Outreach through the arts: Global practices in early childhood music

Music is a natural and essential part of children's development and growth. Children's early experience in music will have long term influence on children’s lives in both musical and non-musical aspects. Therefore, it is important that early musical experiences for young children must be enjoyable and encouraging, as well as musically challenging. While arts education is identified as central to early development, it is also a primary vehicle for artistic and holistic growth for young children. In facilitating such enjoyable and meaningful music experience for young children, Barrett (2003) has identified five essential components of early childhood music education: (i) composing and improvising with instruments and voice; (ii) notating music experiences; (iii) singing invented and canonic songs; (iv) playing instruments; (v) listening to music. Also, the four music approaches for young children, namely Dalcroze Eurhythmics, Orff Schulwerk, Kodaly Approach and Suzuki Method are widely recognized adopted in the globe. Based on Barrett’s (2003) five essential components of early childhood music education and the four current music pedagogies, this study explores the objectives, principles and different pedagogical issues of teaching music to young children, as well as teachers’ beliefs and perceptions in various aspects of these current music approaches.