The purpose of this qualitative study was to better understand how transgender and gender expansive (TGE) former college marching band members navigated their band membership. Transgender and gender expansive college students often experience greater levels of harassment, isolation, and discrimination than their cisgender peers (James et al., 2016; Thompson et al., 2021). TGE students are more likely to benefit from positive interactions with peers, staff, and faculty through “high-impact” practices such as extracurricular and social activities (Renn, 2020). Marching bands are often the most visible musical, social, and cultural organizations on college campuses (Healey, 2016; Madsen et al., 2007) and may be attractive potential sites of welcome, affirmation, and community (Matthews, 2017) for TGE college musicians. However, the marching band medium may also reinforce traditionally gendered social, musical, and cultural practices (Disney, 2018; Marshall, 2009). In this dissertation, I utilized the metaphor of wayfinding (Page-Reeves et al., 2019) to craft individual narratives around each participant’s experiences, and then employed collective case study to build within-case and cross-case analyses. Primary themes that emerged in the cross-case analysis included: impact of high school band directors, visibility and collective action, impact of staff, social connectivity, leadership as empowerment, self-confidence, and representation. Participant narratives focused heavily on their journeys of coming out and living their gender identities within the social and musical norms and contexts of their respective programs. Although the concept of the safe space has arisen in scholarly literature, Siegel (2019) argued that there are many spaces on college campuses which offer varying levels of safety and affirmation. Likewise, participants in this study found various structures, practices, and people to be supportive of or antagonistic to their band membership. Through the data and results of this dissertation, my aim is to encourage thoughtful and genuine reflection and discussion among music educators around issues related to transgender and gender expansive individuals. Rather than being tolerated and forced to create their own spaces of affirmation and courage, educators may instead partner with TGE students to build a more caring and compassionate musical experience.

Researchers have shown that the teaching career proceeds in stages or phases and each stage is associated with differentiated professional needs (Berliner, 1994; Feiman-Nemser, 2001; Huberman, 1993; Steffy, Wolfe, Pasch, & Enz, 2000). Teachers in the second stage of their career, or those with four to 20 years of experience, are characterized by a stabilized identity and are ready to explore meaningful ways to reflect upon their teaching practices. Collaborative professional development promotes reflection amongst educators, yet music teachers specifically are isolated and have little opportunity to connect with one another. The purpose of this study was to examine the experiences of four second-stage music teachers in a Collaborative Teacher Group (CTG). I was a second-stage teacher in the midst of career stagnation. I had grown disillusioned with my teaching practices, and I was disconnected from colleagues. I enlisted three other second-stage music teachers to join me in the CTG, and we met over the course of three months to engage in structured conversations. Using The Life Cycle of the Career Teacher (Steffy, et al., 2000) as a conceptual framework and narrative inquiry as the research approach, I sought to determine (a) how the participants described their experiences in the CTG; (b) how the participants connected their experiences in the CTG to their teaching practices; and (c) how the participants related their experiences in the CTG to their career stage. What I did not foresee was that our CTG meetings would coincide with the COVID-19 pandemic in the summer of 2020. The necessary shift to remote instruction and virtual CTG meetings spurred a new research dimension related to the efficacy of online interactions. As the participants and I navigated an unprecedented disruption in our teaching practices, we sought to understand our experiences within the safety of our CTG community. I analyzed transcripts of our meetings and coded the conversations thematically. I then distilled salient passages into eight conversational vignettes. Findings show that second-stage teachers experience career-stage confusion during an educational crisis and need collaborative professional learning opportunities to avoid withdrawal. The participants and I found that a CTG fosters a cycle of reflection, renewal, and growth, and can serve as a powerful form of professional development. Although meeting virtually did not allow for nuances of conversation and warmth of human interaction, we found it served as an adequate means to an end. School and district leaders should create opportunities for teacher group collaboration with an eye towards providing second-stage music teachers professional learning experiences that are relevant to their improvement efforts.

