High school music education is not mandated by the Standards of Quality, the Virginia state educational law, and courses offered on the high school level vary among Virginia school divisions. This explanatory mixed methods dissertation study provides an overview of history of development of high school music education in Virginia, reveals what high school music courses currently offered in Virginia school divisions (N = 131), and surveys approaches to development of programs of studies of a representative sample of Virginia school divisions (n = 14). The study generated three major findings. First, 29 various courses are offered among Virginia school divisions on various levels, five performance type courses and five nonperformance type courses. Out of ten course types offered in Virginia, Band and Chorus are the only courses offered at significantly high rates, while Composition, Guitar, Music Technology, IB Music, Orchestra, and Piano are offered at significantly low rates. This is because Band and Chorus have traditionally been considered as basic high school music courses, and everything else is offered as school divisions can afford and what teachers employed in school divisions can teach. Second, larger Virginia school divisions, located in racially/ethnically diverse cities and suburbs offer more variety of high school music courses. This is because low school budgets and teacher shortages are detrimental to smaller and remote school divisions, as they can afford to hire only so many teachers to teach only so many subjects. Third, administrative approaches to developing high school programs of studies, particularly approaches to stakeholder engagement in program development, influence what courses are offered.

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The purpose of this study was to explore the role of self-efficacy sources in informing the self-beliefs, teaching practices, and commitment of rural music teachers. People’s efficacy beliefs affect what actions they take based on how they envision the expected outcomes. These actions include how much effort they will give, their resilience in the face of obstacles and adversity, how they respond to stressors, and what results they realize. Bandura’s (1997) self-efficacy sources (enactive mastery experience, vicarious experience, verbal/social persuasion, and physiological and affective states) provide a framework to understand how rural music teachers experience with these self-efficacy sources may contribute to their teaching practice and their commitment to rural music teaching. The study methodology was a multiple case study with cross-case analysis. There were six study participants who taught multiple grade levels and music subject areas in a rural public school in Maine. Each participant completed the Music Teacher Self-Efficacy Questionnaire (adapted from Zelenak, 2011 and Lewis, 2018); a focus group interview; individual interviews; and two written journal prompts. Results from this study show the importance to support rural music teachers’ self-efficacy for teaching through the four self-efficacy sources. The strengths of the participants’ perceived self-efficacy enabled them to persevere through music teaching challenges, especially those with out-of-specialty music teaching, which contributed to their resilience and commitment to teaching in a rural area. Helping music teachers to understand self-efficacy development and the cognitive processing of the four self-efficacy sources may motivate them to persist and improve their teaching practice through perseverant action, improve student learning, and strengthen commitment levels for music teaching in rural areas. Furthermore, fostering relationships and building connections of community with students, staff, parents, and members of the community may be important for developing rural music teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs and for supporting affirming rural lifestyle experiences. Rural music teachers may discover an enduring concept of teaching success when they co-create meaningful experiences with students and community members that celebrates the individual strengths and values of a rural area.

The purpose of this study was to investigate what adult singers find meaningful about their participation in a volunteer community chorus and to consider the implication of the choral place on participant sense of meaningfulness. The researcher collected data from four adult singers, their family members, and two conductors. Bridging the gap between science and art, the researcher used a qualitative research method called portraiture, wherein narrative portraits are developed and written by a researcher in a descriptive manner providing voice to understanding the phenomenon of interest, to create portraits of four adult singers. Portraiture researchers seek to discover resonant stories within the complicated framework of daily life. Semi-structured interviews with each participant provided data. In addition, adult singers kept personal journals for the researcher, and the researcher observed participant behaviors before, during, and after rehearsals. The researcher implemented axial, focused, and theoretical analysis during data analysis and interpretation to construct a narrative portrait of each participating singer reflecting the emergent patterns and themes. The two emergent themes were connectedness and achievement. Overall, connections with other people and achieving surmountable challenges were highly valued aspects of this study. Further analysis for the impact of sense of place on meaningfulness noted the impact of the choral place and the choral process on participants’ perceptions of meaningfulness.

