Intercultural Teaching of Music at School as a Form of Dialogue and Meeting of Youth from Neighbouring Countries: Poland, Germany and Ukraine

Abstract

The author of this research approach aims to confront European and American achievements of "intercultural education" with historical and cultural contexts of Central Europe, its pedagogical tradition and systemic solutions of general musical education. The experimental teaching and research project, which was based on a series of music lessons for middle school classes in Poland, Germany and Ukraine, was designed to provide research material, enabling to solve a few problems: 1. How do multicultural music competences shape in the process of teaching music in the relations: a) native music – the music of other cultures. b) music of other cultures towards each other? 2. What is the level of student knowledge about other musical cultures and the scope of their skills associated with music of other nations? 3. What impact do the following factors have on the development of multicultural music competences:  ethnic and national identity,  the scope of curricular content relating to own music and other musical cultures with particular emphasis on Polish, Ukrainian, German and Jewish music.  the level of musical skills and achievements in general,  the scope of curricular content of other subjects taking into account various cultures,  specific teaching methods supporting the mastery of multicultural musical contents? 4. What is the status of preparing teachers for conducting musical education in the multicultural approach in the subject of music? 5. Can intercultural musical education lead to:  becoming aware of the fears and tensions occurring in contacts with other ethnic groups,  respecting other cultural identities,  becoming aware of one's identity and outlooks related to it, subjecting them to criticism and moving on to understanding other outlooks and identities,  building a consensus on the common basis of living together in one society, shaping an attitude ready to mitigate conflicts of ethnic, cultural and religious context?

Teaching objectives of the programme Carrying out the teaching programme, a series of lessons based on the canon of musical national cultures – of Poland, Germany, Ukraine and the Jewish culture as a supranational context (national anthems, historical songs, ethnic music and its artistic style, sacred music and great forms expressing a clearly defined national identity) also assumed to achieve the following objectives important from the viewpoint of the assumed issue: - broadening the aesthetic and musical identity of students, - in-depth, historical reflection on one's own and foreign cultural and artistic heritage, - developing awareness of the aesthetic and cultural differences, as well as competences of perceiving the borderline sphere and mutual transcultural impact, - developing competences for taking up intercultural dialogue through the symbolical medium of music, - education in ethics stressing the importance of own and foreign cultures' musical work while maintaining universal norms and values.

Methodological approach and applied techniques and research tools

The starting point is the analysis of well-known concepts of intercultural-oriented musical education (Boehle, Kruse, Merkt, Stroh and others) or analysis (in the absence of integrated methodological concepts in a given country) of teaching and educational contents of the musical education curriculum in school, relating to the so-called musical multiculturalism. Results of the study were gathered using the following measurement and quality techniques: - a test of musical knowledge and skills in the scope of own music and of other musical cultures (including an auditory skills test), - non-standardised interviews with teachers of music participating in the experiment, - Likert scale to measure the "contextual-musical multicultural attitude", - analysis of school programmes of teaching music, - emotional and imaginative technique of studying students' responses as student reactions to music listened to, - student's questionnaire studying determinants of achievements.

Study results

After conducting studies on a population of approximately 500 students from Poland, Ukraine and Germany, a comprehensive material was obtained, which after preliminary analysis, presents the effectiveness of the experiment, as well as the scope of changes in knowledge and attitudes of people participating in it. These results can be generalised as follows: 1. A significant increase in knowledge about the music of other cultures and skills associated with it can be observed in the experimental group as compared to the control group. 2. The experiment also significantly influenced changes in students' attitudes towards the contextual realm of the experiment's music, simultaneously being the image of their cross-cultural attitudes. Therefore, an essential correlation was observed between the increase in knowledge and skills, and those attitudes. 3. Student attitudes can be classified according to the following profiles: a) national - ethnic, b) sacral - national, c) ethnically and nationally balanced.