Music in the Life Skills classroom

Abstract

Generalist educators in South Africa shy away from music in the subjects Life Skills (Dance, Drama, Music, Visual Art, Physical Education and Personal and Social Well-being) and Creative Arts (Dance, Drama, Music, Visual Art) and universities are not delivering generalist students for the subject demands. In-service educators as well as subject advisors have often had no music training. The twofold purpose of the study reported on in this article was to determine the extent of challenges experienced in the music component of Life Skills and Creative Arts in South Africa and how this can best be dealt with.Mixed methods research was conducted to ascertain the problems experienced with music tuition in Life Skills and Creative Arts classrooms. It was found that generalist educators have to teach music, whether they have the requisite skills or not. The subject has low status and is frequently used as a filler subject for teachers. Lack of music knowledge, scarce resources, limited support and everchanging educators are some reasons for the absence of quality music tuition. Mentoring by competent subject advisors and senior educators and the re-alignment of school and university curricula will assist music in enjoying its rightful place in the school curriculum.

Arts across the curriculum as a pedagogic ally for primary school teachers

“…South African universities generally have single-semester modules that cover all aspects of the four basic arts forms, but it is not possible to learn and master a new skill in such a short time (Van Vuuren & van Niekerk 2015). Russell-Bowie (2012) agrees and states that:…”

Early childhood care and education educators’ understanding of the use of music-based pedagogies to teach communication skills

“…They expressed the need for the educational authorities to take practical steps to provide the necessary resources to enable them to implement music-based pedagogies more effectively, by providing instruments and by modifying the CAPS curriculum to create more intentional space for music-based pedagogies to teach a variety of skills. This finding is confirmed by Van Vuuren and Van Niekerk (2015), who observed that the Life Skills curriculum where music is included is overloaded, and that insufficient space is provided for educators to employ music-based pedagogies.…”

“…Several research studies have also established that using music to teach any skill helps learners to gain a quick understanding, makes the classroom atmosphere a positive environment for learning and promotes social interaction amongst learners, thereby aiding the growth and development of the ECCE learners (Ba'th & Mychailyszyn 2017;Hawkins 2016;Knight & Rabon 2017;Van Vuuren & Eurika 2018). In addition to listening, reading and writing skills, skills in other subjects such as mathematics and life skills can be unpacked using music as a teaching strategy for other grades (Cloete & Delport 2015;Van Vuuren & Van Niekerk 2015). Khaghaninejad, Motlagh and Chamacham (2016) found that music and communication share certain characteristics, and that using music-based pedagogies for teaching, reading and listening skills to ECCE learners is therefore appropriate.…”

A conceptual framework of the relationship between musicking and Personal and Social Well-being for intermediate phase learners in the South African context

“…12 In our experience, even specialist music teachers in the intermediate phase are, however, often unfamiliar with the approaches one could take to integrate the different components of life skills. 13 There is, therefore, a great need for awareness amongst music educators and general educators about the relationship between personal well-being and musicking, to ensure that they are able to integrate these two concepts in their own teaching. As of now, there is no conceptual framework in the literature which may be used to understand the relationship between personal well-being and musicking in the life of the intermediate phase child in the South African context.…”