Holiday content in music education textbooks for the first cycle of primary education: Potential for connecting school and family

Holidays represent significant cultural, affective, and educational phenomena whose ritual and symbolic dimensions can serve as a basis for connecting school learning with students’ personal and family experiences. In the context of music education, holiday-related content has the potential to foster cultural sensitivity, emotional development, and a sense of community belonging. The aim of this study was to examine the representation, structure, and ways of addressing holiday-related teaching content in music education textbooks for the first cycle of primary education in Serbia. The research was conducted through a qualitative content analysis of 34 textbooks published by various Serbian publishers. The findings show that content related to family and secular holidays – particularly birthdays and New Year’s – is the most prevalent, while content related to religious holidays is moderately represented and appears primarily through traditional Christmas and Easter songs. Content reflecting holidays and musical traditions of other cultures and confessional groups is nearly absent, indicating an underused potential for developing intercultural understanding. The analysis of methodological procedures indicates that textbooks predominantly offer music performance through singing and activities involving listening to music, whereas creative, analytical, and interdisciplinary forms of work are significantly less represented. Although holiday themes possess strong affective and cultural potential, this potential is only partially utilized in the textbooks, especially regarding the promotion of cultural diversity and the integration of school learning with students’ family experiences. The findings highlight the need for a more systematic and methodologically diverse inclusion of holiday-related content in music education textbooks, in order to support educational goals, foster students’ creative musical expression, and strengthen the potential for constructive connections between school and family environments.