In a constantly changing society, the education process must seek new ways to enable young people to build quality knowledge. One of the challenges that primary school education is faced with, is unconnected knowledge which is a result of the traditional division between school subjects. Appropriate planning and implementation of cross-curricular approach to teaching can help students discover meaningful connections between subjects, which enables a more in-depth and long-lasting knowledge. Also, it is necessary to provide approaches within the education process that will help young people in their personal growth and exploitation of their creative potentials. The latter can be developed in arts and cultural education which is interdisciplinary in its essence.
The purpose of the doctoral thesis was to design and test the effects of an experimental programme based on interdisciplinarity of music education and history which includes goals and principles of culture and arts education. The study involved 76 ninth class primary school students which formed comparator groups. The lessons in the control group were based on the traditional approach to teaching, while in the experimental group, the interdisciplinary approach was adopted. The research method used was the experimental method of empirical-analytical research.
The research results confirmed positive effects of the programme on the level of interest in classical music, self-initiative in listening to classical music, importance of selected values (culture, arts, creativity, knowledge), popularity of music education and history, students’ performance in music education and history examinations, and their opinion about usefulness of interdisciplinarity and cooperation with a composer. Positive effects of the programme are also reflected in the opinions expressed about musical culture. Compared to the students of the control group, students in the experimental group agreed to a higher extent with the following statements: that classical music relaxes them, that musical industry encourages mass consumption; that the strive for financial profit in music paralyses culture and arts; that a musician should have a certain musical training; that musical training of a listener enables a better understanding of music; and that they liked 20th century classical music. The students of the experimental group expressed less agreement with the statements that a musician should be somebody who likes to sing and dance and is attractive, and that 20th century classical music is difficult to understand.
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