‘Now can I watch my video?’: Exploring musical play through video sharing and social networking in an early childhood music class

Abstract

The purpose of this research was to explore factors influencing musical play of preschool children in home and class settings through the use of video sharing by parents and teacher in an early childhood music course. Six families, all of whom had participated in at least one semester of prior research, attended a 45-minute music class each week for nine weeks and completed and documented assignments via a private online social network. Research questions explored musical play-enhancing and play-inhibiting factors as identified by parents, teacher, and outside observers, and how the behaviors varied across settings. Data included field notes, parent-written posts on the social network site, video footage of children in home and community settings, class video, and transcripts of exit interviews. Results of qualitative data analysis suggested that the expression of child's agency was a key element in play-enhancing behaviors; adult involvement fell into both categories, but was more often play-enhancing when paired with child agency.

‘I don’t even dare to do it’: problematising the image of the competent and musical child

“…How can a more competent participant, such as a teacher, contribute, if at all, to children's development in play activities? Koops (2012) studied what enhances and inhibits children's musical play and found that adults can contribute in both respects. It is important that children keep their agency; adults should not become too involved and take control, for example, by giving too many suggestions.…”

The Overlooked Tradition of “Personal Music” and Its Place in the Evolution of Music

“…Centering on lyrics generally characterizes the initial stage of acquisition of vocal musical skills (Welch, 1994). The earliest children's non-imitative singing surprisingly resembles an ekmelic PS with its stretchable intervals, formulaic structure with retexted lyrics, and private musicking to accompany various activities (Moog, 1976;Dowling, 1984;Bjørkvold, 1992;Campbell, 1998;Barrett, 2011;Koops, 2012). By 7 months, infants can differentiate the timbre of complex tones (Trehub et al, 1990) and remember timbre-specific information (Trainor et al, 2004).…”

Planning for Enjoyment in the General Music Classroom

“…Early childhood music literature contains multiple examples of a connection between enjoyment and children's music making (Andang'o, 2009;Gluschankof, 2008;Koops, 2012Koops, , 2014Suthers & Niland, 2007). However, a search of the literature shows few occasions where researchers set out to study enjoyment within musical interactions.…”