Content area
Full Text
Introduction
Cantonese Opera, or "Yueju", is one of more than 400 genres of opera in China. The genre employs Cantonese as the main dialect, which is widely spoken within Guangdong Province, Hong Kong and Macau. Cantonese opera has been the main Chinese opera genre in Hong Kong since the late nineteenth century. In 2009, Cantonese opera was recognised by UNESCO as an Intangible Cultural Heritage ([23] UNESCO, 2009). To preserve and help spread this traditional genre, the Hong Kong government has realised that the inclusion of the genre in the school curriculum is a critical means of ensuring that all students encounter it, and so encourages schools to include Cantonese opera in their music curriculum (Curricululm Develoupment Council, 2003). There has traditionally been an imbalance between Chinese and western music in Hong Kong's school music curriculum, with many teachers ignoring Chinese music as a core component ([4] Cheung, 2004). Further, primary and secondary students in Hong Kong generally lack passion for Chinese music ([10] Ho, 2007). Finding more effective ways of teaching Chinese music is thus considered to be an urgent need.
This paper describes a study that employed Variation Theory as a guiding principle of pedagogical design to help Grade 5 students identify three types of speech in Cantonese opera. The study examined whether the application of Variation Theory in teaching this subject can enhance student learning outcomes. The findings of the study provide empirical evidence to support the use of Variation Theory as a guiding principle of pedagogical design in teaching Cantonese opera.
This paper is also a learning outcome of a learning study course at a teacher education institution. The first author, having taken a course related to learning study during the second year of a BEd programme at the Hong Kong Institute of Education, attempted to apply Variation Theory in his graduate project in a primary school. Although studies of how Variation Theory can be applied in academic subjects such as mathematics and science are well documented in the literature, there is less evidence of its use in cultural subjects. This study tests whether Variation Theory can help to improve the learning outcome of students in the cultural subject of music.
Teaching Chinese music in Hong Kong schools
The modern...