The agency of primary school students has been studied increasingly in recent years; yet, we know relatively little about student agency in music educational settings or how students experience their participation in joint musical action. This study explores sixth-grade students' experiences of their agency in whole-class playing. Qualitative…

Although the effects of focus of attention (FOA) on the performance of gross motor skills are now well understood, less is known about the role of FOA in naturalistic classroom settings where learners are engaged in the ongoing acquisition and refinement of complex motor skills. The purpose of this study, the first of its kind, was to explore how…

The purpose of this case study was to describe how one band director used pedagogical content knowledge while working with beginning-band students to help them develop the skill of playing brass lip slurs. Data were generated from (1) video recordings of each class over two different weeks during the school year, (2) "think aloud"…

Like the best teachers in any subject, Dana Hamant is a consummate student. In his 31 years as a music instructor, he has attended every single annual Music Educators Association conference in his home state of Kansas and missed only two Kansas Bandmasters Association conferences. (He is also a frequent attendee at NAfME and other professional…

Pedagogical content knowledge, the particular ways that teachers understand their subjects in order to instruct others, has been described and explored in the math and science education fields in some depth, yet little research exists illustrating this concept in music instruction. I used a descriptive approach to explore expert beginning band…

Students with communication disabilities present challenges to general music teachers with inclusive music classrooms. Typically, students perform, compose and improvise with others in the class, but students with physical disabilities that include communication difficulties or students with autism are left out or at best marginally participate.…

Facing the ambiguous status of in-school music literacy, this follow-up eight-year study aims to touch on the effects of traditional staff notation (SN) learning on student's intuitive symbolizing behavior and musical perception. Subjects were 47 second-graders attending a religious Jewish school in Israel. One "pre-literate" meeting, in…