Sing, Say, Move and Play

About

Sing, Say, Move and Play: Music from Around the World for Teaching Young Children's Musical-Cultural-Cognitive Understandings

Music is central to young children's lives. Every day, children sing songs, say rhymes and chants, move to music, and play instruments and games — alone, together with others, and as guided by educators. As competent musicians, children reproduce songs and rhymes they have heard before, put their own spin on old favourites and compose new ones. Despite these rich and often complex childhood musical practices, music teaching in early childhood classrooms is often valued as "fun" but not gainful in the way of cognitive understanding (when in fact music is an enjoyable learning pathway). This view ultimately sells children short because they make a plenty of music. Children need attentive educators to support their development as young people who think, express, and feel. This online workshop will explore the six fundamental musical concepts of beat, rhythm, pitch tempo, dynamics, and tone colour, from an experiential perspective, and examine how teachers can scaffold children's multimodal understanding of their music-making in a playful environment. Using songs, rhymes, and games from around the world, participants will be offered a child-centred, constructivist framework within which to support children's musical play and scaffold their developing understanding. This will enable children to take greater conscious control of their own music-making and future musical endeavours.

Speakers

Professor Patricia Shehan Campbell is Donald E. Peterson Professor of Music at the University of Washington, where she teaches courses at the interface of education and ethnomusicology. She lectures internationally on the pedagogy of world music and children’s musical cultures. She is the author of books and chapters such as Music, Education, and Diversity: Bridging Cultures and Communities (2018), Songs in Their Heads (1998, 2010), Teaching Music Globally (2004), co-author of Music in Childhood (2018), School-Community Music Intersections (2019), and Teaching World Music in Higher Education (2020), co-editor of the Oxford Global Music Series, the Oxford Handbook on Children's Musical Cultures, and Global Music Cultures. Chair of the Advisory Board of Smithsonian Folkways and educational consultant in the repatriation of Alan Lomax recordings to the American South, she is editor of the seven-volume Routledge World Music Pedagogy Series (2018-2020).
 

Dr Peter Whiteman is an experienced music educator who has worked with children and families in prior-to-school, school, community and University settings. Previously Head of the Institute of Early Childhood at Macquarie University, Australia, he was a member of the team that developed the Early Years Learning Framework for Australia. He was editor of the Children and Childhoods book series (Cambridge Scholars) and served on the editorial board for Advances in Music Education Research (Information Age). Currently an Associate Faculty Member in the S R Nathan School of Human Development, Singapore University of Social Sciences, Peter has also consulted on early learning to large early childhood organisations in Australia and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Kids Listen.