Music Education Settings Research Articles

Participatory and digital cultures in practice: Perspectives and possibilities in a graduate music course

Abstract Music educators seeking to address contemporary society might look to existing and emerging ways that people engage with music. Participatory culture(s) as discussed primarily in media studies and related fields offers a fruitful context for expanding music education. This study addresses graduate music students’ perspectives on integrating expressions and circulations related to participatory culture in music education settings. Participants described musical expressions such as appropriating or transforming existing music as having creative and learning potential. Participants also expressed how students’ creative expressions in the form of appropriating music could be meaningful and empowering. Participants experienced challenges ranging from difficulty envisioning concrete applications of participatory culture in existing curricular structures such as large ensembles, to unresolved perspectives of related ethical, legal, philosophical and pedagogical issues. Findings suggest that media and musical skills specific to participatory culture along with related understanding and dispositions are important for its realization in music education.

Swamp Sistas: Beth McKee and a socio-musical swamp revival online and real time

Abstract Beth McKee, the singer/songwriter known for her Mississippi roots and music-recording career created a community of mostly American women known as the Swamp Sistas. Although the network was developed to energize McKee’s female fan base, it quickly became a virtual and real-time social fabric, where artists, authors, colleagues and friends weave an ongoing tapestry of tradition and renewal. McKee’s performances, tours, merchandise and albums ground the artistic and social repertoire of the Swamp Sistas. The message of sharing with and supporting one another served as a powerful and creative vehicle for McKee’s musical presentations to new audiences. Her collaborations with educators, authors and artists fuelled the shared socio-musical trend, along with the performance venue she created in collaboration with the Swamp Sistas called the ‘La La’. The Swamp Sistas phenomenon is about fans who became co-creators. They inspired song lyrics, planned, staged and performed with McKee or in other groups at La Las, changing a musician and her audience into a community, complete with shared values and social engagement. This article describes the Swamp Sistas based on research in the field that included online and real time musical and social participant observation. Lessons from the swamp include emphasis on the participatory and co-creative culture of Swamp Sistas and implications for building community in music education settings.

Toward hip-hop pedagogies for music education

Music education scholarship in the areas of popular, vernacular, and participatory musicianship has grown in the past decades; however, music education research concerned specifically with hip-hop has been relatively scarce. Because hip-hop music can differ tremendously from the traditional western genres with which many music educators are most familiar, a great need for research in this area exists. In this article, I summarize general education scholarship related to hip-hop and offer implications toward hip-hop pedagogies for music education. I employ Hill’s (2009) classifications of hip-hop pedagogy ( Pedagogies with hip-hop, Pedagogies about hip-hop, and Pedagogies of hip-hop) as a structure to better understand previous literature and to provide a descriptive framework for potential applications of hip-hop pedagogies to music education settings. I describe Hill’s categories using the labels of Hip-hop as a bridge, Hip-hop as a lens, and Hip-hop as practice.

Music Research in Inclusive School Settings

A search for music research in inclusive music school settings (1975–2013) resulted in 22 descriptive and experimental studies that can be classified and coded according to settings, participants, research variables, measures of generalization, and effectiveness of the interventions. Half of the studies reported data from both students with disabilities and typically developing students. All participants were at preschool or elementary levels; no participants were at secondary levels. Less than half of the studies were conducted in music classrooms, but few measured music knowledge or skills; most often, social skills were measured. Only a few studies reported the generalization of learned skills (music or other) to new situations. Participants with disabilities were most often described as having intellectual disabilities or autism; high-incidence populations (e.g., learning disabilities) were underrepresented. In a large majority of studies, authors reported effective outcomes for interventions (most were specifically designed music activities), and some reported partially effective results. Based on the results of this review, we conclude there is a pressing need to expand research in inclusive music education settings and answer the many questions about students’ participation and effective teaching strategies for classrooms and rehearsals that include a wide range of student abilities.

Examining Instruction in MIDI-based Composition Through a Critical Theory Lens

This paper considers the issue of computer-assisted composition in formal music education settings from the perspective of critical theory. The author examines the case of MIDI-based software applications and suggests that the greatest danger from the standpoint of ideology critique is not the potential for circumventing a traditional understanding of theoretical knowledge and notation when composing. Instead, it is false subjectivity, or the potential belief that what one creates is free from the mediation of tacit musical conventions and the ideological biases of the technology itself. Developing a framework for critique that is partially based on the writings of Theodor Adorno and draws on a dialectical conception of composing, the author applies this framework to the issue of MIDI-based composition in order to make this case.

Music education and human flourishing: a meditation on democratic origins

This philosophical essay is a meditation on the multiple and contested meanings of the concept of democracy with the aim of redirecting dominant discourses in music education practices and building new capacities for democracy's practical use in music classrooms. Inspired by philosopher John Dewey's travels to China, and his influence on major Chinese thinkers like Hu Shih and Tao Xingzhi, the author plays with the etymological origins of the term ‘democracy’, finding limited value in its Greek origins, but inspiration in the many ways of referring to democracy in Chinese [Minzhu: 民 主 / Pingmin: 平 民 / Shumin: 庶 民 / Minben: 民 本] each of which has the potential to direct and enlarge contemporary instructional practices in formal music education settings.

