3/31/08
Why Study Music?
when...
Music is everywhere
Children learn through incidental learning
What are the benefits?
• Psychological - self-esteem
• Educational - problem solving, working together
• Cultural - learn the identity
• Social - team building, cooperation, behaviors, self-disciple, responsibility, friendships
• Economic - consumer electronic
Comparing/Contrasting Musical Influences
• Family
• Community
• Cultural
• Other
Music Learning and Music Values
Learning: a relatively stable change in behavior, valuing, knowing as a result of experience.
- Enculturation: occurs spontaneously in a given culture
- Training: the result of self-conscious, directed efforts.
(Self=conscious & purposeful
Acts of Learning and Studying
When one learns it is: Always a personal -- an individual process; the necessary condition of studying
When one studies, it is: Deliberate, thru self-guided musical growth; through formal or informal settings
School vs. Life Music Learning
Life Music Learning -- Evaluative insight, knowledge, skills -- less depth,
School Music Learning -- Evaluative insight, knowledge, skills, cognitive capacity - they know how to evaluate and compare, more experiences, greater breadth and/or depth
Narrowing the Gap Between School and Life Music
• By redefining "expertise"
• By motivating students to "study"
• By helping students to value a better "outcome" through music study
GOOD Music Programs
• Emphasize individual and group performance
• Emphasize personal insight and recreative skills
- Children learn to "be themselves" and to be a "good group member"
- reinforces person sensitivity and group contribution
Approach/Avoidance & Attitudes
• Approach /avoidance behaviors tend to be consistent with what we know, believe and value
Gates' "Theory of Music Participation"
• Acquire information to engage in the activity
• Identify oneself the an activity
• Perform the activity-related behaviors
• Use one's resources to support the activity
• Identify with the activity - a conscious sense of individual uniqueness
Musical Expansion and Personal Choice
• From competition -> tolerance
• From dominance -> understanding
The Business of Music Education
• Learners connect musically with a social group
• "It" teachers belonging through music
• "It" helps broaden music preferences , tolerance, & understanding
Music Study helps learners to...
(adapted from James Banks)
• Function within their musical micro-culture
• Function across musical micro-cultures
• Function in the larger musical macro-culture
4/7/08
What are the "Behavioral Indicators" of Motivation?
• Actions
• Feelings
• Thoughts
Four Action (Behavior) Patterns
Choice and preference
Student is intrinsically motivate to engage in an activity when others or rewards are not present. The reward is internal.
Intensity
The degree to which one becomes involved in an activity
Persistence
How long a person "persists" in a choice or activity
• Does a child choose an activity over the "popular" choices?
• Does a child remain engaged in the activity for an extended period? (persistence)
• Does a child repeatedly return to the activity, showing an extended investment in learning?
Quality
Thoughtful and critical engagement while investing in an activity
• Self-regulating behavior should be present
Affect and Cognition
Affect: positive or negative feelings or emotions about doing a thing
• How one feels before and while engaged in a activity
Cognitive: How one things about or talks about the thing or topic
Expectancy X Value
• Atkinson (1957): Advanced a previous theory by Lewin - Level of Aspiration Model
• We choose to do and continue to do the thing we think we can do (expectancy) and value doing
• Variety in our decision making patterns occur when an outcome is uncertain yet predictable
examples: fear of failure, hope for success
Historical Review
* Behavioral theorist: uses external force to influence motivation
• Cognitive theorist: considers internal cognitions as determents of behavior (Piaget's stages of development)
• Social-cognitive theorist: considers cognitions and reaction to the environment
Allport: believed positive or negative attitudes (beliefs, feelings, thoughts) influence motivation
Lwein: father of social-cognitive theory
Applications to Music Teaching and Learning
Tasks and Learning Activities
Maintain student interest with a variety and diversity of tasks
Allow students to choose among a variety of tasks
Use tasks that students can master w/ effort - good balance of skill and challenge
• Examples:Too hard = anxiety, Too easy = boredom
Evaluation/Reward Practices
Evaluate students on task improvement, not overall ability
Ego goals: evaluation focuses on student ability
Task goals: evaluation focuses on individual improvement
When to Increase Student Decision Making
Student "self-regulatory" skills
Can she handle the responsibility e.g., leading a sectional rehearsal
What is his level of autonomy?
