THE QUALITY DYNAMICS OF YOUNGER STUDENTS’ MUSICAL SENSORY SKILLS: RESULTS OF THE FORMATIVE EXPERIMENT

Abstract

The importance of forming primary school children’s musical perception is justified by the introduction of the new version of the educational standard and educational programs as well as by teaching Arts on the basis of an integrative methodological approach. The purpose of the article is to scientifically ground the system of didactic influences on musical perceptual processes of younger school children focusing on the following research tasks: a) to define sensory ability as a unit of functioning of musical perception; b) to characterize the levels of pupils’ musical sensory skills formed in the mass experience of primary education; c) to disclose the specifics of variable experimental effects which differ in the degree of intensity of intermodal connections of sensory channels; d) to compare the quality dynamics of musical sensory skills formation in different versions of the pedagogical experiment. Musical sensory ability is defined as the performance of a system of auditory interiorized perceptual familiarizing and cognitive actions based on the mastered standards of music sounds and skills of applying these standards in the examination of musical phenomena. It has been found that in the mass experience of primary education pupils master musical sensory skills at elementary, intermediate and sufficient quality levels where the intermediate one prevails. The system of exercises and game tasks has been developed on the basis of intermodality with coordination of musical and phonemic auditory, musical auditory and color visual, musical auditory and spatial visual sensory processes. The system is aimed at expanding and systematizing pupils' reference ideas about music sounds as well as forming rational ways of their examining musical phenomena. The effectiveness of the introduced didactic influences has been proved: in comparison with the control group the participants of experimental groups, especially the first one, have demonstrated both the highest efficiency of distinguishing and systematizing music sounds and a variety of skills to reproduce them in singing, spatial modelling and instrumental game. The following changes have taken place in the structure of experimental groups: the respondents with an elementary level of musical perception development have not been identified, but a level gradation with intermediate, sufficient, high and consistently high levels of mastery of musical sensory processes.