Genre Diversity of Music Examples in Contemporary Textbooks of Music Education (Primary School Grades 1-4) in the Domain of Music Literacy and Development of Students’ Multicultural Literacy

Encouraged by the facts from a segment of an earlier research of music examples according to genre in Music Education textbooks, the authors of the paper decided to analyse the content of the latest editions of textbooks published by different publishers in order to collect the most up-to-date facts and get relevant information about the diversity of music examples according to genre in the process of developing music literacy and multicultural literacy of students in the lower grades of primary school. The research focuses on printed textbook units (N=24) from the latest textbook sets for grades 1-4 of primary school published by six publishing houses (Zavod za udžbenike, Klet, Beogradski izdavačko-grafički zavod, Kreativni centar, Logos, and Vulkan znanje). The research is important not only because of the research instruments used (music genre categorisation and a survey questionnaire ‒ ŽUMK 2022), the obtained results on the usefulness and the level of using music examples according to genre for developing students’ music literacy and multicultural literacy, but also because it was the first time that primary school teachers (N=132) from 10 primary schools in four cities in the territory of South-East Serbia (Novi Pazar, Raška, Sjenica, and Tutin) were included in the research. The results of the combined empirical research: а) аnalysis of printed textbook units of different publishers for the subject Music Education and b) opinions of primary school teachers regarding genre diversity are the same in some segments and different in others. The survey of primary school teachers attitudes was conducted using Google Forms. The aim of the paper is to present, based on the quantitative analysis of the identified music content categorised in terms of genre and the attitudes of the primary school teachers, the facts related to the genre diversity of music examples (rhythmic, melodic, and/or rhythmic-melodic) in the most recent Music Education textbooks which are important not only for developing music literacy by means of activities such as singing/playing an instrument/movement using the method of learning by hearing and/or from music scores, but also for developing students’ multicultural literacy.