Does he monitor his own progress and practice appropriately?
4/14/08
Modes of Inquiry
• Observation - personal experience
• Expert opinion
• Empirical inquiry
• Philosophical inquiry
• Theoretical inquiry
A workable Theory Provides:
• A typology for categorizing (a way to categorize)
• Predictions for future events
• Explanations of past events
• Understanding about what causes events
• The potential for control of events
Areas a Music Theory Should Address:
• Music production
• Music perception
• Music performance
Taetle and Cutietta Article: Learning Theories as Roots of Current Musical Practice and Research
from the New Handbook of Research in Music Teaching and Learning
A theory of music learning involves processes that produce an ongoing change in mental structure as individuals continue to add and modify musical knowledge
• Sensation
• Perception
• Cognition
Developmental and Music Theories Should:
* Reflect the nature of musical behavior
* Be valid across a range of musical activities
• Composering
• Performing
• Audience-listening
* Account for the natural developmental inclinations of individuals and their cultural environment
What a "Good" Theory Should Provide:
Concepts you can understand and use to solve problems that are important to you
Howard Garner on Music Intelligence
Musical abilities or capacities in specific areas
• Aural discrimination
• Singing
• Instrumental playing
Gardner's Definition of Intelligence:
The ability to solve problems
• To deal with new situations
• Not simply making well-practiced responses to familiar situations
The ability to learn
• To learn and use abstractions that involve words and other symbols
Intelligence vs. Domain or Discipline
Domain or Discipline
• An organized activity in a culture
• You can array people in terms of how expert they are in a particular domain or discipline
* History, violin performance, gardening, physics, are domains or disciplines
Intelligence is a biological potential
• Domains call on certain "Intelligences" - often more than one
* Violin playing may require musical,. kinesthetic, and other intelligences.
Behavioral models
• stimulus/response
Cognitive Models
• Internal process and one's readiness for new stimuli
* Maturation, individual capabilities
• Examine individuals and their response to individual tasks
Piaget
Learners actively construct knowledge on the basis of their reaction to sensory stimuli
* Consider babies -> toddlers -> pre-school...
* Reactions to sensory stimuli and the construction of knowledge
Bruner: Representation and Learning
• Enactive representation
• Iconic representation
• Symbolic representation
Constructivist
• Relationships that connect the learner to internal and external environments
• Examines the learner as an individual and as a member of a particular group
4/21/08
Direct Instruction Defined
Instructional processes that involve carefully constructed sequences to archive explicit learning outcomes.
Sink says that there is not enough research to really show that direct instruction works.
Instructivist vs. Constructivist Approach
Instructivist: teacher-centered instruction
Teacher leads and directs students to acquire and generate specific, clearly defined knowledge
Constructivist: student-centered
problem solving, holisitic activities, cooperative learning, discovery learning
Measures Behaviors from Student-Teacher Interactions
• Less Emphasis on the classroom environment
• Examines teaching cycles
1. Task presentation
2. Student response
3. Feedback
Teacher Centered
Children acquire and generate specific knowledge
• Concepts: knowledge of
• Proposition: why
• Strategies: how
• Operations: how to
Effective Teaching -> On-task behavior -> Learning
Learned Teaching Behaviors and Skills
Task presentation and teacher talk
Modeling
Teacher Intensity
Feedback - positive and negative
Approvals: academic, social
Teacher Intensity
• The sustained control of the student/teacher interaction
• Efficient, accurate presentation of subject matter
• Enthusiastic affect and pacing
Hi vs. Lo Magnitude
Increased student attention attributed to:
• High amounts of group and individual eye contact
• High amounts of approving body movements
• High amounts of approving feedback
Robert Duke article - "A letter to music educators" - UPDATE 1999
Rehearsal Frames
• Period of concentrated attention and effort
• Attention and efforts directed toward the "skill" of music making
- Students play or sing
- Teacher instruct and evaluate
• A new rehearsal frame begins when the music teacher identifies a skill or concept that needs to be improved or expanded;
• It ends when the target goal is accomplished or when work on a new goal is initiated
Questions to ask:
What do students need to learn?
