Using Five Music Instructional Methods to Illustrate the Social Constructive Music Teaching Framework in Hong Kong Primary Level Music Education

Music education under the frame name of arts education has been integrated into the primary and secondary education curriculums in Hong Kong for more than 20 years, starting from 2001, the year of launching the Learning to Learn curriculum for the reconstruction of the education system for the younger generation. Music education, embedded into the arts education, was therefore regarded as one of the key subjects to cultivate and uplift student holistic development, focusing on aesthetic skill training and moral growth development. This research was an exploration study of music teaching practices from two private international and two general public school music teachers at the primary school level. The value of this study rested on borrowing the idea of Shulman’s pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) principle to create a social constructivist music teaching framework from five commonly-used instructional methods, namely, Orff, Kodaly, Dalcrozes, Suzuki, and Gordon’s approaches. Based on the evaluations of these four case studies, hypotheses on the differences in the PCK were tested with the types of schools and found to be no difference. The preliminary results suggested that music teachers in private international schools had similar pedagogical approaches to music instruction to teachers in aided-public schools. Additionally, the modeling, guiding, and training approach was identified as a grounded teaching method for music education at the primary school level regardless of different types of schools. Other implications like the further development of the framework were discussed.

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