Creativity in Greek Music Curricula and Pedagogy: An Investigation of Greek Music Teachers’ Perceptions

Abstract

Creativity's enhancement through education has been widely discussed and promoted in Greece, especially in the past few decades. In the music domain, teaching philosophy and practice seem to focus on ways that can encourage children to learn and apply their knowledge through creative music activities. This paper reports on the outcomes of a study undertaken with 112 general music teachers of different ages and scientific backgrounds, who teach in 235 primary and secondary schools in Greece. Being the first time that such research is being conducted in Greece, the main aim of the study was to reveal how Greek music teachers think, feel about, and influence pupils' creativity and the teaching conditions that may enhance or inhibit it. It is believed that such a study may contribute to the development of creativity enhancement projects through music teaching. The findings suggest that creativity is associated by Greek music teachers with a natural gift that cannot be addressed in all students, and can only be partly taught in music classroom. They also indicate that teachers do not have an explicit understanding of music creativity as well as creativity assessment, since most of them tend to assess students' creative performance on the basis on non musical criteria (i.e. participation, eagerness, etc.). Results also show that creative musical activities are more often applied in primary education, while in secondary education they are successively replaced by music theory and history. Finally, teachers' negative views about the music curriculum, textbooks and number of teaching hours are identified. Such findings lead to suggestions for numerous changes in music teachers' education, establishing training in teaching for creativity as a fundamental priority.

A phenomenographic approach to understanding some Taiwanese music teachers’ experiences of creativity in the classroom

“…Only a handful of studies have examined directly pre-service (Crow, 2008;Kokotsaki, 2011Kokotsaki, , 2012 and in-service music teachers' conceptualizations of creativity (Odena, Plummeridge, & Welch, 2005;Zbainos & Anastasopoulou, 2012). In particular, Kokotsaki (2012) found that pre-service primary teachers who had more limited conceptions were inclined to view creativity as dependent on the ability of the child rather than on the teacher's skill and expertise to foster creativity in the classroom.…”

“…Last but not least, in a study of how Greek in-service music teachers conceptualize creativity (Zbainos & Anastasopoulou, 2012), creativity was believed to be an innate characteristic that could not be promoted in all students. Participants had difficulty in identifying creative and non-creative situations and further, omitted composition when asked to report incidents of creativity in their teaching practice.…”

“…This seemed to be most obvious with the primary school pre-service teachers (Kokotsaki, 2012), almost a third of whom had no prior musical training. Crow's (2008) longitudinal investigation showed the influence that teaching experience has in changing conceptions, while Zbainos and Anastasopoulou (2012) showed how an educational system and lack of resources can impact on the ways teachers think about and interact with creativity in music education.…”

Application of Virtual Reality in Music Teaching System

“…Virtual reality solves the problem that perception and action separating, leads the perception and action study more natural, improves the study ecological validity, and holds great promise for the study of perception-action. In decades, researches about the relationship between perception and action in baseball, handball and tennis found that, athletes can make exact interceptive actions in virtual environment [11]. Figure 1 shows an instrument playing system based on the visual reality technology.…”

Application of Spectrogram Analysis in Traditional Vocal Music Teaching and Multimedia Animation Vocal Music Teaching

“…Ministry of education on the education facing the 21sl century revitalization action plan [5], the article has made clear that are widely used in the modern information technology in education leads to profound changes in the education system. In terms of vocal music education field, the category of longitudinal fine development and integration with other subjects is an important trend of the development of the contemporary vocal music, increasing its total knowledge information geometric type [6][7]. Reflected in the vocal music discipline, mainly to enrich the song theory, a new mechanism and singing techniques and style of the deepening of the study, with the integration of related subjects and infiltration is increasingly strengthened [8].…”