Young children and spirituality: understanding children’s connectedness in a group music class

Abstract

In a fast-paced materialistic world, it is important to create opportunities for spirituality in early childhood music education, a developmental element often neglected in the scholarly literature. The purpose of the present hermeneutic phenomenological study is to understand the meanings that children ascribe to their experiences of connectedness in a group music class for 15 children, aged 4–5 years, at a nursery school in Potchefstroom, South Africa. Data were collected by means of interviews, close observations, diaries and drawings. In a qualitative data analysis, the following themes emerged regarding the children’s experiences in the music class: Music is the best; My body dances; Music takes me places; We can play together; You and me; I feel better and You can have mine. Music group classes in early childhood education could be useful in creating opportunities for spiritual experiences, promoting connectedness and consequently fostering children’s spiritual well-being.

Keywords:

• Children’s spirituality
• early childhood music education
• connectedness
• lived relationality
• Dalcroze

Notes

1. Eva Nivbrant Wedin is a Swedish eurhythmics teacher and a senior lecturer at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm, Sweden. She graduated from Malmö Academy of Music in 1979 and continued her further studies at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm 1991 and 1998.

2. The following categories were used as a priori codes: Relationality: connection, interpersonal relationships, intrapersonal relationships, spiritual virtues, spiritual vices and meaning. Spatiality: awareness, awe & wonder, transcendence, ecstasis and suprarationality. Temporality: journey, joy, flow and eternal. Corporeality: embodiment, sensory experience, creativity and breath (Van der Merwe and Habron 2015, 53).

3. Pseudonyms are used to protect the identity of the children in the study.

4. The numbers in brackets are a reference to the primary documents from ATLAS.ti. The first number refers to the document and the second number to the place in the document.

5. Virtues are a very complicated concept and are viewed differently in different religions, by different philosophers and differently through history. With spiritual virtues, we have ‘theological virtues’ such as the ‘Fruits of the Spirit’ in mind, namely the following: ‘love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control’. Galatians 5:22–23.