Contemporary Music Education Approaches in Practice: Nicosia Pre-Schools and Primary Schools

1st Writer: Assist Prof Dr. Ertem Nalbantoğlu
2nd Writer: Neriman Soykunt (MSc)
3rd Writer: Aliye Havalı

The significance of music education has been emphasized throughtout the history. Musical experiences in the childhood provide high level of cognitive, psychomotor, social, psychological development of individuals.  Contemporary music education approaches such as Kodaly, Dalcroze Eurythmics, Orff-Schulwerk are well accepted throughout the music education world to be constructive for perception, attention, memory, imagination, self confidence and communication of children.  Nevertheless, contemporary music education in practice requires an open classroom interaction as well as music teacher to master the musical knowledge, ability and the philosophy of contemporary approaches. This research has been carried out in order to investigate the existing situation about contemporary music education.  The study aims to 
prove the level of practice of contemporary music education in Nicosia pre-school and primary schools. A qualitative survey was used in order to collect the data includes general information about music teachers, teacher proficiency, 
lesson practice, classroom, materials, student profile, musical activities and contemporary music education. The questions have been prepared after searching the related literature.  The research group of the study consisted of 
22 teachers from the pre-schools and the primary schools in Nicosia District. The collected data has been analyzed and interpreted by the researchers. Research findings indicate the need for improvement of teacher quality, the regulation of 
teacher assignment, the solution of infrastructural problems and improvement of inspectoral services in order to provide quality contemporary music education.