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An examination of alignments and misalignments of music teacher and student attitudes about music technology in and out of school

I examined what a music educator considered critical for students to achieve and maintain autonomous musicianship (Tobias, 2013) with the aid of current music technology, thereby seeking ways that their viewpoints did or did not blend with those of students in their classroom. I sought to record one teacher’s attitudes about music technology implementation in an Advanced Placement Music Theory classroom, a branch of the “secondary student population…traditionally excluded from music programs” (Tobias, 2010, p. 559). Next, I searched for ways that participating students’ uses of music technology revealed alignments or misalignments between their informal and formal learning environments. Finally, I explored the ways in which the teacher’s and students’ attitudes revealed a cooperative learning environment, defined according to pure and pragmatic constructivist theories of learning.
Participants in this ethnographic case study comprised one teacher and nine students. Within one month, I interviewed students and their teacher, conducted classroom observations and collected several artifacts. Data analysis comprised a priori and open coding processes, as well as inductive, axial and selective application of codes to data. I organized data according to each research question and ensuing themes.
Data analysis revealed the teacher’s attitudes about implementing technology into his curriculum and his students’ music technology use outside of school. Students discussed a variety of ways in which they work with music technology in and out of school, and some of these ways aligned with how their teacher facilitated their classroom routine. The classroom environment revealed constructivist qualities wherein students built their knowledge with music technology while making use of their informal learning experiences. Future research could look further into the extent to which students’ experiences play a role in the teacher’s music technology implementation in other non-band, choir, and orchestra classrooms and the role that a teacher’s assumptions play in that implementation.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:bu.edu/oai:open.bu.edu:2144/44411
Date09 May 2022
CreatorsHawkins, Timothy Sean
ContributorsDorfman, Jay
Source SetsBoston University
Languageen_US
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis/Dissertation

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