Abstract
This paper reports the findings of a study that aimed to identify the music beliefs and values of educators in early childhood education and care settings in Australia. The aims of the study were 2-fold: to adapt and pilot a survey of music beliefs and values which might be implemented subsequently nationally in childcare settings; and, secondly, to identify the music beliefs and values held by early childhood and care educators concerning music in children's learning. The research questions that guided this component of the study were: What is the profile of early childhood and care educators? What beliefs and values for music engagement are held by early childhood and care educators? What shapes early childhood and care educators' music beliefs and values? Findings indicated that educators' beliefs and values on all items are above the mid-point indicating overall positive attitudes toward music despite the majority having no formal qualifications in music or a history of instrumental performance and/or singing. Given the overall positive attitudes toward music we suggest there is enormous potential within this population for further professional learning and development targeted at music and its potential wider benefits in young children's learning and lives.
Highlights
In recent years there has been a documented steady decline in the provision of music education in the pre-service training of early childhood educators in Australia (Letts, 2015)
The overwhelming majority of educator participants were female, which reflects the current over-representation of females globally in the early childhood education and care sector (Peeters et al, 2015)
Use of the three latent constructs of creative and cultural development benefits, quality of life benefits, and social and emotional development benefits, did not capture and explain the present data set better than a single unified general set of beliefs about the role of music in childhood development. These results suggested that the more parsimonious single-factor structure was preferred over the three-factor model and, as such, scores on the Music Beliefs Questionnaire (MBQ) were calculated by averaging across all the items to obtain an overall single general measure of favorable beliefs and values held regarding the role of music in early childhood2
Summary
In recent years there has been a documented steady decline in the provision of music education in the pre-service training of early childhood educators in Australia (Letts, 2015). There is a substantial and growing body of literature that evidences the contributions of music learning and engagement to young children’s development across a range of factors (for example, Moreno et al, 2009; Brown et al, 2010; Brown and Sax, 2013; Williams et al, 2015; Bugos and DeMarie, 2017). Concurrent with this documented decline in educator preparation to teach and use music in early childhood education and care, there has been increasing recognition of the role early education and care plays in producing positive long-term development and learning outcomes (cf Siraj-Blatchford et al, 2011).
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