Playing with diversity: Young children and music in an Australian child care centre

This paper reports on research titled "Young children, diversity and music" which is examining musical experiences of three and four-year-old children. Children 's developing cultural awareness and the role music plays in this process is a focus. The aim of the research is to explore the potential benefits of providing children in early childhood programs with high quality experiences of music that reflect cultural diversity. The project examines children's music experiences during spontaneous play. Using a sociolcultural approach to observation, learning stories (Carr, 2001) are used to record and analyse the children's music play. Included in the research is an e>.ploration of educators' perceptions of themselves as facilitators of a music program. The educators in the research are collaborative partners in this proj ect and participate in the design of 'music learning centres'. What the child brings to the learning situation, in regards to musical experiences, will be identified through a parent survey, naturalistic observations within the context and also observations across time and space so the children's music activities, interests and dispositions fl'om one mwse1y and educator to another can be recorded.