Research Shorts: Growing the future early childhood music education workforce

Karen Wickett and Jane Parker

This week’s Research Shorts follows on from last week’s lovely research on playful learning, which I’d like to claim credit for but is a happy accident, or perhaps a playful one. I’m talking with Dr Karen Wickett and Jane Parker about their research in finding opportunities for learning for early years and music workforces, and their arguments for making spaces ‘that welcome [a] pedagogy of experimentation, playfulness and inclusion.’ Their work around Soundwaves, an Early Childhood Music Education (ECME) project, has been the focus of this research.

Karen is an Early Childhood Studies lecturer, and Jane is Soundwaves’ Early Childhood Music lead. They came together as learners/partners/colleagues/friends in the making of opportunities for undergraduate and postgraduate students to learning about early childhood music. One example that intrigued me from their article is their note about finding opportunities for music students to see young children’s music education. They write:

“Care for each other’s learning and experiences resists hierarchical relationships and diminishes students’ reluctance to join novel learning experiences. Instead, contexts are created where horizontal relationships between collaborators flourish and who welcome novelty, experimentation, play and vitality to the learning experiences.”

Karen and Jane are connected by their passion for very young children and their adults to experience “beautiful and nourishing musical experiences”. I asked them how they started working together: “Long before we met we were inspired by each other’s work. Now as collaborators we invite students to join us to play, experiment and learn/research about young children, their musicality and music education.”

They explained how they did the research that led to their recent article: “To uncover new insights we worked with Barad’s diffractive methodology. With pens, sparkly bits, ribbons, glue and paper, we mapped our Soundwaves narratives.” They described noticing the ‘fleetingness’ of learning opportunities for students, who may only get brief projects to see young children learn. “Initial concern about ‘fleetingness’ was replaced with reassurance, as we noticed fleetingness welcomed our philosophies about learning and relationships, whilst resisting formulaic, shallow and instrumental teaching methods.”

I asked them who is this research for, and they told me that the ‘insights are of particular importance to educators of the future early years and music workforces and their partners including Music Education Hubs, arts and cultural organisations’.

Interview by Dr Sarah K. Whitfield, Research Manager for Music Mark

Read the article here:

https://doi.org/10.1080/14613808.2024.2354738

Read a blog post about their collaborative work from Youth Music.

Karen Wickett’s staff page – https://www.plymouth.ac.uk/staff/karen-wickett