What do I need to teach?
How will I teach it?
May 5, 2008
Musical Ability
• Suggests a common factor of set of factors exist among the folks with musical ability.
What is Musical Ability?
• Acquired cognitive expertise
• At its core: the ability to make sense of music
When One Makes Sense of Musical Sequences:
• He remembers music that conforms to a cultural language
• She makes plausible substitutions when asked to recall music she has just heard
• He judges whether or not a given musical sequence is acceptable
• She correctly identifies the consensual mood or emotion of a passage
Social Identity and Responses to Less Acceptable Music:
• Introducing children to less accepted styles - classical
Music Ability
• Clearly evident by age 10, regardless of training
How does someone learn to make sense of music?
• Through enculturation
• Through repetition and familiarity
• Processing a large number of examples
• Through music performance
Technical vs. Expressive Ability
• Musically interesting performances: slight fluctuations in duration, loudness, pitch, timbre
How do we make sense of music?
• Composing, performing, arranging, improvising, listening
Expressive Repertoire (p. 268)
• Becomes deeply internalized
• Performers differ in the distribution and intensity of their expressive devices
High level music performers
• Have the dual abilities: they are both technically and expressively excellent
How do we develop musical ability?
• Practicing
• Parental involvement & encouragement
• Teacher encouragement - Making it "fun" early on and not "achievement oriented"
Motivation
• Intrinsic: develops from intense pleasurable experiences with music
* Leads to a deep personal commitment to music
• Extrinsic: concerned with achieving certain goals
* Winning competitions
5/19/08
Meaningful Life Skills
• Literacy
• Economic sufficency
• Independent living
Transition
• The movement of individuals across a variety of school and non-school environments throughout life.
National Standards for Music Education
• Sing
• Perform music on instruments
• Compose and arrange
• Read music
• Listen to and evaluate music
• Describe and analyze relationships between music and other arts
Transfer Point: 1
• Students should participate in music experiences and learn similar skills and knowledge similar to those valued by adults.
• The more similar tow situations are , the more likely that learning in one situation will transfer to the other situation.
Transfer Point: 2
• Students should have frequent opportunities to practice the smale skills and tasks
Transfer Point: 3
• Students will learn fewer things more deeply and thoroughly.
• The more deeply and thoroughly something is learned, the more likely it is that learning will transfer to new situations.
Transfer Point: 4
• Students will learn meaningful principles rather than isolated facts and skills
• Meaningful principles will more easily transfer to new situation than rote learning of isolated facts and skills
Rich vs. Limited Musical Lives
• Adults with rich musical lives: choose form a variety of music experiences at different times throughout their lives
• Adults with limited musical lives: enjoy passive experiences with music (background music or passive music listening)
Learning Principles
Workable theories: predict, describe, explain learning
Music learning: produce, perform, perceive
Gordon's theory explains that students should be able to perceive music through audiation
Theories: Help to Predict, Describe and Explain learning
Cognitivists
Developmental (certain things happen at a certain point in life)
Piaget, Gardner
Behaviorist
Environment, stimuli, positive feedback
Skinner, Madsen
Constructivists
Environment and developmental
Dewey?
To make sense of musical sequences:
• Remember music which conforms to a cultural language
• Make plausible substitutions when asked to recall music we have just heard
• Judge whether or not a give musical sequence is acceptable
• Correctly identify the consensual mood or emotion of a passage