Undergraduate Music Students Research Articles

Early Socialization and Opinions of Musicianship Among Preservice Music Teachers

The development of musicianship is a fundamental learning outcome for music students. The purpose of this study was to examine the early socialization experiences of preservice music teachers, as well as their opinions about musicianship. A total of 138 undergraduate music education students completed a three-part online questionnaire. The large ensemble setting was the most common source of learning and participants believed this setting contributed to the development of overall musicianship more so than any other source of learning. “Learning songs from notation” and “Music analysis” were perceived as most valuable in developing musicianship. Kruskal–Wallis tests showed differences in conceptions of musicianship based on the instrument played, but not among other socialization variables. Based on the findings, I conclude that preservice music teachers are being socialized to conceive of musicianship in ways that suit an existing school model, rather than contemporary and evolving music cultures found outside of schools.

Social awareness and engagement in undergraduate music students: Generating a foundation for curriculum decisions

Tertiary music institutions, like universities generally, are increasingly recognising the value and importance of a curriculum that fosters social awareness and social engagement in students. This article reports on a mixed-methods research project that investigated the nature and extent of social awareness and engagement among undergraduate students at one Australian tertiary music institution. Through a survey methodology, the research sought to understand students’ interest in, and awareness of, pressing contemporary social issues, as well as their prior, current and perceived potential future engagement in those issues. A clear understanding by educators, researchers and tertiary music institutions of the nature and degree of undergraduate students’ social awareness and engagement is an important and arguably necessary foundation for expanding and improving socially engaged teaching and learning initiatives.

Undergraduate music student perspectives on the music school as a space for the development of allyhood

ABSTRACTThe purpose of this study was to examine undergraduate music student perspectives on the music school as a space for the development of allyhood (Waters, R. 2010. “Understanding Allyhood as a Developmental Process.” About Campus: Enriching the Student Learning Experience 15 (5): 2–8). Framed within research in student affairs (Edwards, K. E. 2006. “Aspiring Social Justice Ally Identity Development: A Conceptual Model.” NASPA Journal 43 (4): 39–60. doi:10.2202/1949-6605.1722; Reason, R. D., E. A. R. Milla, and T. C. Scales. 2005. “Toward a Model of Racial Justice Ally Development.” Journal of College Student Development 46 (5): 530–546) and counselling (Torres-Harding, S., C. Steele, E. Schulz, F. Taha, and C. Pico. 2014. “Student Perceptions of Social Justice and Social Justice Activities.” Education, Citizenship and Social Justice 9. doi:10.1177/1746197914520655) researchers used Seidman’s (2013. Interviewing as Qualitative Research. 4th ed. New York: Teachers College Press[Q3]) phenomenological interview design (including individual interviews and a focus group) to study six undergraduate music students. Findings report on: (a) participants’ level of awareness regarding injustice, (b) narratives of classroom scenarios experienced by the participants; and (c) participant suggestions for professors and institutions.

Integrating Music Therapy Students into Interprofessional Education: Academic Program Development

Abstract Interprofessional education (IPE) occurs when students from two or more professions associated with health or social care engage in learning with, from, and about each other. IPE addresses four essential competencies that not only seek to prepare students for interprofessional practice, but also strive to improve the overall quality of healthcare delivery for patients and their families. This article describes the development of an IPE program that fully integrates music therapy students into program-wide and program-to-program IPE events. We identify core components of IPE, describe the development of program-wide and program-to-program events involving undergraduate and graduate music therapy students, and discuss the benefits and challenges encountered during program development. In doing so, we advocate for IPE as a core component of music therapy education and training.

Комп’ютерні технології в методиці формування творчої самореалізації магістрантів

Досліджено питання впровадження комп’ютерних технологій у процес формування творчої самореалізації магістрантів музичного мистецтва під час вивчення циклу диригентсько-хорових дисциплін у вищому педагогічному навчальному закладі. Охарактеризована сутність фахової підготовки студентів до музично-педагогічної діяльності з учнями загальноосвітньої школи, а саме проведення вокально-хорової роботи на уроках музичного мистецтва. Запропоновані навчальні методи спрямовані на формування творчої самореалізації магістрантів музичного мистецтва. Використання комп’ютерних технологій здійснюється порівняно з вирішенням організаційних, методичних і навчальних завдань під час музично-педагогічної діяльності вчителя музичного мистецтва зі школярами. Виявлена необхідність оволодіння магістрантами музичного мистецтва навчальними методами, що передбачає широке використання можливостей засобів мультимедіа, комп’ютерних технологій, залучення учнів до евристичної діяльності. Обґрунтована гіпотеза, що використання комп’ютерних технологій в музичному навчанні підвищить мотивацію студентів до творчої самореалізації.

