In this global community, it is identified that children should understand and appreciate the musics of other cultures within a music education curriculum. In Scotland the National Guidelines for Expressive Arts (Music) (SOEID 1992) included specific references to non-western musics and the more recent Curriculum for Excellence (LTS.2006) states a need for our young learners to "understand different beliefs and cultures". There is a difficulty, however, in that current pedagogical approaches are constructed upon a western aesthetic framework where responders are required to identify and use "musical concepts" in short extracts of music. Decontextualising music in this way, while perhaps satisfying current assessment procedures, this approach does little to develop a full understanding of the true meaning of music in the learner. Music is not devoid of context (Storr,1992, Walker 1996, Ridley 2004), whether emotional, historical, political or social for in every piece of music there is a purpose, function and value. Ridley asserts that music is embedded in historical setting. Walker deduces that it develops from social and environmental conditions. Storr takes the position that while it is possible to study from a purely objective position it is not enough. This presenter argues that to deal solely with musical content is reductionist and that for music to be fully understood requires exploration of context with musical content has to be undertaken together in order that learners will understand the deeper meaning behind those elements of music. The research question for this study is "What do young children perceive in non-western musics?", and the contexts and the musics in this research are those of Africa (Drumming), the Caribbean (Steel Pans) and Indonesia (Gamelan). Data coming from the responses and the commentaries of young learners provides the illustration for this presentation from two perspectives: (1) an active listening approach similar to the conditions found in a typical music classroom invited response to a range of musical extracts from the cultures mentioned. 250 young people were involved in this experimental, quantitative stage of the study (2) an immersed activity approach with 25 children where the learners took part in six Javanese Gamelan workshops, where they set their own targets for learning after review of each workshop session and worked towards a fully integrated experience of music (content) with puppet theatre (context). This aspect of the study adopted an action research model in order to systematically develop a methodology for future classroom work in non-western musics.

Two approaches were adopted for this research. The first, an experimental approach used a re-modelled Hevner -type adjective list (Hevner,1936) and a 6-point Likert-scale to determine individual perceptions and preference in the learner. The second was more rooted in a real-world action research model (Robson 2002) where the learners and the teacher worked together as researchers. Over six weeks of immersed activity the children and tutor worked together to explore an appropriate methodology for teaching and learning one non-western music in the curriculum.

The experimental findings revealed that the learners had a very low preference for Gamelan music, selecting more negative terms from the Hevner list and offering a low score on the Likert indicator. The reasons will be presented more fully but briefly can be attributed to complexity and non-familiarity. By comparison the music of the Caribbean received a very high scoring. Since the second stage is still in progress, the outcomes of the action research activity will be presented in full at conference. Initial indicators show a high level of positive and sensitive commentary to the music and reveal learners abilities to set clear targets for learning.