‘Facing Challenges and Finding Solutions in 21st Century Music Education for Young Learners’

"<< Background >>There were some valid reasons for involving music teachers in such project work. First, it can help attract more attention to teaching music as today less and less music classes are being offered in school systems. Many schools even began to exclude music from their curriculums to make room for other subjects. As music is removed from educational institutions, children can no longer receive these benefits unless they enroll in private lessons, which is much too expensive. Improved music education practices are bound to be responsive to community needs, foster cognitive development, increase creativity, improve self-esteem, and promote better health of both teachers and students. They can also promote a sense of shared culture and community belonging, and be a valuable and enriching part of general education. Most of the existing projects are confined to schools-based music activities. That means it has not explored the important world of children ’s music-making beyond the connections of the school.Besides, we intended to reveal more about partnerships in music education and the ways in which arts and cultural organisations are developing valuable relationships with educational institutions.<< Objectives >>Nowadays a large number of students miss out on effective music education because of the lack of equity of access, insufficient quality of provision and the poor status of music in many schools so that Music education in our schools is at a critical point where prompt action is needed. That is why this project aimed to:•contribute to enhancing music teacher in-service education and have more adequately educated specialist teachers;•help to improve the equity of engagement in school music for young students;•specify ways to support productive partnerships and networking with music organisations and the cultural institutions in terms of developing and promoting good practices;•identify and develop some relevant, good practices based on competent music teacher experiences and build an understanding of the e-readiness of music educators as well as bring together examples of best practice and innovation in use of digital technologies and disseminate widely with suggestions for local adoption;•highlight the importance of collaboration and professional relationships with colleagues to improve their teaching repertoir by helping music teachers connect to support each other through peer professional and psycho-social support.<< Implementation >>We implemented 4 main activities:Training Event “How to Make Cultural Institutions our Educational Partners”Educational Festival ""Music Explorers""Training Event 'Musical Education in a Digital Age'A Multiplier Event ""The Supporting Role of Musical Education""The Bulgarian partner was in charge of Activity 1 - Training Event “How to Make Cultural Institutions our Educational Partners” due to their project team profile - professional musicians and university lecturers who have high academic degrees and are experts on developing educational resources. The Greek partner has rich experience in organizing numerous extra-curricular events and participating in various competitions, mixing professional skills with culture and creativity. They were responsible for making ''Compendium of good practices'' and Activity 2 - Educational Festival ""Music Explorers"". The Turkish partner, a cohesive team, motivated and well-organised, was responsible for maintaining the project webpage/blog as well as being responsible for organising Activity 3 - Training Event 'Musical Education in a Digital Age'.The Polish partner was in charge of the dissemination activities and the conference 'The Supporting Role of Musical Education''.<< Results >>1) A Compendium of Good Practices, containing the current experience across the partners’ countries/ successful practices in providing Music education to young children. 2) A project webpage with all the project findings and events.3) A model of Blended Course Syllabus, which is to facilitate introducing of the up-to-date practices in Music education in the school curriculum and contains the course description; its goals and objectives; the place and role of the course in the program of study; the course requirements; evaluation specifics; list of assignments, grading criteria.4) Several Flip Books comprising some didactic materials related to developing musical knowledge, skills and competences, as every partner developed several lessons; workshops and master classes for music teachers. It can be a supporting tool given to the teachers with instructions related to the activities, some scenarios for classroom implementation – mostly based on the ‘Active Learning’ approach. A special attention was given to good practices of providing music education to visually impaired learners.5) Numerous Ppts and videos devoted to the project topic.6) An online concert /all the partners/ - recorded."