Music is a part of out everday lives. It affects our existance from different perspectives through all periods of our life cycle. Its presence influences our mood, memories, emoting, experiencing life events and so forth. Musical features and features of effects music has on people can be used in many different ways. Teachers in schools can use them in order to promote a stimulating learning environment for their students and themselves.
In this master thesis, we researched how, why and how often elementary school teachers creativley include music in their everday lessons. Moreover we focused on four pedagogical challenges teachers often face in the process of promoting a stimulating learning environment. Those challenges are calming students down, improving students’ concentration, grasping difficult learning concepts and establishing a pleasant clarssroom atmosphere. We were interested in frequency of solving those challenges with the use of creative musical activities or methods. Furthermore we wanted to discover which activities teachers find the most efficient when facing each of four challenges. And the last but not least we wanted to know what are the benefits and positive effects teachers notice in their students when enhancing their teaching with creative musical activites.
The findings of our study indicate that teachers, on average, incorporate creative musical activities several times per week, most frequently selecting performance-based musical tasks. The primary objective teachers seek to achieve through the implementation of these activities is the cultivation of a positive and supportive classroom atmosphere. In terms of specific pedagogical aims, experiential music listening was identified as the most effective strategy for calming students; rhythmic pattern imitation for enhancing classroom concentration; playing children's musical instruments for facilitating the acquisition of complex learning concepts; and creative singing for fostering a pleasant classroom environment. Teachers perceive the greatest benefit of integrating creative musical activities into their teaching practice to be the increased relaxation and composure of students during lessons.
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