M. Fernández-Aliaga, M.M. Bernabé Villodre, J.S. Blasco-Magraner
Introduction:
The subject of Music in Compulsory Secondary Education includes dance and corporal expression among its contents, although these are usually the least worked on by teachers, according to published research focused on this educational stage. In Secondary Education, unlike what happens during Primary Education, teachers tend to tend towards the master class of certain characteristic contents of the educational curriculum, often due to lack of knowledge or lack of confidence regarding the implementation of certain musical processes. In this case, the practice of corporal expression and dance usually presents many difficulties for its development in the classroom by teachers. In view of this situation, it was hypothesized that the teacher, thanks to the possibilities of Just Dance could contribute to the acquisition by students of certain concepts of dance and body expression, as well as rhythm, meter, etc.. Thus, the following objectives were proposed: to know what skills and abilities could be enhanced by incorporating the dance game Just Dance to help improve the students' body and verbal expression; to investigate how it could teach adolescent students basic musical concepts such as beat, accent, tempo, beat, rhythm and musical form; to know the potential of this game to develop positive attitudes among peers; finally, we wanted to investigate what type of teaching methodology could obtain better results in the music classroom of Compulsory Secondary Education.
Methodology:
Using a quasi-experimental design methodology, the aim was to determine the causal relationship between two variables. This mixed methodology, which used both a quantitative and a qualitative paradigm, made it possible to offer numerical results with the intention of providing greater rigor and validity to the research; as well as qualitative results, which would make it possible to understand the essence and meaning of the processes followed and the resulting behaviors and attitudes during these. For this purpose, a field diary and a questionnaire prepared ad hoc for this research were used. The didactic procedure followed with the control group was limited to a music class with a traditional methodology centered on the master class for the work of the concepts previously mentioned; the experimental group had Just Dance as one of the main work tools in the classroom.
Results and discussion:
The results showed how the students had understood much faster and more clearly the concepts of rhythm, pulsation, etc.; at the same time, the students had valued very positively the use of this type of tools in the classroom as a way to break with the traditional master class, which ended up becoming obsolete to the new needs of today's students. Just Dance would facilitate the work of expressive movement and bodily assimilation of key concepts for musical language, turning the music class into a lively, attractive space that favors bodily expressive awareness.
Keywords: Music, Compulsory Secondary Education, Just Dance, Master Class.