Sound qualities in Early Childhood Education: an analysis of textbooks in Spain

The aim of this study is to analyse activities on sound qualities raised in Early Childhood Education textbooks from an educational-musical point of view. The sample consisted of 1391 activities in textbooks from the leading publishing houses in Spain. For data collection an ad hoc instrument called the Protocol for the Systematic Analysis of Musical Activities was developed. It has been used both exploratory statistics for descriptive analysis and confirmatory statistics for a univariate, bivariate and multivariate analysis of different variables. Results showed that the qualities which were most worked on were timbre and duration with intensity and pitch being least. Activities that worked on parameters most were those related to playing instruments, with the exception of duration, which was more present in movement/dance activities. Finally, two thirds of musical activities in textbooks were related to qualities of sound, reflecting the importance publishers place on these in the teaching-learning proposals of music in Early Childhood Education textbooks.