Research Studies in Music Education recent issues

Editorial

Barrett, M. S. — 2009-05-27

Graduate music education as a site for reconfiguring curriculum development

Barrett, J. R. — 2009-05-27

Curriculum scholars in music education have identified themes and issues to be addressed in reconceptualizing the music curriculum and moving beyond prescriptive and technical models of curriculum planning. Curriculum development courses designed for novice and experienced teachers enrolled in graduate studies serve as sites in which teachers can examine their assumptions about music teaching and learning, think deeply about the school settings where the curriculum is situated, reflect upon the challenges that face the contemporary music classroom, analyze and interpret curricular models and initiatives that address those challenges, and synthesize these insights to design imaginative and compelling musical experiences for students. Graduate study can serve as a catalyst for teachers' professional development, and a cornerstone for the advancement of curricular discourse in music education.

Nurturing music learners in Mrs Miller's `family room': a secondary classroom for students with special needs

Blair, D. V. — 2009-05-27

In this narrative account of a secondary school classroom of students with special needs, I share the story of a teacher and her students. With multiple impairments and low socioeconomic status creating an additional layer of risk, these students struggle with emotional and social interaction in addition to academic challenges. School music classes of choir and band were unavailable to these students. As a former music teacher in this district, I was invited to provide weekly musical experiences. I obtained permissions to engage in a research study while visiting the school. The students' musical experiences were central to our interaction and my research. However, in this article, I explore a finding that emerged during the course of the study — that is, the classroom teacher's role in creating a place of belonging for her students. By understanding the students' need to feel parental love, the teacher — demonstrating a mature model of pedagogical thoughtfulness — fostered a sense of family and belonging within the classroom community.

Naturally emerging self-regulated practice behaviors among highly successful beginning recorder students

Bartolome, S. J. — 2009-05-27

The purpose of this research study was to extend current scholarship on self-regulated practice behaviors of young instrumentalists to the general music recorder classroom. This qualitative study explored the reflections of successful beginning recorder players in relation to the self-regulated practice model. Interviews were conducted with three high-achieving third-grade recorder players and responses were coded for themes relating to self-regulated practice. Results support the notion that self-regulation is an important component of effective practice and implications for music educators are explored. The study represents an unprecedented examination of the practice behaviors of children just beginning recorder study, and provides music educators with practical, research-based strategies for improving group recorder instruction in the elementary grades.

`That's my piece, that's my signature, and it means more ...': creative identity and the ensemble teacher/ arranger

Randles, C. — 2009-05-27

This study follows a phenomenological qualitative research tradition. Two K—12 (5—6 years old through 17—18 years old) music teachers were asked to create an arrangement of a musical selection of their choice to be performed by their students. Guidelines were emergent to allow for the construction of meaningful projects that would encourage personal growth and the development of each participant's creative skills. The primary data collection technique was a semi-structured interview. These interviews were conducted at various stages before, during and after music was arranged for performance. Participants' responses were transcribed and examined for patterns, trends and themes. From this data, codes emerged. These codes were sorted and categorized into four themes: (1) teacher ownership of arrangements/compositions; (2) compositional process: manipulation of musical materials; (3) continuing education; (4) culture of creativity: impact of the projects on students. Findings support the literature regarding musician identity. The researcher provides a model of the relationship of role-identities to musician identity, as well as a model of music teacher identity progression.

On thick description and narrative inquiry in music education

Jorgensen, E. R. — 2009-05-27

The use of `thick description' is evident in various research traditions in the social sciences. Important in American anthropology in the latter half of the 20thcentury, it has been imported somewhat uncritically into educational research. In our time, it is also seen as a means whereby scholars and scholar-practitioners can generate new descriptive knowledge and recover knowledge that has been lost or fallen into obscurity. My present task is to notice the philosophical roots of thick description in the work of Gilbert Ryle and its subsequent use by the American anthropologist, Clifford Geertz. I also note Adam Kuper's critique of Geertz's anthropological use of the term. And after `rescuing' aspects of thick description, I sketch implications for narrative inquiry in music education.

