Young Children’s Friendships with music matter: An exploration as a kinetic sculpture, 2019
Through this theoretical paper and accompanying kinetic sculpture I aim to explore how an educato... more Through this theoretical paper and accompanying kinetic sculpture I aim to explore how an educator can help initiate a child’s life-long “friendship” with music as an ongoing “event”. Borrowing Aristotle’s (384-322BC) thoughts on friendship (as philia, utility and virtue) in Nicomachean Ethics (Broadie and Rowe 2002) I suggest that music for pleasure, music for benefit (perceived non-musical benefits, and increased musical technique), and music for virtuous self-improvement aided by caring, skilful experts are all reasonable aims. All three ways of being “friends” with music need to be in place for a lifelong association with music but, in accordance with Aristotle’s assertion that the virtuous friendship is the most important and long-lived, I suggest that music education should primarily be a virtuous pursuit and refer to Elliott’s plea (2009) that music learning should be a practical subject assisted by caring, ethical professionals. Inspired by Cornelia Parker’s “exploded” artworks which imbue pathos to reassembled components of complicated objects, I have selected words that describe a music education within the categories of philia, utility and virtue using a “phronetic social science” approach (Flyvbjerg 2001) so that the music education practice described falls in the “Goldilocks Zone” that is to say within “the universe of possible discourse” (Bourdieu 1977 p169). The chosen words have been etched on to a moveable sculpture of concentric circles representing philia, utility and virtue and educators are encouraged to play with the sculpture, reflecting on the effect of the juxtaposed words. Music education practice beyond the “zone”, outside of the sculpture, as typified by a slavish pursuit of a pedagogy or directionless meandering, is unethical. The kinetic sculpture challenges the music pedagogue to question their own educational desires, their authority as an expert, their approach to educational certainty and educational risk (Biesta 2013) and their approach to being “fun”, “useful” and “virtuous” when teaching music with very young children.
Music in early childhood tends to be perceived and supported by adults as “performance” and the a... more Music in early childhood tends to be perceived and supported by adults as “performance” and the accurate recreation of tunes and rhymes is valued. Both music and play are appropriated as pedagogical tools for learning and child-initiated, expressive, multi-modal musical play often goes unnoticed by early childhood practitioners. Consequently, the nature of musical play in the healthy development of the child is little understood.
In this study I, an early childhood music practitioner, have monitored the diverse musical behaviours of 26 two- to four-year olds at play in two Children’s Centres in the South West of England in two ways. Firstly, the Sounds of Intent (SOI) scale was used to quantify how a child’s behaviour was musically proactive, reactive, or interactive. Secondly, I collected written observational data.
At the end of 2017, research data will be examined to see if they support the hypothesis that increasing musical behaviours in an early years setting can help to “close the attainment gap” for children identified by the Centre’s professionals as being at risk of academic underachievement.
Data collected so far demonstrate a general trend in the children’s musical development. Some findings require further investigation: the disparity between the quantity of overt musical behaviours recorded for boys compared with girls; the lack of clarity amongst early years professionals over the purpose of musical play in early childhood settings, and when viewing the contextual data obtained within a Playwork Theory framework, hints emerge as to why musical play was occasionally absent.
The idiom “It went in one ear and out the other” expresses that we did not pay full attention to,... more The idiom “It went in one ear and out the other” expresses that we did not pay full attention to, or did not understand what we were listening to. In British Sign Language a similar meaning is conveyed by signing “in one eye and out the other”. Recognising that conventional approaches to music education amongst very young deaf children and their families put music making at risk of “going in one eye and out the other”, this practice paper reflects on musical repertoire and techniques which were co-developed in a two-year action research project working alongside very young children in the local Deaf community. It further reflects on approaches that did not work, questions power relationships between use of conventional music pedagogies amongst groups with sensory impairments and challenges assumptions about music education.
Music interventions in the United Kingdom are, in general, positively regarded (Hallam 2015) but some of the local Deaf Community initially rejected the intervention of “well-meaning”, hearing music leaders. Certain key elements emerged in our practice: careful framing of the music leaders’ intentions before the project as well as before and during music sessions, carefully chosen musical instruments, the use of non-audio support materials to enrich the context of active music making, a commitment to signing, plus evidence of being well-informed rather than well-meaning. An emphasis on facilitating child-led musical play was welcomed by children and carers. Ultimately, deaf and hearing carers demonstrated enjoyment of music making by actively supporting their deaf child’s musical play and “by proxy” through their deaf child’s music-making.
