Program Overview

EDAR311 - Music Education

Unit Rationale, Description, and Aim

An education in Music enhances children's confidence and success as individuals and as members of society. Teachers must be equipped with knowledge and skills in Music to provide Music learning opportunities for children. This unit aims to provide pre-service teachers with the knowledge, skills, and values required to evaluate, develop, and implement engaging and developmental Music programs for children.

Learning Outcomes

To successfully complete this unit, students will be able to demonstrate the following learning outcomes:

1. Demonstrate an in-depth knowledge and understanding of the underlying principles of Music, both as one of the five Arts strands within the primary curriculum and its connections across the curriculum.
2. Demonstrate an in-depth understanding of key curriculum concepts and advanced music-making skills in the curriculum and how these are interpreted and applied creatively in primary school settings.
3. Research, evaluate, and adapt appropriate Music content in a range of genres and styles and sources of professional learning in Music education.
4. Critically examine and implement key approaches to teaching and learning in Music that involve active, creative, and developmental pedagogies.
5. Plan, implement, and critically evaluate a range of sequenced Music learning and assessment experiences that develop primary school students' musical skills and conceptual understandings and cater for diverse learner strengths and needs.

Content

Topics will include:

• The nature, purpose, and philosophy underpinning Music as a domain of knowledge and practice in the curriculum and in society.
• The distinctive nature of Music as an art form: the forms and elements.
• An in-depth investigation of Music concepts and skills as applied to a variety of kinds of musical works by a range of composers and performers from different cultural contexts, times, places, and traditions.
• Current research on the nature of learning and cognition in Music.
• The Music curriculum: requirements; content, concepts, skills, and scope; and issues for learning in the development of sequenced learning activities.
• A range of specific pedagogies to promote children's learning in music, including major influential approaches such as Dalcroze, Orff, and Kodaly.
• Appropriate external professionals, community representatives, excursions, and incursions for the extension and generation of Music content for the classroom and co-curriculum, and as sources of professional learning.
• Cultural Music perspectives, including Indigenous and Torres Strait Islander perspectives.
• Strategies for researching, planning, and implementing Music learning experiences for the development of musical skills and conceptual understanding.
• Strategies for catering for the strengths and needs of diverse learners in Music.
• The integration of ICT, literacy, and issues of social justice in curriculum content and learning activities.

Assessment Strategy and Rationale

A range of assessment procedures will be used to meet the unit learning outcomes and develop graduate attributes consistent with University assessment requirements. Assessments are designed to engage pre-service teachers in authentic Music-making and responding activities that mimic the 'real-world' of schools.

Overview of Assessments

1. Individual Special Interest Project: Demonstration of{

• Content Knowledge, Skills, and Learning Processes: Mastery of Making Skill.
  • Identify a Music "making" skill that would be useful for future classroom practice.
  • Undertake self-directed learning and regular practice of this skill and demonstrate mastery of the new skill.
  • Document and reflect on the learning through a Video Diary and Learning Process Journal.
• Appreciation Report and Resource Kit:
  • Research a Music style, genre, or composer/performer of choice.
  • Analyse a selection of musical works appropriate to the primary curriculum and develop a resource kit of guided listening/"responding" activities. }

2. Assessment Task 2: CHOICE:

• Group Peer Teaching and Performances plus Individual Plan: Develop a series of learning activities in Music, focusing on one or more specific music pedagogies, addressing identified learner strengths and needs, links to the curriculum, overview of learning activities, resources and strategies, and assessment and feedback strategies.
• OR Music Unit of Work: Develop a comprehensive Music unit of work that incorporates the above elements.

Learning and Teaching Strategy and Rationale

The unit aims to increase pre-service teachers' knowledge, skills, and appreciation of Music in education through active engagement in practical making and responding experiences. Participants will be involved in a variety of teaching-learning strategies, including face-to-face and online lectures, tutorials, practical workshops, reading, reflection, discussions, collaborative learning opportunities, and assessment tasks.

Representative Texts and References

• Required Text(s): Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA).
• Recommended References:
  • Barton, G. & Baguley, M. (2017). The Palgrave book of global arts education. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
  • Bloomfield, A., & Childs, J., (2013). Teaching integrated arts in the primary school: Dance, Drama, Music, and the Visual Arts. New York, NY: Routledge.
  • Daubney, A. (2017). Teaching primary music. London, UK: Sage Publications.
  • Dinham, J. (2017). Delivering authentic arts education (3rd ed.). South Melbourne, Vic: Cengage Learning Australia.
  • Gelineau, R. P. (2012). Integrating the arts across the elementary school curriculum (2nd ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Cengage Learning US.
  • Koenig, J. (2021). The musical child: How music supercharges development, sparks creativity, and sets children up for a lifetime of success. Sydney NSW: Harper Collins AU.
  • Mark, M. & Madura, P. (2014). Contemporary music education (4th ed.). Boston MA: Schirmer/Cengage Learning.
  • Roy, D., Baker, W., & Hamilton, A. (2019). Teaching and the arts: Early childhood and primary education (3rd ed.). Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press.
  • Russell-Bowie, D. (2014). MMADD about the arts! An introduction to primary arts education (4th ed.). Frenchs Forest, NSW: Pearson Australia.
  • Sinclair, C., Jeanneret, N., & O'Toole, J. (2017) Education in the arts (3rd ed). Melbourne: Oxford University Press Australia.

Locations

• Online

Credit Points

10

Year

2026