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Research Studies in Music Education Journal web site . . . [WEB] (C)


Submitted via:  ed.asmus@music.utah.edu (Ed Asmus)


Research Studies in Music Education
Fostering music education research internationally.

Editors:  Dr Gary McPherson and Dr Edward Gifford (Australia)

Music Education researchers are invited to visit the web site for this journal:

http://www.usq.edu.au/faculty/arts/music/Research.htm

This address provides abstracts for each issue of RSME as well as ordering
details.

Abstracts for recent publications include:

The Perils and Possibilities of Assessment by Keith Swanwick
An abstract for this article is not available. However, the following are
headings in the article: The functions of assessment; What are we
assessing? Is music assessable? Formal assessment and musical quality;
General criteria for assessing the musical work of students; Audience
listening criteria; Student assessment and curriculum evaluation.

Assessing Music Performance: Issues and Influences by Gary E. McPherson &
William F. Thompson
Assessing musical performance is common across many types of music
education practice, yet research clarifying the range of factors which
impact on a judge's assessment is relatively scarce. This article attempts
to provide focus to the current literature, by proposing a process model of
assessing musical performance that identifies some of the main elements
that affect a judge's assessment in formal performance settings such as
competitions, auditions, recitals, Eisteddfods and graded examinations. The
article includes a review of the literature according to the categories
defined in the model and suggestions which are intended to form the basis
for further research in the area.

Musical Aptitude Testing: From James McKeen Cattell to Carl Emil Seashore
by Jere T. Humphreys
The purpose of this article is to describe the links between late
nineteenth-century psychological research and the early musical aptitude
research of Carl Emil Seashore (1866-1949). The primary link was the
music-related research of the leader of the mental testing movement during
the 1890s, Columbia University psychologist James McKeen Cattell
(1860-1944). German psychologist Wilhelm Wundt instructed Cattell in the
German scientific tradition, and English researcher Francis Galton
encouraged Cattell's research on individual differences and introduced him
to statistical methods. During the 1890s, Cattell conducted a longitudinal
study, the hypothesis for which was that tests of sensory discrimination
ability, including musical discrimination, would correlate with
undergraduates' academic grades. After his study failed to produce the
expected results, the mental testing movement followed Alfred Binet and
Victor Henri of France, and Cattell turned to other activities. However, in
the meantime, Cattell influenced many other important psychologists,
including Edward W. Scripture, Carl Seashore's doctoral mentor at Yale
University, and eventually Seashore himself. Despite the mental testing
movement's shift to Binet and Henri's cognitive-type testing, Seashore
continued his conservative, sensory approach to the testing of musical
aptitude.

Improving Music Teaching and Learning Through Assessing the Music Classroom
Environment by Edward Gifford
Teachers often speak of a classroom's climate, environment, atmosphere,
tone and ethos as important in their own right as well as being influential
in terms of students' learning. Although classroom environment has been
shown to be a subtle concept, considerable progress has been made over the
last two decades (Fraser 1986, 1989, 1994) in conceptualising, assessing
and researching it.  Research into classroom learning environments can
answer important questions such as the following: How does a classroom's
environment affect student learning and attitudes? Can teachers
conveniently and reliably assess the climates of their own classrooms and
can they change these environments? Is there a difference between actual
and preferred classroom environment as perceived by students, and does this
matter in terms of student outcomes? Much of this research has attempted to
answer such questions in the areas of maths and science teaching. There
have been few applications of this work to music classrooms in schools or
universities.

This paper presents data from research with general primary teachers
undertaking music as part of their teacher training at Griffith University,
Mt Gravatt Campus. The instrument used was the College and University
Classroom Environment Inventory (CUCEI) (Fraser, 1986a). The paper
concludes that, while there is considerable difference between students'
perceptions of actual and preferred music environments, the music classroom
environment can be reliably assessed and improved, with demonstratable
gains in students' attitude towards music.

The Role of Linguistic Dominance in the Acquisition of Song by Graham F.
Welch, Desmond C. Sergeant & Peta J.White
There is a growing body of evidence to suggest that there is a
developmental sequence in children's singing, with certain singing
behaviours having developmental primacy over others. The research
literature indicates that, when learning songs, children first focus on the
linguistic features, then rhythm, and finally the pitch and melodic
attributes. This theorised hierarchy was examined as part of a larger study
of singing development in early childhood in which a longitudinal sample
(n=3D184) were assessed on a variety of vocal pitch matching tasks during
each year of their first three years at school, i.e. at age five, six and
seven years. In each year of testing, the assessment protocol embraced a
specially-designed test battery and two sample songs. The protocol was
constructed so that the test battery items (pitch glides, pitch patterns
and single pitches) were deconstructed features of the two test songs, thus
enabling an analysis to be made of the effects of the task on vocal pitch
matching performance. The results suggest that children enter school with a
clear disposition towards learning the words of the songs. In general, this
ability is not matched by an ability to learn and reproduce the melodic
components of the test songs. It is only in the third year of schooling
that vocal pitch matching in song singing improves, but this particular
ability is still significantly less well developed than that for learning
and reproducing the words.