Music performance anxiety is common among musicians, and sometimes it severely affects public performance. Many musicians are not able to perform their best as a result of an increased anxiety level. The specific aim of this research study was an in-depth description of how college piano majors in Taiwan dealt with issues of music performance anxiety (MPA), how MPA was experienced and discussed, and how these factors were associated with students’ debilitating symptoms of MPA. I also sought to identify if college piano professors used any coping strategies, methods and techniques in teaching private piano students and how they helped students to manage with MPA. Research questions included a number of issues related to MPA, such as musicians’ musical development, previous exposure to stressful performance situations, the levels of their psychological and physiological arousal, their approaches to learning and motivation, their social and cultural backgrounds, their coping strategies, and how these factors were associated with students’ debilitating symptoms of MPA. A qualitative research methodology was employed to conduct a multiple case study with questionnaires and interviews. The participants were 122 college piano major students from three universities located in southern Taiwan—Tainan National University of the Arts, Tainan University of Technology, and National University of Tainan. The data collection began with two self-report MPA questionnaires—State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) and the Performance Anxiety Inventory (PAI). After completion of the pre-screening questionnaires, the 20 participants with higher scores, which indicated greater anxiety levels, were selected for the semi-structured interviews. Findings from this study indicated that MPA was found to be a multidimensional construct, influenced by a variety of factors including internal factors (perfectionism, self-efficacy and confidence), external factors (evaluations and critical audience) and the cultural and societal factors (teachers’ and parents’ pressures). The majority of participants reported feeling low confidence about their abilities, sensitivity to fears of being compared and judged with others, and thus often interpreted their anxiety reactions and tensions as signs of vulnerability to poor performance, which significantly affect their confidence, self-worth, beliefs, focus, concentration, self-esteem, and severely diminished performance quality.

Due to recent demographic changes to the student populations in the United States, urban schools have experienced an increase in their proportion of culturally diverse students (Emmanuel, 2006; Fisher, 2008; Robinson, 2006), prompting music education researchers to address issues specific to urban schools. Yet, there still remains a paucity of research on urban music education, particularly in the field of singing and choral participation in the urban setting at the upper-elementary level. Responding to this gap in the research, the purpose of this study was to examine the influence of gender, choral membership, and ethnicity on students’ attitudes toward singing and choral participation in urban upper-elementary schools in a school district in the state of Florida. The following research questions guided the study: (a) How do gender, choral membership, and ethnicity influence urban, upper-elementary school students’ attitudes toward singing?; (b) How do gender, choral membership, and ethnicity influence urban, upper-elementary school students’ attitudes toward choral participation?; (c) How do gender, choral membership, and ethnicity influence urban, upper-elementary school students’ attitudes toward future choral enrollment?; and (d) Is there a relationship between urban, upper-elementary school students’ attitudes toward singing, choral participation, and future choral enrollment? I selected a convenience sample of four urban elementary schools and surveyed fourth- and fifth-grade students, both chorus and non-chorus members, from these four schools (N = 600). I utilized a researcher-modified version of Mizener’s (1990) questionnaire on singing interest and choral participation to measure attitudes toward singing, choral participation, and future choral enrollment. Results indicated that girls had more favorable attitudes toward singing, choral participation, and future choral enrollment than boys. Compared to non-chorus members, students in chorus had more favorable attitudes toward singing, choral participation, and future choral enrollment. Additionally, there was a significant positive correlation between the three dependent variables among chorus members. Ancillary analyses revealed tentative evidence that, among those enrolled in chorus, African American students tended to have less favorable attitudes toward choral participation than students of other ethnicities. However, the ethnic group with the lowest choral participation rate among surveyed students was that of Hispanics

Homeschooling is a growing phenomenon. Estimates are that 1.7 million children are homeschooled each year in the United States. Although a number of studies have explored various aspects of this phenomenon, little has been written concerning the musical experiences and practices of homeschoolers. I interviewed three families consisting of six parents and a total of 10 children three times each using semi-structured questions. I also observed each family’s school day a minimum of four times, and explored the motivations for homeschooling and musical instruction, the kinds of educational and musical activities each family evidenced, and then solicited opinions regarding musical style preferences, musical experience, and the use of music in everyday life. I analyzed and interpreted the data through a framework of concepts formulated by Bourdieu (habitus, cultural and symbolic capital, exchange, and economism). My findings suggest that each family’s decision to homeschool was an outgrowth of their Christian habitus, but with nuanced considerations that included ideology, pedagogy, and family. The parents’ decision to support musical learning and experience (each of the 10 children played at least one musical instrument, most of them two, and a few three) centered on a desire to learn music as an aid to worship. However, both parents and children noted non-musical benefits including self- discipline, time management, character formation, training in focus, and life-long usefulness. Parents and children approached educational and musical studies conscientiously. They also reported preferring classical and church music to music associated with youth culture. The families used music as a concentration aid, a mood regulator, and a teaching tool.

