Learners’ Identity Through Soundscape Composition: Extending the Pedagogies of Loris Malaguzzi With Music Pedagogy (original) (raw)

Cantarelli Vita, J. (2016). Listening To Their Voices: An Ethnographic Study of Children's Values and Meaning Ascribed to Learning World Music in Elementary School General Music (Master's Thesis). Retrieved from ProQuest Dissertations and Theses database. (UMI 10110170)

The primary purpose of this ethnographic study is to examine the values and meaning children ascribe to learning world music in an elementary school general music program. This research seeks to explore the potential of world music pedagogies for deepening children’s understanding of music and its sociocultural context more completely. The participants in this study included fourth-grade students and their music teacher who designed and taught a Music-Culture Curricular Unit on Afro-Brazilian traditions. Data include field notes of music classes collected during seven weeks of observations, focus group and individual interviews with fourth-grade students, audio and video recordings, conversations with the music teacher, documents, and a researcher journal. Children’s voices come alive in interview excerpts and narrative descriptions of the music classes. For the children in this study learning world music meant (a) discovering new sonic features, (b) engaging with language and history, and (c) connecting to the world. The values children ascribed to learning world music were (a) making music together, (b) learning about the sonic features of music, and (c) learning about the cultural context of the music. A deeper understanding of the values and meaning children ascribe to music has the potential to promote a holistic music education that features musicianship, creative thinking, and knowledge of history and culture.

A Sound-based Education for Listening, Appreciating and Co-creating the Soundscapes We Live In.

2019

The aim of this book is to share methodology and teaching approaches as well as to provide indicative resources that will enable students of all stages of life to develop a better understanding of their home soundscapes as well as of the soundscapes from three other European countries. The soundscapes presented in this book cover a spectrum, which extends from rather nature-dominated habitats to primarily machine-dominated habitats. Certain traditional songs and unique place-specific language idioms, or instrumental timbres and practices -given their close connections with local soundscapes as sources of inspiration- will also be presented in this book (see Dionyssiou, Chapters 3 and 6, and Etmektsoglou, Chapter 7). More specifically, the themes addressed are organized in two main parts. Both parts are explicitly or more implicitly related to listening practices connected with soundscape awareness. However, the first part focuses more on theoretical and methodological issues of an education focused on soundscape awareness and the second part presents projects and activities focusing on soundscape awareness, placing an emphasis on those carried out from 2017-2019 at the Ionian University. The second part is followed by four Appendices, which include a large variety of supplementary material for the seven chapters of the book. A short outline of the chapters follows.

Listening to the inner soundscape: A pedagogical tool for opening minds to sound-based music.

This paper describes the context and methodology for research into developing heightened listening as a pedagogical and compositional tool. It builds on my previous research into whether heightened listening (which is defined as a close concentration on sound that allows for external associations with the source) can be effective as an access tool for electroacoustic music. The paper describes the results of my previous project and outlines how my current research aims to build on this to help facilitate a greater interest in sound-based music, for school children, through creative practice. In the current research writing exercises are being used to help participants listen to their ‘inner soundscapes’ (Tzedaki, 2011). They are then required to create their own narratives and, when composing their pieces, use sounds that will support that narrative. In working this way, participants can begin to make the step to listen as composers by internalizing their initial listening, rather than just as listeners, an approach advocated by the composer Michelle Nagai (Nagai, 2011). It is hoped that through this process a deeper interest in sound-based music will be cultivated.

Transient Soundscape Production: Creative and Pedagogical Significance for Educators and Practitioners

Sound Effects, 2021

Over the past decade, there has been a steady increase of scholarly output examining the multidisciplinary, creative, and theoretical aspects of sound and music production in the recording studio and beyond (Zagorski-Thomas & Bourbon, 2020; Bennett & Bates, 2019; Hepworth- Sawyer, Hodgson, & Marrington, 2019; Thompson, 2019; Zagorski-Thomas, 2014; Frith & Zagorski-Thomas, 2012). Accordingly, a broad range of literature examines sound as a widespread cultural phenomenon (Papenburg & Schulze, 2016) and an essential source for pedagogical and ethnographic modeling in music technology education (Bell, 2018). Advances in technology make the “studio,” long viewed as a site of artistic and commercial production, available to a broader group of composers, musicians, and artists. Similarly, portable digital recorders afford sound artists and fi eld recordists an expansive range of choices to conduct soundscape research and creative practice. What emerges is a hybrid “composer- producer” identity and a studio’s function in the artistic process. This growth is the rise of an independent and transient practice in soundscape production among multidisciplinary composers and musicians. This article advocates for an updated notion of soundscape composition that integrates fi eld recordings, studio production, and collaboration from musicians representing a broad range of stylistic infl uences. Positioning the studio as a site of cultural production and creativity has implications for how soundscape production is taught to young composers. The author argues for a more inclusive, process-oriented view on both creativity and the places where musicians, composers, and producers work. The article includes a case study from the author’s recent album project, narrative analysis, concluding with a discussion on the pedagogical implications of independent soundscape production in education

Soundscape Compositions for Art Classrooms

This thesis explores ways in which the process of listening, recording, and editing everyday soundscapes can be incorporated in the art classroom. For this study, I designed and carried out two series of educational workshops; firstly, with a group of students at an all-girls high school in Montreal; and secondly, with a group of art and music teachers from QAIS (Quebec Association of Independent Schools). The data generated from these workshops has been used to develop adaptable educational interventions for teaching this process for Art Education. The data also indicates that this creative practice has a number of salient features for learning and art education. For one, listening deeply to familiar spaces such as a school or classroom can shift and expand our conscious awareness of these surroundings. Furthermore, using technological devices to listen, record, and edit sound can allow students to experience quotidian environments in a different way. This can deepen students’ engagement with common environments by asking them to notice and creatively explore the sounds that define their daily experiences.

Music is Waiting For You: The Lived Experience of Children\u27s Musical Identity

2012

“MUSIC IS WAITING FOR YOU:” THE LIVED EXPERIENCE OF CHILDREN’S MUSICAL IDENTITY by L. Michelle Mercier-De Shon This phenomenological study of lived experience (Van Manen, 1990) explored the perspectives of four 4th grade children as they live in and live through music to formulate their musical identities. Framed within perspectives of symbolic interaction theory (Blumer, 1969), communities of practice (Wenger, 1998), and figured worlds (Holland, et al., 1998), data were collected using methods consistent with qualitative inquiry. These included: observations of quasi-formal music learning settings, in musical playgroups and during professional musicians’ presentations; close observations of children’s daily school lives; and planned discussion group interviews (O’Reilly, 2005). Findings emerged from the data via a bricolage of existentialist (Morrisette, 1999; Holyroyd, 2001) and interpretative phenomenological analyses (Smith, 2003). Children in my study explored and expressed the...