Children’s invented notations: Extending knowledge of their intuitive musical understandings using a Vygotskian social constructivist view

Abstract

Children’s invented musical notations provide a fascinating window into their musical and metacognitive understandings. Using a Vygotskian social constructivist perspective that emphasizes the social nature of cognition, the purpose of this qualitative study was to examine the processes and products of children’s notations as they notated a song and then taught it to a peer, a multi-level task currently unstudied in the literature. Thirteen Canadian children, aged 5–9 years, without prior music instruction, notated a song learned the previous week, sung it back, explained what they did, and then taught the song to a classmate the following week. The children’s notations, as well as audio and videotapes of them carrying out the multi-level task, provided the primary data; audiotaped conversations with parents, teachers, and a school principal provided secondary data. Analyses generated descriptive and narrative portraits, which demonstrate the increasingly sophisticated representational strategies used by the children from three different age groups as they notated, refined, and taught a song. Select portraits are presented and discussed. Implications for research and practice highlight the value of the research task in eliciting children’s multiple intelligences and collaborative problem-solving skills, and painting more complete portraits of their intuitive and emergent musical and metacognitive understandings.