited to complete a questionnaire at the commencement of the study in order to gather numerically related data. This process was repeated after the intervention. After the initial questionnaire was administered, we probed more deeply to better understand reasons for the initial responses. We made use of open-ended questionnaires, observations which were detailed through field notes and video recording (Bogdan & Biklen
The sample comprised 71 students. In 2013, we had a 68% compliance rate and a 100% in 2014. Ethical clearance was obtained, and protocols were observed throughout the project.
Data were thematically coded into four themes. These themes, which are presented in the findings, were determined by the literature review, responses given to the questionnaires, observations, video footage and reflections on student presentations (Rule & John
The data obtained from the questionnaires enabled us to determine if there had been any improved understandings of the benefits and value of music in the early years and if students thought their confidence to present music activities had increased. The video recordings clarified the extent to which students had developed their ability to incorporate music playfully into their teacher-guided activities. The initial findings were further corroborated through reflections, informal conversations and observations during students’ practical teaching experience.
Ethical clearance was obtained from the Wits School of Education Ethics Committee (number 2013ECE099S) and protocols were observed throughout the project.
We present the findings and relevant discussions for each of the four themes.
We divided this theme into three subcategories. These were students’:
enjoyment of music
participation in music
understanding of music.
The findings for the pre-course questionnaires were remarkably similar in both groups (2013 and 2014) for these three subcategories.
All students mentioned that they enjoyed music and vacillated between absolutely loving it to liking it. No student disliked music. There was no significant change in post-course findings in relation to this category.
Just over two-thirds of the group had had some personal music experiences during their school years. School music experiences included singing in the school choir and/or playing in a school marimba band (15). A number of students had taken private lessons in piano (11), keyboard (1), drums (3), guitar (2) and clarinet (2) (see
Students’ music experiences during school years.
In addition to their school experience, the majority of students indicated that they currently continue to interact with music in at least two or three different ways as shown in
Students’ current participation in music.
Post-questionnaire responses indicate a small percentage increase in extracurricular music activity. For example, two students said they now sing in a church choir, which indicates an increased confidence in their singing voice (see theme 3). We would also argue that the music course encouraged students to start realising the value of music, both for learning and emotional and social wellbeing as confirmed by Brown (
As
The 2013–2014 pre-course understandings of music.
Post-course responses for the 2013 group demonstrated no significant shift. Students still gave fairly general and simplistic responses. However, we found a small but significant shift in post-course responses of the 2014 cohort, which demonstrated more insightful understandings of music. They gave a combination of responses, indicating that the 2014 cohort appeared to have gained a deeper understanding of the complexities of music as shown in
2014 Post-course understandings of music.
For example, students expanded on their understanding of music being a collection of sounds; the sounds now contained concepts of music such as beat, pitch and rhythm. This improved understanding is captured in the following comments which relate to the three concepts taught. One mentioned … ‘different sounds that come together to form a melody and a coherent sound’, and another mentioned ‘sounds with beat, pitch and rhythm’. Students also expanded on how music made them feel as an expression of emotion, ‘… beat and rhythm that inspires moods’; and ‘beat you move to’; and ‘rhythm, beat and pitch that you feel in your body and soul’.
Students also referred to the more esoteric nature of music. For example, ‘Music is within us all’; ‘It is that intrinsic need to move and express oneself’; ‘It is beauty that can be felt regardless of what you do or who you are’; ‘Music is something you do see and feel … use it to express yourself;’ and ‘Music is a fun way in which to escape and deal with realities’. This enriched understanding of music can be attributed, we argue, to the more focused and structured course given to this cohort. Less proved to be more. By focusing on only three concepts, we were able to adopt an intensive experiential, hands-on approach. This approach enabled students to identify and relate more closely to music knowledge – the theoretical underpinnings of what comprises an appropriate music education (Vannatta-Hall
Almost all of the students agreed that children enjoy music and would benefit from having planned classroom music experiences.
Students’ pre-course perceptions of the ideal time for children to engage with music.
Nearly half of the students said that they included music in their personal teaching, but this was mainly singing and nursery rhymes. Observations showed that their repertoire was very limited. A small number of students mentioned that they had never thought of including music activities in their teaching. A typical comment from this group was, ‘no – have not thought of it until now’.
As
Students’ post-course perceptions of ideal music engagement time for young children.
Pre-course and post-course confidence levels to teach different music activities.
