Facilitating spiritual and religious education of children in early years through songs

Abstract

Following the Draft Policy Document on Religious Education in Malta (Gellel, Chircop, Debono Curmi, Deguara, Gatt, Magro…Sultana, 2008), the DQSE and the Secretariat for Catechesis have been working on developing a new syllabus for primary and early years school children. Aware that there are currently little or no local resources that help teachers facilitate young children’s Spiritual and Religious Education, as well as of the importance of music in children’s lives (Campbell, 2010), the researcher developed a music resource pack for a year 1 class of primary education. After studying relevant literature on the subject, the researcher developed songs that met the requirements of children and the Religious Education syllabus. The final resource is a CD which includes songs and lyrical videos for year 1 religious education. An evaluation of the effectiveness of a sample of the songs was made through an action research with the help of ten teachers. The data collection was carried out through evaluation sheets and interviews that helped to gather feedback from the teachers. The findings show that teachers believe that these songs facilitate children’s spiritual and religious education. In this research it also transpired that teachers would like to have more such resources as they believe that these will sustain their teaching.