Sample Research Proposal on Singing Culture of Children in Hong Kong

INTRODUCTION               This paper presents a proposal to conduct a dissertation study on the singing culture of children in Hong Kong. The aim of the study is to explore the emerging singing culture of young children in Hong Kong, specifically those in the kindergarten stage. Hong Kong is fitting for cultural investigations because of its rich Chinese culture. There are many traditional songs in Hong Kong that are still being sung by children, and there are also new songs as well that are being introduced to them. Of course, most new songs are products of the Hong Kong pop culture and the international pop culture songs that have penetrated the region. However, it is still difficult to make a conclusion on the singing culture of Hong Kong children because of the various types of songs they can sing, the factors that influenced them to like and sing the songs, as well as the different means of singing the song. Thus, in order to understand this phenomenon, this study will conduct an investigation to have an idea about the 'whats', 'wheres', 'whys' and 'hows' of Hong Kong children singing culture.             The approach in the study will be both quantitative and qualitative. It will survey Hong Kong children using an easy-to-fill up questionnaire, as well as test and observe them through an experiment especially designed for this study. The reason why this topic is chosen is because of the interest of the researcher on singing cultures of children. Exploring the singing culture of Hong Kong children will help identify them from children from other countries in terms of singing. Identification of children's culture in singing will help greatly in their development and growth as there will be an idea on how to approach them when teaching music or songs.   PURPOSE OF THE STUDY                 The purpose of the study is to explore the singing culture of Hong Kong children. Data will be presented descriptively, as the aim of the study is to gather as much information needed to draw a conclusion.               This study topic is chosen because of the lack of understanding about the singing cultures of children. By searching on different journal databases related to music and culture, it is confirmed that there are not too many studies that focus on the singing culture of children, or even adults. This study follows the stance that singing culture is an important scientific investigation because it closely draws how people relate music to their everyday lives. Children are interesting to link with singing cultures because regardless of their naiveté and lack of understanding in musical concepts, they try hard to sing the songs they hear or try to express any musical tune they hear through hymns. Thus, it is important to know how they incorporate singing in their lives, along with their beliefs about it, because by knowing so, music teacher will understand them and will know better how to approach them when teaching them to sing new songs or teaching them the basic musical concepts they can use for singing.               The intention of the proposal is not just to investigate the singing culture of Hong Kong children by surveying or observing them, but also to acquire information from other people that encounter or interact with them daily – their parents and teachers. Parents and teachers may offer insights on the children's singing characteristics as they are the ones who often see and hear the children sing. This paper intends to gather information from those three groups of respondents to be able to build data that can specifically identify the how and why children sing, as well as what specific songs they sing. By doing so, teachers and parents will have insights on how their students and offspring sing and may develop strategies in teaching them how to sing.   OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY                 This paper mentions that the aim of the study is to explore the singing cultures of Hong Kong children. The study can achieve this by focusing on specific objectives necessary to know the elements of what it intends to explore. The objectives of the study break down the general aim of the study into specific issues. They are the following:   Ø      To know what songs do Hong Kong children sing, and why and how do they sing the songs. Ø      To know which specific factors in their environment influence them in their singing. Ø      To know the role of teachers and parents in shaping the singing culture of Hong children. Ø      To contribute in the study of children's singing cultures. On the other hand, the study will answer the following research questions:   Ø      What songs do Hong Kong children usually sing? Ø      What are the different factors that influence Hong Kong children to sing the songs they sing? Ø      Why do Hong Kong children sing songs? Ø      How do Hong Kong children sing, or what manner do they sing?   BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY     What is Culture?   Culture is defined as a set of beliefs and values widely shared in a specific society at a particular point in time (McGuire et al, 2002). Furthermore, culture encompasses a set of fundamental values that distinguishes one group from another (Hofstede and Bond, 1988).   Culture has two philosophies – the etic and the emic philosophy. The etic philosophy is based on the definition of culture as "the collective programming of the mind which distinguishes the members of one group or category of people from another'' (Hofstede, 1980). On the other hand, the emic philosophy stresses upon understanding issues from the perspective of the subjects being studied (Hofstede, 1980). As cited from McCracken (1988) activity, specifying the behaviors and objects that issue from both.   Based on the integrated model, culture influences behavior through its manifestations: values, heroes, rituals, and symbols (Luna and Gupta, 2001). The combination of both etic and emic perspective on the manifestations, can basically reveal culture's strong relation with the behavior of a person.   The Chinese Culture   According to Hofstede's analysis for China, the Chinese rank lower than any other Asian country in the Individualism (IDV) ranking, at 15 compared to an average of 24 (ITIM, 2003). This may be attributed, in part, to the high level of emphasis on a Collectivist society by the Communist rule, as compared to one of Individualism (ITIM, 2003). China is proven to be a collectivist society (Triandis, 1995). Chinese are generally willing to give priority to the goals of the collective over their own personal goals, and emphasize their connection to the members of these collectives. Furthermore, they focus their trust and solidarity toward the norms of the members of their collectives, also called ingroups, and are often distrustful of outgroups. The Chinese believes that individualism connotes selfishness, a lack of concern for others, and an aversion to group discipline, whereas collectivism is understood to affirm the solidarity of the group (Ho & Chiu, 1994). Hofstede explained that the low Individualism ranking is manifest in a close and committed member 'group', be that a family, extended family, or extended relationships. Loyalty in a collectivist culture is paramount (ITIM, 2003).  The society fosters strong relationships where everyone takes responsibility for fellow members of their group (ITIM, 2003). On the contrary with the Individualism trait found in the country, China has a high Power Distance rating of 80 compared to the other Far East Asian countries' average of 60, and the world average of 55. This is indicative of a high level of inequality of power and wealth within the society (ITIM, 2003). This condition is not necessarily forced upon the population, but rather accepted by the society as their cultural heritage (ITIM, 2003).   