‘music is a fun and exciting way of teaching children many different concepts’. (Observation, female ECD 11 2013 student)
Typical post-intervention comments:
‘At the start I had no music knowledge and did not know how to teach it; now I can see how fun and exciting it is to teach through music.’ (Post questionnaire response, female ECD 11 2013 student)
and :
‘It is actually easy to learn and fun to teach’. (Post questionnaire female ECD 11 2014 student)
But perhaps the best indication of increasing confidence levels, and indeed during TE, is this remark:
‘First day-eish this is difficult but now hell I can do this’. (TE interview, female, ECD 11 2013 student)
Those students who had been involved in music during their school days mentioned that the course bolstered their confidence and helped them to more comfortably use what had been learnt during primary school. For example:
‘I feel more able to use piano in my teaching; I can teach basic music and teach children to enjoy music’ (Post questionnaire, female, ECD 11 2014 student)
and:
‘Before the course could play music but had no idea how to teach children, now I feel much more confident’. (Post questionnaire, female, ECD 11 2014 student)
Pointing to an increase in confidence and basic music knowledge, a more common yet welcome response is reflected in these sentiments:
‘I am not so scared of making a fool of myself.’ (Post questionnaire, female ECD 11 2013 student)
‘I now have some idea of what to do in the classroom.’ (Post questionnaire, female ECD 11 2014 student)
Vannatta-Hall (
‘I have learnt many things that my voice can do and can create fabulous songs out of everyday words, phrases etc.’ (Post questionnaire, female ECD 11 2014 student),
reinforcing the assertion that if one were to attempt to express the essence of Kodàly’s education principles in one word, it could only be – singing (Houlahan & Tacka
However, despite acknowledging an increase in confidence and testifying to increased learning, some said they still felt nervous and a number of students said they would like more music input. They wanted examples of ‘music rings’ and wanted to learn many more songs. One student acknowledged that she was still not sure how to teach music:
‘I think I have not learned much but do like the songs I was taught … I have some idea’. (TE interview, female ECD 11 2013 student)
Another student admitted:
‘I’m more confident but still do not want to teach music – not my interest; I am not musically talented’. (Post questionnaire. female ECD 11 2013 student)
This remark speaks, we think, more to a lack of confidence than to a lack of interest or talent. We believe that over time with more input their confidence and professional teacher identity will grow. In part, we attributed their hesitance to a lack of PCK. PCK takes time to root (Shulman & Schulman
Pre- and post-course music activities students considered to offer to children.
We posit that through this intervention students have still retained the fun image but have begun to deepen their pedagogical insights, sharpened their PCK (Neiss
‘I will try to incorporate music into learning concepts, e.g. shapes, colour and number.’ (Post questionnaire, female, ECD 11 2014, student)
and:
‘to include music in more subjects.’ (Post questionnaire, female, ECD 11, 2013, student)
There was a greater realisation that music is an excellent way to encourage children to develop listening skills. Students referred to some of the activities such as percussion playing that were shared with them during the music course (post-course questionnaire). We viewed these findings as a positive shift from pre-course responses where music was seen as a fun activity for children but not as a usable teaching strategy. Our findings, in fact, suggest that post-course students had begun to deepen their theoretical understanding of the value of music in ECE and to demonstrate an increased competence to teach playfully through music.
We would argue that well-considered music education input, which is both interactive and innovative, offers a viable way to enhancing a playful approach to teaching and learning in the early years. Despite the numerous constraints and challenges that exist in current ECE teacher education programmes, a short, theoretically sound music intervention, which offers experiential learning opportunities that are culturally and contextually sensitive, can enhance students’ perceptions of teaching and teaching methodologies. Although students initially displayed apprehension and reluctance to participate in music activities, they gradually relaxed, and within the span of 7 weeks, there was a notable shift in their confidence and competence. We acknowledge that developing proficiency in music-making and teaching takes time and requires ongoing support; we pose that an intervention such as this acts as a first but important step in developing ECE teachers’ proficiency to engage children joyfully through a sound pedagogy of play.
Seemingly once students have been exposed to alternative music teaching practices, they appear to be willing to embark upon a journey of continuous developing. Such willingness was aptly captured by a student who commented:
‘Practice makes perfect!’ (Post questionnaire, female, ECD 11, 2014, student)
In so doing, she reiterated in a playful, colourful way (see
Student’s ‘playful’ conclusion at the end of the post-intervention questionnaire.
It seems that the music intervention programme proffered students the opportunity to experience music as ‘creative play with sound [that] arises when sound meets human imagination’ (Brandt et al.
The authors declare that they have no financial or personal relationships that may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article.
Both A.J.v.A and L.E. contributed equally to the wrting of this article.
Musical concepts are learned through singing, chanting, dance, movement, drama and the playing of percussion instruments. Improvisation, composition and a child’s natural sense of play are encouraged (Estrella
The Dalcroze approach to music education teaches an understanding of music – its fundamental concepts, its expressive meanings, and its deep connections to other arts and human activities – through ground-breaking techniques incorporating rhythmic movement, aural training, and physical, vocal and instrumental improvisation (Dalcroze Society of America
The Kodaly method is a philosophy of music education that develops a complete musician through the finest musical experiences. Each concept is learnt through aural, visual, kinesthetic and cognitive activities (Orpheus Academy of Music
Teaching experience refers to work integrated learning. It is the block of time that students spend in the schools honing their practical teaching experience.
A music ring is a teacher-guided activity that usually includes all the children in the group. It lasts between 15 and 30 min, depending on the age of the children.