The purpose of this study was to examine the experiences of music teachers who teach or have taught in environments outside their personal backgrounds in order to understand how working in environments dissimilar from their personal backgrounds might influence feelings of teacher self-efficacy. The constituent elements of music teacher participants' personal backgrounds considered in the study included socioeconomic status, racial or ethnic identity, and perspectives of public education with regard to classroom management, expectations, and student achievement. One of the main themes throughout the study included cultural differences between teachers and students and the way these differences might affect student engagement in the classroom and teachers’ sense of self-efficacy. Study participants included two early-career teachers with less than five years’ experience and three experienced teachers with more than five years' experience and represented a demographically diverse cross-section of music teachers currently teaching in the public school system in Northern California. Bandura (1997) advanced Social Cognitive Theory and the subset of self-efficacy, which served as the theoretical framework for the current study. The methodological approach of case study was employed and expanded into a modified multi-case study analysis with an accompanying cross-case analysis. Study results revealed challenges that teachers experience when teaching in culturally unfamiliar environments, but also revealed that these challenges could be minimized by engaging with students, making connections, and developing mutually beneficial rapport between themselves and their students. The music teachers in the current study acknowledged that music teaching and learning can be used as a vehicle to make connections with culturally diverse student groups and that appealing to students’ home culture through music can enhance student engagement and academic achievement resulting in an increase in teacher self-efficacy. Teacher self-efficacy is related to health, job satisfaction, burnout, and attrition and the current study sought to add to the body of research that supports the notion that teacher self-efficacy is a critical aspect of success for teachers and learners.

Music educators routinely encounter challenging behaviors in their classrooms. Due to the ubiquity of trauma in our society and the multiple intersections between trauma-related disorders and emotional/behavioral disorder diagnoses, it is possible that challenging behaviors are influenced by trauma and, therefore, require specialized responses. In this study, I investigated the identification of and response to trauma sequelae, the changes to biological and psychological function occurring post-trauma, within an elementary general music classroom for students with severe emotional/behavioral disorders. The questions (a) What were the perceptions of the general music teacher in this study regarding their ability to identify students’ potential trauma triggers?; (b) What were the perceptions of the general music teacher in this study regarding their ability to accurately identify typical trauma reactions including hyperarousal, intrusion, constriction, doublethink, dissociation, and disempowerment?; (c) In what ways did the general music teacher in this study respond to student trauma reactions including hyperarousal, intrusion, constriction, doublethink, dissociation, and disempowerment?; and (d) What barriers, if any, impeded the elementary general music teacher’s appropriate responses to trauma reactions including hyperarousal, intrusion, constriction, doublethink, dissociation, and disempowerment? guided this study. Taking a qualitative approach, the bounded system for this instrumental case study was defined as one music class section, including the students, their music teacher, the classroom assistants, and the paraprofessional staff assigned to that section in a special education setting. The study was conducted in two phases. In Phase One, or the archiving phase, I sought to better qualify the trauma history of the student participants. Through documentation review and interviews with the school’s admissions director, I was able to identify the traumatic experiences that might have influenced behaviors observed in the music classroom. Phase Two of the study included in-person observations in the music room, within the context of the larger school community, and in an online class session, including field notes, sketches of the environment, and videotaping of the class, teacher and researcher free journaling, guided journaling, and adult participant interviews. As the data were analyzed, moments of convergence and divergence surrounding issues of connection, disconnection, and attunement emerged. These moments occurred in multiple ways between all participants within the case. Trauma responses including hyperarousal, intrusion, constriction, doublethink, dissociation, and disempowerment were observed during the class meeting times. The music teacher in the study maintained an accurate perception of her ability to identify trauma responses and acknowledged that externalized behaviors were more likely to identify and respond to than those that were internalized. Although she agreed that the behaviors warranted intervention, she struggled to connect them to the underlying trauma influencing the behaviors. When responding in an attuned manner, leveraging principles of trauma-informed care, she was routinely able to meet the needs of the students and de-escalate trauma-related behaviors. Barriers to the music teacher’s response included lack of attunement to the needs of the students, inadequate pre- in-service instruction specific to music pedagogy for students with advanced behavioral health needs, scheduling and collaboration conflicts, lack of access to educational and biopsychosocial documentation, and the experiencing of secondary traumatic stress symptoms. In refining trauma theory in the context of elementary general music teacher experiences of trauma sequelae, I documented an additional facet of the crucial adult response to children with trauma. The case was consistent with patterns outlined in existing trauma research. Music was a mediator and catalyst for emotional response. By utilizing a trauma-informed approach, music teachers might be able to meet extensive behavioral needs with compassion, strengthen relationships, create more avenues for access in general music, and avoid re-traumatization in the classroom.

