Purpose: The purpose of this dissertation is to investigate the hypothesis that the practices of conceptual art have implications for music education. Procedure for the Study: After an introduction in which conceptual art is described and defined as a modern experiential art form, the study includes: 1. presentation of historical antecedents for conceptual art; 2. description of the development of conceptual art and its various practices, chronologically; 3. comparison and contrast of five extant theories of art with conceptual art in order to demonstrate conceptual art's apparent inexplicability; 4. distillation and summary of fifteen characteristics of conceptual art; 5. application of the implications drawn from these characteristics to general principles of music education. Findings: Historical antecedents began with Post-Impressionist thought in the arts in general. The "avant garde" aesthetic perspective included: 1. a trend toward greater freedom and individuality; 2. a search for commonality among the arts; 3. the desire to shed traditional, Romantic practices and methodologies. The development of conceptual art began with the work of Marcel Duchamp; new practices flowed from his experiments with non-objective art that blurred the line between art and non-art. The experiential quality of doing art became paramount especially in Futurist, Dadaist, and Surrealist movements. Musicians such as John Cage began working with new techniques and technologies. Assemblages, environments, and happenings dominated the radical, sometimes protestant, conceptual pieces of the SO's and 60's. The "idea" began to replace the "object" as the primary motivation for doing art in the 70's and 80 s. Conceptual art was found to be quite incompatible with five extant theories of art: Imitationism, Emotionalism, Expressionism, Communicationism, and Formalism. Fifteen characteristics were derived from the analysis and were explored for implications in music education. Conclusions: Most of the characteristics of conceptual art have relevance to the current practice of music education. Benefits such as engendering individual creativity and expanding creative thinking are compatible and supported by music educators. Conceptual art may promote a sense of an interdisciplinary participation for the student of music, where ideas and processes can be exchanged across the curriculum. The practice of conceptual art is still experimental and defies categorization.

The purpose of this study was to investigate non-music major college and university students’ self-efficacy beliefs and their perceptions of the four sources of self-efficacy as they related to their participation in active music making and creation in college (e.g., ensembles and musicals, group and private lessons, music theory classes). An online survey was used to collect students’ responses to statements that aligned with the four sources of self-efficacy: enactive mastery experiences, verbal persuasion, vicarious experiences, and physiological and affective states and demographic information about items such as gender identity, cultural background, and previous musical experiences. The participants included 111 students from 11 college and university campuses in Pennsylvania, of which 56 students identified as male and 55 students identified as female. No students listed any other gender identification. The participants also represented 14 unique cultural backgrounds which were categorized as either individualist or collectivist according to Hofstede et al.’s (2010) cultural dimensions. The source of self-efficacy with the highest collective mean score in this study was enactive mastery experience (M = 80.75). The source of self-efficacy with the second highest collective mean score in this study was physiological and affective states (M = 78.92). The only statistically significant difference found between genders was for enactive mastery experiences, with females having a higher mean score (M = 85.06) than males (M = 76.51). The number of previous musical experiences a student reported also impacted their perceptions of the sources of self-efficacy with statistically significant differences between students in the higher experience levels and students in the lower experience levels for the sources of enactive mastery experiences, physiological and affective states, and verbal persuasion. When gender and experience were investigated together, females in experience level 1 and 3 had statistically higher enactive mastery experiences scores than the males, and females in experience level 1 had significantly higher verbal persuasion scores as well. The findings of this study suggest that physiological and emotional states may have particular importance in developing musical self-efficacy. This result was consistent for students from all cultural backgrounds. Implications from this research suggest the importance of creating spaces where students can experience positive verbal persuasion and vicarious experiences, which may lead to positive enactive mastery experiences and physiological and affective states and further support the development of musical self-efficacy beliefs. Further research is needed to better understand the impact of cultural background on self-efficacy belief development and the sources of self-efficacy. This research could also be expanded to investigate socio-economic influences on musical self-efficacy beliefs.

Learning a musical instrument is a complex process that involves cognitive, physical, environmental, and motivational factors. When adolescent students first learn a musical instrument, they can demonstrate a fixed or growth mindset (or a mixture of both) when it comes to their beliefs about their skills. Research indicates that adolescents who receive mindset interventions increase academic performance and improvements in their overall mental health and well-being. Music education researchers have found that many musicians lack the mental strategies to improve competency beliefs, but there is scant research on growth mindset interventions in music classrooms. Among bowed string educators and musicians, vibrato is considered to be a skill with both mental and physical challenges. The purpose of the study was to examine the experiences of eighth grade students who receive a growth mindset intervention while learning vibrato in a heterogeneous string classroom. The participants were a sample of eighth grade students from the researcher’s classroom who were learning vibrato for the first time. All students completed a mindset inventory quiz to determine whether they have a fixed or growth mindset orientation. The entire class participated in research-based mini-lessons, class discussions, journaling in the Growth Mindset Workbook for Teens (Schleider et al., 2021), supplemental goal and reflection activities specific to vibrato skills, and video reflection to give students a different format for reflection alongside vibrato instruction. Although descriptive data was gathered from the whole class, a sample of seven participants was selected to examine students’ lived experiences in-depth. To focus on the students’ perspectives and lived experiences, data was collected and analyzed through the lens of Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis. The participants were selected using maximum variation sampling to represent a variety of perspectives: mindset scores, instrument, ethnicity, and gender. Data collection from the study included teacher observation (written journaling), student interviews, journal samples (mix of media recording and written), as well as pre- and post-intervention mindset surveys. While the participants displayed a mix of mindsets about their vibrato throughout the study, many of the students reported that mindset activities helped them improve their mindset and vibrato learning experience. The researcher found that consistent use of both mental (particularly mindset) and physical strategies supported the acquisition of the challenging skill of vibrato. The class was generally more motivated to learn vibrato, less likely to give up when it was difficult, and applied vibrato to their music on their own when compared to previous classes. The results of the study support previous research that others can have an impact on students’ mindsets, particularly family, peers, and educators. The study contributes to the limited research on growth mindset in the music classroom and provides implications for mindset training for young musicians. It also contributes to the limited body of research in string vibrato pedagogy and may provide more implications for the mental processes of learning vibrato.

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