Shelley M. Griffin

Listening to children’s music perspectives: in- and out-of-school thoughts:

ABSTRACT Findings are presented from a three-month, two-phase study inquiring into the music experiences of 20 Grade 2/3 children (seven to eight year olds), both in- and out-of-school. The article highlights the music experiences of three children who were drawn from the group of 20. Situated within the theoretical underpinnings of social constructionism, experience and attentive listening, a framework of ethnography and narrative inquiry was utilized to create and interpret fictionalized narratives crafted in the form of ongoing dialogues between the researcher and participants. The children’s tales offered insightful understandings relating to the influences that shape children’s music experiences. Conversations indicated a recognizable lack of interplay of music experiences between in- and out-of-school. These tales reveal possibilities for how music educators may re/conceptualize ways in which children’s voices may be centrally embedded within elementary music curricula.

Inquiring into Children's Music Experiences: Groundings in Literature.

Highlighting various seminal studies in music education provides grounding for the necessity of connecting children’s school music experiences with their daily lived music experiences. Allowing children to make more seamless connections between these two contexts heightens the possibility of creating increasingly meaningful school music experiences. The review of literature in children’s nonguided music experiences and ethnographic-centered research contextualizes this prominent issue within the field of music education. Such research affirms the importance of attending to children’s experiences as a means of comprehending how children’s perspectives may be a central catalyst in shaping elementary school music curricula. The varied literature showed the clear need for continued inquiry within the field of music education that investigates children’s music experiences in their daily lives.

Singing is a Celebration of Language: Using Music to Enhance Young Children’s Vocabularies

Music engages children in language learning, offering them opportunities to understand and express their ideas and communicate with others in ways that go beyond words. This article, based on two ethnographically-framed studies and the use of two real-life vignettes, demonstrates how singing and musical experiences (e.g., composition, soundscapes, musical improvisation) have the power to enhance children’s lexical acquisition and semantic knowledge at various levels of development. Results demonstrate that singing and musical experiences, whether biologically or socially shaped, provide opportunities to celebrate language and enhance young children’s vocabulary building.

Storying the Terroir of Collaborative Writing: Like Wine and Food, a Unique Pairing of Mentoring Minds

As two faculty members in a Canadian post‐secondary teacher education context, the authors inquired into their collaborative writing process initiated through an informal faculty mentoring relationship. Situating their writing in the discourses of personal practical knowledge, social constructionism, narrative inquiry, and autobiography grounds their understanding of relational writing as side‐by‐side collaborators who engage in a bodily co‐present writing process, negotiating the many nuances of text construction. By using a metaphor of carefully pairing exquisite wine with fine food, they convey the mutual co‐construction of their lived experiences that evolve through relational writing. Highlighting related literature in the areas of mentoring, writing terminology, traits of collaborators, writing process, and benefits of collaboration assists them in comparing and contrasting the literature with features unique to their own collaboration. They conclude by noting critical issues and implications regarding collaborative writing that offer insight into the importance of honoring collaborative scholarship within academic contexts.

Hitting the Trail Running: Roadmaps and Reflections on Informal Faculty Mentorship Experiences

Using a shared theoretical framework of personal practical knowledge, we convey a narrative inquiry into our 3-year journey as two faculty members working in relation in a Canadian post secondary music teacher education context. Our personal and professional narratives are interwoven as we were guided by the question: How do personal and professional knowledge perspectives help transform an evolving faculty mentoring relationship? Our experiences offer insight into the complexities of working alongside one another in an informal faculty mentoring relationship which evolved into a collaborative writing partnership. We use a metaphor of running on an academic trail to share our rich experiences through convergent and divergent lenses which contextualise the temporality of our personal and professional narrative journeys. We conclude with enlightenments that emerged from our mentoring and collaborative, side-by-side relational writing endeavours, as well as suggesting possibilities for future collaboration.

A Dialogue of Necessity Attending to Teacher Candidates’ Informal Music Experiences

Many teacher candidates (preservice teachers) in a Bachelor of Education degree cross the threshold into an elementary music methodology course with trepidation. Thus, teacher educators (music education professors) ought to explore the ways in which they can attend to students’ music experiences so as to increase teacher competence. This article explores three relevant areas of literature: fear of teaching music, relevance of informal music learning on influencing teacher identity, and influence of such experiences on teacher education programs. Building on this literature, the article concludes with highlighting a 2-year narrative inquiry exploring how the daily music experiences of teacher candidates’ inform their teaching practices. Through the use of visual narratives (body maps), oral and written narratives, and conversational interviews, 20 participants gave voice to their multilayered experiences that influenced their perceptions about music teaching. Findings deepen conceptualizations concerning the power of informal music learning in shaping teacher identity and practice.

The fluid infusion of musical culture: embodied experiences in a grade one classroom

ABSTRACT Children’s daily, embodied music experiences are integral to how children live and function in the world. Growing out of a line of work focusing on the interplay between elementary children’s daily experiences of music, both in- and out-of-school and the impact on elementary music education curriculum, this research is nested within the theoretical discourses of experience, children’s musical culture, and children’s agency. Building upon this work, findings from a two-phase, 6-month inquiry, situated in an urban, Canadian, Grade 1 French Immersion classroom, draw upon the tools of ethnography and narrative inquiry, with the intention of deepening understandings of how informal music-making and sound function in children’s lives. Phase one findings highlight: (1) the frequency and spontaneity of children’s daily music experiences, both in- and out-of-school, (2) the nature of how music and sound function fluidly in a variety of contexts as integral to children’s experience, and (3) the power of musical behaviours in assisting young children to acquire French vocabulary and literacy skills. Important considerations for teacher education include: the necessity of creating space in elementary curriculum to engage children in music-making, integrating and infusing the Arts fluidly across the curriculum, and encouraging children autonomy in their musical engagement.