A Conflux of Musical Logics: Memory, History and the Improvisative Music of SLANT

The author discusses SLANT, an improvisation-based project he coconceived, recorded and performed on tenor saxophone in duo with pianist and new music specialist Richard Valitutto. The project deconstructs sound worlds such as late nineteenth-century Romanticism, avant-garde/free jazz, microtonal spectralism and southeast European rural music. Drawing on George Lewis's systems of improvisative musicality, the article analyzes SLANT through the lens of sociomusical experience. The author shows how Afrological, Eurological and other systems of musicality participate together, manifesting in dialogical improvisative music-making that emerges from multiethnic and multicultural histories of improvised music.

Assessment Practices in American Elementary General Music Classrooms

Children in the elementary general music classroom assume multiple roles as they create, perform, respond to, and make connections through music. When children create, they demonstrate musical knowledge, skills, and understandings as they compose and improvise. As performers, they demonstrate musical skill and technique while moving, singing, and playing. To make meaning in music, children respond by listening and evaluating. Finally, when relating artistic experiences they make connections to enhance personal meaning and relevancy. The elementary general music specialist is in a unique position to assess these diverse behaviors in an authentic manner. Music teachers gather and interpret assessment information, record student progress, and communicate student success. An examination of best-practice assessment strategies in American elementary general music classroom is included in this chapter.

Holistic Development and Music Education: Research for Educators and Community Stakeholders

Many educators and parents remain unaware of the value of music and the arts beyond obvious, natural entertainment contexts and find it easy to devalue music and arts programing. This article presents a concise review of significant research that demonstrates strong correlations between the study of music and arts as academic disciplines that improve the development of literacy, language, and math skills while also providing a natural link to improved social and emotional competencies. The material is presented to better inform and aid general music specialist efforts to share the academic value of music for students while highlighting distinct contributions to improved emotional, intellectual, and social areas of cognition that other academic disciplines may not achieve as effectively.

Gordon Peterson

Gordon Peterson—early music specialist, professional musician, and former tenured music professor—was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome at the age of forty-five, by which time he had suffered through decades of misdiagnoses, misguided psychiatric treatments, and despair. “For the first time ever,” he recalls, “I felt the correctness of the diagnosis.” Gordon attributes many of the hardships he has endured to being “wired all funny” with Asperger’s, but he sees the condition as the primary source of his musical talent, intellectual prowess, and fertile imagination as well. “In my mind,” he says, “there is an impossibly complex web of musical and non-musical cultural connections across time and geographic location . . . . I see a ribbon-like time line [that] stretches back from today all the way to the beginning of recorded history, and before . . . and I can walk around in it, looking at the instruments, hearing the sounds, hearing the language.” Asperger’s is “my superpower,” Gordon attests, but as the chapter chronicles, that superpower exacts a very high toll on him in terms of the anguish and turmoil it brings.

Análisis de la influencia en el aprendizaje del alumnado tras la organización de tertulias musicales dialógicas en un centro educativo. / Analysis of the influence on student learning after the organization of dialogical musical gatherings in an educational center

Las tertulias musicales dialógicas (TMD), son parte de las actuaciones de éxito de una Comunidad de Aprendizaje (CdA). El objeto de este estudio se centra en una experiencia realizada en un centro educativo que realiza estas actuaciones con todos los miembros de la comunidad educativa. El CEIP Navas de Tolosa realiza TMD de forma semanal en todas las aulas del centro. El profesorado en general, no solo el de música, realiza esta actividad con el alumnado de forma sistemática, obteniendo grandes beneficios en todas las competencias básicas. La selección de las obras musicales contrastadas procedentes de los clásicos universales, ha sido programada por la dirección del centro, también especialista de música. El estudio analizado desde una mirada cualitativa bajo dos enfoques, la observación participante realizada por la propia docente e investigadora del aula y la moderación de grupos de discusión orientados a conocer la percepción de los discentes sobre el conjunto de actuaciones de éxito realizadas en el aula de música.Analysis of the influence on student learning after the organization of dialogical musical gatherings in an educational center.Dialogical musical gatherings (TMD) are part of the successful actions of a Learning Community (CdA). The object of this study is centered on an experience carried out in an educational center that performs these actions with all the members of the educational community. The CEIP Navas de Tolosa performs TMD on a weekly basis in all the classrooms of the center. The teachers in general, not only the music, perform this activity with the students in a systematic way, obtaining great benefits in all basic skills. The selection of the contrasted musical works from the universal classics has been programmed by the center’s management, also a music specialist. The study analyzed from a qualitative perspective under two approaches, the participant observation made by the teacher and researcher of the classroom and the moderation of discussion groups aimed at knowing the perception of the students on the set of successful performances in the classroom of music.