This study is a chronological narrative of how and to what extent music was taught in public and parochial schools in the Utah territory in the second half of the nineteenth century. It also documents private music instruction during the same period. A compiled list of school and private music educators is provided. Music textbooks authored by Utahans David Orson Calder and Evan Stephens are examined. These textbooks and other documented descriptions of music teaching in the territory show that the Tonic Sol-fa method of teaching was the most common from 1860 to 1890. Music education in Utah developed within a unique ecology of a relatively homogeneous religious culture of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) in geographical isolation from other developed areas of the United States from 1847 to 1869. The LDS people were encouraged by their leaders to be trained in and to participate in the arts. The gathering of LDS converts to Utah from locations such as Great Britain, Europe and Scandinavia brought conservatory-trained musicians to this isolated location. This influenced a gradual inclusion of music in the schools as early as the 1850s. The population of the territory gradually diversified beginning with the completion of the intercontinental railroad in 1869. In the public schools, by the 1890s, some urban school districts reported 100% of their students receiving music education. At the University of Deseret in Salt Lake City, all students in the Normal College (teacher training school) were trained in music instruction. The development of parochial schools from the 1870s forward further expanded music education in the territory. In many parochial schools, the opportunity for music study was a leading message in advertising for the school. Some parochial schools had multiple-year progressive programs in piano and vocal study. Private music teaching was more prevalent in the Utah territory than in neighboring states and territories in the second half of the nineteenth century. The teaching careers of Sarah Ann Cooke, Dominico Ballo, David Orson Calder, Charles John Thomas, John Hasler and Evan Stephens are documented in this study.

The purpose of this case study was to explore and analyze the practices of the Boston Children’s Chorus (BCC) in relation to culturally responsive pedagogy. The intent was to explore how the conductor, his staff, and the support staff (including the administrative team and Board of Directors) considered the issues of cultural relevancy as they programed and rehearsed music, selected concert venues, recruited singers, and marketed the organization. The study also reflected the perspectives of the stakeholders, particularly the parents and singers. The findings reported in this chapter are in narrative form and include the results from interviews, observations, and questionnaires arranged by common themes. The approaches developed at the BCC were congruent with culturally responsive teaching and tied to the mission of social change. The overarching concept of social change mission-oriented planning shaped its curriculum, instruction, and perceptions of staff, students, and parents as well as framed the development of the community of singers at the BCC. The findings indicated that in attempting to achieve more progress with the social change mission it was critically important to further develop a detailed strategic plan for all BCC choirs and staff members. The implications of this research study are that a better understanding of the successful practices of the BCC would help to identify key factors that contribute to teachers’ willingness to implement culturally responsive teaching in music and choral education and would serve as inspiration and an outline for other music teachers and conductors by helping them to overcome problems that might prevent others from succeeding.

Issues of embodiment, musical communitas, and accessibility have been adapted by music educators and music therapists within their practices. Music education in general may benefit from the unique aspects of what these models have to offer. In this qualitative phenomenological research study, I examined the perceptions of a diverse sampling of handbell musicians and their directors with respect to the three phenomena of embodiment, musical communitas, and accessibility. The findings were compared to existing research related to various forms of embodied learning, musical communitas as seen through the field of music therapy, and accessibility as defined by universal design concepts. The central questions that guided this study were: 1. What are handbell musicians’ perceptions of embodied handbell ringing and/or embodied learning? 2. What are handbell musicians’ perceptions of functioning as one unified instrument? 3. How are handbells unique with regard to their accessibility? The data revealed seven themes with regard to embodiment and whole-body expression, seven with regard to musical communitas, and six with regard to accessibility. Three unrelated themes, as well as a small instance of conflicting data with regard to accessibility, were reported and addressed. Consistent throughout the transcripts was the use of three words: together, everyone/everybody, and whole (as in holistic or not divided). This common language represents a sympathetic resonance that existed among the participants without respect to age, position, or experience. Music educators may benefit from more research in music education based in embodied learning to strengthen the acceptance of the body, not as supplemental, but as foundational in music learning, and to dispel the “either/or” notions that place the body in opposition to the brain. The design of the handbell ensemble may provide a model for music making that values embodiment, communitas, and accessibility, which can address a number of music education’s current goals including creating, performing, and responding (NAfME, 2014b).