This paper explores the positive effect of dens on child-initiated musical play (ChIMP) amongst f... more This paper explores the positive effect of dens on child-initiated musical play (ChIMP) amongst four-year-old children in a Children’s Centre in the West of England. Building on studies of child-initiated, collaborative musical play and spontaneous vocalisations in naturalistic settings, as opposed to musical performance, the author proposes that a den provides a generative, sociopetal environment which focuses relationships within the space, increasing the child’s engagement with music. Quantitive and qualitative analysis of selected video evidence of relationships during ChIMP contribute to understanding of how this music making can be supported in an Early Years Setting.
This paper digs deeply into aspects of music making during musical play between young children ag... more This paper digs deeply into aspects of music making during musical play between young children aged 3 to 4 years sharing a large, sit-on log drum over six mornings in an early years setting in England and offers evidence towards the strengthening of an emerging theoretical framework around young children's music being of its own genre, requiring specialist methods of adult support. Quantitative analysis of gaze direction and duration during naturalistic, dyadic drum play was found to be reliably measureable and unique to each dyadic musical play episode rather than to each child. The participant researcher’s attention, as determined by gaze, was also unique to play episodes and was characterised by non-verbal instruction. Elevated levels of dyadic gaze agreement coincided overall with increased joint engagement, flow, co-ordinated communicative gestures and smiling. Gaze direction was found to be insufficient as a stand-alone method of evaluating joint engagement during dyadic play. When qualitative analysis of “dynamic interplay” detected in the space “in-between” the children during dyadic play was aligned with gaze data, it was found that moments of dynamic interplay featured non-coincident gaze as children relied on other senses such as hearing and physical sensation to engage with their partner. The symmetry and size of the log drum favours dyadic, gestural play and attendant embodied meaning. Its intrinsic ability to give immediate sensory feedback facilitates a liminal space where embodied expression and opportunity for performance and audience supports relational behaviours evidenced by joint attention, dynamic interplay and self-regulation.
Young children’s friendships with music matter: An exploration as a kinetic sculpture, 2019
Background
This theoretical provocation and accompanying kinetic sculpture describes the nexus of... more Background This theoretical provocation and accompanying kinetic sculpture describes the nexus of three ideas curated within the realm of Early Childhood Music: Aristotle’s analysis of friendship in “Nicomachean Ethics” is adopted to illustrate a child’s “friendship” with music; Elliot’s thoughts on music as social praxis incorporate the role of the body in music as a performance art; Artist Cornelia Parker’s fragmenting treatment of “things that catch her eye” inspires the author’s physical assemblage of songs, philosophies, objects and ideas that have “caught her ear” throughout her career and this is manifested utilising Barad’s notion of diffraction, inspiring the author to raise the recording and reflection of young children’s music-making off the page and into four dimensions. The resulting kinetic sculpture aims to interpret young children’s fragile “friendship” with music and challenges the beliefs and biases of rigorously-applied pedagogies which do not respect the musicality of the young child. Aims Early Childhood music education aspires to instil a eudemonic lifelong association or friendship between the child and the music that s/he actively makes and experiences. According to Aristotle, friendships can be characterised as philia (for pleasure, freely chosen), utility (for the associated benefits) and virtuous (conducted from a position of respect, requiring hard work and a mutual appreciation of character and goodness). These three ideas align neatly with musical play/self-chosen activities, musicking for “transfer” benefits such as enhanced speech or group cooperation, and the hard work and teacher:pupil:music respect required for musical improvement. Each friendship type is essential to a (musical) life well-lived but a virtuous one, says Aristotle, is worthy of life-long pursuit. Contribution and Implication This structure challenges the hubris of a rigorously applied pedagogy without mutual (teacher:child) respect that might undervalue ”philial” music or be determined by transfer effects. Notice too the mobile’s shadows representing the young child’s musical experience prior to engagement with the music teacher; evident yet unknown, analogous to “dark matter”. Words on a page have pathos. However within a suspended mobile words, and the ideas they evoke, are perpetually moving and changing, challenging fixed opinions and realising ambiguity rather than dispelling it. Poster presented at Music Educators and Researchers of Young Children, IPM, Ghent University, 2019.
