Difficult but Sensitive: Participant Observation Research in Music Education

1992 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 131-141 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roland Bannister
Keyword(s):  
Music Education ◽  
Qualitative Method ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Music Educators ◽  
Research Literature ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Wide Acceptance ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Observation Method ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

There have been numerous calls for the use of qualitative research in music education. Music educators have been slow to heed these calls, despite the wide acceptance of qualitative methods in other areas of education research. This paper describes the place of qualitative paradigms in the gamut of research methodology and assesses the potential of the ethnographic techniques of participant observation and ethnographic interviewing for music education. In doing so it responds to Swanwick's (1984) critique of participant observation method by, (a) describing some of the techniques' philosophical bases, (b) citing several model ethnographies in other disciplines, and (c) reviewing some of the ethnographic research literature which, the author argues, has recognised the particular strengths and weaknesses of qualitative method and developed a strong philosophical and empirical rationale for its use. The author argues that ethnographic method has much to offer as we seek solutions to the problems of understanding music education in its social context in the late twentieth century.

Achievement Goals in Music Contexts: A Review of Literature

2019 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 10-19
Author(s):  
Leonard Tan ◽  
Hui Xing Sin
Keyword(s):  
Music Education ◽  
Achievement Goals ◽  
Motivational Climate ◽  
Music Educators ◽  
Research Literature ◽  
Review Of Literature ◽  
Mastery Goals ◽  
Domain Specific ◽  
Motivational Climates ◽  
Mastery Approach

The purpose of this article was to review and synthesize the research literature on achievement goals in music contexts. It is structured in four parts: (a) adaptive dispositions and outcomes, (b) motivational climate, (c) music and other domains, and (d) implications for music education. Researchers have found that learners who endorse mastery goals, in particular, mastery-approach ones, also tend to possess a range of adaptive dispositions. Music educators may therefore consider creating motivational climates that foster mastery goals. Achievement goals have also been found to be largely domain specific. Based on the review, implications for music education are offered.

Marching Forward: The Music Education Innovation and Legacy of James R. Wells (1931 – )

2018 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 156-178
Author(s):  
Glen A. Brumbach
Keyword(s):  
Music Education ◽  
Student Leadership ◽  
Music Educators ◽  
Band Directors ◽  
Comprehensive Musicianship ◽  
School Year ◽  
Education Innovation ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Instrumental Ensembles ◽  
Insight Into

James R. Wells, retired professor of West Chester University in West Chester, Pennsylvania, could be considered one of the most influential and innovative band directors of the late twentieth century. Wells influenced and mentored many current leaders in the music education field as well as created educational music programs that continue today. In the 2016–2017 school year, Wells’s ensemble music adjudication festival programs involved more than 220,000 students. To gain further insight into the origin and development of these leaders and programs, I conducted an oral history case study with Wells. I collected interviews, e-mail correspondence, and artifacts provided by former students and colleagues of Wells’s to provide additional facts and corroborate Wells’s memories. Results demonstrated Wells incorporated comprehensive musicianship and aesthetic education in marching band pedagogy, professional development and educational experiences for music educators through films, workshops, and adjudicated festivals. He also empowered student leadership and promoted gender equality in instrumental ensembles. Knowledge gained from this study provides insight into the origin of these important music education individuals and programs. I hope that the findings in this study serve as an inspiration to future music educators as they continue to improve and create new experiences and opportunities for students.

Ethnography

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony Kwame Harrison
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Distinct Features ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

Ethnography (Understanding Qualitative Research) provides a comprehensive guide to understanding, conceptualizing, and critically assessing ethnographic research and its resultant texts. Through a series of discussions and illustrations, utilizing both classic and contemporary examples, the book highlights distinct features of ethnography as both a research methodology and a writing tradition. It emphasizes the importance of training—including familiarity with culture as an anthropologically derived concept and critical awareness of the history of ethnography. To this end, it introduces the notion of ethnographic comportment, which serves as a standard for engaging and gauging ethnography. Indeed, ethnographic comportment issues from a familiarity with ethnography’s problematic past and inspires a disposition of accountability for one’s role in advancing ethnographic practices. Following an introductory chapter outlining the emergence and character of ethnography as a professionalized field, subsequent chapters conceptualize ethnographic research design, consider the practices of representing research methodologies, discuss the crafting of accurate and evocative ethnographic texts, and explain the different ways in which research and writing gets evaluated. While foregrounding interpretive and literary qualities that have gained prominence since the late twentieth century, the book properly situates ethnography at the nexus of the social sciences and the humanities. Ethnography (Understanding Qualitative Research) presents novice ethnographers with clear examples and illustrations of how to go about conducting, analyzing, and representing their research; its primary purpose, however, is to introduce readers to effective practices for understanding and evaluating the quality of ethnography.

Error Detection in Music Education: A Review of Literature

2021 ◽  
pp. 875512332110209
Author(s):  
Rachel A. Sorenson
Keyword(s):  
Music Education ◽  
Error Detection ◽  
Ecological Validity ◽  
Internal Validity ◽  
Personal Characteristics ◽  
Music Educators ◽  
Research Literature ◽  
Detection Ability ◽  
Confounding Variables ◽  
Testing Error

The ability to accurately detect performance errors is a fundamental skill for music educators and has been a popular topic of research within the field of music education. In fact, it has been suggested that roughly half of all ensemble rehearsals are dedicated to error detection. The purpose of this literature review was to synthesize the research literature related to error detection among preservice and inservice music educators. The majority of error detection studies have centered on the topics of (a) defining errors and error hierarchy, (b) developing tests and programmed materials, (c) personal characteristics related to error detection ability, and (d) factors that influence error detection ability. Results from existing error detection studies suggest that not only are there valid and reliable methods for testing error detection ability, but certain variables have the potential to increase or decrease that ability. In addition, findings revealed that a tension exists between designing error detection studies with high ecological validity (real world, contextual relevance) and those with high internal validity (elimination of confounding variables). Based on these findings, I offer several recommendations for inservice music educators and music education faculty.

