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

Abstract

A B S T R A C T 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. K E Y W O R D S : children's music-making, children's music perspectives, elementary music curriculum, in-and out-of-school experiences, narrative inquiry Personal beginningsFrom the time I was a little girl, I always remember being around music. I recall my mother singing to me as I rocked upon her knee and hearing my father whistle in the yard as he went about his farming chores. At the age of 5, I began step-dancing lessons and at the age of 6, I enrolled in piano lessons. There were countless hours of practice as I would turn on the stereo and tap my feet on the piece of plywood on the living room floor or tinkle my little fingers on the ivories of our piano in the dining room. (Griffin, 2002, pp. 2-3) As I began to formulate my research inquiry of understanding how a group of 20 Grade 2/3 children (seven to eight year olds) experienced music in their daily lives, both in-and out-of-school, I was intrigued to recollect some of my personal childhood experiences of music. Thus, my article opens with a fragment of writing that shapes the beginnings of my first recollections of the presence of music in my life. Hale Hankins (1998) noted the importance of acknowledging personal experiences in order to claim a voice in the research when she explained that, 'events remembered at AMS/Girona Library on

An 8-year-old’s engagement with preferred music: A case study

“…When I asked Jack about music at school, he replied that it was okay, but 'boring a lot'. This disconnect between school and home music experiences has been highlighted by other researchers such as Roulston (2006), Griffin (2009) and Temmerman (2005). In a study investigating the functions of music listening at home and at school for children aged 9-10 years and 13-14 years, Boal-Palheiros and Hargreaves (2001) articulate a particularly interesting disconnect between the two.…”

“…Jack frequently engaged with his preferred music through spontaneous musical play. This was most clearly seen in his use of parody when recreating songs, a form of musicking that others have observed in young children (Campbell, 1998;Griffin, 2009;Lum & Campbell, 2007;Marsh, 1995). This parodying occurred when he took an existing song melody and created his own words, thus personalizing the music (i.e., singing 'Scruffy ro-o-o-o-ocks' to the opening melody of The Snowman; singing 'Eye of the rex the runt' to the chorus melody of Eye of the Tiger).…”

“…Alongside Roulston's study sits Campbell's (1998) ethnographic study of children's musicking at school and at play, Young's (2009) exploration of young children's engagement with music using digital technologies, and Baker's (2002) examination of pre-teen girls' use of popular music. McCarthy (2010) points to the dearth of research on musicking -participation in any music-making activity (Small, 1998)outside of the school context that focuses on middle childhood (ages 6-12) and, in particular, research that focuses on the voices of these children (see Barrett, 2003;Griffin, 2009;and Young, 2009 for examples of the foregrounding of young children's voices). This is the focus of the current research, namely an examination of an 8-year-old boy's preferred music, focused not only on his preferred music, but also on why this is preferred music and how he musicked with these preferred pieces of music.…”

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

“…The vignettes that follow come from two ethnographically-framed studies (Bresler, 2006;Creswell, 2012;Griffin, 2009Griffin, , 2011Van Maanen, 1988) that took place in a west coast urban community in Canada. During these studies, the first author visited several community centres, play groups, libraries, home environments, and schools, looking for evidence of language development and the integration of art forms such as music, drama, visual arts, and media.…”

Espaços para criar e conviver: processos criativos em jogos cênico-musicais na educação musical com crianças

“…Deste modo, procurou-se ouvir e dar voz às crianças, atentando para a maneira como essa experiência "afetou" as mesmas, além de considerar a importância de assegurar as opiniões das próprias crianças nas pesquisas que as envolvem, levantando reflexões também com base no que elas pensam a respeito de um trabalho, considerando-as agentes sociais que constroem modos particulares de significação de mundo (BURNARD, 2006;GRIFFIN, 2009;SARMENTO, 2003).…”