Formal and Informal Music Educational Practices

Informal instructional approaches have long been an important component of a complete education in general and of music education in particular. But informal approaches have often been subject to bandwagon over-enthusiasm, with proponents inflating their virtues beyond what the concept appears to warrant. In this paper I will, first, examine the theoretical underpinnings of informal learning practices, and compare them to those of more formal learning practices to clarify what might be distinctive and valuable about using informal instructional practices in formal music educational settings; second, take a critical look at one empirical study in which informal learning practices were brought into the formal setting, examining some of the favorable and unfavorable aspects of the methods used; and third, briefly argue that informal instructional practices in music education can, along with formal practices, contribute to the formation of an individual learner's identity and agency through engagement with music.

Researching children's musical culture: historical and contemporary perspectives

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. A holistic view, according to Minks, would include studies located around children's informal music making and their participation in various subcultures, in formal music education settings and children's interactions with music produced for them (Minks 2006 Minks, A. 2006. Introduction. The World of Music, 48(1): 5–8. [Google Scholar], 6). 2. Positioning, she says, has ‘a mobile feel suggesting a constant dance of reciprocity between adult and child as they negotiate their research relationship’ (Lahman 2008 Lahman, M.K.E. 2008. Always othered: Ethical research with children. Journal of Early Childhood Research, 6(3): 281–300. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar], 289). Drawing on the work of various scholars, she describes positions adult can assume as they relate to child participants. 3. Marsh drew her conclusions based on interviews with the students but also an in-depth analysis of texts and tunes, in keeping with other studies of playground music making.

Learning through music festivals

This article explores one particular music festival, the Festspel i Pite lvdal, as a source of musical learning. It is grounded in the empirical data of a case study that was gathered through observation, a survey, in-depth interviews, documentation and archival records. The theoretical framework was taken from modernity theory, and the study's epistemological basis was Lave and Wenger's theories of situated learning. The festival was seen as a community of practice, in which the attendees learned through peripheral participation. The findings showed that the audience learned music, about music and via music. When the outcome was compared with theories of musical knowledge, it became evident that it was similar to what people are expected to gain from other informal as well as formal music educational settings. The findings are discussed in relation to music education philosophy and research as well as perspectives found within ethnomusicology.

Mom and Little Richard: The Benefits of Contrast-and-Compare Activities

This article discusses the numerous benefits of employing contrast-and-compare lessons in music education settings. Such activities focus on the elements of music through the higher-order thinking processes of analyzing, comparing, organizing, and evaluating.They also integrate with the teaching goals and practices of many general educators in other subject areas. By posing interesting and open-ended questions, contrast-and-compare lessons promote engagement by students of all ability levels. Finally, this technique offers opportunities for authentic formative and summative student assessment. Readers will be given carefully reasoned rationale, supporting references, and suggestions for specific lesson designs.

Hearing Conservation and Music Education

Because musicians have a critical dependence on hearing, and because exposure levels of music are known to be potentially hazardous to hearing, one might assume that hearing conservation is a critical and valued core educational component to any and all music instruction. However, in most music educational settings, there has been little or no mention of any health risks associated with music. Organizations such as the National Association of Music Education, the National Association of Schools of Music, the Texas Center for Music & Medicine, and the Performing Arts Medicine Association are now working together to establish priorities and guidelines concerning the hearing, physical, and psychological health of musicians and music students. Every music educator in the United States should be aware of the need for teaching hearing-loss prevention principles and should be willing to provide instructional time for this agenda. Such actions will make a significant contribution to hearing-conservation efforts on behalf of all children.

Learning from Masters of Music Creativity: Shaping Compositional Experiences in Music Education

