The Emergence of Children’s Multicultural Sensitivity: An Elementary School Music Culture Project

Abstract

The purpose of this ethnographic study was to examine student outcomes of a curriculum designed to address the overlapping aims and practices of music education and multicultural education ideals in a fifth-grade music class. The following questions guided the research: What are the student outcomes as a result of a traditional music curriculum when it is designed to focus on selected musical cultures of Africa and the African diaspora? Are children capable of developing cultural understanding through a process of learning experiences that include emphasis on the sociocultural features of the musical cultures? What are the culturally specific musical skills that children develop in classes based on the goals of multicultural and music education? A curriculum was created to explore five selected musical cultures. This was followed by an examination of children’s responses and perspectives and the impact of the learning experiences. The most pertinent themes were: cultural authenticity in performance, social bias, and multicultural sensitivity. This study benefits music educators by offering evidence that children can develop musical and social understandings as a result of curricular design and consequently, how that learning shapes children’s understanding of processes that are historical, cultural, and even democratic.