Dutch early years classroom teachers facilitating and guiding musical play: problems and opportunities

Abstract

Musical play is an activity in which young children more or less freely explore and create with sound with limited guidance from a teacher. This study explored the occurrence of musical play in Dutch early years education (4-5 year olds). Twenty early years classroom teachers were interviewed about the content of the music education taking place in their classroom, and about a possible facilitation and guidance of musical play. Findings showed that ten teachers were unfamiliar with musical play, whilst nine experienced it as too difficult due to limited experience and knowledge. One teacher successfully included musical play, due to additional pre-service training. We argue that musical play may be a valuable addition to early years music education, one that enables young children to learn about music more consistent with their age and interests. Based on our outcomes, we advocate the provision of additional teacher education around facilitating musical play.

Preparing preservice early childhood educators to use music in Australian settings: An audit of programmes

“…Musical capabilities of young children are enhanced by musically trained adults who facilitate an enabling environment (Bartel & Cameron, 2007; Custodero, 2005; Ilari, 2018; Marsh & Young, 2015; Nieuwmeijer et al, 2019; Trinick & Pohio, 2018; Young, 2005). The lack of national guidance or specific music curriculum (Southcott & de Vries, 2006) allocates music education to a tenuous position, depending on educators’ discretion, resulting in delivering poorly conceptualised, ineffective or tokenistic music learning experiences (Nyland et al, 2015; Suthers, 2004).…”

Learning through Play in Early Childhood: A Systematic Review

“…Teachers' knowledge is not always related to their level of education, nor guarantee that teachers have content knowledge related to effective teaching (Piasta et al, 2006). The most common challenges include early childhood teachers that hold limited content knowledge (Nieuwmeijer et al, 2019;Nieuwmeijer & van Oers, 2021;Lindeman et al, 2021;Hesterman & Targowska, 2020;Zhu et al, 2021). This contradicts Fleer's (2010) study which demonstrating that some teachers may have the requisite content knowledge, but they did not always make concepts conscious to children while engaged in play-learning programs they planned.…”

“…Recently, previous studies gave a comprehensive review of teachers' knowledge. Nieuwmeijer et al (2019) recognized that musical play is a valuable addition to the early years of music education, one that enables young children to learn about music more consistently with their age and interests. This is supported by Nieuwmeijer and van Oers (2021) who revealed that taking part in the PD promoted teachers' TE for the musical play and 50% of the respondents for music education in general.…”

“…In addition to work of Nieuwmeijer et al (2019); Nieuwmeijer and van Oers (2021); Campbell (2020); Lindsay (2021); Lindeman et al (2021), numerous researchers have acknowledged the need of teacher's training. Firstly, Bose and Backman (2020) raised several concerns about the significance of a framework for specialized and professional early childhood education (ECE) training and gaining SMK and PCK that conduced to the preschool teachers' knowledge bases and practices in their teaching of mathematics and science.…”