Open Collections

O'Sullivan, Margaret

University of British Columbia

Grand narratives of quality in music education self-perpetuate through their reproduction in received concepts of merit that shape experiences of making and learning music. Shifting contexts emerging in the 21st century—digital spaces, community music, instant access to global musical cultures through the Internet—remove historical barriers to youth music participation. Dismantling such barriers enables expansive experiences with music. In this autoethnographic, arts based research study of a community music education program within a national network in Ireland (Music Generation), I inquire into how quality is experienced in situations of music making and learning to develop insights into quality music education that affords expansive possibilities for youth becoming musicians. By centering the experiences, situations, and stories of young people in processes of becoming musicians, I aim to show the many ways that constitute a quality music education in the 21st century. Three fundamental questions structure and inform my research: (1) What is the experience? (2) What is the situation? (3) What is the story? My storied methodological approach draws on my journey of learning and discovery in community music education contexts, developing new understandings of quality music making and learning in contemporary ways. I align with artography to craft autoethnographic living inquiries of quality in music making and learning. Along with my observant participation, these storied inquiries draw from lived experiences shared by adolescents becoming musicians. I weave story and theory together in reflexive, explanatory interludes that emerge through a creative analytical process of engagement with the stories that form the core of this dissertation. Through this process, I generate new touchstones for quality that signify the many ways of music making in the present moment. Along the way, I identify concepts of embodiment, community, and refusal that are features of quality in music making and learning that promotes Positive Youth Development (Lerner, 2005) in a relational developmental systems (RDS) paradigm (Overton, 2015). Listening to what the situation is asking (Aoki, 2005) leads me to determine touchstones of quality that characterise equitable, inclusive situations of music making and learning in the present historical moment.

Text

2024-06-10

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/88452

Curriculum Studies

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/