An Active Learning Study: Mastering Music Coordination Skills through Kompang and Dalcroze Eurhythmics among Primary Students

Abstract

Music coordination skill is very important in music education and performance. A problem that has been identified is that children are unable to sing and play traditional percussion (kompang) simultaneously during school music performance. It appears that the necessary skill is barely coached with the current teaching methods used by primary school teachers. This not only affects performance quality but also necessitates more hours of training despite students being talented in singing or playing musical instruments. The purpose of this study is to apply the Dalcroze Eurhythmics approach to improve musical coordination skill among primary school students. Hence, a quasi-experimental design was used to collect data from two groups of 9-year-old students in a Malaysian primary school, 35 in the experiment group and 35 in the control group. The pre-test and post-test data consist of mean value, standard deviation, percentage, and T-test analysis. The instrument used for data collection is a Practical Music Test. The result of the research shows that: (1) there is a significant difference between pretest and post-test scores in the experiment group, (2) there is significant difference in achievement score post-test between the control and experiment group, and (3) there is a significant difference between the achievement scores of the control and experiment groups. The present study has proven music coordination skill has potential to be developed as a part of music education in primary school. The findings also reveal that the Dalcroze Eurhythmics approach is an appropriate intervention.