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Music Education In A Liquid Social World: The Nuances Of Teaching With Students Of Immigrant And Refugee Backgrounds, Gabriela Ocádiz Velázquez

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This integrated-article dissertation explores the multiple ways in which music teachers, community facilitators, and students engage in music teaching and learning in social contexts prone to change due to human mobility. Drawing upon Bauman’s sociological understanding of modern societies as liquid and the larger implications of processes of human mobility in schools and communities, this research focuses on exploring music education as it happens within an increasingly diversifying Canadian society.

In the first article, a philosophical research study, I conceptualize the notion of coping with discomfort as a form of response possibly experienced by music teachers. Here, I draw from …

Control, Constraint, Convergence: Examining Our Roles As Generalist Teacher Music Educators, Danielle Sirek, Terry G. Sefton

Education Publications

This research explores the effects of institutional constraints on instructional practices in a preservice generalist teacher music education program in Ontario, Canada. Using Institutional Ethnography and document analysis of active texts, we, an adjunct and tenured professor, use our own experiences to elucidate the multiple points of control and constraint in which teacher education instructors operate. We examine the ways in which “official” documents, such as course outlines, activate institutional expectations and relations of power, and promote standardization (convergence). We explore factors that influence our curricular choices, pedagogical strategies, and occasional acts of resistance; and how these impact differently tenured …

“Until I Die, I Will Sing My Calypso Song”: Calypso, Soca, And Music Education Across A Generational Divide., Danielle Sirek

Education Publications

In post-revolution Grenada, explorations of identity often reveal a generational divide. This generational divide is frequently expressed through music (Sirek 2013, 2018). In this qualitative case study I use an ethnographic methodological approach to examine Grenadian calypso and soca music, analyzing data collected from observations and participant observations, interviews, investigation of media/social media; as well as calypso and soca music and lyrics. Drawing from Tönnies’ (1887/2017) constructs of Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft, I explore the ways in which calypso and soca musicking (Small 1998) and music education initiatives construct and articulate the generational divide in Grenada.

Providing Contexts For Understanding Musical Narratives Of Power In The Classroom: Music, Politics, And Power In Grenada, West Indies, Danielle Sirek

Education Publications

The role of music in Grenada, West Indies has traditionally been to pass on knowledges, values, and ideals; and to provide a means of connecting to one another through expressing commonality of experience, ancestry, and nationhood. This paper explores how Eric Matthew Gairy, during his era of political leadership in Grenada (1951-1979), exploited the transmission and performance of music in very specific ways to further his career politically and exert power over Grenadian society. This historical case study of Grenada, where music was deliberately used as a method of supporting perceived social and political binaries, sheds light upon the power …

Acts Of Courage: Leaping Into Mindful Music Teaching, Cathy Benedict, Patrick K. Schmidt

Music Education Publications

The authors explore the idea of courage in the classroom focusing on two populations of teachers: pre-service undergraduate students and in-service teachers. They articulate their own paths toward their own understandings of facilitating and recognizing acts of courage and share how their educational and pedagogical experiences have led them to think differently about the opportunities of doing and being differently as teachers.

Students' Experiences Within A Community-Based Orchestral Music Education Program: A Phenomenological Exploration, Leigh C. Walter

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Phenomenology was used to explore eighteen students’ experiences of participating within a community-based orchestral music education program with the aim of gaining understanding of experiences that may enter into the continuance of musical instruction. Interpretive analysis of audiotapes of in-depth interviews revealed three themes which together captured students’ holistic experience of being in a community-based orchestral music education program: (1) contextual factors facilitating/impeding progress; (2) enacting progression; and (3) experiencing the process of participating in the program. Findings revealed the importance of instructor feedback, students’ perceived necessity of striving, and students’ subjective feelings of participating in the program to student …