Stories students tell about their lived experiences of spirituality in the Dalcroze class

Abstract

This article is a narrative inquiry of the lived spiritual experiences of students participating in Dalcroze Eurhythmics training. Previous studies have located Jaques-Dalcroze’s own writings and thought within the context of spirituality and have explored the spiritual experiences of Dalcroze teachers, but students’ perspectives remain to be investigated. We interviewed seven students, broadly defined as anyone currently attending regular Dalcroze training or who have recently attended Dalcroze courses and still consider themselves Dalcroze students. Various strategies for narrative data analysis were synthesised into our own coding scheme. Themes emerged from the data analysis: situation, continuity, personal interaction, social interaction and significant moments. The themes helped us construct a fictive conversation between the participants, using direct quotations from the interviews. Implications for practice focus on what inhibits and promotes experiences of spirituality in the Dalcroze class. This research will be relevant to music educators, as it gives clear, evidence-based guidelines on how opportunities for spirituality can be created in the Dalcroze classroom. It also offers an original synthesis of existing coding schemes for other researchers undertaking narrative inquiries.

Gamified Teaching Design for Early Childhood Musical Literacy: A Concept Paper

“…The Dalcroze Teaching Method is based on auditory perception, allowing students to use their bodies as instruments and reproduce the music they hear through bodily rhythms. This method trains improvisational performance, performance, and creative abilities through music and bodily rhythms (Habron et al, 2020;Dalcroze & Rubenstein, 1967).…”

“…The Dalcroze music teaching method emphasizes the principle of practice preceding theory, meaning that children are taught rules after experiencing the things they are supposed to learn (Habron & Van Der Merwe, 2020). Movement and rhythm are the primary teaching tools of this method.…”

“…At the same time, in the process of applying the "Three Major Music Teaching Methods," music teachers for young children can not only enrich music teaching activities and improve their own musical literacy and comprehensive abilities (May et al, 2016). On the other hand, they can also improve the quality of music classroom teaching in a gamified form through the application of these teaching methods, and further stimulate children's interest in music comprehensively (Habron & Van Der Merwe, 2020;Landis & Carder, 1992), thereby better achieving the training objectives of music activities.…”