Children’s Voices Matter: Exploring Chinese Kindergarten Music Curriculum from Children’s Perspectives Using an Adapted Mosaic Approach

Music education is an essential component of early childhood education, fostering children’s aesthetic appreciation, emotional expression, social interaction, creativity, and cognitive development. However, previous studies have largely reflected adult perspectives, focusing on how to evaluate or improve the kindergarten music curriculum, while children as the primary participants in early childhood education, their voices have been overlooked.

This study investigates how children understand, experience, and construct Chinese kindergarten music curriculum. It was conducted in a public kindergarten in a provincial capital city in southern China, adopting an adapted Mosaic approach that integrates multiple participatory and arts-based methods such as photography, tour guiding, voting, painting, and conferencing. Grounded in the New Sociology of Childhood and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, the study recognises children as competent social actors with rights to express their views. A total of 83 children (48 girls and 35 boys) aged between three and six years participated in the study. Among them were 24 junior kindergartners, 28 middle kindergartners, and 31senior kindergartners.

Based on children’s views, the type of music curriculum they prefer is as follows: play-based and joyful learning experiences; opportunity for autonomy and choice; supportive and friendly social relationship; rich and diverse musical experiences; and aesthetic, natural and supportive environments. By comparing the music lessons children currently experience with the music curriculum they envision, several issues in current kindergarten music education become evident: the curriculum contents are imbalanced; teachers mainly take on the role of instructors; lack of active peer interaction; the learning environment receives limited attention; and learning materials remain inadequate. By listening to children’s voices, these insights call for rethinking Chinese kindergarten music curriculum toward practices that genuinely reflect children’s voices, preferences, and ways of engaging with music.