Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Creating developmentally appropriate and culture-sensitive songs for Arabic-speaking preschool children in Israel: Considerations and directions

2017; Intellect; Volume: 10; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1386/ijcm.10.3.247_1

1752-6299

Claudia Gluschankof,

Multilingual Education and Policy

Abstract Songs for children (i.e. a singing repertoire aimed at or performed by children), can be found in most societies. In Arabic-speaking societies, published and accessible collections of songs for children are few. In this article, I examine the issue of Arabic-language children’s songs aimed at children ages three to six living in the twenty-first century: the challenges arising from the language’s diglossic nature and the songs’ musical style and lyrics content in an era of globalization and westernization. Then, I present a solution proposed by Beit Almusica, a Palestinian NGO based in Shefa-Amr, Israel, featuring a collection of developmentally appropriate and culture-sensitive new songs for contemporary young children whose first language is Palestinian Arabic.