Description, interpretation, meaning: notes on Geertz and ethnography in music education research

Stauffer, S., Robbins, J. — 2009-05-27

Narrative and emotion in music: seeking wisdom and truth in music education

Carr, D. — 2009-05-27

Music education ethnographic research and thick description: a response

Marsh, K. — 2009-05-27

Book review: LUCY GREEN, Music, Informal Learning and the School: A New Classroom Pedagogy. London: Ashgate, 2008. 213 pp. ISBN 0754665224 (hbk) $29.95

Dunbar-Hall, P. — 2009-05-27

Editorial

Barrett, M. S . — 2008-12-03

Mentoring novice teachers: developing a community of practice

Blair, D. V. — 2008-12-03

Mentoring new teachers is critical to music education, not only for purposes of retention and attrition, but also to provide the support they need to become reflective practitioners. Researchers consistently report that novice music teachers share feelings of being overwhelmed by the duties and responsibilities of teaching. In 2004—05, a local school district (USA) employed five novice elementary general music teachers. Through the district, I offered a professional development program to these teachers to provide mentoring during the entire school year. With their consent, this program was used to collect data reflective of their experiences throughout the year, exploring the nature of their lived experience and, emergently, the growth of a community of practice. Data included the email correspondence of all participants, each teacher's end-of-year reflective journal, a personal log reflecting my perspective and an audio-recorded group discussion conducted at the end of the school year. Two key issues arose during the year that profoundly affected the professional self-confidence of these novice teachers: their struggles with classroom management, and issues that arose during their experiences with the district's process of teacher evaluation. Within the context of these common problems, the teachers seemed to value the meetings as an opportunity to give and receive support in a safe, collegial environment, in which all those present understood the parameters of their unique jobs and cared about each other as individuals and music educators. What began as a group of individuals emerged as a community of practice.

Capitalizing on community music: a case study of the manifestation of social capital in a community choir

Langston, T. W., Barrett, M. S. — 2008-12-03

There is an extensive literature on social capital and its generation and use in communities, but less is known about the ways in which social capital is manifested in community music settings. The literature suggests that social capital is evidenced through a range of `indicators', including trust, community and civic involvement, and networks. This article reports the findings of a research project that examined the manifestation of social capital in a community choir in regional Tasmania. The study employed multiple data-generation methods including survey, field notes, and artefact-elicited, semi-structured interviews in a qualitative interpretive case study design. An analysis of narrative approach was used to interrogate data generated with the 27 members (the Tutti) of the `Milton' Community Choir, and to identify those social capital indicators present. Through analyses of these data, findings suggest that the social capital indicators identified in the literature, specifically those of shared norms and values, trust, civic and community involvement, networks, knowledge resources, and contact with families and friends are present in the community choir. Further, a previously unemphasized social capital indicator, that of fellowship, is identified as a key component in fostering group cohesion and social capital development in the community choir.

Beyond music lessons: subject teachers' use of music in the classroom

Lum, C.-H. — 2008-12-03

In this ethnographic study, the mother-tongue (Chinese, Malay, and Tamil) language teachers of a first-grade class in Singapore were examined for their incorporation of music and musical elements in their daily teaching. Findings suggest that the teachers' musical training, influences and preferences, along with considerations of curricular needs, and classroom management, all factored into determining the amount and type of music that was brought into the classroom. An active approach by teachers to infuse children's musical interests into their classroom practices served to validate children's musical experience and competencies beyond school, encouraging a positive attitude towards music in the classroom.

