Common musical mistakes in Early Childhood Education textbooks

Abstract

The aim of this study is to detect and analyse mistakes in musical activities included in Early Childhood Education textbooks from a musical and didactic viewpoint. The sample comprised 2,200 activities corresponding to the textbooks of four leading publishers in Spain. An instrument designed ad hoc for collection of information was developed, proposing a taxonomy of mistakes in three categories: musical, didactic and worksheet. Results revealed that 22.6% of analysed activities contained some type of mistake. The most frequent were in the musical category (concepts, terms or graphic representation), followed by didactic (level, planning or methodology) and, finally, those related to student worksheets.