Research On Localization Of Orff Music Teaching Methods

In today’s world with the trend of globalization and pluralism，the issue of educationlocalization has been paid more and more attention to, especially by developing countries.Under these circumstances, the music education theory and practice of our country are facedwith the important issue of building up a music education system with national and pluralcharacteristics. The globalization and localization of music culture education is closely relatedto the history of the development of our country’s music education. One the one hand, weshould join the international music education to come into contact with new thoughts; on theother hand, we should keep the unique qualities of traditional Chinese music culture andmusic education and base ourselves on local development.At the same time, we must achievea balance and integrity between the two, that is, looking out to the world, based in themotherland and developing through combination.In recent years, plural music cultural education has been one of the important subjectsdiscussed in the field of music education worldwide. The famous Orff music education whichoriginated in Germany contains the important thoughts of plural music culture education.When he was researching on original music and developmental music, Orff realized that themusic culture shouldn’t only concentrate on a certain western or eastern music culture，butshould take in the advantages of every advanced culture and develop diversely. Orff’s pluralmusic culture thoughts are mainly reflected in his music works. It can be said that, pluralism,as the basic opinion in his elementary music education theory, infiltrates his whole musiceducation system. Orff pays equal attention to folk music everywhere, whether it be Bavarianfolk songs, or Japanese or Chinese which are traditional Eastern or the unique Africanxylophone，or the orchestra of Southeastern Asian percussion music. All of those forms ofmusic reflect the nature and origin of music and are the most natural and energetic music. Allthe natural folk music which can be learnt and experienced by every child can be materials formusic teaching. They can be created into all kinds of Orff music courses and teachingactivities which are suited to children’s participation and experience. Thus, Orff musicdidactics has worldwide influence and has been well received by many teachers and students.It can be said that the wide spread and full development of Orff music didactics in the worldmusic education field have greatly promoted the research and development of plural musicculture education. Therefore, it is academically worthwhile and has far-reaching theoretical significance to deeply study the integration, development and evolution of Orff musiceducation in the world and meanwhile study its localization in China.Orff music didactics, one of the three most world-famous modern music didacticssystems， focuses on cultivating all-round personality, initiative and creativity, has beenhighly praised and loved by music educationalists worldwide and welcomed by childrenbecause of its liveliness and diverse teaching forms and strategies, making it widely spread.At the beginning of the1980s, it was introduced into China by music educationalistsrepresented by Liao Naixiong. This has made our country connected with the world at thebeginning of the music teaching reform and it has developed quickly，greatly promoting thereform. However, at the beginning, influenced by the national conditions at that time and thefactors like examination-orientated education system，music education didn’t get the dueattention，combined with the relative lagging of our country’s music education theoreticalresearch, resulting in the problems that Orff music didactics was not well integrated in theprocess of localization and thus couldn’t fully develop. Some teachers only copied the forminstead of deeply understanding the true intensions and ideas and there were even mistakes intheir teaching. Recently, with the development of quality-oriented education and our country’smusic education theories， Orff music didactics has come back into the highlight. Now, inChina’s elementary music education， there exist the weaknesses of competition,craftsmanship and professionalization. However, the ideas of Orff music didactics can putright the present situation in which knowledge and skills are over-emphasized while students’all-round mental and physical development is overlooked. Thus, I base my study on theworld-wide music education globalization and cultural integration and development. After adetailed introduction of the contents, ideas, principles, methods and patterns of Orff musiceducation system， I analyze the integration and evolution of Orff music didactics in theworld and focus the study on the localization of Orff music didactics in China.My research is on the following issues. First, how to define local and localization inmy study? How to understand the connotation and value of the localization of Orff musicdidactics?. How to promote its integration and development in the process of localization？Secondly，why hasn’t it been well localized since it was first introduced20years ago? Whatare the restricting factors？ Thirdly，how to find out the best interests it could exert on musiceducation in the curriculum reform and use them in fundamental music teaching？Fourthly,what are the mentalities of Chinese middle school and primary school students when theylearn music? How to design music classes using the methods according to different agegroups? Fifthly, how to learn from other countries’ practice in their process of the localizationof Orff music didactics in order to build up the Orff music education principles, methods,strategies and patterns with Chinese characteristics in our fundamental music education? The thesis includes7parts including the introduction.Part I， introduction, mainly deals with the background, fixes the research field anddiscusses the value, research methods and initiatives of the localization of Orff musicdidactics. At the same time, it summarizes and comments on the work done in the field, anddefines related concepts, which lay the foundation for carrying out the research.Part II mainly discusses the background and value of the localization of Orff musicdidactics and explains it by introducing Orff’s music education thinking and its socialbackground， its contents, theoretical and practical contributions and the present developmentin Germany. It also studies the value of its localization under the globalization of musiceducation.Part III discusses the connotation and theoretical bases of the localization of Orff musicdidactics from the perspectives of introduction and integration, absorption andtransformation， creation and construction.Part IV discusses the approaches of the localization of Orff music didactics， that is, thecurrent situation of the spread and localization of Orff music didactics， mainly those inChina. It also deals with the current situation and problems of the didactics in China andexplores the way of its integration in China.Part V is about the study of the practice of the localization of Orff music didactics.Targeting at China’s new curriculum reform, aiming at the present integration of Orff musicdidactics and our new curriculum standards, it analyzes the agreement between the ideas ofOrff music education and those of China’s new curriculum standards to study the practice ofOrff music didactics in fundamental music education.Part VI mainly deals with the local creation and construction of Orff music didactics inChina which includes the local creations of teaching modes, teaching goals， teachingprinciples, teaching contents, teaching methods，evaluation， teaching strategies, teachingequipment and so on.Part VII considers the traditional Chinese thinking，Chinese educational system, teachingequipment， the lagging of music education theories, the lack of professional staff and so onwhich all interfere with the integration of Orff music didactics and puts forward relatedsuggestions on policies in the aspects of national policies, public opinions，school atmosphere,teachers resources, students’ needs and so on.