Projects
A Sound centered approach to Music Education: A Pedagogical Framework for a new paradigm in teaching and learning music during childhood
Coordination
Funding
Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT)
Period
2022.04655.CEECIND
Prazo de Execução
2023 to 2029
Abstract
Recent research in Music Education and Music Psychology has established important connections between music and children’s personal and social development. Consequently, several researchers have highlighted the need to implement more inclusive and democratic practices in formal and non-formal educational contexts, involving all children in participatory and meaningful musical experiences.
Following this demand, some scholars have criticized hegemonic Eurocentric approaches to music teaching, suggesting instead a departure from sound and sounding phenomena as larger categories that might incorporate children’s diverse trajectories and life experiences. This turn to sound has been reinforced by researchers relating the field of Music Education with Sound Studies and Musicology, while addressing the many possibilities that might arise by interdisciplinary research involving these three fields.
At the same time, and responding to the same initial call, other scholars have emphasized the many positive transformations that occur when children learn music though creative, collaborative and informal strategies, disrupting the more common practices focused on performance and the development of technical skills.
Responding to this double plea, the present project aims to design, implement and evaluate a Pedagogical Framework (PF) that might critically address a Sound Centered Approach to Music Education, promoting an equitable, inclusive and democratic education, aligned with the recent advancements of the fields of Sound Studies and Musicology. In order to achieve this aim, this study will adopt an Educational Design Research approach that will unfold through sequential research cycles of analysis, design and evaluation and will be divided in 3 stages: (1) Exploratory - that aims to design implement and evaluate a first outline of the PF through a Participatory Action Research design. (2) Multiple Case Study – that aims to analyze in depth the previous version of the PF and redefine it throughout 3 case studies. (3) Evaluation and Dissemination – that aims to disseminate and evaluate the impact of the previously developed PF in teaching and learning practices in Portugal and overseas.
This new PF will emerge from a constant and dynamic collaboration between researchers, teachers, and other practitioners working in the field of Music Education, in national and international contexts. It is expected that this PF might play a key role in the development of an equitable, inclusive and democratic education, becoming a central element not only of new activities and projects developed by teachers and other practitioners in formal and non-formal contexts of learning, but also on the education of music teachers and musicians working in educational contexts, opening, thus, a new door for innovative developments in Music Education research, and for policy makers to reflect on feasible transformations in music education curricular guidelines and directives.
Key-words
Collaborative Creativity; Informal learning; Formal and non-formal educational contexts; Inclusion; Educational Design Research