The effect of focused instruction on young children’s singing accuracy

The purpose of this study was to test the effect of daily singing instruction on the singing accuracy of young children and whether accuracy differed across four singing tasks. In a pretest-posttest design over seven months we compared the singing accuracy of kindergarteners in a school receiving daily singing instruction from a music specialist to a control school receiving no curricular music instruction. All children completed four singing tasks at the beginning and end of the study: matching single pitches, matching intervals, matching short patterns, and singing a familiar song from memory. We found that both groups showed improvement on the pitch-matching tasks from pretest to posttest, but the experimental group demonstrated significantly more improvement. Performance on the familiar song task did not improve for either group. Students achieved the highest accuracy scores when matching intervals. Regular singing instruction seems to accelerate the development of accurate singing for young children, but the improvement was evident only in the pitch-matching tasks. It is possible that singing skill development proceeds from pitch-matching to the more difficult task of singing a song from memory. If so, this has implications for how we structure singing instruction in the early grades.

Integrando La Música En La Educación Infantil A Través Del Equipo Docente Interdisciplinar

School education is a complex process in which students and teachers interact in a context. In order to obtain an adequate and complete advance in the field of educational research, it is necessary to study in depth the different parts of this process. This article focuses on the study of the interdisciplinary teamwork of teachers in a project on the awareness of the linguistic discourse, verbal and musical, in early childhood education. In this project the generalist teachers carried out the music-verbal activities with their students. The objective of this study was to analyse the influence of the work in teaching team, composed by generalist teachers and music specialist, in this project; examining the parameters that influence its functioning and observing the benefits of its application. The analysis has been carried out from the qualitative methodology, finding that previous knowledge and experience of each teacher, positive interdependence between them, shared responsibility and the role of the music specialist and of the School influence the proper functioning of this group. The teamwork carried out in this project has reported benefits, among which are the production of linguistic knowledge, training and professional development of the teachers involved. It is valued that the project is not only beneficial for students but also for teachers.

Why Do We “Skip to My Lou,” Anyway? Teaching Play Party Songs in Historical Context

This article focuses on teaching play party songs in a general music curriculum, using their authentic form and historical context. The history of play party songs is discussed, as well as the social conditions in America during the time they were used in the late 19th to mid-20th century. Descriptions of the songs include variations in lyrics and movements, with three examples of popular play party songs discussed in detail. Tips for teachers who wish to teach play party songs in their original historical context are offered, and a case is made for using them as a component of interdisciplinary teaching between the music specialist and the classroom teacher. At the end of the article, a sample list of popular play party songs are presented, as well as a list of resources to support the music specialist in learning more about these songs.

Training music teachers through distance learning: The case of teaching practice mentoring at one primary school teacher training college in Zimbabwe

This study sought to examine the quality of teaching practice (TP) mentoring in the teaching of music at primary school level through the distance mode of training at one college of education in Zimbabwe. The study examined the experiences and perceptions of lecturers and student teachers on TP mentoring in music within the context of a distance mode of teacher training. A purposive sample of 17 music student teachers and 11 lecturers was selected. The study employed a qualitative case study research design in which one-on-one interviews, focus group discussions and documentary analysis were used to collect data. The main conclusion from the study was that the distance approach to teacher training was not effectively utilised for teacher preparation in music due to inadequate music knowledge and skills of mentor teachers as well as weaknesses of the school curriculum. Recommendations drawn from these conclusions are that the teaching practice period should not be the same for all subjects and more demanding subjects such as music deserve to be practiced more. Student teachers specialising in music must be placed for teaching practice where there are music specialist teachers. This study also recommends that the placement of music student teachers for teaching practice be undertaken jointly by the teaching practice coordinators and the music specialist lecturer.

Music education in the Grade R classroom: How three teachers learned in a participatory action inquiry

The contribution of music education to the holistic development of the young learner is uncontested. However, in South Africa, the vast majority of Reception Year (Grade R) teachers do not have the required competences to teach music in ways that optimally enhance the holistic growth of their learners, as this aspect has been largely neglected during their pre-service and in-service training. In this paper, we report on a year-long intervention aimed at enabling three Grade R non-music specialist teachers at one urban township school in the Eastern Cape to create music-based learning opportunities for their learners. We employed a participatory action learning and action research (PALAR) approach to the inquiry, which combines research with development. Our findings indicate that after a series of collaborative interactions, the participants started to explore and tap into their own musical competences. They revisited notions of the self as (ill-)equipped, (un)confident, (in)competent and (in)dependent music teachers, and began to assume autonomy and agency with regard to effective music education in the Grade R classroom. We consequently argue that under-qualified in-service teachers can be enabled to improve their practice through research interventions that stimulate maximum participant involvement, such as PALAR.