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This chapter outlines research-grounded, practical approaches for teaching music improvisation in both elementary and special education schools. Including improvisation in music education is important because through this activity children can develop agency, responsiveness, and expressiveness. A flexible pedagogical model is offered with many lesson ideas, underpinned by the rationale and strategies to promote effective delivery. Activities include warm-up exercises, relational playing, conducted improvisation, and improvisation with symbols. Teachers working within a range of genres will be able to use and adapt the lesson ideas within this chapter to best fit their own contexts.

Defining categories of musical actions in improvisation with young children is challenging due to the spontaneous, creative and emergent nature of interactions. Following a literature review, two new constructs were proposed to circumscribe and classify different types of events in improvisation, Creative Musical Agency (CMA) and Socio-Musical Aptitude (S-MA). These were refined and tested through eight phases of mixed-methods research. Two cycles of improvisation workshops were video-recorded. Multimodal Video Analysis of musical, gaze and gestural Modes of Communication contextualized with field notes was used to refine constructs. Two raters independently observed and rated children’s improvisations as showing CMA, S-MA or neither, giving reasons for difficulty or ambiguity in using constructs in separate interviews. Raters demonstrated fair agreement for CMA (Κappa 0.21) and moderate agreement for S-MA (Kappa 0.5). Development of these constructs offers a valuable way of understanding the complexity of young children’s musical actions and mental processes in improvisation.

There has been a recent expansion of school curricula and extra-curricular activities emphasizing musical creativity and collaboration. Parents have a crucial role in providing children with access to such experiences; their views on music and the nature of creativity influence the types of musical engagement their children will access. Teachers also have an important role, yet can have difficulties when supporting children in open-ended tasks. A qualitative study investigated parents’ and teachers’ constructions of creativity and music. Interviews were held with 11 parents and 4 teachers of preschool children who took part in improvisation workshops. Data were analyzed with thematic analysis, resulting in identification of three themes. Creativity and musicality were described as fundamental to children’s “human nature” but positioned as a non-fundamental part of their own adult identities. “Values” explored conceptualizations of creativity through artistic products; musicality was appreciated demonstration of technical skill. “Frames for engaging” identified adults engaging with their children in creative tasks mainly through child-led narratives; in contrast, parents took on the role of “teacher” in musical tasks. Understanding these influential views offers insight into the types of activities and guidance offered to pre-schoolers and how they can be built on to foster children’s musical creativity.