Publications

THESIS
Davis, S. G. (2008). Fostering a musical say: Enabling meaning making and investment in a band class by connecting to students’ informal music learning processes. (Ph.D in Music Education Doctoral dissertation), Oakland University, Rochester, Michigan.   Adviser: Jacqueline H. Wiggins, Ed.D.

In this qualitative study, I explored the musical processes and music learning processes of students in one fifth-grade beginning band class. As teacher-researcher in my own classroom, I endeavored to peer more deeply into the musical lifeworld of these beginning instrumentalists. Influenced by an earlier study of rock musicians (Davis, 2005), I began to consider how I might incorporate informal learning processes into the context of a formal classroom. Through this six-month investigation in my own classroom, I became aware of the learning strategies my students were using to create their own musical meaning and, in turn, what I learned about their strategies continually influenced my teaching.Findings describe the nature of the teaching and learning processes that emerged in this setting, including the emergence of a reflexive pedagogical design that accommodated students’ learning strategies and fostered their investment in their own learning. Within this pedagogical design, I learned as a teacher that enabling students to discuss their own musical connections (which, in this study were largely metaphorical) instead of perhaps dismissing what may have seemed unrelated to my own way of thinking, enabled students to give birth to their own musical rationality (Greene, 1995) and encouraged their personal investment in their own learning.Finally, it became clear that the inclusion of informal learning processes in the formal learning context lies at the nexus of change in the nature of the relationships that comprise participation in the band community. This fostered the development of identity and enabled the transformation of meaning as it corresponded to the students’ personal and cultural experience (Swanwick, 1999; Wenger, 1998). Informal learning is the catalyst for meaningful musical rationality because it enables the realization of ecological relationships within musical works and the transformation into new relationships that correspond to the learner’s personal experience. The potential for this transformative experience is the power of music; providing the groundwork that enables this to occur in the music classroom is the role of the teacher.For a complete copy of this dissertation, please contact me: slgdavis@mac.com