Work-life balance has become a buzzword in many corporate settings. This study situates itself at a higher education institute in Melbourne (Australia) where African music (singing and drumming) was used as a lever for faculty staff to "break from work" and "learn about a new music and culture". Drawing on email communication,…

With particular reference to Beijing, China, this study adopts mixed-method research to focus on Grades Seven to Nine students' perceptions of how parental cultural capital and support influence their musical instrument learning. Framed by Bourdieu's theory of cultural capital, two research questions are addressed in this article: (1) How do…

This article reports on a pilot project exploring the viability of a teaching-through-playing approach in chamber music instruction in higher music education. Literature suggests that teaching traditions such as the one-to-one setting need renewal, and socio-cultural theories of learning propose that collaboration and participation are a way…

Research in higher music education acknowledges a persistent divide between performance studies and the realities of musicians' work. Alongside this is global pressure for curriculum that is more supportive of students' metacognitive engagement, experiential learning and career preparation. However, scholars assert that the provision of these…

The purpose of this mixed-methods study was to explore the perceptions of secondary-school band teachers as they moved to virtual formats with their students. The study was designed to fill a gap in the literature, as little research has been done on the subject of distance learning and music. As teachers reflect on their pandemic-closed schools,…

Self-observation has proven to be a powerful medium for personal and professional growth and development. This research makes use of self-observation through video to determine the latent structure that underlies the gestures to be learned and mastered by orchestra conducting students. Exploratory Factorial Analysis (EFA) techniques have been…

Growing numbers of universities are developing service-learning community music-making interventions. However, there has been little research into their efficacy and effect on overall mental health for students. This study explored whether 4-weeks of dyadic group drumming could improve depression, anxiety, stress, social resilience, and enjoyment…

Amateur musical instrument learners are usually taught in a one-to-many learning mode owing to the cost consideration; therefore, it is difficult for the teacher to address individual students' problems. This results in a lack of knowledge internalization. The flipped classroom enables the teacher to have more in-class time to interact with…

This paper reports on an exploratory research-and-development project concerning a device for conveying a conductor's gestures wirelessly to a visually impaired (blind or partially sighted) performer as a haptic signal. The research team developed this device from January to July 2017 under a University College London (UCL) Institute of Education…

This study explored perceptions of four undergraduate instrumental music students. The purpose of this study was to describe social and emotional challenges of college instrumental music students and to explore the music connection with these challenges. Questions guiding this inquiry were as follows: (a) What social and emotional challenges do…

Given the prevalence of honor ensembles (Lien & Humphreys, 2001) and the lack of research investigating these ensembles outside of the event itself, the purpose of this study was to examine collegiate musicians' remembered benefits and experiences of such honor ensemble experiences. Participants (N = 86) were undergraduate and graduate…

This research is aimed to determine the effects of piano education on the attention skills of 7-12-year-old children. In the research, pretest-posttest control group design is used, and attention skills of both of the groups are measured before and after the experiment. Unlike the control group (n=53), the experimental group (n=46) had private…

Although flow theory is one way of measuring the quality of a student's experience in a music ensemble, the majority of flow research utilizes samples of high school or collegiate level musicians thus causing us to generalize findings to young adolescent (middle school) populations. Using a convergent parallel mixed methods design, the purpose of…

Improvisation-based exercises may be the key to unlocking students' innate musical creativities. This article focuses on two exercises--drone improvisation and circle stringing--that can be easily integrated into the orchestra curriculum and adapted to the learning needs of the individual student, small-ensemble, and large-ensemble settings. Of…

In the pedagogy of Western classical string music, creativity is often viewed according to the works of luminary composers, suggesting the question: how might string teachers, students, and musicians conceive of creativity? After problematizing standard definitions and ontological ideas of musical creativity, I outline an open model using the…