Intellect is happy to announce that the Journal of Popular music Education
2.3 is now available! For more information about the issue, click here >>
https://bit.ly/2CmBwLH
*Content*
*Editors’ introduction*
Authors: Gareth Dylan Smith And Bryan Powell
*Haphazard pathways: Students’ perceptions of their routes to music study
in higher education in the United Kingdom*
Authors: Zack Moir And Bryden Stillie
This article reports on a qualitative study, which explored perceptions of
fourteen first-year undergraduate music students in the United Kingdom
regarding their secondary school music education as preparation for
undertaking degree-level music study. The authors (both lecturers in
popular music at a UK university) were motivated to undertake this research
to explore issues of alignment between school music and music degrees in
the United Kingdom and the pathways students constructed through this
transition. Data pertain to three key areas: students’ perceptions of the
extent that school music courses prepared them for university application,
students’ descriptions of their extracurricular music activities, and areas
that students would like to change about their secondary music courses.
Findings suggest that all interviewees felt underprepared for university
study by their secondary music courses, yet differences in perception exist
between students who were accepted to ‘classical’ music degrees, and those
who went on to study popular music.
*Modern band: A descriptive study of teacher perceptions*
Authors: Clint Randles
This study is a descriptive evaluation of the work of Little Kids Rock, a
US non-profit organization that provided at the time of data collection
free music instruction and instruments to over 187,754 students, 1120
teachers, in 30 cities around the United States. Music teachers (N=62 of
1120, 68% response rate) completed an end-of-the-year assessment of their
perceptions of the learning outcomes of students involved with the
programme. According to teachers’ perceptions: a majority of the programmes
around the country utilize the acoustic guitar (94%), students have
performed a few songs that they choose (66%), and students appear to be
more engaged (76%) in their music classes. However, teachers believe that a
majority of students have not composed an original song (68%), and cannot
improvise on an instrument (68%). Implications for the future of the
programme include better equipping teachers to teach songwriting and
improvisation.
*Towards an understanding of how creativities shape songs and build culture*
Authors: Danny Halpin
Creativity is now widely recognized as being an important factor in shaping
culture. From songwriters to government ministers, many people seek to
improve productivity by fostering creativity. However, among many of these
social actors the nature of creativity is misunderstood, negatively
affecting career opportunities, emotional well-being and quality of
education. Through a case study and literature review, this article seeks
to further the understanding of the influence of multiple creativities on
popular music in the United Kingdom, demonstrating how musicians
collaborate creatively and how researchers, educators and public officials
all contribute to the domain, improving opportunities for artists and
sharpening Britain’s competitive edge in a globalized world. It also
concludes that creativity must not simply be seen as another source of
capital above its uses for improving personal lives and ambitions.
*Dynamics of digital media in school music contexts*
Authors: Tess Nielsen
This study focuses on participants’ behaviours and practices as they
discovered, produced and shared music using digital devices. Three broad
areas of engagement include students’ perception of digital music
reception, self-production and transmission. A
constructivist–interpretivist viewpoint frames the theoretical perspective
of the study. Interviews and observations of four high school students and
their music teacher comprise the data. Detailed accounts illustrate the
perceptions of the participants, building a thick description. The study
also considers what a music teacher understood about her students’
out-of-school musical interactions. The findings are represented in a
visual model demonstrating the convergence and divergence of digital music
engagement in a high school setting. Themes of experiencing music for
personal identity, creativity and popular culture intermix in classroom and
informal learning contexts. The outcomes may suggest possible paths for
connecting in-school and out-of-school music learning with digital devices.
*Finding pedagogical value in Australian contemporary popular music: A
comparative case study of electric guitar compositional styles*
Authors: Daniel Lee And Bill Baker And Nick Haywood
How do educators ascertain the pedagogical value of a musical composition
for inclusion as curriculum exemplars? A number of factors contribute,
including: canonic status, historical and cultural significance, popularity
and aesthetic values. This comparative case study examines a number of
Australian compositions from within the scope of contemporary popular music
(CPM) looking for musical richness as a factor of pedagogical value in
modern guitar curricula. Using The Beatles’ song ‘Eleanor Rigby’ as a
comparative basis, musicological methodologies of theoretical analysis are
applied to six Australian CPM compositions to evaluate their pedagogical
value. Discussion of the musical richness discovered in each composition
leads to conclusions regarding their value within a guitar programme of an
Australian CPM school curriculum.
*Higher Ed Rocks: Don’t fret the small stuff*
Authors: Virginia Wayman Davis
This article presents an account of the Modern Band Higher Education
Fellowship – a week of professional development workshops for music teacher
educators in the United States. The workshop focused on Modern Band
instruments and curriculum, underpinned by Music as a Second Language
pedagogy. Fellowship participants all took part in a gig at a local venue,
performing on instruments with which they had varying degrees of
familiarity – embracing the Modern Band ethos of participatory learning,
approximation and curating a low-anxiety environment. Among key benefits of
the workshop, the author notes improved aural skills, stronger orientation
towards student-centred learning experiences and re-engaging with
music-making for fun. Fellows returned to their colleges, committed to
embedding Modern Band into their undergraduate syllabi. The author urges
other music education professors to attend a Modern Band Higher Education
Fellowship.
*Popular music education: A white paper by the Association for Popular
Music Education*
Authors: Gareth Dylan Smith And Bryan Powell And David Lee Fish And Irwin
Kornfeld And Kat Reinhert
In this white paper, board members of the Association for Popular Music
Education set out practices, approaches and domains that account for
popular music education as understood in the present moment in largely
English-speaking contexts. Popular music education has come of age as a
field, overlapping with fields including popular music studies, music
education, music business, music technology and music production, community
music, media studies, ethnomusicology and communication studies. Popular
music education is diverse and inclusive. It also has deep commercial and
industrial connections. It includes school teaching, music teacher
education and Higher music education. Popular music education scholarship
and practice are expanding. The authors invite responses to this white
paper in order to engender discussion and curate a community of
practitioners and scholars.
*Book Reviews*
Authors: S. Alexander Reed And Seth Pendergast And Patricia Shehan Campbell
- Radicalism & Music: An Introduction to the Music Cultures of
al-Qa’ida, Racist Skinheads, Christian-Affiliated Radicals, and Eco-Animal
Rights Militants, Jonathan Pieslak (2015)
- Engaging in Community Music: An Introduction, Lee Higgins and Lee
Willingham (2017)
- The Music Learning Profiles Project, Radio Cremata, Joesph M. Pignato,
Bryan PowEll and Gareth D. Smith (2018)
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