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- Genre: Art--Psychology.
- Genre: Music--Performance.
- Creators: Arizona State University
Description
The purpose of this study was to investigate the attitudes of high band directors in the United States toward solo and ensemble activities. Independent variables such as teaching experience, level of education, MENC region in which directors taught, personal solo and ensemble activity experience, teaching assignment, and director-centered external factors (supplemental contracts, teaching evaluations, program awards) were used to investigate potential differences in attitudinal responses. Subjects were high school band directors (N = 557) chosen through a stratified random sample by state. Participation in the study included completing an online researcher-designed questionnaire that gathered demographic information as well as information regarding directors' attitudes towards benefits from student participation in solo and ensemble activities, the importance of such activities to directors, and attitudes towards student participation in local, regional, and state solo and ensemble festivals and contests. One-way analyses of variance and two-way multivariate analyses of variance were conducted to investigate potential differences in responses according to various independent variables. Significant differences were found in responses to statements of the importance of solo and ensemble to directors and of solo and ensemble festivals and contests according to region, solo and ensemble experience, and director-centered external factors. No significant differences were found for statements of director's attitudes toward benefits of student participation in solo and ensemble activities according to any independent variables. Results indicate that directors understand and believe strongly in the benefits of solo and ensemble activities to students, but factors such as time, job demands, band program expectations, and festival and contest adjudication, format, and timing may hinder directors' inclusion of solo and ensemble activities as an integral part of their program. Further research is suggested to investigate directors' attitudes within individual states as well as ways to integrate solo and ensemble activities into daily band rehearsals.
ContributorsMeyers, Brian D (Author) / Sullivan, Jill (Thesis advisor) / Busg, Jeffrey (Committee member) / Schmidt, Margaret (Committee member) / Stauffer, Sandra (Committee member) / Tobias, Evan (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
As the desire for innovation increases, individuals and companies seek reliable ways to encourage their creative side. There are many office superstitions about how creativity works, but few are based on psychological science and even fewer have been tested empirically. One of the most prevalent superstitions is the use of objects to inspire creativity or even make a creative room. It is important to test this kind of notion so workplaces can find reliable ways to be innovative, but also because psychology lacks a breadth of literature on how environmental cues interact with people to shape their mental state. This experiment seeks to examine those gaps and fill in the next steps needed for examining at how multiple objects prime creativity. Participants completed two creativity tasks: one for idea generation and one that relies on insight problem solving, the Remote Association Task. There were four priming conditions that relied on objects: a zero object condition, a four neutral (office) objects condition, a single artistic object condition, and finally a four artistic objects condition. There were no differences found between groups for either type of task or in mood or artistic experience. The number of years a participant spent in the United States, however, did correlate with mood, idea generation scores, and insight problem scores. This potentially demonstrates that performance on idea generation and insight tasks rely on the tasks created and culture.
ContributorsJariwala, Shree (Author) / Branaghan, Russell (Thesis advisor) / Cooke, Nancy J. (Committee member) / Song, Hyunjin (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013