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- Volume 6, Issue 3, 2022
Journal of Popular Music Education - Special Section: Popular Music and the Environment, Nov 2022
Special Section: Popular Music and the Environment, Nov 2022
- Editorial
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- Articles
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College music administrators’ opinions of curricular initiatives in popular music
Authors: Virginia Wayman Davis and Donna HewittThis study examined college music administrators’ attitudes towards popular music in tertiary settings. Participants (N = 92) completed a Likert-type scale survey that solicited administrators’ overall attitude towards popular music education, coursework and degree plans. Additionally, data were collected through written comments regarding challenges to implementing curricular changes. Descriptive data revealed that administrators’ overall attitudes towards popular music and its inclusion in higher education settings are mostly positive. Participants’ responses to open-ended questions revealed that limited resources, budgetary concerns and pressure to have fewer credits in degree programmes are challenges to curricular changes that include more popular music opportunities. With these findings, we suggest that while college music administrators may be in favour of popular music initiatives in higher education, the ways in which they can be enacted through curricula will vary based on the unique opportunities and challenges at each institution.
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‘It’s dynamite!’: The role of popular music and the home–school connection in the special music education classroom
By Sarah PerryWhen teaching children with disabilities, the home–school music connection can be the key to keeping our students engaged and motivated while increasing students’ self-regulation and positive interactions with peers. This article aims to shed light on classroom experiences with popular music of two third-grade students with sensory processing disorder and on how ‘music sharing turns’ influenced their overall engagement and ability to self-regulate in music classes. Music sharing turns, a weekly music ‘show and tell’, provided opportunities to bring popular music and activities they enjoy at home into the classroom. The results show that the participants were easily engaged and experienced greater self-regulation and awareness of others during music sharing turns. Music sharing turns also provided a predictable environment for peer interaction with opportunities to take on leadership roles within the classroom while remaining open-ended in a way participants could make their own.
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Who’s aloud* to have fun? On covers and identity crossing1
More LessMusic educators regularly employ covers – or the performance of a version of a song previously performed or recorded by an artist – to learn and teach popular music. While covers might be an effective strategy towards music learning, issues of social justice become present when these covers cross genre and identity boundaries. How are educators and musicians to approach covers that enact these ethically perilous terrains? In this action-research and autoethnography-inspired study, I look at my cover of the song ‘Girls Just Want to Have Fun’ (Hazard 1979), performed by Cyndi Lauper in 1983. I explore the ethical aspects of me – a White male – aiming to perform this feminist anthem. Using a framework of strategic anti-essentialism, I suggest that covers can be a uniquely musical way to create solidarity by crossing identity boundaries in ways not available through language. This might become a framework for judging covers that cross identity and genre boundaries. I conclude with implications for music education practice as well as research, including using strategic anti-essentialism to structure discussion in the classroom.
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Curriculum and assessment in popular music education
More LessIn this article, I examine how curriculum and assessment in popular music can be organized and delivered in valid and authentic ways in both school and university settings. This discussion focuses on how popular musicians learn, what they do as independent musicians on a regular basis and how this is contrasted with traditional models of music instruction and assessment in schools. I describe the three stages of backward curricular design and address formative, summative and negotiated assessments in detail. This discussion is supported with examples of assessment tools currently being used in selected popular music programmes in diverse school settings around the world.
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Rockstar teaching: Blended informal music learning in an elementary ukulele club
Authors: Jacqueline J. R. Secoy and Raychl SmithThe purpose of this case study was to examine the phenomenon of informal music learning in an elementary school ukulele club. Research questions were: (1) How does a master teacher use informal music learning in an elementary ukulele club? (2) What teacher behaviours and characteristics facilitate informal music learning in an elementary ukulele club? Participants in the study were 60 students in an elementary ukulele club and their music teacher. Data were analysed using a priori themes from Lucy Green’s five components of informal music learning. The researchers found that elementary students were free to develop leadership, ownership and fearless musicianship because a master teacher utilized blended learning approaches. The teacher created an environment that encouraged musical noodling, and while the room was often loud, the space gave students the ability to play and learn while the teacher had opportunities to coach and facilitate musical skill development.
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- Special Section: ‘Popular Music and the Environment’
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Climate-conscious popular music education: Theory and practice
More LessGiven popular music’s impact and its tradition in environmental activism, popular music education seems suited to contribute to a societal transformation towards sustainability in which the arts are increasingly considered to play an important role. The article proposes goals and methods of a climate-conscious popular music education, illustrated with examples from the author’s experience in music education. Drawing from and adding to eco-literate music pedagogy and activist music education, the article suggests that a climate-conscious popular music education should include: reducing the carbon footprint of educational practices; cultivating ecological consciousness, i.e. a connection to and appreciation of local nature; understanding climate change as a complex issue of intergenerational and global justice; using the specific potential of music to help overcome barriers to climate action, in particular its sensory, imaginative, creative, emotional, expressive and communal character.
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#SaveTheAmazon: Promoting global competence and making bridges in the middle school music classroom
Authors: Luiz Claudio Barcellos and Rebecca Wade-ChungThis article offers an overview of a semester-long general music class unit in an international middle school. Due to international schools’ transient nature, students come from various backgrounds, and many do not have formal musical training. Using samba and popular music as a base for the unit, students developed critical awareness and explored socio-ecological issues in sustainability, resource consumption and environmentally friendly education about the Amazon rainforest. This action research will discuss the teaching strategies used in the classroom to promote student-led learning, problem-solving and collective music-making in times of hybrid learning and physical constraints due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Initially, students studied rhythms and developed musicianship while using popular music repertoire. Subsequently, students investigated the impact of deforestation in the Amazon basin and how it may affect the world. Finally, they learned about activism in art and were encouraged to take action through songwriting and social media, developing critical awareness and global competence.
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Welcome to the journal
Authors: Gareth Dylan Smith and Bryan Powell
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