Compositions of elementary recorder students created under various conditions of task structure

Smith, J. — 2008-12-03

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of various levels of researcher-imposed task structure on the compositional products of elementary school recorder students. Twelve recorder students aged nine to 10 years each completed six composition tasks. Audio tapes of their compositions were given to four musicians who followed a Q sorting procedure to place the compositions in a rank order of recorder musicality. The total length of time spent on each task and the percentage of process stage time spent by the child for each task was compared with the type of task. The results suggest there is a relationship between the type of task and the musicality of the resulting compositional products. Pieces with the least amount of structure often were lowest ranked. The poem task led to compositions of higher musicality. The amount of time children spent on each of the tasks was not significantly different and was not a factor in creating works of higher musicality. Data from post-compositional interviews indicated that different children preferred different types of task structure.

Second Chair: an autoethnodrama

Saldana, J. — 2008-12-03

Second Chair, an autoethnodramatic one-man play, explores the reminiscences by an older adult of his high school band years and his quest to become first chair clarinetist through an epiphanic challenge. The play is a metaphor for the feelings of lesser status experienced by the marginalized individual in a competitive mainstream society. The full play script is included, accompanied with the author's reflections on the development and performance of the piece, and its implications for narrative inquiry.

Dancing about architecture: a commentary on Second Chair

Bowman, W. — 2008-12-03

Competition, creativity and what counts: a response to Second Chair

Brewer, W. D. — 2008-12-03

Negotiating meaning between the page and the stage: a drama educator's perspective on Second Chair

Smigiel, H. — 2008-12-03

From competition to collaboration: lessons from the Second Chair

Robinson, M. — 2008-12-03

Guest editorial

Burnard, P., Dillon, S., Ballantyne, J. — 2008-06-09

Disaffected learners and school musical culture: an opportunity for inclusion

Rusinek, G. — 2008-06-09

In order to understand why adolescents who fail in all other subjects can be highly engaged with music learning, a case study was conducted in a compulsory general music class at a Spanish public secondary school. In the context of this study, the students' general disengagement from learning seemed to be a reaction to teachers' declarative, textbook-based, teaching strategies. Contrastingly, the music teacher had generated student enthusiasm through an inclusive pedagogy in which the principle of `music for all' created the expectation of the orchestral performance of arrangements for percussion instruments in 4 to 12 parts of pop, classical and film music by each class. The subject narrative, `the goal is the concert', was shared both by the teacher and the students, and had been widely accepted as an important part of the school culture. Through observations and video-stimulated interviews with the teacher, the students, parents and administrators, it was found that although the group of students rejected the school academic culture, in the end they decided to work diligently to be included in the school musical culture.

When minorities are the majority: voices from a teacher/researcher project in a multicultural school in Sweden

Saether, E. — 2008-06-09

What can a music teacher do, when confronted with 99 percent immigrant students? How does he or she interpret guidelines in national governing documents and, at the same time, listen to the needs of the students? This article opens the doors to two music classrooms in Malmö, a Swedish town with 27 percent of the population born abroad. The project `Social Inclusion in Music education'(SIM), described here, sought to give voice to both teachers and students who work and live in multicultural areas. It was conducted as a collaborative project by a music teacher and a university lecturer-researcher in music education. The results show that the teacher and students involved all stress the importance of student engagement. In the observed classrooms, this engagement is encouraged by taking the music of the youth culture as a starting point.

Whose agency matters? Negotiating pedagogical and creative intent during composing experiences

Ruthmann, S. A. — 2008-06-09

Drawing on observation and interview data collected from a case study of learning and teaching in a music technology lab, this article focuses on the nature of feedback and compositional intent during a soundtrack composing experience as viewed through the lived experiences of a teacher (Mary), a student composer (Ellen) and Ellen's peers. Tensions embedded in their shared experiences are analyzed for insights that may help other teachers of music composition in schools provide more successful feedback through valuing and responding to the student's musical agency and compositional intent. These insights illustrate the complex interplay among teacher feedback, learner agency and students' compositional intent, with particular attention to implications aimed at helping teachers to facilitate and design composing experiences in more inclusive ways.