Young Children’s Friendships with music matter: An exploration as a kinetic sculpture, 2019
Through this theoretical paper and accompanying kinetic sculpture I aim to explore how an educato... more Through this theoretical paper and accompanying kinetic sculpture I aim to explore how an educator can help initiate a child’s life-long “friendship” with music as an ongoing “event”. Borrowing Aristotle’s (384-322BC) thoughts on friendship (as philia, utility and virtue) in Nicomachean Ethics (Broadie and Rowe 2002) I suggest that music for pleasure, music for benefit (perceived non-musical benefits, and increased musical technique), and music for virtuous self-improvement aided by caring, skilful experts are all reasonable aims. All three ways of being “friends” with music need to be in place for a lifelong association with music but, in accordance with Aristotle’s assertion that the virtuous friendship is the most important and long-lived, I suggest that music education should primarily be a virtuous pursuit and refer to Elliott’s plea (2009) that music learning should be a practical subject assisted by caring, ethical professionals. Inspired by Cornelia Parker’s “exploded” artworks which imbue pathos to reassembled components of complicated objects, I have selected words that describe a music education within the categories of philia, utility and virtue using a “phronetic social science” approach (Flyvbjerg 2001) so that the music education practice described falls in the “Goldilocks Zone” that is to say within “the universe of possible discourse” (Bourdieu 1977 p169). The chosen words have been etched on to a moveable sculpture of concentric circles representing philia, utility and virtue and educators are encouraged to play with the sculpture, reflecting on the effect of the juxtaposed words. Music education practice beyond the “zone”, outside of the sculpture, as typified by a slavish pursuit of a pedagogy or directionless meandering, is unethical. The kinetic sculpture challenges the music pedagogue to question their own educational desires, their authority as an expert, their approach to educational certainty and educational risk (Biesta 2013) and their approach to being “fun”, “useful” and “virtuous” when teaching music with very young children.
Music in early childhood tends to be perceived and supported by adults as “performance” and the a... more Music in early childhood tends to be perceived and supported by adults as “performance” and the accurate recreation of tunes and rhymes is valued. Both music and play are appropriated as pedagogical tools for learning and child-initiated, expressive, multi-modal musical play often goes unnoticed by early childhood practitioners. Consequently, the nature of musical play in the healthy development of the child is little understood.
In this study I, an early childhood music practitioner, have monitored the diverse musical behaviours of 26 two- to four-year olds at play in two Children’s Centres in the South West of England in two ways. Firstly, the Sounds of Intent (SOI) scale was used to quantify how a child’s behaviour was musically proactive, reactive, or interactive. Secondly, I collected written observational data.
At the end of 2017, research data will be examined to see if they support the hypothesis that increasing musical behaviours in an early years setting can help to “close the attainment gap” for children identified by the Centre’s professionals as being at risk of academic underachievement.
Data collected so far demonstrate a general trend in the children’s musical development. Some findings require further investigation: the disparity between the quantity of overt musical behaviours recorded for boys compared with girls; the lack of clarity amongst early years professionals over the purpose of musical play in early childhood settings, and when viewing the contextual data obtained within a Playwork Theory framework, hints emerge as to why musical play was occasionally absent.
The idiom “It went in one ear and out the other” expresses that we did not pay full attention to,... more The idiom “It went in one ear and out the other” expresses that we did not pay full attention to, or did not understand what we were listening to. In British Sign Language a similar meaning is conveyed by signing “in one eye and out the other”. Recognising that conventional approaches to music education amongst very young deaf children and their families put music making at risk of “going in one eye and out the other”, this practice paper reflects on musical repertoire and techniques which were co-developed in a two-year action research project working alongside very young children in the local Deaf community. It further reflects on approaches that did not work, questions power relationships between use of conventional music pedagogies amongst groups with sensory impairments and challenges assumptions about music education.
