The educational value of the Junior Eurovision Song Contest (JESC) in the early years learning context : a critical multimodal investigation

Abstract

This research is based on a multimodal analysis of the twelve winning songs of the Junior Eurovision song contest(JESC). Through an in-depth literature review it seeks to examine the notion of music in education and music in the early childhood, its benefits, as well as the idea of the contemporary music which children are exposed to outside the classroom. The methodological framework UNLOCK (Cremona, 2012; as cited in Cassar & Cremona, 2012) was used in order to derive the modes and analyse the meaning of the songs. Moreover the two ‘superordinate modes’: Lyrics and Music where chosen to investigate the elements found in the twelve winning songs of the JESC. These were later analysed in-depth to put forward the child-oriented features that are present in the songs. From the thematic analysis of the lyrics one concludes that there are several themes brought out through the lyrics ‘mode’ which all relate to a different aspect of love. The music ‘mode’ elicits elements such as dynamics, instrumentation and use of sounds, style and cultural aspect which some are child-oriented whilst others are not. Furthermore, the study provides an insight to what elements can be used in the early childhood classroom. The pedagogical implications were put forward to implement these elements in the early childhood classroom. Such as; using the dynamics in the song to create different movements and explore slow vs fast movements or smooth vs. detached movements. Lyrics could also be used by using the songs which include repetitive words and use these words to create simple songs with children thus, combining music with creativity. Other suggestions were related to social interaction and multicultural education. This study creates a stepping stone of ideas by which educators can integrate music from the JESC in the early years classroom.