The purpose of this study was to determine the attitudes of administrators, counselors, agriscience teachers, and students towards the high school agriscience programs in Mississippi. It was also to determine the average scores of students on a criterion-based exam, and to determine if there was a correlation between the attitude scales of the agriscience teachers, counselors, administrators, students, and the student scores on the exam. The study used a descriptive survey and a descriptive-correlational design. Three different surveys were sent out to 356 agriscience teachers, counselors, and administrators at schools with either a Concepts of Agriscience Technology course or an Introduction to Agriscience course. Superintendents were asked for their permission, and subsequently, 14 teachers agreed to let their students be surveyed and tested on a criterion-based exam created by the Research and Curriculum Unit. The surveys asked the teachers, counselors, and administrators about their attitudes towards the two agriscience programs using four scales: science integration into the agricultural curriculum, the agricultural industry and agriscience courses in general, standardized testing in agricultural programs, and science credit for completion of agriscience courses. The students were surveyed about their attitudes towards agriscience programs in general. Based on 201 usable surveys from the agriscience teachers, counselors, and administrators, and 156 student surveys and test scores, data were analyzed by descriptive statistics and Pearson Product Moment correlations. It was determined that there were statistically significant correlations between the attitude scales of the teachers, counselors, and administrators. There was only one statistically significant correlation to the student test scores and that was the administrator attitude scale about science integration. This relationship was determined to be of a moderate negative relationship based on Davis’ (1971) conventions.

Strong educators always look for different ways to excite and enthrall their students in the curriculum. The field of science education often loses student interest due to the complexities and vocabulary found in the scientific realm. Incorporating music into the classroom has shown positive results as a way to integrate student learning and a different way of facilitating students in the learning process (Brewer, 1992; Davies, 200). Resources for implementing the integration of music and science exist throughout the Internet in a variety of mediums. This study looks at the availability of said resources and the concepts they cover, for what students they are intended for, how are they intended to be used and the level of accuracy they maintain. Those resources upholding the accuracy desired for use in the classroom were then compiled onto one webpage for use by elementary science educators. The webpage is open and free to the public and may be shared.

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My inquiry, centered on the applied practice of teaching, confronts the detachment that often disassociates the intellectual study of music theory from the physical experience of music. This pedagogical detachment, perceived as a split between opposing views of knowledge, privileges positivist science over interpretive art (Aróstegui, 2003), producing written competencies that have little or no musical meaning (Rogers, 2004). Endeavouring to re-attach music theory and the music it was initially intended to explain (Dirié, 2014), I constructed four Listening Guides to align with the intermediate-level theory curriculum of the Royal Conservatory of Music. Their construction incorporates elements of design research along with an underlying framework derived from the Kodály Method’s four-step instructional process. Given my multi-faceted personal/professional interactions with music theory, my research project is presented in the form of a quest narrative that weaves together my story and the stories of participant teachers who established the Listening Guides’ potential usefulness through reviewing and implementing interactions. This narrative, as a creative representation of arts-based research practices (Leavy, 2015), is derived from the blurring of specific cognitive findings and less definable aesthetic knowings (Greenwood, 2012). My data, both the prototypical data I designed and the empirical data I collected from focus group discussions with my participants, are filtered through an a/r/tographic lens that acknowledges the coexistence of my artist/researcher/teacher identities. The analysis of our aggregate narrative, as an exploration of music theory pedagogy with, about, in, and through music, relies on the evaluative tools of educational criticism (Eisner, 1991). Unfolding in a mostly linear climb, my quest for a fully integrated music/theory (art/science) pedagogy reaches its apex in the understanding that a music-logic organization confounds the subject-logic of traditional teaching approaches. Thus, my inquiry challenges the customary practices of scientific knowledge-building with a model for artistic “ways-of-knowing” in music theory pedagogy.