scholarly journals Promoting African Music and enhancing intercultural understanding in Teacher Education

2015 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 108-121
Author(s):  
Dawn Joseph ◽  
◽  
Kay Hartwig ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Teacher Education ◽  
Music Education ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Music Educators ◽  
African Music ◽  
Multicultural Music Education ◽  
Culture Bearers ◽  
Multicultural Music ◽  
The Rich

Australia is a culturally diverse nation. The Arts provide a pathway that contributes to the rich tapestry of its people. Tertiary music educators have the responsibility to provide opportunities to effectively prepare and engage pre-service teachers in becoming culturally responsive. The authors discuss the importance and need to include guest music educators as culture bearers when preparing pre-service teachers to teach multicultural music. Drawing on data from student questionnaires, author participant observation and reflective practice in 2014, the findings highlight the experiences and practical engagement of an African music workshop in teacher education courses. Generalisations cannot be made, however, the findings revealed the need, importance and benefits of incorporating guest music educators as culture bearers who have the knowledge, skills and understandings to contribute to multicultural music education. This experience may be similar to other educational settings and it is hoped that the findings may provide a platform for further dialogue in other teaching and learning areas.

Building a digital Girl Army: The cultivation of feminist safe spaces online

2017 ◽  
Vol 20 (6) ◽  
pp. 2125-2144 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rosemary Clark-Parsons
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Safe Space ◽  
Safe Spaces ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
Relational Work ◽  
Marginalized Groups ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Context Specific ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

“Safe spaces” emerged as an important activist tactic in the late twentieth-century United States with the rise of feminist, queer, and anti-racist movements. However, the term’s ambiguity, while denoting its wide applicability across movements, has led “safe space” to become overused but undertheorized. In both theory and praxis, “safe space” has been treated as a closed concept, erasing the context-specific relational work required to construct and maintain its material and symbolic boundaries. The emergence of online communities promising safety for marginalized groups calls for renewed investigations into the construction of these activist spaces. In this article, I draw on ethnographic fieldwork to consider the cultivation of safe space within Girl Army, a Philadelphia-based feminist Facebook group. Through participant observation and interviews with Girl Army members, I trace the group’s technical and discursive enforcement of safety and the role this space plays in members’ activism and everyday lives.

Creativity and Commerce in Social Media, Digital Technology, and Music Education

2020 ◽  
pp. 666-680
Author(s):  
David Lines
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Music Education ◽  
Digital Technology ◽  
Music Educators ◽  
Research Literature ◽  
Media Technologies ◽  
Production And Consumption ◽  
Economic Forces ◽  
Pedagogical Innovations ◽  
Contemporary Education

Digital music and social media technologies continue to be embraced with a positive sense of optimism in music education, and a broad range of technological and pedagogical innovations and insights have been celebrated and affirmed in the research literature. Despite this, there has been relatively less scholarly discussion on the broader contextual aspects of music and social media technologies, especially within commercial contexts of contemporary education and corporate technology production and consumption. This chapter suggests that a materialist perspective of digital technology and social media is important for raising a greater awareness of the different commercial, cultural, and other dimensions that converge in music and music education. It is suggested that global technologies in education can be questioned through Appadurai’s notion of scapes, and that creative directions in digital technology can be conceptualized through Deleuze and Guattari’s image of the rhizome. These concepts are important for music educators as they become attuned to, and more discerning of, the economic forces that impact on their work with students and as they suggest creative practices that have transformative value for their students.

Managing culinary diversity in urban China: On the reception of Sichuanese cuisine in the recent Guangzhou press

1970 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacob Klein
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cultural Influences ◽  
Sichuan Province ◽  
Urban China ◽  
Historical Background ◽  
Western China ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

Taking as its starting point the broad themes of globalisation and transnationalism, this paper focuses on what the author describes as an often neglected aspect of the growing interconnectedness of the late twentieth century: that is, the management of cultural influences moving between unequally positioned places within a single polity or region. In particular, the paper examines how the cuisine of Sichuan Province in south western China has been received in Guangzhou. Providing a summary of the historical background, the paper ends by outlining an agenda for further ethnographic research, which should look in particular at restaurateurs, restaurant workers, consumers and gastromic writers

scholarly journals Religious Faith as Cultural Heritage at the Refuge for World Truths

Religions ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 207
Author(s):  
Aaron Raverty
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
Religious Faith ◽  
New Age ◽  
Interreligious Dialogue ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Divine Revelation ◽  
Old Spanish ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

Faith undergirds the Refuge for World Truths, a multireligious heritage-scape that emerged out of an old Spanish land grant adjacent to the Wild West mining and ranching town of Crestone, Colorado. Established by an entrepreneurial husband-and-wife team in the late twentieth century, the Refuge’s spiritual centers were founded upon different faith commitments. Christian, [Sufi] Muslim, and Baha’i centers adhere to a monotheistic faith and claim divine revelation as the source of their presence in the Refuge. New Age, polytheistic, and nontheistic groups base their faith claim on the personal mystical revelations of “Glenn,” a local peripatetic and self-described prophet who hailed the arrival of the original couple. Two stints of ethnographic research point to the spiritual centers’ public ritual performances as both invitations to pilgrims to intensify this faith and as functional cogs in the integration and continuity of the heritage-scape’s ritual economy. Finally, the faith expressions underlying the Refuge for World Truths allow this unique locality to champion interreligious dialogue as a method for addressing diversity and negotiating potential onsite conflict on the path to peaceful mutuality.

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