Projects

 

Following these ideas, and in the quest for a more inclusive and democratic Music Education, some scholars have criticized hegemonic Eurocentric approaches to music teaching and learning, suggesting instead a departure from sound and sounding phenomena as larger categories that might incorporate children’s diverse trajectories and life experiences, and invite all children to participate in truly engaged ways (Recharte, 2019; Thumlert & Nolan, 2019; Thumlert, Harley & Nolan, 2020).

With this pilot research project, we aim to develop and evaluate a set of strategies and tools that might favor the implementation of an approach to Music Education based on sound as an artistic matter and give a decisive contribution to the design and evaluation of the Pedagogical Framework that will be developed as a follow up of this study, during a more in-depth research project.

This pilot project will be implemented in a non-profit association, from March 2022 to July 2023, with a group of children aged from 1 to 5 years old, their caregivers, and the educators of the association. The project will be developed through an action research design divided into four cycles, and each cycle will be dedicated to aspects we want to explore, namely: (i) soundscapes; (ii) sound microscopy; (iii) conventional musical instruments; (iv) new musical instruments. The overall project will evolve in constant and dynamic collaboration between researchers, children, educators, musicians, and other practitioners working in the field of Music Education in national and international contexts, to find the methodological and procedural bases of the more in-depth research project that will follow.