Music interventions in the United Kingdom are, in general, positively regarded (Hallam 2015) but some of the local Deaf Community initially rejected the intervention of “well-meaning”, hearing music leaders. Certain key elements emerged in our practice: careful framing of the music leaders’ intentions before the project as well as before and during music sessions, carefully chosen musical instruments, the use of non-audio support materials to enrich the context of active music making, a commitment to signing, plus evidence of being well-informed rather than well-meaning. An emphasis on facilitating child-led musical play was welcomed by children and carers. Ultimately, deaf and hearing carers demonstrated enjoyment of music making by actively supporting their deaf child’s musical play and “by proxy” through their deaf child’s music-making.
This paper explores the positive effect of dens on child-initiated musical play (ChIMP) amongst f... more This paper explores the positive effect of dens on child-initiated musical play (ChIMP) amongst four-year-old children in a Children’s Centre in the West of England. Building on studies of child-initiated, collaborative musical play and spontaneous vocalisations in naturalistic settings, as opposed to musical performance, the author proposes that a den provides a generative, sociopetal environment which focuses relationships within the space, increasing the child’s engagement with music. Quantitive and qualitative analysis of selected video evidence of relationships during ChIMP contribute to understanding of how this music making can be supported in an Early Years Setting.
This paper digs deeply into aspects of music making during musical play between young children ag... more This paper digs deeply into aspects of music making during musical play between young children aged 3 to 4 years sharing a large, sit-on log drum over six mornings in an early years setting in England and offers evidence towards the strengthening of an emerging theoretical framework around young children's music being of its own genre, requiring specialist methods of adult support. Quantitative analysis of gaze direction and duration during naturalistic, dyadic drum play was found to be reliably measureable and unique to each dyadic musical play episode rather than to each child. The participant researcher’s attention, as determined by gaze, was also unique to play episodes and was characterised by non-verbal instruction. Elevated levels of dyadic gaze agreement coincided overall with increased joint engagement, flow, co-ordinated communicative gestures and smiling. Gaze direction was found to be insufficient as a stand-alone method of evaluating joint engagement during dyadic play. When qualitative analysis of “dynamic interplay” detected in the space “in-between” the children during dyadic play was aligned with gaze data, it was found that moments of dynamic interplay featured non-coincident gaze as children relied on other senses such as hearing and physical sensation to engage with their partner. The symmetry and size of the log drum favours dyadic, gestural play and attendant embodied meaning. Its intrinsic ability to give immediate sensory feedback facilitates a liminal space where embodied expression and opportunity for performance and audience supports relational behaviours evidenced by joint attention, dynamic interplay and self-regulation.
Young children’s friendships with music matter: An exploration as a kinetic sculpture, 2019
Background
This theoretical provocation and accompanying kinetic sculpture describes the nexus of... more Background This theoretical provocation and accompanying kinetic sculpture describes the nexus of three ideas curated within the realm of Early Childhood Music: Aristotle’s analysis of friendship in “Nicomachean Ethics” is adopted to illustrate a child’s “friendship” with music; Elliot’s thoughts on music as social praxis incorporate the role of the body in music as a performance art; Artist Cornelia Parker’s fragmenting treatment of “things that catch her eye” inspires the author’s physical assemblage of songs, philosophies, objects and ideas that have “caught her ear” throughout her career and this is manifested utilising Barad’s notion of diffraction, inspiring the author to raise the recording and reflection of young children’s music-making off the page and into four dimensions. The resulting kinetic sculpture aims to interpret young children’s fragile “friendship” with music and challenges the beliefs and biases of rigorously-applied pedagogies which do not respect the musicality of the young child. Aims Early Childhood music education aspires to instil a eudemonic lifelong association or friendship between the child and the music that s/he actively makes and experiences. According to Aristotle, friendships can be characterised as philia (for pleasure, freely chosen), utility (for the associated benefits) and virtuous (conducted from a position of respect, requiring hard work and a mutual appreciation of character and goodness). These three ideas align neatly with musical play/self-chosen activities, musicking for “transfer” benefits such as enhanced speech or group cooperation, and the hard work and teacher:pupil:music respect required for musical improvement. Each friendship type is essential to a (musical) life well-lived but a virtuous one, says Aristotle, is worthy of life-long pursuit. Contribution and Implication This structure challenges the hubris of a rigorously applied pedagogy without mutual (teacher:child) respect that might undervalue ”philial” music or be determined by transfer effects. Notice too the mobile’s shadows representing the young child’s musical experience prior to engagement with the music teacher; evident yet unknown, analogous to “dark matter”. Words on a page have pathos. However within a suspended mobile words, and the ideas they evoke, are perpetually moving and changing, challenging fixed opinions and realising ambiguity rather than dispelling it. Poster presented at Music Educators and Researchers of Young Children, IPM, Ghent University, 2019.
