The goal of this contribution is to examine the role of body engagement during rhythm learning activities in primary school classes of six to eight-year-olds.
Previous scientific findings show how the transition from corporality to rhythmicity is carried out by motor function and imply that musical learning is facilitated by embodying musical structures. Students make periodic movements spontaneously while listening to music, and these movements influence their perceptions of musical structures and rhythm. The use of figural descriptions is an efficient tool during rhythm learning. However, students’ personal tempi in the absence of a loud beat of reference represent a challenge to collective rhythmic (re)production.
The aims of this contribution are to better understand the role of the body during rhythm learning activities and to identify how body engagement can contribute to improved rhythmic understanding and performance.
The methodological approach involves video-recording nine lessons, then transcribing and coding the exchanges. Self-confrontation interviews are conducted after each lesson in order to discuss chosen extracts from the recordings.
The results first describe moments of teacher and student actions and interactions when reading, speaking and playing rhythms. These results show teachers and students favouring an embodied experience during the process of acquiring specific rhythmic knowledge. The teachers use their bodies as models and regulators, communicating bodily to avoid explicit articulation of rhythmic notions, thus replacing language resources. This bodily basis for communication helps students to make rhythm through movement and to experience the passage from corporality to rhythmicity via motor function rather than via reasoning processes. These results also highlight that teachers should choose their musical gestures because not all gestures are efficient in transmitting specific information (ex. duration). Particular attention is given to the phenomenon of personal tempo observed in students during rhythm activities, which results in very young children being unlikely to adhere to a collective beat unless it is made very obvious by their teacher. Moreover, these case studies call attention to figural descriptions that can help convey musical concepts alongside embodiment.
To conclude, this study has further implications for music education as it shows some connections between embodied teaching and learning, and improved rhythmic understanding and performance as teachers and students exploit natural links between body movement and rhythm in teaching.