In the thesis entitled Folk songs in Slovenian kindergartens, we investigated the presence of folk songs in kindergartens across Slovenia; the ways in which children's folk songs are selected, presented and included in musical activities; and the opinions of teachers on their own professional competence in the field of children's folk songs. In the theoretical part, we first defined the Slovenian folk tradition. We focused in more detail on folk customs and habits, folk music and folk dance. Next, we described Slovenian folk song and children's folk song. We defined their origins, types, roles, content, characteristics and uses. We also focused on music in the pre-school period, where we looked at the importance of music for the pre-school child, musical developmental characteristics and musical content and activities used by teachers in the pre-school period. As the thesis is based on children's folk songs in kindergarten, we defined the role of children's folk songs in the Kindergarten Curriculum. In the following, we describe the criteria for selecting appropriate children's folk songs and describe the process of introducing children's folk songs in kindergarten. At the end of the theoretical part, we have given some information on the professional qualifications of teachers for the presentation of children's folk songs.
The empirical part was divided into a qualitative and a quantitative part. In the qualitative part, we used interviews and direct observation to check which children's folk songs the interviewed teachers use in kindergarten, on the basis of which criteria they choose children's folk songs, in which musical activities they include them, and what their opinion is about their own competence in delivering children's folk songs. This was followed up by observing children's folk song learning in the second age group. In the quantitative part of the research, we reinforced the above-mentioned highlights obtained through interviews with a questionnaire survey of male and female teachers from all twelve statistical regions of the Republic of Slovenia. We found that male and female teachers include a similar range of children's folk songs in their work, which are most often chosen on the basis of the current topic in the department and the children's interest. Most teachers do not feel professionally trained in children's folk songs and most often include children's folk songs in music performance activities.
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