Theoretical And Empirical Pilot Study Of Teaching Patterns Of Senior High School Music-Under The Guide Of Constructivism Principles

For long times, senior high school in our country mainly adopts the teaching pattern guided by teaching goals in which teaching goals or knowledge dominates and controls the selecting of teaching materials, organization, implementation, and assessment of music curriculum. Teachers are the goal-maker and dominator of teaching activities, and students act as the passive receiver of teaching activities. The teaching pattern paid more attention to the transmission of knowledge that students can not function as subject of learning, let alone develop their personality, strong will, and emotion. So music education in senior high schools must update the teaching beliefs and construct new teaching patterns by cultivating the subject position of students and foster the autonomous development of them to adapt to the new teaching request of the time.Constructivist learning theory argues that learning is not only for students to receive knowledge passively from teachers; rather it is a process of construction in which learners actively construct their knowledge based on their own knowledge and experiences. That means, the learning process happened in the environments set up by teachers, when students, with the help of their own knowledge and experiences, explore and interact actively in order that the new cognitive structure can be constructed. So it is a process in which students actively construct their knowledge, and a process for the new experiences to interact with the original experiences to enrich and reform his or her original knowledge and experiences. Constructivism, as a new cognitive and teaching theory, is student-centered, and lays stress on the activity, sociality and situationality of learning, and on the active exploration, discovery, and construction of the new knowledge.The present thesis conducts an intensive study of constructivist learning theory according to the requirements of New Curriculum Standards with the consideration of the features of music teaching in senior high schools in our country, and endeavored to integrate the theory into the teaching practice of music in senior high schools. After 3 months empirical pilot study in a senior high school in Longxi County, Gansu Province, the results shows that, compared to traditional teaching approach, Constructivist music teaching approach can improve effectively the music proficiency of senior high school students, and have to some extent the effect of raising their interests in music, improving their learning strategies, their willingness to learn music actively, and helping them lay a favorable environments for learning.Some implications can be drawn from the study: learning is s process in which teachers and students communicate bilaterally and co-operate with each other; in music teaching, we should provide actively contexts to inspire student's interests and enthusiasm in music exploration; we should concern ourselves with teaching practice, and develop students'music competence in problem-solving.