Effects of Using Musical Fairy Tales in the Classroom: Action Research in Poland

The paper concentrates on the problem of developing imagination understood as human trait and virtue. To realize the challenge educators have to face huge difficulties as a tendency to flatter the world and its inhabitants dominates and becomes more and more powerful. A musical fairy tale is presented as a valuable and effective school practice. From one side it refers to perennial human custom of listening, telling, and creating stories, fables, and sagas. They may base on real life or refer to imaginary situations. Thus creation may have various realizations, depending on personal knowledge, skills, life experience, cognitive horizon, individual interests and virtues. From the other side the idea of the fairy tale shown in the paper refers to the music and its uncountable possibilities of describing the world. Everything depends only on one’s imagination. The last part of the paper presents the effects of students’ work on musical fairy tales. Those students apart of being instrumentalists and vocalists of the Music Academy of Lodz, Poland plan to become music teachers in compulsory general education.