Inner Ear: A tool for individualizing sound-focused aural skill acquisition

Inner Ear is a browser-based aural training software designed to improve and better understand the process and means through which students acquire sound-focused aural skills. Its ongoing development follows educational principles established through years of research with undergraduate music students who major in electroacoustic studies, beginning in 2005. It provides users with ongoing detailed feedback about their performance, areas that need additional work, and an accessible notepad for students to record their insights during practice. It collects data on users’ performance and settings that can later be analysed and shared with their instructor. The design of Inner Ear follows insights that emerged in students’ feedback, provided mostly in home practice reports. Primary among these insights are the needs for individualizable practice environments, diversified exercises, speedy and informative feedback and progress evaluation methods.

What does it mean for a musician to be socially engaged? How undergraduate music students perceive their possible social roles as musicians

ABSTRACTA raft of recent music education research advocates fostering social awareness and engagement among tertiary music students. The evidence is compelling: a socially engaged tertiary education prepares students to play meaningful social roles, while also better meeting the aspirations and needs of music institutions, universities and society at large. As tertiary music institutions explore ways to increase the social orientation of their curricula, it is important that the student voice be present in research and scholarship. How do students themselves conceive of the notion of a ‘socially engaged’ musician? What social roles do they see for themselves as musicians? Exploring these questions, this article draws on qualitative survey and focus group data from a small-scale study at one Australian tertiary music institution. Findings indicate that students envisage their social roles as musicians in a gamut of ways, from believing it is ‘wrong’ for musicians to engage with contemporary social issues, to holding a sense of moral responsibility to act as social change agents. An understanding of the diverse ways in which students envisage their social roles and potential as musicians provides a necessary foundation for expanding relevant, effective, and targeted teaching and learning initiatives that develop social consciousness in students.

Book Review: Stolen Time: Black Fad Performance and the Calypso Craze by Shane Vogel

Shane Vogel. Stolen Time: Black Fad Performance and the Calypso Craze . Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018. When I tell my undergraduate popular music students that for a fleeting moment in the mid-1950s, Americanized calypso threatened to eclipse rock ‘n’ roll for sales and cultural

Health and Wellness for In-Service and Future Music Teachers: Developing a Self-Care Plan

Researchers have published an increasing number of reports about undergraduate music students suffering from depression, anxiety, and stress as well as of in-service teachers’ experiences with burnout. Whether an undergraduate music student, a teacher, or a teacher educator, those in our profession need to increase awareness of the prevalence of stress and mental health concerns in music education. Along with presenting information to increase mental health literacy, this article discusses the use of self-care as a form of stress reduction among current and future music educators.

Music and the Social and Emotional Challenges of Undergraduate Instrumental Music Students

This study explored perceptions of four undergraduate instrumental music students. The purpose of this study was to describe social and emotional challenges of college instrumental music students and to explore the music connection with these challenges. Questions guiding this inquiry were as follows: (a) What social and emotional challenges do instrumental music students encounter at the college level and how does music relate to these? and (b) What is the role of music in the participants’ lives? Findings suggest undergraduate music students encounter a variety of challenges, and that music had a profound connection to these challenges either as a catalyst or as relief. The most common challenge was struggling with time management and overcommitting. Participants articulated differences between performing and listening to music in relation to their social and emotional challenges. Further findings suggest that for these participants there has been a music culture shift away from communal, ensemble-based music making to a more individual activity.

Haphazard pathways: Students’ perceptions of their routes to music study in higher education in the United Kingdom

Abstract This article reports on a qualitative study, which explored perceptions of fourteen first-year undergraduate music students in the United Kingdom regarding their secondary school music education as preparation for undertaking degree-level music study. The authors (both lecturers in popular music at a UK university) were motivated to undertake this research to explore issues of alignment between school music and music degrees in the United Kingdom and the pathways students constructed through this transition. Data pertain to three key areas: students’ perceptions of the extent that school music courses prepared them for university application, students’ descriptions of their extracurricular music activities, and areas that students would like to change about their secondary music courses. Findings suggest that all interviewees felt underprepared for university study by their secondary music courses, yet differences in perception exist between students who were accepted to ‘classical’ music degrees, and those who went on to study popular music.

