Throughout childhood, children experience the social semiotic of music in a variety of ways. As they sing, dance, move, and play, they enjoy making and listening to music. Childhood is also a time of immense change. During their early years, children grow and develop at a faster rate than at any other time in their lives, displaying an intense proliferation of ways of knowing about the world. As part of the industrious activity that accompanies this explosion of knowledge, children sing many songs. It is through sensitive investigation of these songs that we can begin to understand what children know about music, and the place that it is afforded in the social milieux within which they participate. Children???s songs have been the focus of investigation for a number of years, with a range of studies reporting on the manner in which they reflect musical development. Several researchers have reported on children???s songs from a developmental perspective, while others have focussed on the social and functional contexts of the songs. These various approaches have established some basic principles concerning the development of children???s musical skills and knowledge. It is accepted that as children mature, they are likely to exhibit changes in their musical understanding and abilities. However, the diverse range of inquiries that have been undertaken, although rigorous, have resulted in fragmented and irresolute information about the manner in which these changes take place. Research into all areas of children???s development has recently undergone a paradigm shift, with current views focussing on the agency of children and their development within a social context. Such perspectives view the acquisition of knowledge as a dynamic process that occurs as children interact with others, and therefore place great importance on a range of environments in which this knowledge gain takes place. This thesis reports on a 3-year longitudinal study of eight preschool-aged children who were attending a long day care centre in Sydney. Regular video-recordings were made of the children???s spontaneous singing during free play, with each child recorded approximately once per month. Camera tapes were examined and all examples of the participants??? singing were transferred to VHS tapes for transcription and analysis. The resulting 443 songs were transcribed using Western notation, and each play episode and associated song then coded for musical aspects such as song type, melodic range and level of temporal organisation, as well as social aspects such as song function and social roles taken on by the children. The notion of social role was informed by Vygotsky???s Zone of Proximal Development. In addition to base data such as the child???s name and the date of the observation, the resultant dataset was transferred to a qualitative software package (NUD???IST) for subsequent analysis and interpretation. Results of the study indicate that the children used songs for specific purposes, and that patterns of musical development were distinctly different for each child. While interacting with their playmates, the children used both explicit and implicit tools to acquire and transmit musical signs. During this process, the status of knowledgeable other was often conferred on a playmate by a less knowledgeable member of the group, and was not solely dependent on chronological age. The results exhibit some congruence with prior studies, especially those for which the social context of music-making was an important consideration. The findings expand previous developmentally-based investigations by showing that conceptions based on a unidirectional model of musical development, closely linked to chronological age, need to be refined to consider the diversity of social contexts and generative processes within which children???s musical cultures can be defined. The current study supports a modular conception of musical development allied with recent social reconstructions of childhood. Some substantiation of previously reported Western musical universals was found in the children???s production of a specific form of chant, and their ability to operate within meaningful musical units such as phrases. The thesis includes a discussion of practical and theoretical implications that arise from the findings. Several implications for the classroom are offered. Among the most important are that children???s musical constructions should be utilised as important components of planned teaching and learning experiences, because they are capable of producing sophisticated music if afforded the opportunity to do so. Careful observation of existing musical knowledge and its incorporation in teachers??? programming will facilitate an efficient and appropriate mode of teaching and learning, based on the needs and interests of the children. As the children were able to scaffold each other in the process of transmitting and acquiring musical knowledge, it appears advantageous to group them in mixed ages for at least some part of the week. However, without some intervention on the part of the teacher, it seems that they would likely rely on a fairly restricted collection of scaffolding behaviours. Additional research is recommended to determine the value of a number of strategies that can be used to meet the musical needs of preschool-aged children beyond the current research site. Indeed, the outcomes of the study question the importance of striving for a unidirectional model of musical development, immersed in the veil of teleology, and suggest that further research be undertaken in the area of children???s songs, which acknowledges the social agency of children, and their roles in their own musical cultures.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/187771 |
| Date | January 2001 |
| Creators | Whiteman, Peter John, School of Music & Music Education, UNSW |
| Publisher | Awarded by:University of New South Wales. School of Music and Music Education |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | Copyright Peter John Whiteman, http://unsworks.unsw.edu.au/copyright |
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