Cecilia Wallerstedt

The art of teaching children the arts: music, dance and poetry with children aged 2–8 years old

In this article, the theoretical framework of developmental pedagogy is presented as a tool in studying and developing children’s knowing within the arts. The domains of art focused on are music, poetry and dance/aesthetic movement. Through empirical examples from a large‐scale research project, we illustrate the tools of developmental pedagogy and show how this perspective contributes to our understanding of children’s learning of music, dance and poetry. More specifically, we will analyse: (a) the important role of the teacher in children’s learning within the arts; (b) the importance of conversing when learning the arts; (c) what constitutes the knowledge, what we refer to as ‘learning objects’, to be appropriated within the three domains of art focused on; and (d) how to conceive of progression in children’s knowing within the arts.

Making musical sense: the multimodal nature of clarifying musical listening

The present study concerns the multimodal nature of music education. How children (aged 4–8 years) respond when faced with the challenge of talking about what they hear in pieces of music is studied. The semiotic tools children and their teachers use in these situations and how they transduce between modalities (verbal, sound, colours and gestures) are analysed. Paradoxically, this analytical focus on multimodality results in an emphasis on the importance of verbal language in the learning situations studied. Some implications for music education are discussed.

Learning to play in a goal-directed practice

This study concerns the relationship between learning and play. On the basis of sociocultural theory, some ideas are put forward about how this relationship can be conceptualised in the context of goal-directed practice. Empirical data from primary school with children 6–8 years old are used to illustrate and discuss this conceptualisation. It is suggested that learning and play need to be seen as intrinsically interwoven, and that children’s play is contingent on their learning, more particularly the cultural tools they have appropriated or are in the midst of appropriating.

Learning to discern and account: The trajectory of a listening skill in an institutional setting

The purpose of this study is to investigate how children (aged 6 to 8 years) appropriate concepts relevant to making distinctions about music. In particular, the focus is on how they perceive and describe differences in time in pieces of music. The data were generated through interviews with children. The results show that there seems to be a developmental trajectory from a point where children are unable to discern differences in time in music, via a situation where they perceive such differences but account for them in an ad hoc manner, to a stage where they are able to discern and explain such differences in institutionally relevant concepts. In addition, the study documents how children – operating in the zone of proximal development – may be scaffolded in interaction with a more competent person to appropriate such institutionally relevant distinctions. It is argued that this developmental trajectory describes the development of a cultural skill where children increase their ability to structure music through bodily performance and in linguistic terms. Through this development they also become more skilled at communicating about significant features of music. Generally, in research analysing learning these processes of appropriation and scaffolding are presumed rather than made explicit.

Engaging children's participation in and around a new music technology through playful framing

This article concerns childrens engagement and participation in a musical dialogue, with the adult taking the role of the more-experienced participant and frames the activity as a musical play activity (in both senses of the word ‘play’). It presents an analysis of empirical data from a session with two six-year-old children interacting with and around a new music technology in a Swedish preschool setting and explores what participating in these practices implies for the childrens learning. The results indicate that the communicatively established framing made it possible for the children (i.e. provided scaffolding for them) to participate actively in a joint playful music-making activity. The communicative framing provided by the adult who took the role of a more-experienced participant played a vital part in providing musical experiences, not only in guiding the children to explore the system but also in introducing mediating tools as a way of discerning musical aspects.

Didactic Challenges in the Learning of Music-Listening Skills

Through an empirical study of teachers trying to promote children’s listening skills in music, three inherent didactic challenges are exemplified and discussed. These challenges are (1) dealing with the temporality and invisibleness of the music (i.e. the issue of how to fixate the ‘horizontal’ structure of the music), (2) what constitutes productive questions to ask children in this learning and (3) managing dimensions of variation. These challenges are discussed in terms of some of the constituent concepts of variation theory: learning objects, the learner’s perspective and discernment.

Here Comes the Sausage: An Empirical Study of Children's Verbal Communication during a Collaborative Music-Making Activity.

The purpose of this study is to explore the verbal communication that three 7-year-old children are engaged in when given the task of composing music together. The data consist of a video-observation of the activities that unfold when they try to manage a composition task using a keyboard and two novel technologies called MirorImpro and MirorCompo, respectively. The questions posed by the children and their verbal dialogue are analysed. The results show that they pose few questions and that they do not use musical terms in their conversations. Instead, they come to invent a concept which is shown to fill several mediating functions for the children in the activities, such as facilitating discernment, playing/composing music and sharing their musical experience. The need for further analyses of young childrens verbal communication in music activities is pointed out in order to get hold of childrens perspective on music and in the development of a music education informed by sociocultural theory.

Micro-Genetic Development of Timing in a Child

The purpose of this study is to analyze the micro-genesis of a child’s appropriation of timing. The data consist of video observations from a primary classroom with a focus on one child (7 years old) participating in a musical activity. The results show that the teacher scaffolds the child in several steps: from establishing a platform for participation in the activity, via demonstration to explanation. The child goes from being uncoordinated with the teacher to being able to play in time with her. The meta-issue of how to represent developmental processes in research is discussed.

Experiencing and creating contrasts in music

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine what are necessary conditions for learning the concept ABA form, a concept for analysing and composing music, and to discuss how the use of variation theory can contribute to the field of music education research. Design/methodology/approach – The method used is a form of lesson study, but with only one participating teacher. Three cycles are conducted with three small groups of children, aged eight to nine years old. Findings – The main findings are that the learning of ABA form requires first, awareness of the sequential form of the music, second, that the attitude to differences that appear between sequential parts of the music is consciously being re-direct from seen as “failures” to being interesting musical contrasts and third, that attention is being paid to different features within one musical aspect, that sounds (not only looks) different. It is found that a main contribution of applying variation theory to studies in the domain of music is the c...

Embodied Voices and Voicing Embodied Knowing: Accessing and Developing Young Children’s Aesthetic Movement Skills

Eleven-month-old Matilda is with her parents in the laundry room where they are hanging out the washing. All the washed and wet clothes are in a pile on the floor. Matilda sits down amidst the clothes while her parents hang shirts and sweaters on hangers. Matilda roots about among the clothes and finds two socks of the same kind, pink with white dots on. She holds one sock in each hand, looks up at her parents, laughs and waves the two socks in the air. Through her actions, Matilda displays some of her many skills. She has noticed symmetry, something that is central to aesthetic knowing as well as to mathematics. However, for her skills to develop into, for example, skills in mathematics (principles such as pairs, number, etc.) or aesthetics (understanding how the beautiful patterns of the fabric and the colours are “constructed”, etc.), we suggest that it will be necessary for her to be introduced into and engaged in speech mediation by another (an adult).