A phenomenological study of music teachers' approaches to inclusive education practices among disaffected youth

Burnard, P. — 2008-06-09

The drive for `inclusion' has become a prominent feature in UK educational policy agendas and school improvement programmes. The term refers to all children achieving and participating despite challenges stemming from poverty, class, race, religion, linguistic and cultural heritage or gender. While much has been written about inclusion, evidence on how teachers perceive inclusive education practices among young people who are disengaged from learning and educational opportunity (as manifested by non-attendance or under-achievement at school) has been less thoroughly explored. This multiple case study draws on research on secondary school music teachers in `poorly performing', so-called `under-achieving' schools, including three comprehensive secondary schools in the east and south-east regions of England. It reports on what it is that three music teachers can tell us about their beliefs and approaches to inclusive teaching and learning in their pedagogical settings. A phenomenological approach utilizing semi-structured interview was employed to explore music teachers' perceptions of what it is that they think they do in responding to and overcoming the challenge of re-engaging disaffected youth — their perceptions of their own inclusive pedagogic practices. In order to explore the teachers' perceptions further, some artefact prompts in interviews, such as curriculum planning documents, were employed to provide an opportunity to discuss key factors concerning the content of the music courses. The findings emphasize that, for these teachers, inclusive pedagogies involve more than the accumulation of teaching strategies employed by teachers for supporting troubled and troublesome learners. These teachers' pedagogies are informed largely by particular views of music, views of musical learning and learners, views of the kind of knowledge that is created and the educational outcomes that are desired in overcoming the particular challenges of attuning to and re-engaging disaffected learners. Inclusive pedagogic practices in this study were foregrounded and framed by attuning to and re-engaging disaffected learners by: (a) democratizing music learning as social practice; (b) foregrounding high-status creative projects; and (c) using digital technology as pedagogic levers for re-engaging learners. The emergent themes provide a preliminary basis for theorizing about the role of music education in the schooling of disaffected youth.

Promoting socially just and inclusive music teacher education: exploring perceptions of early-career teachers

Ballantyne, J., Mills, C. — 2008-06-09

Teacher education plays a significant role in influencing generations of future teachers. This article aims to explore the role of pre-service teacher education in promoting socially just and inclusive practices in music education. Six pre-service teachers were interviewed before graduating, and then again six months into their first year of teaching. The interviewees reflected on their understandings of what constitutes being inclusive in the music classroom and how these understandings have been influenced by their perceptions of both university and school experiences. The article provides insights into the ways that teacher education programmes might equip early-career teachers to engage in a variety of teaching practices that are socially just, within the music classroom.

Editorial

Barrett, M. S. — 2007-12-18

Narrative inquiry as a way of knowing in music education

McCarthy, M. — 2007-12-18

Hermeneutic knowledge: Dialogue between experiences

Georgii-Hemming, E. — 2007-12-18

This article discusses the need for theoretical analysis in narrative music education research. Stories we hear are not simply accounts of individual experiences. They are also part of cultural narratives, socially and historically located. For the purpose of increased and in-depth understanding in narrative studies there must be an analysis of how a person's life relates to phenomena such as time, culture, society and gender. In order to bring to light unconscious pre-understandings, hidden conventions and ideologies it is necessary to problematize the text on different levels of abstraction.

One way of enriching narrative work is through the incorporation of hermeneutics.ⁱ Hermeneutics offers dialogue-based interpretations of meaningful phenomena in the life world. If we understand narrative as a form of knowledge, both narrative and hermeneutics refer to the same fundamental characteristics of our individual and social existence: historicity and interaction, or dialogue, between experiences.

On the narrative of challenged assumptions

Benedict, C. — 2007-12-18

This article explores the ways in which the construction of the narrative of music education was problematised through pre-service teachers' and an academic's engagement with a self-assessment project. While the self-assessment tasks afforded a place through which students were able to interrogate their personal construction of assessment and what it means to demonstrate knowings, larger concerns remained unaddressed and less documented. A key issue was the ways in which what had first been a seemingly "simple" qualitative design was overridden by larger philosophical and methodological concerns. What had seemed an obvious process of culling themes from narratives to document growth, development, and turning points soon disintegrated as the author realized the need to attend not only to which and what story to tell, but who had a say in telling the story, and how the story was to be told.

