How young children teach us to teach – Steps towards an integrative Music Education

Abstract

The understanding of learning processes has been fundamentally changed by scientific conclusions of the psychology and the neurophysiology of learning. Learning is understood as a construction process on the part of the learner. It is imperative to create the corresponding learning fields in order to be able to efficiently learn. The prelinguistic child is capable of learning its mother tongue without any previous language skills. Based on today’s findings on the nature of learning processes, it can be assumed that learning from and with sound signs is decisive for the neonatal cognition. Those learning experiences are the „previous knowledge “and therefore formative for the future learning. However, they are hardly recognized within the academic environment: musical thinking and acting are almost always restricted to music class and are hardly ever connected to extra musical learning by the governmental education plan. Learning with and through music in educational psychology has rarely been discussed and has hardly been explored. It is to be expected that this paradigm shift in the understanding of sound will evoke critical questions from within all fields of education and will have an influence on the formation of teachers as well as on the overall understanding of teaching. The way young children learn and the way the school teaches has to be compatible.