Play What You Want, Just Land on the One is a pedagogical invitation and creative mantra. It is my attempt to articulate a disposition of music creation, as it does a conviction about democratic education. The title is a Deweyian invocation of interest, tuning the pedagogical ear towards phenomenological origin(s): scenes of discovery. Learning becomes ontological, to become the questions that drive us. I see music theory a bit differently, music harmony not as scientific principles, but as playground. Music, like how I perceive theory, is constructed for play: Democracy in its most beautiful, where the journey of dissonance binds within moments of collective surrender - to listen, to accept, to embrace the other - the presence of moment-by-moment. This is a letter for those who don’t quite fit inside the canon, for those listening towards the horizon - laced with a hope, of encouraging, supplementing, and challenging our relationship to music and the learning of it. I am bound by the coterminous nature of culture and music, enlivened by their shared evolution, and how it speaks to what it means to be human. My chosen genre is meditation, to pursue philosophy in an ancient sense: surrendering codification to illuminate the questions. The inheritance of wonder, while tracing the unnervingly manic, is to skirt the edge of heresy. This work is structured like a pop song, a form of communication where: the return of each chorus with widened meaning, bridges for unexpected detours, and verses that shape the perception of scene. As you read, remember the return: an idea repeated, now different because of the experience.

This study was undertaken to provide ways to strengthen and enhance existing online courses and to assist music educators in creating new online classes that are effective and engaging for students. Prior to the pandemic there was a clear lack of instructional expectations, guidance for online music education, and technical support for content development. Training initiatives and support for online education were launched during the pandemic, however, the findings from this study revealed that these initiatives were not adequate in assisting music educators, who found themselves needing to supplement their online classes with knowledge and resources from online communities of practice and assistance from colleagues. Based on the analysis of online courses and methods, a 15-week professional development course design with synchronous and asynchronous components was created and evaluated to guide music educators in creating effective and engaging online courses. The online course design created for this study was intended to prepare primary, secondary, and post-secondary music educators in designing and implementing effective and engaging online courses through the exploration of issues surrounding content development, learning, and teaching online. The study was informed by the literature surrounding the related issues of teaching online and the necessary considerations to create and implement an effective and engaging online course. An overview of issues related to instructors, students, and content development was reviewed with additional consideration of the specific issues for instructors outlined in Kebritchi et al., (2017). The findings from this study supported the related literature that the instructor is the most critical factor in the effectiveness of a course. The course design was evaluated, modified, and refined given the analyzed data collected in three phases. The first phase included a review of the course design by three academic scholars with extensive experience in online education and music technology. The second phase included three synchronous meetings with a public middle school music teacher, who had experience with music technology, to review the content, sequence, modules, and assignments. The final phase of data collection concluded with semi-structured interviews of five music educators, who reviewed the course design and provided their perspectives and experience with online education. The sample population from Phase 3 included music educators from across the United States in K-12 private and public schools, higher education, and private studios. This study found that an engaging online course involves the instructor’s understanding of how to effectively present and deliver course content in an online environment and how to build an online community that fosters student engagement. The findings from this study supported that an instructor’s content delivery must be adapted for an online environment as a digital setting requires unique pedagogical, social, managerial, and facilitation skills than traditional in-person methods (Hurlbut, 2018). The findings suggest that effective training for online music educators include models of developed content, guidance in adapting existing content for an online environment, an introduction to available resources for music educators and students, and ways to integrate interactive elements to effectively design and deliver online music courses and engage students.