Technology’s role for achieving creativity, diversity and integration in the American undergraduate music curriculum: Some theoretical, historical and practical perspectives

Abstract This article provides an overview of six years of research with the goal of identifying key music technology competencies seen as essential for the undergraduate music major by tertiary music professors largely in North America. The results of the research are viewed from multiple dimensions: ‘pillars’ of curriculum as defined by a recent College Music Society (CMS) (United States) task force report, the diffusion of innovative technology historically within music instruction and general categories of music study within the tertiary curriculum. The authors share the results of five separate studies over a six-year period beginning in 2011 dedicated to the identification of core technology competencies for all undergraduate music students. Total responses included 772 returned questionnaires across the five studies that probed key competencies and their role in the instructional process. Consistent support for eleven key competencies was identified. The article concludes by offering a number of creative teaching scenarios across the tertiary curriculum for supporting the eleven competencies identified by participants in the research studies. The results from the research along with the overarching curricular issues presented may apply not only to tertiary music study in North America, but to the broader, international landscape of music curriculum innovation and reform.

Feedback and Feedforward Models of Musical Key

This study begins by drawing a distinction between two ways of framing the concept of musical key.Feedforwardmodels understand key as arising from immediately apparent surface characteristics like the distribution of pitch classes or a melody’s intervallic content.Feedbackmodels, on the other hand, understand key as being determined in tandem with other domains. Here, key arises from the surface being organized into other more complicated musical groupings or schemata—harmonic progressions, cadences, prolongations, meter, etc.—that themselves are informed by the music’s tonal center. While much music theory and theory pedagogy have acknowledged that feedback occurs in various approaches to tonality, formal modeling in the fields of music cognition and computation has focused primarily on feedforward systems. This article attempts to right this imbalance by presenting a corpus-based feedback computational model that can be tested against human behavior. My model will identify a passage’s key by organizing a surface into its constituent harmonies. Here, harmonic organization and key will be integrated into a feedback system with the ideal key being that which produces the ideal harmonic analysis, and vice versa. To validate the resulting model, its behavior is compared to that of other published tonal models, to the behaviors of undergraduate music students, and to the intuitions of professional music theorists.

A Pilot Study Evaluating the Physiological Parameters of Performance-Induced Stress in Undergraduate Music Students

Music performance anxiety (MPA) is a specific condition for musicians. Although it can have a negative influence on their music careers, little attention is paid to this phenomenon both in the professional environment and in stress research. In the current pilot study, insight was gained into the physiology of the autonomic stress response related to anxiety in musicians when performing on stage by using a wearable biosensor patch for registration of a range of physiological parameters. Also, the validity of two different psychometric questionnaires in objectifying the stress response on stage to predict the individual stress response was explored. The autonomic physiological parameters (heart rate, respiratory rate, skin temperature) of 11 violists and violinists were collected while performing on stage and in resting state using the VitalConnect HealthPatch®. In addition, scores on validated questionnaires in research on MPA (State Anxiety Inventory, Kenny Music Performance Anxiety Inventory, Short Form Health Survey) were collected in order to try to objectify the magnitude of the subjective level of both MPA and experienced stress. The registration of the autonomic parameters showed a significant increase in heart rate, respiratory rate, and stress level from resting state measurements during stage performance. Analysis of heart rate variability showed a shift from indices of parasympathetic nervous system activity during baseline measurements towards indices of sympathetic nervous system activity during stress measurements. Surprisingly, none of the questionnaires was correlated to the physiological stress parameters on stage. In conclusion, the wearable biosensor patch proved to be an adequate tool to assess physiological stress parameters on stage. The different questionnaires did not contribute to the prediction of its occurrence in a group of musicians.

Experiences of musical performance anxiety in final-year undergraduate music students: An interpretative phenomenological analysis

Musical performance anxiety (MPA) is a common problem for musicians. However, the majority of work in this area is quantitative in nature, meaning that analyses of musicians’ individual experiences are lacking. This study therefore explored the subjective experiences of performance anxiety in undergraduate music students through the use of semi-structured interviews. Interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) was used to analyse the experiences of four undergraduate music students, including how MPA feels, how it is dealt with, and what causes it. Three themes emerged from the analysis: the psychological impact of the audience, issues of trust, and the musical identity. These results are compatible with several quantitative studies and contribute an original idiographic perspective on how music students experience and understand MPA. This has implications for both amateur and professional musicians: If the underlying mechanisms are better understood, it may be possible to introduce interventions to help musicians cope with their anxiety.

