Education Commons^™

Free Improvisation Pedagogy: An Arts Based Research Approach To Promoting Student Agency And Embracing Difference, Nicholas Catino

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Free Improvisation Pedagogy explores the changing perspectives of students as they co-create musical improvisations. Free improvisation is understood as a site for transformative pedagogy, with the possibility for people to break free of structures, think and perform independently, broaden their perspective of proper tonality, engage in musical democracy and equality of voice, and participate in music making that is active, participatory, and continually evolving.

Working with a small group of High School students in suburban New York, this research explores these topics and documents, through audio, video, visual art, and conversation, how students experience this type of music making and …

Stage As Street: Representation At The Juncture Of The Arts And Justice, E. Gabriel Dattatreyan, Daniel L. Stageman

Publications and Research

Arts educators working with court-involved youth face a set of complex and imbricated challenges. First, how do we gain the interest of the young people we would have participate in what we imagine are col-laborative and mutually generative projects? Second, how do we mediate representational tensions when the project is not solely therapeutic but has a broader public pedagogical purpose—to disrupt the simplistic and pathologizing discourses of poverty and violence that so often capture young men and women of color in the United States? (Bourgois, 2002; Noguera, 2008). Third, and not least, how do we navigate the institutional settings where …