An exploratory study of the role of performance feedback and musical imagery in piano playing

Wollner, C., Williamon, A. — 2007-12-18

Musicians experience various forms of sensory feedback when practising and performing. By studying the extent to which musicians rely on such auditory, visual and kinaesthetic information, insight can be gained (albeit indirectly) into the content and strength of their mental imagery for the music they play. While in previous empirical research, impaired auditory feedback has not been shown to affect performance outcome, the significance of visual and kinaesthetic feedback is less well-understood. In the current study, performance feedback was systematically removed in a repeated measures (within-subjects) design. Eight skilled pianists performed from memory under a normal condition and under three further conditions without auditory, visual and kinaesthetic feedback, one of which included tapping along with the beat of an imagined performance. Differences and similarities in the expressive timing and intensity (dynamic) microstructure were analyzed and compared across conditions. Performance consistency in both timing and intensity profiles was highest for conditions with kinaesthetic feedback, even in the absence of auditory and visual feedback. The results are discussed in relation to their implications for mental imagery and mental practising.

The influences of parents, teachers, peers and other factors on students' motivation in music

Sichivitsa, V. O. — 2007-12-18

This study examined influences of: parental support of music, previous musical experience, self-concept in music, teachers and peers, academic and social integration in music classes, and value of music on college nonmusic majors' intentions to continue music participation. An author-developed Choir Participation Survey was administered to 130 choir members at a large public university in the United States. The proposed path analytical model fitted data well and explained 42% (p < .01) of variance in musical intentions. The analysis showed that students whose parents were involved in music and supportive of their children's musical participation developed better self-concepts in music, consequently felt more comfortable in choir academically and socially, valued music more, and as a result developed higher motivation to participate in various musical activities in the future. The strongest direct predictor of musical intentions was value of music (β = .65, p < .01).

The acquisition process of children's game songs during peer teaching: A semi-structured experiment with pre-school children

Ogawa, Y., Murao, T. — 2007-12-18

A semi-structured experiment was conducted to identify children's acquisition processes when learning playground game songs. Participants in the study were 20 pairs of children aged 4, 5, and 6 years, with each pair consisting of a younger child-learner and a senior child-teacher. The pairs were divided into two groups; Group 1 was observed by a researcher and a video-recorder, while Group 2 was observed using only a video-recorder. All child-teachers were well-acquainted with how to play the games, however the games were unfamiliar to the child-learners. Results suggest that child-teachers change their strategy of teaching depending on the conditions of instruction. Child-teachers in Group 1 used a variety of strategies including: demonstrating; playing and singing with the learner; slowing down; and, instructing. In contrast, child-teachers in Group 2: demonstrated; frequently played with the learner; sang alone; and, increased the tempo and rate of repetition even though the child-learners did not understand. In Group 1 over 50% of the time was devoted to demonstration by child-teachers, 40% to children playing together, and 5% to dialogue. In Group 2, over 90% of the time was devoted to the children playing together, and approximately 10% to demonstration by child-teachers. The article suggests that this latter instruction mode is not only a common feature of child-teachers' teaching in Group 2, it is also reflective of the teaching strategies of the masters of Japanese traditional music.

Book Review: Bresler. L. (Ed.). (2007). International Handbook of Research in Arts Education. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer. 1627 pp., 2 volumes. ISBN 978-1-4020-2998-1, Hardcover, price: {euro}449.00/US$549.00. ISBN13 978-1-4020-4857-9, ISBN10 1-4020-4857-2, Paperback, price: {euro}86.00/US$95.00

Stauffer, S. L. — 2007-12-18