There are several possible ways for investigating the creative process in musical composition in order to induce certain assumptions about the nature of the compositional experience that may provide a certain philosophical framework for shaping compositional experiences in music educational settings at all levels. By taking an approach mainly based on writings and interviews of twentieth and twenty-first century composers, such as Boulez, Ferneyhough, Foss, Ligeti, Xenakis, Reich, Reynolds, Schoenberg, Stockhausen, and Varese, among others, Eleni Lapidaki illustrates certain parameters about their actual compositional process. Implications for music education are suggested for immersing student composers in learning experiences that respect their intuitions, search for their individuality, and place emphasis on innovation and creative freedom as inseparable from expression in their compositions. Asked in an interview how he could explain the creative processes involved in his composing, Gunther Schuller readily admits that the element of mystery that © Philosophy of Music Education Review, 15, no. 2 (Fall 2007) lies beyond rational explanation plays an important part in the creation of his music: As an artist—and I believe I am a thinking artist, not hopefully a mindless artist—it doesn’t bother me that I don’t know everything about either the creative process or its progeny. I am happy to know that it works, and that in the main I can rely on it and the way it functions. The fact that there are unrevealed and incomprehensible mysteries in the creative-arts process and in our evaluation of its products does not disturb me, although it arouses my curiosity. But I don’t have to know how something works in order to use it.1 The present study, however, is based on the premise that a music teacher needs indeed to grasp how this creative process works in a real world context in order to foster and expand the student composers’ craft of composition in educational settings at all levels. More specifically, the present study involves the investigation of the compositional process as seen from several twentieth and twenty-first century influential composers’ viewpoints that may help us gain insight into a domain coated with a colorful diversity of personal experiences and theoretical speculations. The composers chosen for examination include the following: Luciano Berio, Pierre Boulez, Robert Erikson, Brian Ferneyhough, Lucas Foss, Gyorgy Ligeti, Tristan Murail, Steve Reich, Roger Reynolds, Arnold Schoenberg, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Edgar Varese, and Iannis Xenakis, among others. The choice of these individuals was dictated by my wish to include composers from as wide a variety of compositional styles as possible including serialism, avantgarde, modernism, minimalism, musique concrete, and electronic music and who placed emphasis on innovation and creative freedom as inseparable from expression. Their musical styles which opened up new possibilities of expression encompass, as Elaine Birkin wrote, “free form, unequal time segments, fuzzy or non-tonality, angled contours, rapid change, multi-hued harmonies, dense texture, dissonance, mixed—or no—meters, an exploration of instrumental resources, and more.”2 The choice of the above-named composers by no means implies a value judgment on my part about the importance either of their accounts or of their compositions and their respective styles. It is simply that their writings, lectures, and interviews demonstrate a dedication toward capturing the subtleties of the creative process and are especially elaborate in their description of the nature of creativity, in contrast to others who are not as prone to divulge their feelings about their creative process. In order to draw any kind of philosophical implications, I strongly believe that one should have in mind what Arthur Danto wrote in Beyond the Brillo Box: “Variation in style may have historical explanation but 94 PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC EDUCATION REVIEW

Forty Years of Case Studies: A History of Clinical Case Studies in the Journal of Music Therapy, Music Therapy, and Music Therapy Perspectives

ABSTRACT: Clinical case studies have played an invaluable role in history of music therapy and its literature. These single-participant studies focus on individual treatment and personalized objectives and have appeared frequently in Journal of Music Therapy, Music Therapy, and Music Therapy Perspectives. The purpose of this article was to identify and catalogue all case studies published in Journal of Music Therapy, Music Therapy, and Music Therapy Perspectives from 1964-2003. The researcher identified and analyzed 123 studies. Results indicate that published case studies within literature base evince that music therapy interventions have been successful with a wide variety of populations using a diversity of clinical techniques to address client deficit areas. The majority of these studies contained only qualitative data. Additionally, 50% of reviewed articles examined more than one participant. This catalogue of published clinical case studies may help music therapists who are dealing with a particular age, diagnosis/population, music therapy treatment method, or clinical objective by serving as a database or collection of studies. Case studies are a type of qualitative or quantitative research that recognize unique qualities of a particular client, setting, and approach when dealing with a single participant. case studies have appeared frequently within music therapy literature of Journal of Music Therapy, Music Therapy, and Music Therapy Perspectives. These are characteristically single-participant qualitative descriptions of successful music therapy interventions with a variety of client populations. Typically, these case studies impart a descriptive and rich characteristic (Aigen, 1995). This method is used extensively in music therapy literature due to its ability to isolate situations and behaviors (Madsen & Madsen, 1997). During first half of 20th century, case study was largely clinical research's sole methodology (Barlow & Hersen, 1984). The development of currently practiced case study research can be traced to work of B. F. Skinner. Behavioral analysis relied upon single case designs to evaluate effects of individualized variables (Kazdin, 1982). In music education and music therapy settings, many of these behaviorally based approaches have been effective with an extensive range of maladaptive behaviors (Standley, 1996). Today, case studies are still important to modern applied research (Barlow & Hersen, 1984). Many prolific researchers have noted value and importance of case studies. Hanser (1999) wrote the results of these studies are enlightening because they offer objective evidence of client change or lack thereof (pp. 179-180). Heiman (2002) noted that case studies appear frequently in clinical research due to their in-depth descriptions of patients' symptoms and reactions to therapy. Nickles (2001) suggests that case-based scientific techniques can be appealing because they are a problem-solving versus a directly truth-seeking enterprise, do not leave theory of validation to epistemic evaluation, are forward-looking rather than backward-looking, and thrive on single case-based consideration and practice, over rule-based examination. Barlow and Hersen (1984) proposed that case studies merge roles of practitioner and researcher and can lead to further empirical inquiry. As a result, measures have been developed and further experimental analyses of treatment have been performed (Mills, Agras, Barlow, & Mills, 1973); Thus, resulting data can increase one's understanding of problem while client receives and benefits from treatment (Barlow & Hersen, 1984). Chambless and Hollon (1998) noted that efficacy can be best established in vigilantly controlled case studies and their group analogues and suggested case studies are only limited by creativity of researcher. Thus, because of creativity and flexibility of these single-case designs, they can provide an ideal format for music therapy literature. …