Infants are born with an innate capacity to engage in musical interaction from birth (Gordon, 1971); thus, social interactions between infants and their caregivers are musical, combining music and language in an expressive, artistic form. The term musical parenting (MP) was described initially by Custodero and Johnson-Green (2003), as the practices, values, and behaviors parents bring to their musical interactions with their children. Koops (2020) recently proposed the family musicking framework, that includes the musical parenting and parenting musically actions and enhances the understanding of the musical interactions within family settings. Even though musical parenting is considered a non-conscious, intuitive pracice, (M. Papousek, 1996), many researchers suggest that educating parents to understand their children's musical worlds could empower them and improve musical parenting practices (Koops, 2020; McLean, et al., 2019)

The purpose of this study was to investigate the experiences of a group of mothers who participated in an online musical parenting educational program, aimed to increase knowledge regarding the use of music with infants and suggest practical implications. Research questions were: (1) How did musical parenting unfold during mothers’ participation in the online musical parenting program? (2) How did mother participants perceive the role of the program in shaping their musical parenting practices? Participants were eighteen mothers with infants from birth to 12 months old. This study was conducted for six months using qualitative research methods: semi-structured interviews and informal discussions with mother-participants, participants’ digital journals and filmed videos, and researcher field notes taken during the educational program. 

Findings showed that during participation in the program, mothers engaged in multimodal musical interaction with their infants, which facilitated a dynamic state of attunement within the mother-infant dyad. Active participation in the educational program fostered mothers' confidence in using music as a parenting tool and enhanced their intentional musical parenting practices with their infants. It was found that the most powerful part of the program was the discussion initiated between the facilitator and the mothers, which increased the mothers' confidence in using music as a parenting tool, overcoming some of the initial hesitancy reported. 

The presentation will discuss the significant contribution of this research to music pedagogy.

• Social musical settings
• Meaningful musical experiences
• Music psychology and identities

Maria Papazachariou-Christoforou, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor in Music Education and Pedagogy at the Department of Education Sciences, European University Cyprus. Her research specialises in the sociological dimensions of music pedagogy and musical identities, early childhood music education, musical parenting, and informal music learning practices. She is the founder and director of the LifeLong Music Engagement Research Unit, SosciEAtH, and serves on the board of EuNetMERYC. She has expertise in Edwin Gordon's Music Learning Theory and is an active member of the GIML. Her research activities include collaboration with other academic institutions through the Erasmus+ programme and other initiatives. Dr. Papazachariou-Christoforou has presented research papers at numerous international conferences and has published extensively in peer-reviewed journals and conference proceedings.