Studies On Beginner's Piano Teaching Materials For Children In China

Beginner's piano teaching materials for children hold a very important status and play a very significant role in piano education. Since the 1980s, indigenous beginner's piano teaching materials for children have begun to appear in China; up till now, about 20 kinds of indigenous beginner's piano teaching materials for children have been formally published and put into use. Nevertheless, there are rare systematic studies conducted on existing indigenous beginner's piano teaching materials for children in China. Precedent studies are often conducted to make an introduction to or give comments on certain teaching materials of such a kind or make a simple comparison between such teaching materials; as a result, no in-depth and extensive discussions are conducted and there lack large-scale studies.By conducting systematic studies on mainstream beginner's piano teaching materials for children in China and summarizing laws on development in history, it is possible to find out properties shared by all such teaching materials and look into the future development direction. In doing that, people can be enabled to know about the status quo and teaching level of piano fundamental education in China, discover underlying deficiencies, find out the gap between the existing piano teaching system in China and those advanced piano teaching systems abroad, provide suggestions on making effective and reasonable use of existing teaching materials, provide a foundation that can be used for reference for the piano fundamental teaching for children to develop healthily, rapidly, and scientifically, raise specific proposals and principles that can be followed on the compilation of indigenous beginner's piano teaching materials for children with Chinese characteristics that bear distinctive features of the present era and advanced educational philosophy.The thesis consists of five parts:In Part I, the development of beginner's piano teaching materials for children in China in history and the status quo of such teaching materials are studied and systematized. Before the 1980s, there was no extensively prevalent piano teaching materials for children in China as it was not necessary to compile piano teaching materials for children and there was no condition to do that. Since the policy of opening-up and reform was adopted, people's economic, cultural, and living standards became increasingly higher. As piano education became more and more popular among common people, experts compiled China's beginner's piano teaching materials for children in national styles and with national features in succession. In the thesis, induction and systemization are conducted in accordance with time sequence; analyses are conducted on the environment in which such teaching materials were compiled and conditions for their appearance as well as the features and influences of representative teaching materials.In Part II, properties shared by all beginner's piano teaching materials for children in China are discussed. The compilation of such teaching materials is based on the common sense of national identity and the common cultural psychology. All of them were established on specific teaching practices in China and had had the teaching wisdoms of Chinese teachers integrated. As such beginner's piano teaching materials for children have reflected Chinese children's aesthetic tastes and learning habits, they present distinctive properties shared by all.In Part III, comparative studies are conducted between beginner's piano teaching materials for children in China and the contemporary beginner's piano teaching materials for children in Europe and the United States of America. In this part, major theories in piano education in Europe and the United States of America are summarized while common beginner's piano teaching materials for children compiled under the guidance of such theories are illustrated at the beginning. Then, comparisons are made between beginner's piano teaching materials for children in China and those abroad in terms of introductory patterns, structure, stylistic rules and layout, material selection, production practice, and teaching contents with an objective to make evident characteristics of beginner's piano teaching materials for children in China, find out shortages and gaps, and provide references to be used in the development of beginner's piano teaching materials for children of new types bearing Chinese characteristics.In Part IV, main contradictions in piano teaching are set forth on basis of actual situations for beginner's piano teaching for children in China while shortages in the existing beginner's piano teaching materials for children in China and specific proposals are raised on the compilation of beginner's piano teaching materials for children in China of new types.Part V is a conclusion. In this part, it is pointed out that although great achievements have been made on the development of beginner's piano teaching materials for children in China, there also exist quite a few problems. With time going on, it is sure that more splendid achievements will be made on the development of beginner's piano teaching materials for children in China.