Music for Fun, Music for Learning: Finding the Music Curriculum in Early Childhood

Abstract

In my position as a lecturer in early childhood music education to early childhood teacher trainees, I have found myself over the years becoming increasingly distant from the reality of making music with young children. My experience as a playcentre supervisor was almost twenty years ago, and my current knowledge about the music programme in early childhood settings comes from being a visiting lecturer to students in their teaching experience. I have been present at many mat-time sessions and have had opportunities to get to know some centres well; however, I no longer feel in touch with the full realities of working with children in music. The study I report on in this paper was chosen in part as an attempt to dispel this feeling of distance, while at the same time fulfilling the requirements of my study towards an M.Ed. My study (Willberg, 2000) began with the question: What is the role of music in early childhood education settings? My supervisors quickly persuaded me that it was too much to attempt to study the three main kinds of New Zealand early childhood settings: full-day early childhood education for 0 - 5 year olds (childcare), sessional age-based early childhood education for 3 - 5 year olds (kindergarten), and parent-co-operative early childhood education programmes (Playcentre). This led to a decision to focus on full-day childcare through one case study. My rationale for choosing this setting was that: full-day childcare was the setting with which I was least familiar; children are attending childcare in increasing numbers; the teachers who graduate from the teacher education institution in which I teach are increasingly likely to be teaching in this type of early childhood education setting; a case study would offer sufficient data to allow for the emergence of some theoretical statements about the place of music in childcare.