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In this dissertation, a collective of eighteen Israeli and Palestinian former and current students and staff of two music education-encounter dialogue programs in Israel-Palestine engaged in participatory action research to reflect upon their former experiences in these shared society programs, while imagining and enacting designing of what they could be (Bashir & Goldberg, 2018; Escobar, 2018; Hess, 2018). At large, this research was a curriculum studies dissertation in retrospect that took a decolonial and music education activism approach to narratively understanding Israeli-Palestinian shared society music education spaces that exist within the greater contextual setting of settler colonialism and power asymmetries, deep within the borderlands (Anzaldúa, 1987; Lavie, 2011). The initiator of research and member of the collective also utilizes a narrative approach through memoir in the writing of this inquiry in which to embody the socio-historical-cultural context of this research. This intergenerational research collective with multiple identities (Maalouf, 2001) across the national binary of Israeli and Palestinian identities co-researched over a ten-month period within small inquiry communities, or dialogue research circles. The dialogue research circles were formed by eliciting research questions from the collective. Upon entering the dialogue research circles, co-researchers revisited experiences within Israeli and Palestinian musical spaces through narrative witnessing and testifying of stories of these spaces. Co-researchers then considered how these stories as curricular artefacts (Sonu, 2020) could offer insights into a multitude of alternative ways of co-constructing Israeli-Palestinian shared society spaces. The content of the stories told included looking at the interaction of multiple narratives and histories to collective memories and everyday realities, in addition to our experiences learning and teaching music in multicultural, multilingual, multireligious, multi-ethno-national-affiliated spaces. The findings presented in this dissertation are organized as three themes embedded with curricular tensions and decision points. Furthermore, these themes are presented through vignettes that attempt to portray on another level the different phases of the dialogue research circle’s group dynamics interconnected with the research process and timeline. The themes include the processes and structures of co-constructing Israeli-Palestinian participatory researching spaces, negotiating the complexities and conceptualizations of safe space within these programs, and finally, exploring the implications of, and decentering of, the national binary dominance of Israeli and Palestinian nationalisms present within the binationalism of shared society programs.

Providing standards for music technology use in community college music programs presents both challenges and opportunities for educators in American higher education. A need exists to assess the current use of technology at the community college level for the purpose of improving instruction. Although limited research has been done on the use of technology to support music education K- 12 and in four-year universities, little research on the problem in the community college setting was found. This research employed a Delphi study, a method for the systematic solicitation and collection of professional judgments on a particular subject, to examine existing criteria, “best practices”, and standards, in an effort to develop a set of standards specifically for the community college level. All aspects of a complete music program were considered including: curriculum, staffing, equipment, materials/software, facilities and workforce competencies. The panel of experts, comprised of community college educators from throughout the nation, reached consensus on 50 of the 57 standards. Forty-one or 82%, were identified as minimal standards for the application of music technology in music education. Community college music educators, planning to successfully utilize music technology to improve teaching and learning should implement the 41 standards determined as minimal by the Delphi panel. As the use of music technology grows in our community college programs, the standards used to define the success of these programs will expand and mature through further research.

These eight were selected as typical lyrics to meet the diverse interests of students in the intermediate grades and to aid the teachers of those students in transmitting desired precepts and ideals. The poems are short and varied in verse form. The subject matter ranges from pirates and fairies to one's own conscience and Christmas; the moods, from whimsicality and nonsense to patriotism and reverence. The marked poetic devices influencing the choice of these particular lyrics are their rhythmical and alliterative quality; their rich, lively, yet correct language; their vivid imagery; their emotional appeal; and in a few cases their narrative quality.

This thesis describes how music affects the group dynamic of children living in congregate homes in Texas

D.Ed. (Media Studies) / In-Service Class Music Training and relevant programming is addressed in this research. The Class Music requirements in die Junior Primary phase were established by the present researcher in her M.Ed. investigation (1986). The target group involved were Grade 1 teachers who had no or inadequate Class Music training and who had to be responsible for their own music presentation.

The problem of this study was to obtain empirical evidence of the functional nature of the Audio-visual Identification Instruction (AVII) model for designing effective music instruction for young children. The method was to use materials prepared according to the model specifications in actual classroom conditions. The purpose of the study was to compare the achievement gain of second grade children of high, middle, or low musical aptitude levels, who were instructed by experienced music specialists, first year music specialists, student teacher music specialists, or experienced classroom teachers using AVII model materials, on three tasks in the area of pitch and three tasks in the area of timbre. Subject to the circumstances and limitations of this investigation, the results indicate that the AVII model is effective for instruction for musical naming and identification tasks for young children.

This study investigated how and to what extent music listening was initiated by elementary general music teachers. The specific problems of the study were (1) identification of activities and materials related to music listening and (2) the determination of how and to what extent assigned and assumed music listening was initiated in the selected classrooms. Systematic observation was chosen to investigate these problems. An observation instrument, the Elementary Music Listening Schedule (EMLS), was developed by which eighteen elementary general music teachers were observed during ten lessons.