Musical creativity in Slovenian elementary schools

Background: The Slovenian music education curriculum for the first years of elementary school emphasises the following musical activities in the classroom: singing, playing instruments, listening to music, movement to music and musical creativity. In the field of musical creativity, there are two activities where students can be original and creative: making music and moving or drawing/painting activities stimulated by music. Purpose: This research investigated musical creativity in Slovenian elementary schools, its observable characteristics and some of the similarities among the statements made by students and teachers. Sample: The study involved 118 eight-and-a-half to nine-year-old students from five schools in Slovenia, and 51 elementary classroom teachers - 25 of them came from the same five elementary schools as the students and 26 of them came from another four schools located in different parts of the Republic of Slovenia. Students and teachers who took part in our study attended/or worked at the third grade level during the 2004 school year. Design and methods: For the study, two questionnaires were completed using closed and open questions. The teachers had more questions than the students. Some of the questions were the same for both. The data received from the questionnaire was analysed qualitatively and quantitatively. The chi-square test was used to check the relationship between the answers given by students and the answers given by the teachers. Results: We found that creativity in music does exist in the classrooms, but there is only an emphasis being put on activities stimulated by music, and not on creating music. The opinions of the students and classroom teachers overlapped in the following areas: in the types of creative activity preferred, in assessing the successfulness of creative activities, in the feedback following the creative activity, and concerning the amount and difficulty of the tasks performed. The only important difference between the answers found was in assessing the teachers' role in leading the musical activity during the lesson. The reasons for such similar reactions were: (1) that the teacher's expectations were effectively conveyed to the students, and/or (2) the children's self-perception was being formed through an awareness and interpretation of the environment around them. Conclusions: The investigation showed that the students and teachers are satisfied with creative musical activities in the classroom, however, they are not aware of all the aspects of creative musical thinking as well as the criteria for the evaluation of musical creativity. It seems that they are not fully acquainted with the strategies for teaching musical composition and improvisation. The role of university programmes that specialise in music pedagogy should be to produce teachers who will be able to provide creative musical activities in an appropriate manner, and to organise more seminars of similar content for student-teachers during their practical training.