Contexts of music education: primary school children’s opportunities and motivations in music

This paper examines primary school children’s self-perceptions of their participation and learning in the broad range of opportunities that are available to them within music education at Portuguese institutional and cultural levels. The main findings were gathered from two studies carried out in two phases (year 1 and 2): the Pupil Questionnaire study and the Pupil Interview study. In this paper, we will explore four issues: children’s musical activities, both in school and outside school; the influence of children’s participation in extracurricular musical activities at school on their selfassessments of their musical development; changes occurring in children’s musical activities as a function of their participation in extracurricular musical activities, and their attitudes and beliefs about music. Findings has shown that musical participation in the different contexts of music education seems to be an activity participated in only by a minority of those involved in this research. One of the alarming finding across the sample, relates to the children’s level of musical participation in most school activities as they tended to decrease in frequency in year two. Most children’s did not participated in many other musical activities at school or outside school before participating in the established extracurricular activities. In fact, those seem to provide children with wider opportunities to participate in music, generating musical development and learning, as well as positively influencing children’s self-assessment of their ‘own musical development’, attitudes and beliefs about music. Most children began enjoying their school more and evidence supported the fact that taking part in those musical activities positively affected these children’s identification with school music lessons as they moved from grade 3 to grade 4.