The Multimedia Technologies Applications indd

Music Activities – Their Representation in the 
Educational Process
Blanka Knopová
Since 1976 the subject of music education has been understood in the curriculum 
of all types of school as an activity subject. It is presumed that all that children are 
supposed to learn happens in a direct contact with music via the four fundamental 
activities: vocal, instrumental, listening and musical movement. All the mentioned 
activities should be well balanced and closely tied one to another. Still, it is the vocal 
activity that we need to consider as crucial for acquiring basic music knowledge and 
skills.
Even though the Czech educational system has gone through many reforms since 
1976 (various concepts of primary schools, Framework Education Programme), the 
content of music education has preserved the same character (i.e. the fi nal outcomes 
of individual educational periods are comparable).
Together with changes in the sphere of education, the whole society has been 
changing. Thinking as well as value orientation has changed. Similarly as in the pre-
vious times, when the subject of music education was not of a signifi cant importance, 
it is not even these days.
The research team of employees of Music Education Department carried out 
‘The Research into Using Multimedia Technologies in Music Education’ in 2010. 
612 schools participated in the research carried out in the form of questionnaire. The 
total of 1839 pupils of the second stage of elementary education and 598 teachers 
were involved. 
The questions focused on the following areas:
– status of music education and its meaning
– content and process of lessons 
– teacher’s and self-assessment by pupils 
– equipping of music classroom
The results of the questionnaire research in relation to the quality of educational 
process and approach of pupils to the subject of music education tend to be rather 
negative. In answer to question whether pupils consider this subject to be as impor-
tant as the other subjects, only 21,31% of respondents said yes. The parents’ view is 
very similar – 21,74%. Music education is considered less important than the other 
subjects by 52,06% pupils and 49,85% parents. The teachers’ opinion is almost the 
same – 51%. The percentage of pupils that said ‘I don’t know’ is quite high (6,59%). 
A bit more optimistic are the answers to the question It is worth having lessons of 

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music education? Compared to the previous question, where 52,06% of children 
stated that music education is less important, it is pleasant to hear that 57,10% of 
them state that it is worthy. From another perspective, the percentage of neutral and 
negative answers (altogether 42,90%) could be seen as high, too (see C
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2010). 
Music education has been considered as a subject of less importance for a long 
time. So results of the questionnaire research only supported this fact.
But let’s consider the research results from the perspective of watching the content 
programme of a lesson in relation to the number of lessons available to this subject.
Music education at the second stage of primary education has a donation of 
1 lesson per week. This means that a teacher can have approximately 35 lessons in 
a school year. In the given number of lessons children should:
a) learn at least 15 new songs
b) listen to 8-10 compositions
c) cooperate on about 10 instrumental accompaniments
d) interconnect 8-10 songs or selected compositions with movement
It ensues from the given list that the teacher must have a very well thought-out 
and elaborated yearly curriculum in which he/she functionally interconnects indivi-
dual activities and links them to learning new things from music theory.
The questionnaire deals with ‘New matters to learn’ – music theory – separately, 
same as it deals with the internet or watching musical fi lms. But, from the aspect of 
the structure of a lesson, the named elements cannot be separated – all need to be its 
natural constituent.
The following part of the paper will focus on the representation of the vocal, 
instrumental, listening and musical movement constituents of education. We come 
from the statements of pupils who are not affected by any knowledge of the lesson 
structure or involvement of music activities that help in learning new matters.