Browsing by Subject "Music teaching"

The purpose of this research is to study primary school teachers’ thoughts about today’s music teaching. The aim was to acquire information and understanding about music teaching in Finland nowadays. The idea was to carry out a study on experiences and skills of the teachers, planning and evaluation in music teaching and also integration of music into other subjects in lower primary school. The intention was also to investigate teachers’ attitudes to the curriculum, the highlights of music teaching and also teachers own ideas about developing the teaching of music. The research was carried out as a survey-research. Answers were received from 15 communities in Finland. There were both multiple-choice questions and open questions about music teaching in the survey form. That was addressed mainly for teachers specialized in music teaching. The survey form was published in the Internet and the answering was done by e-mail. The answers were collected during the spring of 2005 and altogether 96 teachers took part in the research. The research data was analyzed mainly quantitatively, but the open questions were analyzed also qualitatively. According the results the teachers at lower primary school are mostly quite satisfied with the state of the music teaching in Finland nowadays. The improvements were mainly desired in time and material resources, supplementary training (f .ex band and IT-skills) and sizes of teaching groups. The teachers are basically satisfied with the music teaching curricula, although they are considered to be challenging as the resources constantly diminish. According to the teachers’ experiences the evaluation of students in music teaching is difficult. Music is often integrated with other subjects. Many teachers point out the importance of practical and art subjects especially at lower primary school.