Research Studies in Music Education

This article offers a short commentary on the “state of play” in early childhood music education research to accompany the articles published in this special issue. It provides an international overview of recent research trends in this field, with examples drawn from Europe, the Americas, Asia, the Middle East, East and South Africa and Australia.

Two assumptions that underlie much research in early childhood music education are that music is a social endeavor and musical participation is beneficial to children’s overall social development. As members of cultural and social groups, young children engage with music in a multitude of ways and with different companions. This article examines young children’s musical engagement from a social perspective, integrating research from a wide range of fields and theoretical orientations. The first section brings forward a discussion on the nature of social interactions with an emphasis on three building blocks of social cognition and their relationships to musical experiences of young children. Studies on rhythmic entrainment, social identity in childhood, musical play, and the effects of formal music education on children’s social development are discussed in the next sections, along with some of the caveats of current theorizing. Implications for future research and practice in music education are woven throughout the text.

Whilst the role of interactive play, thought and language in children’s development has been acknowledged, less is known of the role of interactive play, thought and music. Children’s early music-making is both generative and performative in nature and provides a means by which they engage with self and others. Their independent music-making arises from the infant’s early interactions with carers in a form of “communicative musicality”. Children’s interactive musical engagement may be viewed as foundational in their identity work both as music-makers (identity in music) and as users of music (music in identity), and provides a means for them to trial different ways of being in the world. This article explores the uses of music for a 2-year-old girl and the ways in which she employs music as a resource in her identity work and world-making to narrate a self in and through music.

This study looks at children’s music making in a public setting designed for society writ large. Although known to most children in the city, the subway presents a unique environment, both structurally predictable yet sonically dynamic; it is in continuous transition. Adopting Winnicott’s psychoanalytical perspective, we make a case for viewing children’s spontaneous music making as a tool for comfort and engagement, specifically through the use of musical material as transitional objects and musical behaviors as transitional practices. Data were collected over three weekends on two subway lines in New York City. Seven to 10 field observers traveled in groups of two or three; each filled out a protocol form for every episode of children’s music making observed, indicating musical qualities, sources, and contexts. These categorical descriptors and accompanying field notes were later used to construct more detailed qualitative narratives. With a total of 69 episodes, the authors found that music making was present in children from infancy to middle childhood (approximately age 10). Findings showed musical behaviors were influenced by adult interaction, and generated by resources in the environment. Over 81% of observed episodes contained vocal behaviors; movement occurred in almost half (48%). Musical materials were mostly invented. The most frequent function was “to comfort and entertain self,” comprising over 50% of those observed, and was linked to solitary interaction. Communicating with others accounted for another third of the reports.

Music-based technology is frequently included in early childhood classrooms as an attempt to incorporate music education in the curriculum. However, there is a lack of research that addresses the educational benefits of music-based tablet applications (apps) for young children. Researchers in this study explored the preferences of 4-year-old children (N = 16) for music-based apps in a preschool setting. They found that children preferred those apps that had a high frequency of visual stimulation, were easy to navigate, and/or had familiar music. Although children in the study engaged in social interaction, there was a lack of outward musical behavior. It is anticipated that a knowledge of children’s preferences for music apps will assist with the provision of developmentally appropriate and interactive music-based technology for young children. Additionally, understanding the qualities of music apps that are most likely to promote musical responses (such as singing, rhythmically chanting, moving, or combinations thereof) may help developers create music-based technology that will provide the maximum educational benefits for young children.

Sounds of Intent in the Early Years explores the musical development of children from birth to five years of age. Observational evidence has been utilised together with key literature on musical development and core concepts of zygonic theory (Ockelford, 2013) to investigate the applicability of the original Sounds of Intent framework of musical development, intended for children and young people with learning difficulties, as an assessment model for all children in the early years. One hundred and twenty five observations of 58 children (aged 10 weeks to five years) engaging with music were taken in the form of video recordings over a six-month period within an early years children’s centre. These observations were analysed using the original Sounds of Intent framework to determine whether the types and levels of engagement with music could be framed within the existing model and to identify areas of potential mismatch. A preliminary framework has been designed from which practitioners and parents can gauge their children’s level of musical development in order to support them effectively.

The purpose of this study was to gain insight into the nature of a young child’s engagement in an individual music lesson setting based on principles of informal learning. The informal educational space allowed the child to observe, explore, and interact with a musical environment as a process of enculturation and development (Gordon, 2013; McCloskey, 2012). The setting incorporated the piano, and was considered a readiness experience for later formal piano training. Data collection occurred via video recording, with 24 episodes isolated for close analysis. Richly descriptive narratives of each episode were analyzed by line-by-line transformation regarding the nature of the child’s engagement (Van Manen, 1990). The child’s engagement in the setting was viewed through lenses of lived space, lived body, lived time, lived other (Van Manen, 1990), and lived musicality (Kooistra, 2013). Results include that the child engaged in the setting by expanding the boundaries of the room, using the full range of the room, using his body in rhythmic response, directing the time, including the parent in the lesson, creating pretend contexts, making music (singing, chanting, moving, playing the piano and other instruments), embedding music in his activities, and believing in his musicianship.