Music Teachers’ Communication Ways Helping Preschool Children to Engage with Learning Objects and to Explore their Critical Aspects

This article aims to reveal the variation-theory-grounded ways that music teachers use to communicate with pre-school children and direct their attention to learning objects (sounds of music) and the critical aspects of learning objects (music sound qualities) while listening to music. Variation theory is a novel didactic approach in the musical education of pre-school children. A learning study based on the theory of variation as a phenomenographic approach and a strategy for a lesson study as a form of participatory action research were employed. While conducting the empirical research, attempts were made to identify the ways in which music teachers communicate with children, which are grounded in variation theory and direct children’s attention to learning objects and their critical aspects. The research distinguishes two groups of ways of music teacher communication that encourage children to listen to music: music teacher communication that directs children’s attention to feeling, understanding and discerning the learning object, i. e., sounds of music (group one) and the critical aspects of learning objects, e. g., pitch, duration of music (group two). These ways that apply variation theory are new and enrich the didactics of early music education.