Date of Award

8-16-2024

Document Type

Open Access Thesis

Department

School of Music

First Advisor

Wendy Valerio

Second Advisor

Gail Barnes

Abstract

I facilitated this ethnographic case study to better understand potential successes and difficulties music improvisation presents in music facilitating and learning from the student perspective. The purpose of this research was to examine my fourth-grade students’ perceptions of music improvisation via improvisatory music circles using the following guiding research questions. Regarding 30-minute improvisatory music circles: 1) How do fourth-grade students (a) define music improvisation, (b) respond to facilitator-selected improvisatory music activities during improvisatory music circles, and (c) make decisions while participating in improvisatory music circles? 2) How did those students’ perceptions change throughout data collection?

I collected data from five 45-minute fourth-grade music classes over the course of three weeks. To achieve triangulation, I employed a variety of data collection sources: my learning plans, voice-recorded small-group opening discussions, video recordings of improvisatory music circles, student projection sheets, voice-recorded small-group closing discussions, passive participant-observer fieldnotes, moderate participant-observer memos, a focus-group discussion with member-checking, students’ personal transcriptions, and voice-recorded, member-checking interviews. Through my data analysis process, I identified six emergent themes: students defined music improvisation in a variety of ways, determined our classroom music community elicited feelings of trust and prompted students to help each other and respond with empathy, utilized music improvisation as a tool to express their emotions and focus their energy, used a variety of thinking strategies to inform their decision-making during improvisatory music circles, reported a balance between novelty and familiarity in facilitator-selected activities for improvisatory music circles improved their situational interests and engagement, and realized that improvisation, as an extramusical skill, may be used outside of music classes.

Through those findings, I gleaned insight from students’ perceptions of music improvisation to determine that a co-constructed classroom music community is essential to developing an effective music learning environment. Exploring improvisatory music circles within that effective learning environment yields benefits for both music education and Social-Emotional Learning (SEL).

Rights

© 2024, Ashley Elizabeth Cobb

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