Mama’s Turn: A mother’s musical journey

Abstract

The purpose of this narrative inquiry was to document the musical journey of Sarah, a young mother taking piano lessons. The research questions explored how Sarah’s journey influenced her young children’s musical expressions, their expressed desires to participate in music outside of their current experiences, and Sarah’s experience of musical parenting. Data for this study included Sarah’s lesson notes, iPhone videos of piano practice and family interactions, emails related to the project, and interview transcripts from five interviews spanning 15 months and an additional interview over two years later. In addition, Sarah wrote a 3000-word reflection in which she identified three principles from her piano lessons that she applied to other areas of her life: “focus and attention, small and do-able, and quality over quantity.” We explore the interpersonal dynamics created by Sarah’s becoming the music learner in the family, the tension between enjoyment and guilt of a leisure pursuit, as well as her application of the principles.

Does Music Training Improve Inhibition Control in Children? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

“…Music training may benefit the critical skills necessary for succeeding during children’s education. Music is generally a rewarding and motivating activity for children (Koops & Kuebel, 2018), and greater motivation is associated with enhanced learning (di Domenico & Ryan, 2017) and dopaminergic goal-directed action planning (Bogacz, 2020). By promoting greater motivation and engagement, music training may offer a cost-effective complement to general education programs.…”

The literacy-enhancing potential of singing versus spoken language in public library storytimes: A text analytics approach

“…Songs and music are considered important components in storytimes, and findings from this study viewed through both learning sciences (Hirsh-Pasek et al, 2015) and language acquisition (Grifenhagen et al, 2017) perspectives, indicate that song integration in storytime contributes to children's language development. Children tend to enjoy participating in musical events (Koops and Kuebel, 2018;Powell and Somerville, 2020;Wang et al, 2019), and interactions occurring in positive situations facilitate language learning (Zauche et al, 2016). Additionally, singing in storytimes serves as an opportunity for children to expand their language productivity.…”

“…Songs, words that are sung rather than spoken, are regularly promoted as tools for rhyme awareness, prosody, and rhythm (Terrell and Watson, 2018), and most preschool age children emit affective cues, continued responses, on-task behaviors, and positive body movements that evidence their enjoyment of music and musical activities (Koops and Kuebel, 2018;Powell and Somerville, 2020).…”

“…From a very early age, children demonstrate a preference for singing over speech and a willingness to attend to sung language for longer durations than they are willing to attend to spoken language (Tsang et al., 2017). Songs, words that are sung rather than spoken, are regularly promoted as tools for rhyme awareness, prosody, and rhythm (Terrell and Watson, 2018), and most preschool age children emit affective cues, continued responses, on-task behaviors, and positive body movements that evidence their enjoyment of music and musical activities (Koops and Kuebel, 2018; Powell and Somerville, 2020).…”

Music education through the lens of ITERS-R: Discussing results from 206 toddler day care groups

“…Psychologist Stern (1985/2000) and anthropologist Dissanayake (2000, 2001, 2012) emphasize the infant’s need for care and belonging when explaining human musicking and musicality (see also Barrett, 2016; Koops, Kuebel, & Smith, 2017). Small (1998) suggests an approach to musical quality that celebrates relationships, and we support these views.…”