Transgender and gender-expansive (TGE) students encounter harassment, microaggressions, and adverse experiences in schools (Kosciw et al., 2022). In music classrooms, these students may find a safer space, although the choral classroom, in particular, can be a highly gendered environment (Palkki, 2019). Researchers have described the experiences of TGE students in music classes (Bartolome, 2016; Nichols, 2013; Silveira, 2019). Some quantitative studies exist examining the experiences and attitudes of music teachers working alongside TGE students (Cates, 2022; Silveira & Goff, 2016). However, there is little to no qualitative research that examines the experiences of choral music educators who work with TGE students. In this study I aimed to explore and understand the experiences of four teacher participants who worked alongside TGE students in their choral music classrooms. Two research questions guided this study: 1. What experiences or circumstances might act as catalysts for change for a secondary choral teacher teaching transgender and gender-expansive students? 2. How does the experience of teaching a transgender or gender-expansive student change a secondary choral music teacher's perspective, approach, or classroom? Data were gathered during the fall and winter of the 2021–2022 school year and included semi-structured interviews and artifacts. Interview transcripts served as the primary source of data. Participants shared their own individual experiences as they worked alongside TGE students and themes were organized across individual case studies and a cross-case analysis. The participants made changes to their practice and pedagogy as they worked with TGE students. Cross-case analysis uncovered the themes of isolation, autonomy, and inattention as catalysts for change for teachers as they worked alongside TGE students. Teacher participants also changed their practice regarding language, uniform policies, and voicing. The findings from this study add to the growing literature about the experiences of TGE students in music classes.

General creativity and, more specifically, creative thinking in music are valuable qualities that should be fostered in music education for personal, professional, and societal reasons. In order for band directors to successfully integrate musical creativity into their classroom curriculum and serve as resources for other content area teachers implementing 21st Century Skills (Partnership for 21st Century Skills, 2017), it is imperative that they are personally capable and comfortable with the very activities and methods they would employ with their students. In this action research study, a group of five band directors with similar conservatory-influenced undergraduate backgrounds volunteered to participate in peer-led, non-formal professional development in the area of musical improvisation. Due to the common traditional attributes of such institutions of higher education, many future educators are trained to reproduce performance practices of Western art music in place of, and to the exclusion of, following individual musical curiosities and creative impulses (Small, 1998). A general lack of improvisation and jazz experiences in pre-service teacher education (Pignato, 2010) has left many with an inability to engage in genuinely creative experiences with their students and on their own. Using Dewey’s vision of democracy in education, the basic framework of “we learn together, we learn by doing,” shaped the way in which the teacher-led professional development took place. Each participant had a unique voice within the process, which helped build collegiality, a stronger sense of self, and broaden the base of experience and knowledge. Data were collected through focus group interviews, participant journals, exit slips, and video-recordings of the improvisation sessions. The goal for this study was to discover the implications of peer-led professional development, have a substantial effect on the comfort and ability of the participants to improvise with their professional peers, and ultimately provide pedagogical tools that will transfer to the classroom and yield a variety of opportunities for student improvisation. Findings suggest that the use of free improvisation as an entry point to improvised music in general is a successful path to overcome various impediments such as anxiety and lack of familiarity with a specific musical idiom.

