Analysis of the ecological music education content in the elementary school integrated textbook ‘Pleasure Life’

The necessity of ecological education for coexistence between nature and humans, such as environmental education, ecological education, and ecological transition education, is increasingly emphasized through gradual changes in schools. Therefore, ecological education is now an important educational topic that should be addressed not only in specific subjects such as social studies, morals, science, and environment, but also in all fields. Ecological education in the music field starts from ecological musicology, which explores the relationship between music, culture, and the natural environment, and includes the area of environmental sounds. Therefore, the types of ecological music education that appear in the integrated textbook for elementary schools, “Pleasure Life,” which is being used for the first time in accordance with the revised 2022 curriculum this year, were analyzed by dividing them into ecological education through the text of the original song and sound activities such as exploring, listening to, and imitating environmental sounds. Through this, we examined whether the 2022 revised curriculum music text composition is appropriate in terms of ecological and environmental education, and the most common text related to the 'land ecosystem', while few or no texts such as 'climate change and response', 'marine ecosystem', and 'eco-friendly energy' were used. In addition, the sound activity area was classified into three categories based on soundscape ecology: 'geophony', 'biophony', and 'anthrophony', and it was confirmed that sound activity appeared in all three categories, and that the activity area had a variety of organization ranging from search, listening, and imitation of sound. This analysis is considered to be helpful in setting the direction of ecological music education and operating the subject.