The investigation of infants’ and young children’s early musical engagement as singers, song-makers, and music-makers has provided some insight into children’s early vocal and musical development. Recent research has highlighted the vital role of interactive vocalization or ‘communicative musicality’ in infants’ general development, including their health and well-being, and early identity work. Little research has investigated how these early vocalizations and musical interactions are taken up and used by young children as they construct an emergent identity as a musical and sociocultured being. This article draws on a three-year longitudinal project that has investigated the role of invented song-making and music engagement in 18 young children’s (aged approximately 18–48 months) identity work and self-making. Data sources employed within a narrative inquiry design included parent-maintained video and paper diaries of song-making and music engagement, interviews with parents and other care-givers, and researcher observations of children in musical activity. Processes of narrative analysis and analysis of narrative were employed to analyse these data and provide a narrative account of the ways in which one 2-year-old child fashions a self through her engagement with known and invented song and music-making over a 12-month period. Findings suggest that invented song and music-making build on young children’s experiences of ‘communicative musicality’ and provide narrative structures in which young children perform and enact multiple ways of being through musical storying and story-telling.
This study extends an eight-country mapping exercise (McPherson & O'Neill, 2010; see Research Studies in Music Education issues 2010-2011) to include students' motivation to study music within the Australian context. It sought to determine whether music learners (students learning an instrument or voice), might be more motivated to study academic subjects at school, and whether gender and socioeconomic status (SES) affected student motivation to learn music at school. A total of 2,727 students from grades 5 to 12 completed a questionnaire based on Eccles and Wigfield's expectancy-value framework. Data collected included: ratings of competence beliefs, interest, importance, usefulness and difficulty for music, English, maths, and science; indications of whether the students were currently learning a musical instrument or voice (music learners); and whether they would like to if given the opportunity. There was an overall significant decline in competence beliefs, interest, importance, and usefulness across the school years, in contrast with increased task difficulty ratings across the school years. Music learners reported
The image of the composer as a lone seeker of creative inspiration is embedded in popular views of the creative artist. This isolationist view ignores the ‘thought communities’ on which composers draw in their development as musicians, composers and teachers, the relationships that hold between composer-teacher and student-composer, and the role of these relationships in the ongoing development of allparticipants in the teaching and learning process. This article draws on ‘eminence’ studies of creativity to investigate the teaching and learning beliefs, processes and practices, of an eminent composer-teacher when working with a tertiary-level student-composer over the course of one academic semester. The emergent view of the teaching and learning process in music composition is one of a dyad working towards shared goals in a process characterized by collaboration, joint effort, and social support. This suggests that the teaching and learning process in composition may be a form of creative collaboration.
The research reported in this article describes some of the ways in which young children use idiosyncratic symbols (invented notations) to encode their compositional experiences in music. These symbols may be viewed as vehicles for conveying meaning and are precursors to the development of the culturally agreed symbol systems of the adult literate world. The investigation was naturalistic in design and focused on children's individual responses to simple compositional tasks completed in an early childhood setting. A number of categories of symbolisation emerged from the data collected, suggesting that as children become more experienced in encoding their responses, their recordings become less context-bound and more concerned with ideas and concepts.
This article reports an investigation of the musical and extra-musical outcomes of participation in a music programme for students in four socio-economically disadvantaged school settings. Drawing on the theory of Positive Youth Development, which provides a focus on the positive assets young people bring to their engagement rather than perceived deficits and risks, the findings indicate that PYD outcomes do arise from music participation in these settings. Specifically, students evidence developing competencies in the PYD domains of Competency (musical, academic, social), Confidence, Connection, Character, and Caring. The findings also indicate those learning and teaching strategies and environmental supports that foster the development of PYD domains in these settings.
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