Documenting ‘The Early Childhood Music Collaborative’: A multi-organizational response to early childhood music in the time of COVID-19

Abstract

When the COVID-19 pandemic began impacting countries around the globe in the early months of 2020, music education professional organizations in locations worldwide mobilized to provide remote teaching suggestions and interpret new research related to minimizing the virus spread in music-making settings. In June and July 2020, the National Association for Music Education released a set of research-based recommendations for music teaching in the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic. Discussion of young children and recommendations for early childhood settings were noticeably absent. The purpose of this article is to document the processes by which several dozen individuals and representatives from three professional entities came together at the beginning stages of the COVID-19 pandemic to address the lack of guidance for responsive early childhood music education. We describe the outcomes of the collaboration between June 2020 and June 2021, reflections about our learning and share the group’s next steps. As the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic continue, reading documentation of our collective might serve the profession and encourage international collaborative teams working to improve access and equity of early childhood music education.