Date
12-2020
Department
School of Music
Degree
Master of Arts in Music Education (MA)
Chair
Keith A. Currie
Keywords
Curriculum and Teaching Strategies
Disciplines
Music | Music Education
Recommended Citation
Holloway, Stanley K., "Creating a Music Education Curriculum Based on Current Teaching Strategies" (2020). Masters Theses. 696.
https://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/masters/696
Abstract
Contemporary pedagogical, psychological and sociological researches highlight the need for music education available to every child. Starting from the fundamental point of view according to which music affects the development of the child's whole personality, this idea stands out in history since the 17th century. Various educators in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century emphasized the importance of music education for every child. To nurture a child’s music development, as it is to support the development requires other basic skills in the child’s life. Young children learn most basic life skills from their parents because adults create consciously and unconsciously a loving and stimulating environment for learning to talk, move, think, and live with others. Through a process that seems magical, children figure out how to do these things mostly by watching, listening, and experimenting. Music Together is a curriculum designed by the writer of this thesis to help provide this nurture, regardless of the parents own music background or ability. With historical and theoretical overview of this idea, this paper tries to examine the possibility of its realization in contemporary educational practice. One method in particular, the Kodály Method, is an approach to music education based on the philosophies of Zoltan Kodály. As Kodály approach to music education suggests that everyone is capable of musical literacy and we should focus on this at a very young age. The impact of musical instruction to engage students at a young age helps them with development such as reading comprehension and verbal memory. Considering the status of music in American educational policy, in which music is recognized as an educational priority for the first time in the history of education and it became the basic academic subject in the American federal education policy plan, as well as unprecedentedly incorporated in the federal law. This study attempts to provide greater knowledge of methods in Music Education and eventually, will contribute to research and development work within childhood and student development.
