Matching Items (25)
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- All Subjects: Music Education
- Creators: Tobias, Evan
Description
This study utilized symbolic interaction as a framework to examine the impact of mobility on four veteran elementary general music teachers' identities, roles, and perceptions of role support. Previous research has focused on teacher identity formation among preservice and novice teachers; veteran teachers are less frequently represented in the literature. Teacher mobility research has focused on student achievement, teachers' reasons for moving, and teacher attrition. The impact of mobility on veteran teachers' identities, roles, and perceptions of role support has yet to be considered. A multiple case design was employed for this study. The criteria for purposeful selection of the participants were elementary general music teachers who had taught for at least ten years, who had changed teaching contracts and taught in at least two different schools, and who were viewed as effective music educators by fine arts coordinators. Data were collected over a period of eight months through semi-structured interviews, email correspondence, observations, review of videotapes of the participants' teaching in previous schools, and collection of artifacts. Data were analyzed within and across cases. The cross-case analysis revealed themes within the categories of identity, role, and role support for the participants. The findings suggest that the participants perceived their music teacher roles as multi-dimensional. They claimed their core identities remained stable over time; however, shifts in teacher identity occurred throughout their years as teachers. The participants asserted that mobility at the start of their careers had a positive impact because they each were challenged to solidify their own teacher identities and music teacher roles in varied school contexts. Mobility negatively impacted role and teacher practices during times when the participants adjusted to new school climates and role expectations. Role support varied depending upon school context, and the participants discovered active involvement in the school community was an effective means of seeking and acquiring role support. Reflection experiences in music teacher preparation programs, as well as mentoring and professional development geared toward teacher identity formation and role maturation, may assist teachers in matching their desired school context with their teacher identities and perceptions of the music teacher role.
ContributorsGray, Lori F (Author) / Stauffer, Sandra (Committee member) / Schmidt, Margaret (Committee member) / Sullivan, Jill (Committee member) / Bush, Jeffrey (Committee member) / Tobias, Evan (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
The purposes of this study were (a) to develop a reliable and valid measure of secondary student attitudes toward band teacher turnover using the Thurstone (1928) equal-appearing interval scale as a model, and (b) to administer this measurement tool to determine attitudes of high school band students toward teacher turnover. This procedure included collecting statements about an imagined teacher turnover from students in the population (N = 216) and having student judges (N = 95) sort the statements into eleven categories based on how positive, neutral, or negative, each statement was perceived. The judging results were then analyzed, and 29 statements were selected for inclusion in the final survey, which was completed by students (N = 521) from 10 randomly selected high schools in Arizona. Student responses were analyzed and compared by the independent variables of gender, grade level, and band teacher turnover experience, to determine if significant differences existed. Results indicated that the overall students' attitudes toward teacher turnover are neutral. One significant difference was found in the slightly positive attitudes of students in the year immediately following a band teacher turnover. This only lasts a year, as students in the second year of a teacher turnover were found to have comparable attitudes to students who have not experienced a new teacher transition. Findings also suggest seniors may have a different perspective than other students toward teacher turnover.
ContributorsKloss, Thomas E (Author) / Sullivan, Jill (Thesis advisor) / Stauffer, Sandra (Committee member) / Schmidt, Margaret (Committee member) / Bush, Jeffrey (Committee member) / Tobias, Evan (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of an after-school music program on music underachievers' musical achievement, social development and self-esteem. A true-experimental pretest-posttest design was used and included 14 hours of treatment time. The subjects (N = 66), fifth-grade students were randomly selected from the lowest quartile of scores on Colwell's Music Achievement Test (MAT), which was administered to all fifth-grade students (N = 494) in three Korean elementary schools. The treatment group (n =33) experienced a movement-based after-school music program (MAMP); the control group (n = 33) did not receive the after-school music program. Measurements included sections of Colwell's Music Achievement Test (MAT), Kim's Social Development Scale (SDS), and Hare's Self-Esteem Scale (HSS). The researcher and music teachers of each school administered all measurements. Fourteen treatment lessons occurred over fourteen weeks. One-way analyses of covariance tests were used to test for post-test differences between groups. A significant difference was found in music achievement total scores of the MAT with the treatment group scoring higher scores than the control group. There were no significant differences for interval and meter discrimination tests of MAT. There were no significant differences between treatment and control groups in the post-test scores of the Social Development Scale (SDS) and the Self-Esteem Scale (HSS). However, for both tests, mean scores increased for the treatment group and decreased for the control group. Results from this study suggest that a movement-based after-school music program promotes music underachievers' musical growth and may also support music underachievers' social development and self-esteem.