Uploads
Papers
Borrowing Aristotle’s (384-322BC) thoughts on friendship (as philia, utility and virtue) in Nicomachean Ethics (Broadie and Rowe 2002) I suggest that music for pleasure, music for benefit (perceived non-musical benefits, and increased musical technique), and music for virtuous self-improvement aided by caring, skilful experts are all reasonable aims. All three ways of being “friends” with music need to be in place for a lifelong association with music but, in accordance with Aristotle’s assertion that the virtuous friendship is the most important and long-lived, I suggest that music education should primarily be a virtuous pursuit and refer to Elliott’s plea (2009) that music learning should be a practical subject assisted by caring, ethical professionals.
Inspired by Cornelia Parker’s “exploded” artworks which imbue pathos to reassembled components of complicated objects, I have selected words that describe a music education within the categories of philia, utility and virtue using a “phronetic social science” approach (Flyvbjerg 2001) so that the music education practice described falls in the “Goldilocks Zone” that is to say within “the universe of possible discourse” (Bourdieu 1977 p169). The chosen words have been etched on to a moveable sculpture of concentric circles representing philia, utility and virtue and educators are encouraged to play with the sculpture, reflecting on the effect of the juxtaposed words.
Music education practice beyond the “zone”, outside of the sculpture, as typified by a slavish pursuit of a pedagogy or directionless meandering, is unethical. The kinetic sculpture challenges the music pedagogue to question their own educational desires, their authority as an expert, their approach to educational certainty and educational risk (Biesta 2013) and their approach to being “fun”, “useful” and “virtuous” when teaching music with very young children.
In this study I, an early childhood music practitioner, have monitored the diverse musical behaviours of 26 two- to four-year olds at play in two Children’s Centres in the South West of England in two ways. Firstly, the Sounds of Intent (SOI) scale was used to quantify how a child’s behaviour was musically proactive, reactive, or interactive. Secondly, I collected written observational data.
At the end of 2017, research data will be examined to see if they support the hypothesis that increasing musical behaviours in an early years setting can help to “close the attainment gap” for children identified by the Centre’s professionals as being at risk of academic underachievement.
Data collected so far demonstrate a general trend in the children’s musical development. Some findings require further investigation: the disparity between the quantity of overt musical behaviours recorded for boys compared with girls; the lack of clarity amongst early years professionals over the purpose of musical play in early childhood settings, and when viewing the contextual data obtained within a Playwork Theory framework, hints emerge as to why musical play was occasionally absent.
Music interventions in the United Kingdom are, in general, positively regarded (Hallam 2015) but some of the local Deaf Community initially rejected the intervention of “well-meaning”, hearing music leaders. Certain key elements emerged in our practice: careful framing of the music leaders’ intentions before the project as well as before and during music sessions, carefully chosen musical instruments, the use of non-audio support materials to enrich the context of active music making, a commitment to signing, plus evidence of being well-informed rather than well-meaning. An emphasis on facilitating child-led musical play was welcomed by children and carers. Ultimately, deaf and hearing carers demonstrated enjoyment of music making by actively supporting their deaf child’s musical play and “by proxy” through their deaf child’s music-making.
Drafts
Quantitative analysis of gaze direction and duration during naturalistic, dyadic drum play was found to be reliably measureable and unique to each dyadic musical play episode rather than to each child. The participant researcher’s attention, as determined by gaze, was also unique to play episodes and was characterised by non-verbal instruction. Elevated levels of dyadic gaze agreement coincided overall with increased joint engagement, flow, co-ordinated communicative gestures and smiling. Gaze direction was found to be insufficient as a stand-alone method of evaluating joint engagement during dyadic play. When qualitative analysis of “dynamic interplay” detected in the space “in-between” the children during dyadic play was aligned with gaze data, it was found that moments of dynamic interplay featured non-coincident gaze as children relied on other senses such as hearing and physical sensation to engage with their partner. The symmetry and size of the log drum favours dyadic, gestural play and attendant embodied meaning. Its intrinsic ability to give immediate sensory feedback facilitates a liminal space where embodied expression and opportunity for performance and audience supports relational behaviours evidenced by joint attention, dynamic interplay and self-regulation.
