This paper presents an analysis of how guided engagement with the arts can provide leadership lessons for school leaders and administrators. The study was conducted as part of two projects funded by the School Leadership Program (SLP) grants from the U.S. Department of Education. The principal interns and practicing school leaders participated in…

In 2012, the Austin Independent School District reported that over 60 percent of its students identified as Hispanic. However, the number of theatrical offerings for children including Latino stories or Latino/a characters on Austin stages is staggeringly disproportionate to the number of Latino children living in the community. "Mariachi…

We offer a multi-voiced performance autoethnography where contemporary music education practices are informed and imbued with the voices of teachers and learners. By dialogically and musically engaging with the very people who live, make music, and engage with learners in music classrooms, we promote contemporary qualitative forms of research and…

Because students spontaneously exhibit aesthetic and rhythmic acts in the classroom and human beings across the world have engaged in the arts for thousands of years, this study argues that artful behavior represents an inherent and significant human proclivity. Exploring the tension between the human predisposition and the physical and mental…

Ethnomusicology, the field in which the author has spent most of his life, is an unpronounceable interdisciplinary field whose denizens have trouble agreeing on its definition. He calls it the study of the world's musical cultures from a comparative perspective, and the study of all music from the perspective of anthropology. In this article,…

This case study about a teenage musician, Wade Johnston, suggests how YouTube has affected music consumption, creation, and sharing. A literature review connects education, technology, and media. Informal learning, digital literacy, and twenty-first century technology are also connected in the review. Data reveals how Wade started his channel,…

This autoethnographic study seeks the value, position and possibilities of free improvisation in the musical field. It explores how embodied knowledge, dialectical exchanges, emotional and intellectual stimulation constructs and reconstructs experiences in various contexts for the free improviser, who is both researcher and actual piano performer.…

This qualitative study presents a group of five diasporic Chinese "xianshi" musicians in Hong Kong as an example, illustrating how they learnt and value their music throughout their lives, and examines the possible link between learning-practices and values. It is hoped that the lesson learnt from these "xianshi" musicians may alert music…

This paper explores the issue of motivation in music learning in higher education by contextualising data collected as part of the "Investigating-Musical-Performance" research project (Welch, et al., 2006-2008). The discussion begins with findings which suggest that popular, jazz and folk musicians experience more pleasure in musical activities…

Arts resources available on the Internet and DVDs provide a flexible, richly resonant, student-friendly framework for a coordinated study of the connections between the style and structure of Proust's novel and the social and cultural worlds he depicts. "In Search of Lost Time", a product of an artistic revolution as well as a critical and…

This paper discusses how software development can be used as a method for music education research. It explains how software development can externalize ideas, stimulate action and reflection, and provide evidence to support the educative value of new software-based experiences. Parallels between the interactive software development process and…

In folk-rock duo Tegan and Sara's 2004 music video "Walking with a Ghost," two women face one another, mirrored images in black and white. One is dressed in black--grunge shirt, pants and boots, while the other stands barefoot in a simple white dress. The black-clad figure removes three red paper hearts from her twin's chest, leaving crimson…

This study explores the metaphorical relationship between the process of narrative inquiry and the process of "musical mapping." The creation of musical maps was used as a classroom tool for enabling students' musical understanding while listening to music. As teacher-researcher, I studied my fifth-grade music students as they interacted with…

This qualitative study examined young children's music preferences through group conversations with children, interviews with parents, and non-participant observation of classroom settings in daycare and elementary classrooms. Data were analyzed inductively to generate themes, and revealed that (1) children expressed distinct preferences for an…

This reflective article explores a tension between private and public expression of deep aesthetic response to reading, with specific reference to the play of this tension in the public space of the classroom. Implications for teaching are included, most specifically the need to understand the sensitivities and emotional vulnerability of students,…