Conference Agenda

Musical narratives combine sound elements with symbols, similar to storytelling. This practice fosters symbolic thinking, creativity, and musical skills, enabling children to represent abstract ideas through sound. However, musical narratives have rarely been explored in school music education due to a lack of suitable teaching strategies.

This project focuses on how primary school children invent musical narratives using everyday objects to inspire symbolic associations and musical creativity. It addresses three key questions: 1) How do children use objects to develop musical ideas? 2) How do teachers facilitate creative processes? 3) How do children’s musical narratives change over multiple sessions? The study aims to deepen understanding of musical narrative development and provide generalist teachers with tools to integrate such practices in their lessons.

Over several weeks, children will work in groups to create musical narratives. Data collection includes audio-visual recordings, written documentation, and transcriptions for qualitative analysis. This study adopts a Participatory Action Research (PAR) approach, involving teachers as co-researchers. Given their dual role, specific distancing strategies ensure objectivity and critical reflection. These include reflective journaling, where teachers document observations and thoughts; peer debriefing, allowing co-researchers to discuss experiences, mitigate bias, and refine interpretations; and external validation, involving third-party experts to review data analysis.

Preliminary findings indicate that children develop musical narratives by drawing on their prior musical knowledge and experiences. This research contributes to both educational practice and theory. Practically, it provides insights for developing lesson activities that integrate musical narratives, offering teachers strategies to foster creativity and active cultural participation. Theoretically, it aligns with Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) and the cultural psychology of music education (Barrett, 2010), which emphasise the role of cultural practices in shaping musical invention. Within this framework, musical narratives emerge as a valuable pedagogical tool for developing critical thinking, collaboration, and creativity.

The use of technology in educational processes has brought significant transformation to all areas of education in recent years, enabling the integration of new learning and teaching environments into educational practices. Existing research supports the importance of utilizing technology in educational settings (Çakan Uzunkavak et al., 2024; Oh et al., 2024; Koolivand et al., 2024; Putranto et al., 2023).
In this context, the widespread use of virtual reality (VR) technology in educational environments is considered essential. The application of VR technology in music education is thought to provide music teachers with new pedagogical opportunities in teaching and learning processes. Therefore, it is deemed necessary to evaluate how VR technology is perceived and utilized by teachers in educational contexts.
This study aims to explore the experiences of middle school music teachers with a "virtual stage" application and to assess the feasibility of using VR technology in music education. The study group consists of 10 middle school music teachers, with 5 participants from Bursa and 5 from Şanlıurfa, Turkey. As part of the research, the participants were provided with a 40-minute VR stage experience, followed by the collection of their opinions on the application’s feasibility in music education through a semi-structured interview form developed by the researchers. The data were analyzed using content analysis methods.
The study is expected to identify the perceived benefits and potential limitations of using VR technology in music education based on the experiences of the participant teachers. The findings aim to contribute new insights into the potential advantages and challenges of integrating VR technology into music education and to inform the development of innovative pedagogical approaches while addressing existing limitations in the field.