Folk pedagogy? Investigating how and why UK early years and primary teachers use songs with young learners

Songs seem popular for achieving educational purposes other than teaching music in early education, despite scant evidence to support this ‘folk pedagogy’. To investigate why teachers use songs, this mixed-methods study explored teachers’ self-reported purposes for using songs in an online questionnaire (n = 103) and semi-structured interviews (n = 7), finding that respondents hold strong beliefs about songs’ effectiveness for teaching content, establishing classroom routines, and supporting pupils’ linguistic and social development. There are considerable differences between how early years and upper primary teachers use songs. All use songs intuitively. Research needs to provide more rigorous evidence to underpin this valued teaching practice.