ContributorsYun, Gwan Ki (Author) / Stauffer, Sandra L (Thesis advisor) / Bush, Jeffrey B (Committee member) / Schmidt, Margaret T (Committee member) / Sullivan, Jill M (Committee member) / Tobias, Evan (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
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
This study examines the experiences of participants enrolled in an online community college jazz history course. I surveyed the participants before the course began and observed them in the online space through the duration of the course. Six students also participated in interviews during and after the course. Coded data from the interviews, surveys, and recorded discussion posts and journal entries provided evidence about the nature of interaction and engagement in learning in an online environment. I looked for evidence either supporting or detracting from a democratic online learning environment, concentrating on the categories of student engagement, freedom of expression, and accessibility. The data suggested that the participants' behaviors in and abilities to navigate the online class were influenced by their pre-existing native media habits. Participants' reasons for enrolling in the online course, which included convenience and schedule flexibility, informed their actions and behaviors in the class. Analysis revealed that perceived positive student engagement did not contribute to a democratic learning environment but rather to an easy, convenient experience in the online class. Finally, the data indicated that participants' behaviors in their future lives would not be affected by the online class in that their learning experiences were not potent enough to alter or inform their behavior in society. As online classes gain popularity, the ability of these classes to provide meaningful learning experiences must be questioned. Students in this online jazz history class presented, at times, a façade of participation and community building but demonstrated a lack of sincerity and interest in the course. The learning environment supported accessibility and freedom of expression to an extent, but students' engagement with their peers was limited. Overall, this study found a need for more research into the quality of online classes as learning platforms that support democracy, student-to-student interaction, and community building.
ContributorsHunter, Robert W. (Author) / Stauffer, Sandra L (Thesis advisor) / Tobias, Evan (Thesis advisor) / Bush, Jeffrey (Committee member) / Kocour, Michael (Committee member) / Pilafian, Sam (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
This study investigates ways in which music teachers make personal sense of their professional selves and their perceptions of their places within the broader landscape of music education relative to other types of music teachers in school and community settings. A social phenomenological framework based on the writing of Alfred Schutz was used to examine how participants constructed a sense of self in their social worlds and how they both shaped and were shaped by their social worlds. Eight music teachers participated in this study and represented differing types of music teaching careers, including: public school general music teaching and ensemble directing; independent studio teaching and teaching artistry; studio lessons, classes, and ensembles at community music centers; church ensemble directing; and other combinations of music teaching jobs throughout school and community settings. Data were collected from in-depth interviews, observations of the music teachers in their various teaching roles, and artifacts related to their music teaching positions. Research questions included: Who do the participants conceive of themselves to be as music professionals and music teachers; How do they construct and enact their professional selves, including their teaching selves; How is their construction of professional self, including teaching self, supported and sustained by interactions in their social worlds; and, What implications does this have for the music profession as a whole? After developing a professional portrait of each participant, analysis revealed an overall sense of professional self and various degrees of three role-taking selves: performing, teaching, and musical. Analysis also considered sense of self in relation to social worlds, including consociates, contemporaries, predecessors, and successors, and the extent to which performing, teaching, and musical selves were balanced, harmonized, or reconciled for each participant. Social worlds proved influential in terms of participants' support for sense of self. Participants who enacted the most harmonized, reconciled senses of self appeared to have a professional self that was grounded in a strong sense of musical self, enabling them to think and act flexibly. Participants whose professional selves were dominated by a strong sense of teaching or performing self seemed confined by the structures of their social world particular to teaching or performing, lacked a sense of musical self, and were less able to think and act flexibly. Findings suggest that active construction of consociate relationships throughout varied social worlds can support a balanced, reconciled conception of self, which informs teaching practice and furthers the ability to act in entrepreneurial ways.
ContributorsBucura, Elizabeth (Author) / Stauffer, Sandra (Thesis advisor) / Landes, Heather (Committee member) / Tobias, Evan (Committee member) / Schmidt, Margaret (Committee member) / Sullivan, Jill (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
The purpose of this study was to investigate the attitudes, preferences, and practices of Arizona high school choral directors towards sight-singing skills, and student success in group sight-singing evaluations, the teaching of sight singing including preference for a specific sight-singing system, and the instructional practices employed in daily rehearsals. High school choral directors from the state of Arizona (N = 86) completed an online researcher-designed questionnaire that gathered demographic information as well as information regarding directors' attitudes towards sight-singing instruction, which exercises are used for sight-singing instruction, and directors' self-perceived ability not only to sight sing but also to teach sight singing. Independent variables such as teaching experience, level of education, the system they were trained to use as a student, the system they currently use in the classroom, their self-perceived ability to sight sing, their self-perceived ability to teach sight singing, their choir's sight-singing rating at festival, and their daily instructional practices (as measured by minutes per week of sight-singing instruction) were used to investigate potential differences in attitudinal responses. 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 sight-singing instruction according to level of teaching experience and time spent on sight-singing instruction in the classroom. No significant differences were found for statements of directors' attitudes toward sight-singing instruction according to level of education or prior training. Results indicate that Arizona high school directors are a seasoned and highly education group of professionals who understand and believe strongly that sight-singing instruction should be a part of their choral music rehearsals. These directors use a variety of systems and resources to teach sight-singing and all dedicate time to sight-singing each week in their rehearsals. Despite the overwhelming support for teaching sight-singing in daily choral rehearsals, there is a lack of participation in choral adjudication festivals where group sight singing is assessed. Further research is suggested to investigate the lack of participation of Arizona high school choral teachers in the group sight-singing component of the state choral adjudication festivals.
