Design, Implementation and Reflection of Project Based Learning in Core Courses of Music Education Major in Universities

Abstract

In light of the concept of "student-centred, outcome-oriented and continuous improvement" for teacher-training professional accreditation, courses for the music education major in universities urgently need to move away from the traditional model of knowledge transmission without competence cultivation and adopt deep learning based on authentic tasks. Based on the driving questions, aiming for demonstrable results, and conducting cooperative inquiry, project-based learning naturally aligns with the disciplinary characteristics of core courses
for music education majors, which include strong practicality, high comprehensiveness and visible deliverables. Based on the theoretical origins of project-based learning, this paper selects the course Instructional Design for Primary and Secondary School Music as an example and
elaborates the design framework from four dimensions: project topic selection, objective setting, task decomposition and evaluation scheme.
In addition, it also addresses some practical problems, such as too few class hours, evaluation difficulties, free-riding among group members,
and a lack of authentic context; thus, improvement measures have been proposed, including integrating long-term and short-term projects, coconstructing rubrics, and promoting university-school cooperation to offer reference cases for similar curriculum reforms.