The effect of exam frequency on academic success of undergraduate music students and comparison of students performance anxiety levels

The general measurement and assessment approach among universities in Cyprus is to have one mid-term exam and one final exam within a semester. In terms of the validity and the reliability of the measurement and assessment processes, it is essential to understand the ways in which students got influenced by the frequency of exams in psychological terms, and whether this has any effects on their overall success. In 2015–2016 Fall Terms, Near East University, Music Education Department decided to have two mid-term exams for each semester with the unanimous decision of the council of the department. The decision was bounding for music courses within the department. The decision was taken with the assumption that there is a positive relationship between the frequency of the exams and better studying habits among students who are viewed as highly exam and exam score oriented individuals. The new approach of having two mid-term exams was only introduced for music courses, where pedagogy courses and courses related with general cultural studies were exempted. It is observed that the new exam approach increased the exam anxiety among students at noticeable degrees. Due to undesirable outcomes of the new approach on student’s behaviours, the application of two mid-term exams per semester was cancelled only after one semester. It can be argued that such decisions which are highly critical for the entire learning and educational processes need to be based on solid pillars and evaluated in the light of scientific data. The main purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of the aforementioned approach which is based on two mid-term exam per semester on students’ academic successes. With this study, it is also intended to reflect on the attitude of students concerning the two mid-term exam per semester approach. In this context, the research group of this study was composed 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Grade Students of 2015–2016. There are 59 students in total. The exam scores received by these 59 students during the fall semester of 2015–2016 from two mid-term exams and one final exam will be compared with the exam scores they received during the spring semester of the same year where a different approach was applied as one mid-term and one final exam for the post-requisite (supplementary) courses of the previous term. The courses which were analysed can be listed as: (1) primary instrument, (2) piano, (3) voice training, (4) solfege, (5) choir and (6) orchestrate courses. These courses were selected because the scores received from these courses in different semesters can be consistently compared on the grounds that they are related to each other via being pre-requisite (preparatory)/post-requisite (supplementary) courses. Quantitative research methods were employed where survey research will be employed as the main model and causal survey research as the sub-models. For data collection, Near East University automatic information system was used to get access to the students’ exam scores in fall and spring terms of 2015–2016. An attitude scale was prepared for this study where the reliability and the validity will be controlled and pre-tests were employed for this new scale. The relationship between exam scores received by same students in two different semesters from courses related to each other were determined by using Pearson Correlation Coefficient. Besides descriptive data analysis techniques, t test and one-way analysis of variance were used at the same time.

The role of parents in the perfectionistic tendencies of university music students

Perfectionism is a complex multidimensional state with positive and negative outcomes. Research has identified that parents could influence perfectionistic inclinations, which may lead to increased levels of anxiety and ultimately lead to maladaptive tendencies. The aim of the study is to explore the role of parents in the experience of perfectionism in South African university music students. A total of 93 BA (Music) and BMus music students from four South African university music departments participated in the quantitative study by completing the Frost Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale (FMPS). The data were analyzed according to the variables of academic institution, type of music degree, academic year of study, gender, home language, and main instrument. The results showed significant differences in BA (Music) students who scored significantly higher than the BMus students in the dimensions Parental Expectations and Parental Criticism, along with students from the African language group. The study provides valuable insight into the perfectionistic trends of South African undergraduate music students, with particular emphasis on the parental dimensions of perfectionism.

Mesleki Müzik Eğitimi Alan Öğrencilerin İş Umudu Düzeylerinin İncelenmesi

The purpose of this study is to examine the employment hope levels of the undergraduate music students in terms of different variables. Descriptive survey model was used in the study. The study group was comprised of 791 undergraduate music students in Turkey during 2015-2016 school year. “Employment Hope Scale” was the data collection tool. The data obtained from this inventory and "personal information form" which was prepared by the researcher was analyzed by one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) and Welch test. According to the results obtained the psychological empowerment ranking of the undergraduate music students in the study vary across the age, department, class, encouragement of the educational environment. Goal-oriented pathway ranking of the undergraduate music students in the study vary across the department, instrument, encouragement of the educational environment

Musculoskeletal and other performance related disorders in South African undergraduate music students

Musculoskeletal and other performance related disorders in South African undergraduate music students

‘To give an outsider an idea of what it could be like’: A case study of the creative representation of hearing voices

This paper reports on a case study which aims to recreate the hearing voices symptom in schizophrenia. The case study was submitted for a co-curricular module at King’s College London by a first-year undergraduate Music student, Bethany James, and was created using the web application, Mahara. The core of the case study consists of a soundscape of both everyday and unusual sounds, in conjunction with an original musical composition. The paper describes the case study and discusses it using chaos narrative as an analytical lens. The paper argues that the case study (‘A Beautiful Mind – Artefact’) effectively evokes the hearing voices symptom, conveying a lucid sense of the experience to non-sufferers and thus potentially creating use value for clinicians and care workers.