Using vernacular to drive secondary instrument proficiency

This poster was presented at the 2016 National Association for Music Education Research and Teacher Education Conference

This presentation is designed to describe and illustrate the activities and practices within the String Band Project curriculum unit for pre-service music education students and to provide literature support for the organization and choice of curricular activities. The curriculum project begins by the “whole-part-whole”, a variation on rote style, process of learning songs idiomatic to string instrument playing. In addition to this, students are asked to identify a song from their music vernacular from which they can create a lead sheet and brief comprehensive musicianship profile (CMP). Students from a string techniques or string pedagogy class then are grouped into small 3 to 4 person ensembles, or “string bands”, in order to prepare for performances of collected songs that will be shared on YouTube or another video sharing website. In addition to having a compiled a set of song material specifically arranged and pedagogically analyzed for string teaching, students will have also had a chance to perform various melodies, baselines, and improvisations in semi-authentic performance settings. Giving music education undergraduate students the experience with arranging and organizing small improvised performances allows them a structured space to think creatively about performance and the teaching process.

Informal learning practices in the teaching and music making of music teachers

This poster was presented at the 2015 SMTE National Symposium in Greensboro, NC

Informal learning is often seen as having a lack of direction and is characteristically not outcome driven. Although goals and outcomes may not be clearly defined, the benefits of this type of learning are clearly described by several researchers. An important delineation to make is the difference between learning settings for informal and formal music making. Often, informal music making takes place in the form of musical sessions, and participants are engaged in a social music activity. Through this engagement, participants are actively defining a musical self as well as creating an important “social network of like-minded people” (Waldron and Veblen, 2009, p. 66).

Professionally I have yearned to understand the importance of informal music making and its impact on classroom instruction. I wanted to know if my previous teaching activities were appropriate and what I can do to increase the value of those experiences in my future teaching. My goal is to bring clarity and understanding to these emerging concerns in the field of music education. In conducting research in the understanding of informal music practices, a large portion of research has been done in observing and describing the practices seen in informal musical sessions.

Important aspects of informal music learning as described above are regularly observed in these settings. What hasn’t been observed is the participation of trained music educators in these settings. Having had formal music training and understanding, how they interact with this process can be of great interest to other music education professionals. Similarly, research has been conducted in observing how students learn informally without teacher interaction. This model can be useful to serve as an outline for periodical musical experiences, but highlights a diminished importance of teacher driven education.

What has not been looked at in depth is how teachers can be participants in the informal music making along with their students. Case study research of specific teacher’s activities is limited and a broader understanding of these teacher’s backgrounds could be beneficial. Other educators need to know why such teachers are interested in informal learning and what allows them to feel comfortable in this style of instruction. With greater understanding of individual experiences and personal practices, there may be a way to design further instructional practices to include informal learning in the formal music classroom.