While it seems many music educators share an enthusiasm for music festivals, others do not. Discrepancies seem to be rooted in the perceived educational outcomes in terms of musical knowledge gained, motivation, competition, psychological impact and social considerations. Advocates believe competitive festivals provide a "superlative" motivational…

This study offers an arts-based a/r/tographic inquiry using poetic transcription and representation of interviews conducted with a co-educational group of 14 students in a West Vancouver, British Columbia secondary school rhythm and blues band class. The decision to translate and analyse the interview transcripts into the Japanese poetry form of…

As a framework for our study, a broad set of themes related to the retention of students in music programmes are presented to enhance our understanding of how to retain band students. Data were collected from grade seven students comprising four focus groups. We used ethnodrama, an arts-based educational research approach, to represent results as…

The relationship between musical training and general intellectual capacity as well as academic achievement has been discussed in numerous contexts. In our study, we examined the relationship between participation and achievement in music and achievement in academic courses, based on data from three consecutive British Columbia student cohorts.…