Conference Presentations
This theoretical provocation and accompanying kinetic sculpture describes the nexus of three ideas curated within the realm of Early Childhood Music: Aristotle’s analysis of friendship in “Nicomachean Ethics” is adopted to illustrate a child’s “friendship” with music; Elliot’s thoughts on music as social praxis incorporate the role of the body in music as a performance art; Artist Cornelia Parker’s fragmenting treatment of “things that catch her eye” inspires the author’s physical assemblage of songs, philosophies, objects and ideas that have “caught her ear” throughout her career and this is manifested utilising Barad’s notion of diffraction, inspiring the author to raise the recording and reflection of young children’s music-making off the page and into four dimensions. The resulting kinetic sculpture aims to interpret young children’s fragile “friendship” with music and challenges the beliefs and biases of rigorously-applied pedagogies which do not respect the musicality of the young child.
Aims
Early Childhood music education aspires to instil a eudemonic lifelong association or friendship between the child and the music that s/he actively makes and experiences. According to Aristotle, friendships can be characterised as philia (for pleasure, freely chosen), utility (for the associated benefits) and virtuous (conducted from a position of respect, requiring hard work and a mutual appreciation of character and goodness). These three ideas align neatly with musical play/self-chosen activities, musicking for “transfer” benefits such as enhanced speech or group cooperation, and the hard work and teacher:pupil:music respect required for musical improvement. Each friendship type is essential to a (musical) life well-lived but a virtuous one, says Aristotle, is worthy of life-long pursuit.
Contribution and Implication
This structure challenges the hubris of a rigorously applied pedagogy without mutual (teacher:child) respect that might undervalue ”philial” music or be determined by transfer effects. Notice too the mobile’s shadows representing the young child’s musical experience prior to engagement with the music teacher; evident yet unknown, analogous to “dark matter”. Words on a page have pathos. However within a suspended mobile words, and the ideas they evoke, are perpetually moving and changing, challenging fixed opinions and realising ambiguity rather than dispelling it.
Poster presented at Music Educators and Researchers of Young Children, IPM, Ghent University, 2019.
Borrowing Aristotle’s (384-322BC) thoughts on friendship (as philia, utility and virtue) in Nicomachean Ethics (Broadie and Rowe 2002) I suggest that music for pleasure, music for benefit (perceived non-musical benefits, and increased musical technique), and music for virtuous self-improvement aided by caring, skilful experts are all reasonable aims. All three ways of being “friends” with music need to be in place for a lifelong association with music but, in accordance with Aristotle’s assertion that the virtuous friendship is the most important and long-lived, I suggest that music education should primarily be a virtuous pursuit and refer to Elliott’s plea (2009) that music learning should be a practical subject assisted by caring, ethical professionals.
Inspired by Cornelia Parker’s “exploded” artworks which imbue pathos to reassembled components of complicated objects, I have selected words that describe a music education within the categories of philia, utility and virtue using a “phronetic social science” approach (Flyvbjerg 2001) so that the music education practice described falls in the “Goldilocks Zone” that is to say within “the universe of possible discourse” (Bourdieu 1977 p169). The chosen words have been etched on to a moveable sculpture of concentric circles representing philia, utility and virtue and educators are encouraged to play with the sculpture, reflecting on the effect of the juxtaposed words.
Music education practice beyond the “zone”, outside of the sculpture, as typified by a slavish pursuit of a pedagogy or directionless meandering, is unethical. The kinetic sculpture challenges the music pedagogue to question their own educational desires, their authority as an expert, their approach to educational certainty and educational risk (Biesta 2013) and their approach to being “fun”, “useful” and “virtuous” when teaching music with very young children.
In this study I, an early childhood music practitioner, have monitored the diverse musical behaviours of 26 two- to four-year olds at play in two Children’s Centres in the South West of England in two ways. Firstly, the Sounds of Intent (SOI) scale was used to quantify how a child’s behaviour was musically proactive, reactive, or interactive. Secondly, I collected written observational data.
