Using a song as a mediating object for learning temporal points of reference

Abstract

This Dalcrozian pedagogical process, carried out with students aged between 4-6 years old, uses a “song object” as learning mediator with the aim of appropriating a “psychological instrument” (Vygotski, Rabardel 1994, 1999) crucial to education: “temporal reference” (Suchaut 2008, 2013). The song moves from the status of ordinary object to the status of learning mediator, using signs as well as material and symbolic artefacts, and relies on the temporal competencies linked to musicality in early childhood. (Gratier 2007, Imberty 2010). The mediations are of various natures (sensory modes, gestures, graphic marks, interactions) and allow a transposition of time into space, similar to the process of entry in the written language.