The purposes of this study are to develop the early childhood music education program and to examine its possible effects by analyzing the musical aptitude, emotional quotient, and creativity among young children. The development of the program aim to...
The purposes of this study are to develop the early childhood music education program and to examine its possible effects by analyzing the musical aptitude, emotional quotient, and creativity among young children. The development of the program aim to provide musical activities suitable and useful for Education for Music and Education Through Music in early childhood education practice and suggest a new direction for music activity programs in the early childhood education practice
For this purpose, this study developed a music education program suitable for Korean educational methods and emotion by Carl Orff Approach to apply to the early childhood education practice and determined what contributions the program made to improvement in musical aptitude, emotional quotient, and creativity among young children. The program consists of four activity media, such as speech rhythm, singing songs, Movement, and instrumental performance, with 16-session activities that the researcher developed on the basis of Carl Orff Approach.
To examine effectiveness of the program, a preliminary test and a main test were conducted with 156 four- and five-year-olds (74 boys and 82 girls) from three early childhood care centers. The survey was conducted on 80 parents to investigate musical Home environment variables; episode observations of the children were recorded during the period of the main test from the second week of August to the second week of October 2007. Tools used in pretest and post-test for the experimental and control groups were Gordon's (1979) Primary Measures of Music Audiation (PMMA), Bar On & Parker's (2000) Emotional Quotient Scale for Young Children, and Torrence's (1981) Thinking Creativity in Action and Movement (TCAM).
The tools were analyzed by t-test, paired t-test, ANCOVA, multiple response analyzed.
This study drew the following conclusions.
First, the music education program developed by Orff Approach is an education program suitable and effective for Education for Music and Education Through Music, which are the goals of early childhood music education.
Second, as for musical aptitude of the children, they were generally at the average level for a sense of sound and rhythm but showed great individual differences in a sense of sound. Musical aptitude was higher among older children, showing no difference by gender. In terms of musical aptitude, the music education program by Orff Approach was more effective for younger children and those with lower musical aptitude.
Third, emotional quotient of the children was generally at the average level, showing no difference by age or gender. In terms of emotional quotient, the music education program by Orff Approach was more effective for younger children and those with lower emotional quotient.
Fourth, creativity of the children was generally at a lower level, with older children at a higher level, showing no difference by gender. In terms of creativity, the music education program by Orff Approach was more effective for older children and those with lower creativity.
Fifth, as for changes in musical aptitude, emotional quotient, and creativity of the children by personal environment variables, both the group greatly affected by musical home environment and musical experience and that with an insignificant amount of such effects made great improvement, showing statistically significant differences. However, the group less affected by musical home environment and musical experience made greater improvement in musical aptitude, emotional quotient, and creativity in terms of the general mean after implementing the program. This implies that the program is more effective for children with less musical influence at home.