ABSTRACT

Early childhood education in Korea has been initiated in the early twentieth century. Music was the core educational content for Korean preschoolers since then, however child`s musical activity in preschool settings was focused more on singing rather than on performance or music listening. In present, children`s preference to CM songs or pop songs away from either traditional or contemporary child songs seems to be accelerated in- and out-of-school because of mass media and commercialism. However, in the formal educational settings especially like childcare centers, children need to be nurtured with music of various musical concepts and the songs with educationally appropriate song texts. Thus teachers of young children are asked to be equipped with musical knowledge as well as the selective skills of song repertoire in order to guide their children towards the versatile experience of music according to the child`s music developmental stages within the diverse ways of singing, playing, listening, improvising, and creating. Therefore music pedagogical research is required both on the examination of child`s song repertoire from the child`s daily life and on the early childhood music curricular development for its practical use ; decision making will be processed on what to include or exclude, how, and to what extent, under what goal. The purpose of this research was to provide music teaching models based on song analysis. These models were aimed to be utilized for the extension of child`s musical experience with various music concepts through diverse activities within the realm of either musical activities or non-musical but related activities such as drama, language, drawings ; this may be called as collaborative curriculum. Major issues of this study were : (1) Collection of child`s preferred song repertoire in formal settings of the selected preschools both in the dties and countryside of Korea, (2) Analysis of collected song data from the musical, literal, spatial(i.e., accompanied dance or other activities like finger game, gesture, or body movement) and historical(i.e., behind story of the music piece) perspectives, and finally(3) Provision comprehensive music teaching models for preschool teachers. Research method included review of the related literature on child songs and song repertoire, survey questionnaire with preschool music teachers regarding their teaching song repertoire, and observation of children`s singing behaviors in the natural preschool atmosphere during the school days. Data was analyzed on the basis of musical, literal, spatial and historical characteristics. As a result, a music teaching model for preschool children was provided and these models will be utilized for a comprehensive music class. As expected in the beginning of the research, a comprehensive music class in preschool settings as well as in other school levels would not be limited to singing but extended to performance, music listening, and creative activities. Research result implies that the role of musical activities in preschool seems to change from so-called transferor (e.g., sing a song with the theme of cleaning to enhance child`s `cleaning up` activity) to core (e.g, sing same song to make child to understand `pitch change`), which emphasize child`s experience directly with various music concepts rather than with the musically decolorized educational goals ; building self-esteem or developing citizenship through music instead of feeling and/or conceptualizing musical ideas. Future research needs on the assessment of provided music teaching model.