Multiplier Event
On 23 February 2024, we held the final presentation on music pedagogy in basic education and language learning (and beyond). We were able to discuss our findings and results with 23 adult educators from Spain and Austria. In an interactive setting, we presented our publication “Ham’avaaz – Polyphonic”, which addresses the following topics over the course of 20 teaching units: language acquisition through song lyrics, transcultural exchange through musical activities, body percussion, movement and dance.
Playing in the Dark
Thanks to a collaboration with the Vienna-based artist collective Blickwinkel, we were able to include the comic “Playing in the Dark”, drawn by Valerie Bruckbög, in our materials. The graphic short story is based on real events and beautifully narrates the pianist Aeham Ahmed’s story, for whom playing the piano became an important resource in times of war and crisis. In the Music Box you will find the whole comic together with suggestions on how to work with it in the classroom. On the platform Learning Apps, we have created some digital exercises for English, Spanish and German lessons.
Photo Session
We are currently finalising the core result of our project, the Music Box comprising 20 teaching ideas. To make the publication a little bit more vivid and comprehensible, we had a photo session. This photo supports the activity “reassembling lyrics” in the chapter “Music in the Second Language Classroom”. For this activity you choose a song and divide the text over several paper slips. You hand out the pieces of paper and ask learners to stick it on their neighbour’s back. Make sure that everyone feels comfortable doing this.
Now you play the song (or part of it) on repeat while everyone moves freely around the room to the music. The group is given the task of positioning themselves next to each other in the correct chronological order. This requires everyone to work together as they can only see the lyrics on each other’s back and not on the own.
Finally, each learner can take off their cards and the group repeats the lyrics several times in a row, so that each person reads their lyrics in turn and finally recites them from memory.
Check out this and other activities here:
Transnational Exchange in our Train-the-Trainer Workshop in Teruel, Spain
From 26 to 28 September 2023, the project partners met in Teruel, Aragon, for a music education training course. For three days, we explored the question of how we can interweave music education with language acquisition and transcultural exchange. The key question was, of course, how trainers with or without experience in music education would feel confident to implement this in the classroom.
Tuning in with Music – Workshops at our Centres
The first project months were dedicated to organising music workshops in order to introduce our project and its aims to our learners on the one hand and to collect the songs that are going to shape the main result of Ham’avaaz – Polyphonic (the Music Box) on the other.
For these workshops, we chose tangible content and musical elements to work with. They usually consisted of a group dynamic activity, some voice- and body warm-up exercises, dance, a part, where participants played music together with elementary music education instruments, and a part, where participants introduced their most favourite songs. We would like to sincerely thank our participants willingness to participate and co-creation – and of course for the wonderful music they have shared with us and that can now flow into the Music Box.
Photo: Azucena Badens
Survey Among Adult Educators
Trainers’ Perspectives on Music Pedagogy in Adult Education
During spring and summer 2022, we conducted a survey among adult educators in the partner countries Austria and Spain as a starting point for all further project activities. We were interested, in how far trainers already use music and/or music pedagogy in their teaching routine with their groups and how they evaluate the acceptance, benefits and challenges of music based approaches among the target group. Throughout following pages, we will describe the results obtained and the conclusions extracted from the data collected by the participating trainers.
The survey reached a wide number of participants: A total of 105 adult education teachers completed the survey carried out through the Google Forms platform. With 77.2 % of the respondents, the vast majority agreed that music pedagogical aspects can support learning processes. Respondents clearly indicated the benefits of music in supporting emotional processes, increasing concentration and attention, creating a positive learning environment, increasing motivation and supporting the cognitive learning process. More than 80 % of the respondents expressed interest in receiving music education materials and didactic suggestions. It is now important to build on the suggestions highlighted by the participants as part of the development of the project outcomes.
You can download the detailed analysis here:
Song Collection
In the workshops, which took place in dialogue with adult learners, we have now been able to collect a repertoire of songs in ten different languages. These songs are our inspiration for the upcoming project results. We will use these songs to develop 20 music education units with the following themes: Getting to know music and instruments, transcultural communication through music, promoting concentration, body percussion, self-expression and much more.
Project Kick-off in Vienna
The transnational partner meeting took place from 2 to 3 May 2022 at the Orient Express coordinator’s premises in Vienna. Two people from each partner took part. While Orient Express and the Centro de Profesorado Territorial Angel Sanz Briz, Teruel already knew each other through collaboration in another project on intersectionality, this was the first collaboration with the CFPA Jordi de Sant Jordi (Jordi, Spain). It was therefore important to get to know each other better during a cultural and gastronomic program in addition to the work sessions, which took place at the learning center in Vienna’s Stuwerviertel.
English