Music Culture of Hong Kong                 Little is known about the musical culture of Hong Kong. With that said, it is assumed that the music culture of the region – be it singing, listening, or playing an instrument – is not documented but experienced daily by different individuals. Like other advanced countries, Hong Kong gives importance to music by including it the curriculum early on in education (Leung, 2004). However, the execution of such curriculum has many criticisms. One is that equipment and accommodation in Hong Kong schools act to discourage small group activities, especially practical activities that may involve children working on performances or compositions. There is also often a lack of space, teaching time and equipment for these activities due to the large number of students (around 40) in each class. Teachers are reluctant to employ creative-musical activities, and that they tend to concentrate on Western art music, music literacy, and aural training using a teacher-centred instructional style of approach, with limited opportunities for students to learn about other music traditions, or to make music in small group activities (Leung, 2004).   Hong Kong Children and Music                 According to researchers, the stage of musical development in young children affects their musical behaviors (Smithrim, 1994).  The home environment or the school environment can be a significant factor in the child's level of musical development (Smithrim, 1994). Other factors include the characteristics of musical material and modes of presentation, which basically affects children response (Smithrim, 1994).               Smithrim (1994) found that children, when responding to music, keep the beat by bouncing, banging, jogging and taping. Children also sing along with the songs they hear, but with a co-viewer or listener, they rarely sing but verbally respond to the song.             Another interesting finding in the study is that children sings part of songs that contains repetition on all levels. Furthermore, children like to sing along on fast-tempo songs rather than on slow-tempo ones (Smithrim, 1994).   Atsuko (1994) stated that by nature, children are musical and their musicality has a close relationship with language, movement, and environment. Research shows that music can contribute greatly to the development of an infant – that musical activities promote emotional stimulations (Stauffer, 1994).   In a more related study, Chen (1994) investigated the relationship between text and the accuracy of pitch singing in young children in Hong Kong. The results showed that differences between pitch relationship between text and melody has certain effects on different aspects of children singing such as pitch accuracy, level of difficulty in learning and singing songs, singing styles, and the singing of different intervals and singing range (Chen, 1994).   Specifically, Honk Kong children are known for their creativity. Results of the norming study by Cheung et al (2004) showed that there was generally an increase with grade level in the mean fluency, flexibility, uniqueness, and unusualness of creativity from Grade 1 to Grade 3 (individual administration mode) and from Grade 4 to Grade 9 (group administration mode) for both verbal tests and figural tests, besides a significant drop in the mean of the various indexes of creativity for figural tests in Grade 7. Such indexes can be attributed to singing since they are cognitive skills.               However, in the study conducted by Morris and Ng (1999) about the music curriculum in Hong Kong secondary education, one of the teachers interviewed in narrates that Hong Kong children sings horrible and that teachers should not expect highly. There were also other issues, despites the findings in Cheung et al's (2004) study, that music teacher gives less emphasis in improving the musical creativity of their students. Also, there is a lack of teaching style that effectively incorporates music into children. Finally, the focus is not on assessing the music culture of students, but rather to get them interested in music.       METHODS               The study will explore the problem in a positivist view, using exploratory and experiment research strategy. Exploratory research will enable the study to look at the problem in both descriptive and exploratory manner. It will look into the problem by exploring the views of different sets of respondents, as well as by exploring different literatures related with the study. It will also conduct experiment to observe the subjects, with the hope to find answers to the questions the study ask.               The study will survey Hong Kong kindergartens in the age of 4 to 6. Even though this paper stated earlier that it is difficult to conduct survey on children, it recognizes the challenge to make the children understand the questionnaire. The researcher will explain to the children the mechanics on how to properly answer the questionnaire. The study will use a structured questionnaire, and will incorporate list questions for the subjects to answer.               Aside from survey, the study will also conduct an experiment on the subjects for observation purposes. Here, 10 kindergarten students – 5 boys and 5 girls – will be put in a playroom that plays continuous music. In the first few minutes, the room will play Chinese children songs. Then, Western children songs will follow. In the next minutes, it will play Chinese and Western popular music. The research will observe how each child will react to the different types of music they hear. In this case, the children will be video taped for the whole session. However, live observation will also be conducted and taking important notes will take place.               The study will also interview the parents and teachers of the subjects. It will ask about their knowledge and observations on the singing behavior of the children, specifically the songs they sing, the manner they sing them, the time of day they sing, the people they sing the songs with, etc. In this interview, the study will use open-ended questionnaires. The interviews will be formal and verbal.   Secondary data will also be collated. Literatures will be sought on different online arts education journals. Finally, all data will be evaluated using the latest SPSS software. The weighted mean and percentage of the responses will be calculated.   IMPORTANCE OF THE STUDY               The study will be important because it will help people understand more about the singing culture of Hong Kong children. By doing so, strategies and approaches can be developed by schools in tapping out the singing talents of Hong Kong children. Findings may be important in developing a new curriculum in music education.               Knowing what songs the children like to sing will help teachers and parents know which songs they can use to teach them music or to teach them how to sing. Knowing why children sing will help instructors know the motivation behind children's singing, thus will be able to strategize their approach when doing singing activities or teaching their students how to sing. Finally, knowing the manner children sing will help determine how musically literate Hong Kong children are.               This study can also be an important scientific endeavor in the field of music culture and study, particularly in children. Studying this unexplored issue may help stakeholders identify or categorize the music or singing culture of children in Hong Kong, and from there, develop new hypotheses or create strategies or suggestions on how to address specific weaknesses or strengths.