This study is an investigation of an arts-integrated approach for ESL learners that uses song lyrics and focuses on ways to promote vocabulary acquisition and low-anxiety environments for high school second language English students. The research questions were: (a) To what extent do the affective filters of students differ in music class than in other subjects, and (b) Do ESL students acquire and retain vocabulary (i.e., second language acquisition) differently when taught using music and language integration activities, compared to traditional ESL instructional techniques? The participants were 9th–12th grade high school students in a title one school in North Carolina, that contained 1500 students, all of whom were assigned by the school to pre-existing classes; one comprised the control group, and the other the experimental group. This quantitative study had two phases. The first phase focused upon understanding students’ affective filter in music and non-music classes, and the second phase focused upon the investigation of vocabulary acquisition through an arts integration approach as compared to traditional ESL instructional techniques. The results from the first phase reveals that, when it came to being happy, breathing easily, having relaxed shoulders, stomach fine, (not) nervous, excited, and (not) bored, music class was a place where participants strongly agree or agree to having positive feelings at the time of the class. This data suggests that the participants had a low affective filter when it came to being happy and relaxed, with low anxiety in music class. The findings for Phase Two report that when using the Kruskal-Wallis test, the control group, who was given vocabulary lessons via reading, had no significant statistical difference when it came to their vocabulary acquisition. However, when it came to the experimental group, who was exposed to vocabulary acquisition through song, I determined that there was a significant statistical difference when it came to their vocabulary acquisition. I also conducted an ANOVA test on the data which yielded the result that there was no statistical significance between the control group and the experimental group. In connection, the results also disclose that learning using music didn't show significant results that it helped or hurt to use music in those vocabulary lessons, which suggests the need for further study on this topic.

Elementary-aged students are most likely participating in a school music Community of Musical Practice (CoMP) in addition to other CoMPs outside of school; therefore, knowing a student’s entire Landscape of Musical Practice (LoMP) can help music teachers better align in-school music practices with the music practices of other CoMPs in a student’s landscape and provide appropriate space inside the music classroom for identity work to occur. The purpose of this study was to identify how elementary-aged music students engaged within a landscape of musical practice to determine to what extent, if any, a student’s identity was reconciled, renegotiated, or modulated by participating in multiple practices across their landscape. Five students, five parents, and one vocal music teacher participated in this study. All students attended the same elementary school near a large metropolitan area in the mid-Atlantic region of the United States. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, all data were collected virtually. School music classes were visited remotely using Google Meets, and interviews were conducted using Zoom. Parents recorded and uploaded to a secure Google folder three-to-five-minute videos of music activities in which their children participated. Evidence suggested that the students in this study participated in multiple CoMPs across a LoMP and that their musical identities were reconciled, negotiated, or modulated by competing demands. This study also revealed theoretical terms that can aid in the understanding of how children inhabit and journey across a landscape of musical practice. These terms are the imaginary CoMP, the dabbler, and the steward. The imaginary CoMP is a constructed substitute in a child’s mind where they play or imagine participating within a musical community. Children may not know what types of activities they enjoy, prefer, or have competence in; therefore, they may dabble within and between different activities. The dabbler is someone who tries out and bounces between different musical activities without intention or understanding of full participation within a CoMP. Because children are minors and lack full agency, they cannot join CoMPs without permission and help from an adult. The steward, therefore, can be understood as someone who is responsible for managing the child’s LoMP. The steward is especially involved when searching out and locating access to participation in a CoMP. With these three terms, more can be learned about how a child’s LoMPs may be different than that of an adult, and how music teachers might be better able to understand how to align music class activities with those of the child’s LoMPs. Based upon the findings of this study, music teachers may wish to consider ways to encourage exploration in the music classroom. It may also be important for them to find ways to encourage students to dabble between musical activities that help them discover what kind of musician they want to be as well as what musical activities they might wish to engage, both in school and outside of school, across a LoMP. / 2023-09-02T00:00:00Z

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