Introduction

Several studies have previously studied the connections between music and physical education participation, and the development of social-emotional learning (SEL). Previous literature has indeed suggested a positive association from such engagement (Gaudette-leblanc et al., 2021; Gil-Moreno & Rico-Gonzalez, 2023). Nonetheless, few questions still remain unclear due to flagged methodological limitations (Habibi et al., 2022; Ilari et al., 2021) as well as the wide range on constructs in social-emotional definitions (Blasco-Magraner et al., 2021; Kliziene et al., 2021). This is why the current project is based on reflections written by music and physical education (PE) early childhood teachers, to explore more in-depth how social-emotional behavior might be embedded in early childhood music and physical education lessons.

Objectives and research question

The aim of this study is thus to analyze the teacher reflections, and understand how diverse social-emotional aspects take place in music and PE lessons. The main research question set is: How do music and PE teachers observe 4-5-year-olds’ social-emotional skills in music and PE lessons?

Background to the study

The current study is based on a longitudinal project MUSPRO, which aims at exploring how two years of music and physical education lessons can nurture social-emotional development of 4-5-year-old children. During these two years, students participated in weekly classes of either (1) music education or (2) physical education) or (3) continued with their business as usual. The data based on neurocognitive and observation tests were collected at the beginning, after one year of lessons, and at the end after 2 years of participation. The whole research process has taken place in 10 early childhood-centers in a Finnish mid-size city, during the everyday center schedule.

This part of the research is thus focused on teachers’ reflections which were written after each weekly lesson. The music and PE teachers were external staff to the ECEC who came weekly to teach such lessons. The ECEC staff were also welcomed and invited to participate in these lessons.

Methods Data were collected during the academic year 2023-2024, on a weekly basis from the teachers’ reflection survey. This survey was specifically designed for the current project. The questions involved asking about the general atmosphere of the class, their own and students’ emotional state as well as if any changes to the lesson plan had been done. This presentation is focused on the last open-ended question, where teachers could openly write about anything that they deemed interesting and important for the research project (without making any individual descriptions of the children due to ethical considerations). Once all answers from one school year were collected (29 weeks, N=313); the data were pseudo-anonymized and translated from Finnish-English in the cases that were needed. The analysis followed a thematic reflexive analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2019). This analysis process was mainly a collaborative work between four researchers in the music field (two from music education, one in music therapy and one in music psychology). The analysis took both music and PE reflections together as all the lessons were planned collaboratively. The analysis followed a deductive approach, taking the “Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning” -from now referred as: CASEL (2020) -framework as the basis for the foundation. Following this, the data were first divided into the five categories: self-awareness, self-control, social awareness, relationship skills & responsible decision making. Several iteration coding procedures were done collaborative, after which new categories not captured by the CASEL-5 skills were captured. Once the codes were established, the description of preliminary trends was individually made by all the researchers. The researchers then met together to share their own thoughts and trends established, to create all together the final themes presented here through the reflection of similarities and differences.

Results and conclusion Through our interpretation of teachers’ reflections, we noticed both opportunities and challenges described for each of the 5 skills of the CASEL framework. In particular, reflections regarding self-awareness and self-management were more frequent, which could reflect how developmental theories have also guided this interpretation. More specifically, both music and PE based activities seemed to be quite movement dependent, highlighting the need for energy regulation and balancing movement as well as calm down activities. In terms of social awareness and relationship skills, some group dynamics were reported as children sometimes tried to get the attention off their peers. For the last one, we did not read that many instances regarding responsible decision making, although teachers greatly appreciated when students could choose and create movements/short music compositions. We also interpreted many codes related to teachers’ own development, both professionally on gaining more confidence through the year as well as on their own SEL. Through this analysis, we hope to reflect in depth how social-emotional is embedded and interpreted in music and physical education lessons for 4-5-year-olds. The specific prevalence of themes on energy and self-regulation might also suggest the need towards adapting the SEL definition to the music and PE context. While the CASEL framework was useful to organize the initial coding and overlapping constructs, it became clear the limitations of such definitions especially regarding adults’ own development and the importance of continuous feedback between children-teachers. Moreover, using teachers’ reflections in this research hopes to emphasize the key importance on maintaining a reflexive and observative attitude in pedagogical work. This approach could be nurtured from teacher training education as well as throughout the whole professional career, as it not only contributes to the decision making in the pedagogical work but can also contribute to research, as shown here

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