‘I can teach you that’: a study of musical interaction as a learning-generating practice in Swedish preschool everyday environments

Abstract

In this article, the first part of the research project ‘Musical interaction in preschool’ will be presented and analysed. The purpose of the study was to examine which musical interactive activities are expressed in everyday preschool environments and how these types of interactions can be related to children’s development and learning. Through observations of planned lessons and children’s free play in different milieus, the interactions have been mapped. Using Merleau-Ponty’s lifeworld phenomenology, various interactions reflect embodied education patterns as a part of preschool cultural canonisation. The result shows that the children in the study have a good ability to interact musically but that this resource is less utilised in the planned music teaching. The analyses were based on learning strategies in music with a child-first perspective which links back to lifeworld phenomenological perspectives of meaning.