At the end of 2017, research data will be examined to see if they support the hypothesis that increasing musical behaviours in an early years setting can help to “close the attainment gap” for children identified by the Centre’s professionals as being at risk of academic underachievement.
Data collected so far demonstrate a general trend in the children’s musical development. Some findings require further investigation: the disparity between the quantity of overt musical behaviours recorded for boys compared with girls; the lack of clarity amongst early years professionals over the purpose of musical play in early childhood settings, and when viewing the contextual data obtained within a Playwork Theory framework, hints emerge as to why musical play was occasionally absent.
Music interventions in the United Kingdom are, in general, positively regarded (Hallam 2015) but some of the local Deaf Community initially rejected the intervention of “well-meaning”, hearing music leaders. Certain key elements emerged in our practice: careful framing of the music leaders’ intentions before the project as well as before and during music sessions, carefully chosen musical instruments, the use of non-audio support materials to enrich the context of active music making, a commitment to signing, plus evidence of being well-informed rather than well-meaning. An emphasis on facilitating child-led musical play was welcomed by children and carers. Ultimately, deaf and hearing carers demonstrated enjoyment of music making by actively supporting their deaf child’s musical play and “by proxy” through their deaf child’s music-making.
Quantitative analysis of gaze direction and duration during naturalistic, dyadic drum play was found to be reliably measureable and unique to each dyadic musical play episode rather than to each child. The participant researcher’s attention, as determined by gaze, was also unique to play episodes and was characterised by non-verbal instruction. Elevated levels of dyadic gaze agreement coincided overall with increased joint engagement, flow, co-ordinated communicative gestures and smiling. Gaze direction was found to be insufficient as a stand-alone method of evaluating joint engagement during dyadic play. When qualitative analysis of “dynamic interplay” detected in the space “in-between” the children during dyadic play was aligned with gaze data, it was found that moments of dynamic interplay featured non-coincident gaze as children relied on other senses such as hearing and physical sensation to engage with their partner. The symmetry and size of the log drum favours dyadic, gestural play and attendant embodied meaning. Its intrinsic ability to give immediate sensory feedback facilitates a liminal space where embodied expression and opportunity for performance and audience supports relational behaviours evidenced by joint attention, dynamic interplay and self-regulation.
This theoretical provocation and accompanying kinetic sculpture describes the nexus of three ideas curated within the realm of Early Childhood Music: Aristotle’s analysis of friendship in “Nicomachean Ethics” is adopted to illustrate a child’s “friendship” with music; Elliot’s thoughts on music as social praxis incorporate the role of the body in music as a performance art; Artist Cornelia Parker’s fragmenting treatment of “things that catch her eye” inspires the author’s physical assemblage of songs, philosophies, objects and ideas that have “caught her ear” throughout her career and this is manifested utilising Barad’s notion of diffraction, inspiring the author to raise the recording and reflection of young children’s music-making off the page and into four dimensions. The resulting kinetic sculpture aims to interpret young children’s fragile “friendship” with music and challenges the beliefs and biases of rigorously-applied pedagogies which do not respect the musicality of the young child.
Aims
Early Childhood music education aspires to instil a eudemonic lifelong association or friendship between the child and the music that s/he actively makes and experiences. According to Aristotle, friendships can be characterised as philia (for pleasure, freely chosen), utility (for the associated benefits) and virtuous (conducted from a position of respect, requiring hard work and a mutual appreciation of character and goodness). These three ideas align neatly with musical play/self-chosen activities, musicking for “transfer” benefits such as enhanced speech or group cooperation, and the hard work and teacher:pupil:music respect required for musical improvement. Each friendship type is essential to a (musical) life well-lived but a virtuous one, says Aristotle, is worthy of life-long pursuit.
Contribution and Implication
This structure challenges the hubris of a rigorously applied pedagogy without mutual (teacher:child) respect that might undervalue ”philial” music or be determined by transfer effects. Notice too the mobile’s shadows representing the young child’s musical experience prior to engagement with the music teacher; evident yet unknown, analogous to “dark matter”. Words on a page have pathos. However within a suspended mobile words, and the ideas they evoke, are perpetually moving and changing, challenging fixed opinions and realising ambiguity rather than dispelling it.
Poster presented at Music Educators and Researchers of Young Children, IPM, Ghent University, 2019.