This dissertation is a video ethnography of the
enculturation and learning patterns among children on three
school playgrounds in the Central Region of Ghana, West
Africa. It includes a) a discussion of colonialism on the
redefinition of Ghanaian cultural identity in relation to
play culture and the school curriculum b) performance-based
case studies of six singing games, which comprise a
description of sound and structural features and an
explanation of cultural forms evident in singing games and c)
a discussion on the role multimedia technologies (video,
audio, and computer technologies) played in configuring my
explanations and the explanations of all participants:
children, teachers, and community members. Goldman-Segall' s
"configurational validity" is the conceptual basis of this
ethnography of Ghanaian children's music cultures.
Configurational validity is a collaborative theory for
analyzing video documents that expands on the premise that
research is enriched by multiple points of view.
Performance stylistic features of singing games emerge
that reflected the marriage of two music cultures, indigenous
Ghanaian and European. These include: speech tones,
onomatopoeia, repetition and elaboration of recurring melodic
cliches, portamentos or cadential drops, syncopations,
triplets, melisma, polyrhythms, vocables, anacrusis,
strophic, circle, lines, and partner formations.
During play, the children were cultural interlocutors
and recipients of adult cultural interlocution as they
learned about accepted and shared social behavioural
patterns, recreated their culture, and demonstrated the
changing Ghanaian culture. The culture forms that emerged
include community solidarity, inclusion, ways of exploring
and expressing emotions, coordination, cooperation, gender
relations, and linguistic code switching. For children in Ghana, knowledge is uninhibited shared
constructions; knowledge grows when every one is involved;
and knowledge is like "midwifery." I recommended a teaching
style that encouraged the expression of children's wide
ranging knowledge by a) offering opportunities for
cooperative learning through group work, b) encouraging
continuous assessment, c) establishing stronger ties with the
adult community, and d) recognizing that the ability of
children to hear, interpret, and compensate for dialectic
differences in closely related languages can be used to
enrich the language arts curriculum and also e) recognizing
that the cultural studies curriculum can be enriched by the
ability of children to re-create hybrid performing arts
cultures.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:BVAU.2429/7453 |
| Date | 11 1900 |
| Creators | Addo, Akosua Obuo |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Relation | UBC Retrospective Theses Digitization Project [http://www.library.ubc.ca/archives/retro_theses/] |
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