Music Influence On Music

Introduction

In this chapter, the pertinent literature relating to primary teachers’ formative experiences of music and how it influences their teaching of music composition will be discussed. This review will focus first on the historical context of music in the primary school curriculum….

The historical context

The 1971 primary school music curriculum was based on three strands: Song-Singing and Vocal Technique, Ear Training and Creative Work (Department of Education, 1971). Research in 1985 reported that Irish school children were leaving school musically illiterate, with little vocal or aural training and with a repertoire of songs that were learned by rote (Herron, 1985, p. 2). While, music education was noticeably more widespread in the

Lamont (2002) believed teachers who motivated pupil engagement with music, developed their pupils’ identities as musicians which lead to more positive attitudes towards school music. Turton and Durrant’s (2002) study revealed that participants remembered “enthusiastic teachers the most positively” while research by Mastin (1963), and Frenzel et. al. (2009) suggested teacher enjoyment is connected to pupil enjoyment.

Birch (1969) argued that teachers’ attitudes and confidence to teach music can have a lasting influence on pupils. Other research suggested that teaching behaviours can be learned from past experiences, including teachers’ choice of teaching materials and other aspects of classroom learning (Stakelum, 2008b; Ferguson,

11) noted that negative music experiences in school have left many primary teachers “with little or no musical self when considered in a teaching context”. But when it comes to teachers - and music specialists in particular who have few formative primary music experiences to draw from - Drummond (2001) suggested that this lack of experience negatively influences how they view and teach the subject professionally: highly-trained teachers of music were shown to be teaching their music lessons with uncertainty. However, Koutsoupidou’s (2005) quantitative study about musical improvisation in English primary classrooms found that 81% of teachers in the study uses improvisation in the classroom yet only 19% experienced improvisation themselves as pupils at school. Although, the same study found that teachers avoid using improvisation due to their lack of personal experience (77%) and their lack of familiarity with improvisation