A pilot museum-approach in music education: The impacts on primary school students' interest and understanding in orchestral music

Statistics reflect that Hong Kong students are interested in music yet do not have the motivation to attend orchestral concert regularly. The phenomenon has high research value and will be studied by reviewing the approaches and options in teaching orchestra in local school and professional orchestras, as well as the characteristics of the current concert programs.
In recent decades, museum education emerged rapidly in visual arts and science fields which has multiple benefits for learning. One of its crucial elements, the interactivity, has potential to be applied on music education. With reference also to the traditional composer-performer-audience triangular relationship, revised Bloom’s Taxonomy in Cognitive Doman and multi-sensory learning, a pilot one-off interactive museum-approach concert program is tailor-made as an alternative and compliment with the current education concert programs.
This research finds out the internal (music-related) and external reasons of students’ insufficient motivation towards attending orchestral concert and ranks the factors affecting students’ choices of concert. The experimental program design also successfully enhances students’ interest and understanding in orchestral music. After the program, suggested modifications of some of the particular program tasks are listed. Implications of the museum-approach program are also recommended at the end for further carrying-outs in school-settings and for other target participants in different age groups.