Young People's Music in the Digital Age A study of computer based creative
music making  by G=F6ran Folkestad, Berner Lindstr=F6m & David J. Hargreaves
Recent technological developments and the increasing impact of the media
mean that listening to music and creative music making constitute a major
and integrated part of many young people's lives.  The aim of the present
article is to describe the process of computer-based composition, and how
this is perceived by young composers. This paper describes a three-year
empirical study of 129 computer-based compositions by 15-16 year-olds.
Computer MIDI-files were systematically collected covering the sequence of
the composition processes step by step: interviews were carried out with
each of the participants, and observations were made of their work.

All the participants succeeded in composing music and in the subsequent
analysis, six qualitatively different ways of creating music were
identified which could be divided into two main categories, HORIZONTAL and
VERTICAL. These categories, devised by the authors in this context, refer
to compositional strategies, not to structures in the music itself. In the
horizontal categories composition and arranging are separate processes,
whereas in the vertical categories composition and arranging are one
integrated process. Some of the differences between these strategies, as
well as the music's character, were found to be related to gender. (p. 1)

Effect of a Sound Exploration Program on Children's Creative Thinking in
Music  by C. Victor Fung
The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of a sound exploration
program on children's creative thinking in music. A random sample of 66
students was selected from 12 urban elementary schools in Minneapolis and
Saint Paul, Minnesota, where a sound exploration program was introduced.
Subjects were first grade participants, second grade participants, and
second grade non-participants. Webster's Measure of Creative Thinking in
Music was used in this posttest-only study. Results showed significant
differences for the three groups in Musical Flexibility, Musical
Originality, and Musical Syntax, but not in Musical Extensiveness. First
and second grade participants received higher mean scores in these three
musical creativity factors than second grade non-participants. Results of
this study suggest that first and second graders may become more ready to
fulfil the potential for music creativity after participating in a
non-traditional sound exploration program. (p. 13)

=46inding a Personal Musical 'Voice': The Place of Improvisation in Music
Education by Ros McMillan
The use of improvisation in music education is becoming more widespread as
teachers discover its value in the learning of musical concepts and skills.
Research studies suggest that much useful investigation could be undertaken
into the processes and products of improvisation, particularly empirical
studies involving musicians at work. A study, which sought to enlarge the
understanding of a personal 'voice' in improvisation, was conducted at the
Victorian College of the Arts. Ten students in the Improvisation stream
were 'followed' through the three years of their degree of Bachelor of
Music (Performance). The results provided a large amount of material on
issues ranging from the influence of members of staff on students' artistic
outcomes, to stylistic preferences and relationships between performing
musicians. This paper examines some of the findings of the study. (p. 20).

Knowing the subject versus knowing the child: striking the right balance
for children aged 7-11 years by Janet Mills
Almost all children in England aged from 11 to 14 years are taught music by
a specialist teacher. On the other hand, children aged from 5 to 7 years
are nearly always taught music by their class teacher. This paper addresses
the issue of how children in the intervening years, that is children aged 7
to 11 years, might best be taught. It focuses on the music teaching in ten
primary schools. Of the three most effective schools in the sample, one
bases its music curriculum on specialist teaching, and the other two use a
system based on class teaching. In the sample as a whole, there is no clear
relationship between the teachers' qualifications in music, and the quality
of their music teaching. (p. 29)

Music Learning - Neurobiological foundations and educational implications
by Wilfried Gruhn
In music education many approaches to learning are developed and practiced.
In this paper the phenomenon of music learning will be discussed in
general. Thereby, learning is understood as the process by which musical
representations are developed in mind. Here it is distinguished between
different types of representation: figural and formal. The basis for this
distinction is founded in recent neurobiological research of music
learning. The text refers to three EEG studies which all focus on the
phenomenon of mental representation. By this, it can be shown that there
are different types of representation reflected by different cortical
activation patterns, depending on the ways of teaching and learning. The
results of the neurobiological measurements call for a change of our
understanding of music learning. (p.36)

Musical Creativity in Childhood - A Research Project in Retrospect by
Bertil Sundin
This paper provides the first English language report on a research project
undertaken from 1960 to 1963 in three kindergartens in Stockholm, Sweden,
with children from 3.6 to 6.6 years of age. The purpose was to learn more
about young children's own musical culture and especially their invented
songs. The study combined ethnographic and quasi-experimental approaches.
The first consisted of naturalistic observations of the spontaneous musical
life of the children, while the second asked children individually to sing
known tunes and to invent their own songs. Parents and teachers were
interviewed and rating scales were used to compare the children's musical
life in different contexts. The songs were transcribed and categorized. The
results imply that musical creativity is relatively independent of both
singing ability, intelligence and parents' musical interest and is more an
expression of a general creative attitude. The results, which were
pioneering for the time, are discussed and compared with more recent
research in the area. (p. 48)
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