ContributorsFarenga, Justine (Author) / Sullivan, Jill (Thesis advisor) / Stauffer, Sandra (Committee member) / Tobias, Evan (Committee member) / Scmidt, Margaret (Committee member) / Schildkret, David (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
Jazz continues, into its second century, as one of the most important musics taught in public middle and high schools. Even so, research related to how students learn, especially in their earliest interactions with jazz culture, is limited. Weaving together interviews and observations of junior and senior high school jazz players and teachers, private studio instructors, current university students majoring in jazz, and university and college jazz faculty, I developed a composite sketch of a secondary school student learning to play jazz. Using arts-based educational research methods, including the use of narrative inquiry and literary non-fiction, the status of current jazz education and the experiences by novice jazz learners is explored. What emerges is a complex story of students and teachers negotiating the landscape of jazz in and out of early twenty-first century public schools. Suggestions for enhancing jazz experiences for all stakeholders follow, focusing on access and the preparation of future jazz teachers.
ContributorsKelly, Keith B (Author) / Stauffer, Sandra (Thesis advisor) / Tobias, Evan (Committee member) / Kocour, Michael (Committee member) / Sullivan, Jill (Committee member) / Schmidt, Margaret (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
This philosophical inquiry explores the work of philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari and posits applications to music education. Through the concepts of multiplicities, becoming, bodies without organs, smooth spaces, maps, and nomads, Deleuze and Guattari challenge prior and current understandings of existence. In their writings on art, education, and how might one live, they assert a world consisting of variability and motion. Drawing on Deleuze and Guattari's emphasis on time and difference, I posit the following questions: Who and when are we? Where are we? When is music? When is education? Throughout this document, their philosophical figuration of a rhizome serves as a recurring theme, highlighting the possibilities of complexity, diverse connections, and continual processes. I explore the question "When and where are we?" by combining the work of Deleuze and Guattari with that of other authors. Drawing on these ideas, I posit an ontology of humans as inseparably cognitive, embodied, emotional, social, and striving multiplicities. Investigating the question "Where are we?" using Deleuze and Guattari's writings as well as that of contemporary place philosophers and other writers reveals that humans exist at the continually changing confluence of local and global places. In order to engage with the questions "When is music?" and "When is education?" I inquire into how humans as cognitive, embodied, emotional, social, and striving multiplicities emplaced in a glocalized world experience music and education. In the final chapters, a philosophy of music education consisting of the ongoing, interconnected processes of complicating, considering, and connecting is proposed. Complicating involves continually questioning how humans' multiple inseparable qualities and places integrate during musical and educative experiences. Considering includes imagining the multiple directions in which connections might occur as well as contemplating the quality of potential connections. Connecting involves assisting students in forming variegated connections between themselves, their multiple qualities, and their glocal environments. Considering a rhizomatic philosophy of music education includes continually engaging in the integrated processes of complicating, considering, and connecting. Through such ongoing practices, music educators can promote flourishing in the lives of students and the experiences of their multiple communities.
ContributorsRicherme, Lauren Kapalka (Author) / Stauffer, Sandra (Thesis advisor) / Gould, Elizabeth (Committee member) / Schmidt, Margaret (Committee member) / Sullivan, Jill (Committee member) / Tobias, Evan (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
The purpose of this multiple case study was to investigate what students in three high school music groups perceived as most meaningful about their participation. I also examined the role that context played in shaping students' perceptions, and sought potential principles underlying meaning and value in instrumental ensembles. Over the course of six months I conducted a series of in-depth, semi-structured interviews with six student wind ensemble members, five student guitar class members, and six jazz band members at three high schools in Winnipeg, Canada. I interviewed the participants' music teachers and school principals, observed rehearsals and performances, and spoke informally with parents and peers. Drawing upon praxial and place philosophies, I examined students' experiences within the context of each music group, and looked for themes across the three groups. What students perceived to be meaningful about their participation was multifaceted and related to fundamental human concerns. Students valued opportunities to achieve, to form and strengthen relationships, to construct identities as individuals and group members, to express themselves and communicate with others, and to engage with and through music. Although these dimensions were common to students in all three groups, students experienced and made sense of them differently, and thus experienced meaningful participation in multiple, variegated ways. Context played a substantial role in shaping not only the dimensions of meanings most salient to participants but also the ways that music experiences became meaningful for those involved. What students value and find meaningful about their participation in instrumental music education has been neither well documented nor thoroughly explored. This study raises questions about the ways that meaningful musical engagement might extend beyond the boundaries of school, and contributes student perspectives sorely needed in ongoing conversations concerning the relevance of music education in students' lives.
ContributorsCape, Janet (Author) / Stauffer, Sandra L (Thesis advisor) / Bush, Jeffrey (Committee member) / Schmidt, Margaret (Committee member) / Sullivan, Jill (Committee member) / Tobias, Evan (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012