The purpose of this multiple-case study was to examine the career development, choices, and goals of elementary general music teachers who identified as instrumental majors during their undergraduate degree programs. Data collection included a questionnaire, interviews, participant journals, and observation field notes; data were organized using…

Research investigating links between academic achievement and active music instruction has not previously differentiated between different types of instruction. In the current study, 155 seventh- and eighth-grade middle school band students were divided into two groups. Both groups received 2 months of instruction in jazz phrasing, scales, and…

The purpose of this study is to construct a complete demographic profile of high school music ensemble students using nationally representative data for the U.S. graduating high school class of 2013. We make use of restricted-use data from the National Center for Education Statistics High School Longitudinal Study of 2009 (HSLS). Results showed…

In this study, we examined the effects of multiple reference pitch sources on collegiate singers' accuracy in pitch-matching and intonation tasks. We also investigated which reference pitch source participants preferred and for what reasons. Participants (N = 99) sang a two-measure excerpt of "Joseph Dearest, Joseph Mine" after listening…

The purpose of this study was to investigate participant involvement in community wind bands through the lens of organizational theory to inform the music education profession about community wind bands as an "expressive" voluntary association with potential for lifelong participation. Twenty-eight informants were drawn from three…

Motivation has formed a core strand of research in music education, reflecting its importance in educational psychology and other skill-based performance domains. Understanding motivation is crucial for explaining students' achievement, performance, well-being, and intentions to continue participation in (or drop out of) music learning throughout…

This study was designed to examine to the extent to which impostor feelings, symptomatic of the psychological condition "impostor phenomenon" (IP), would be evident in early career university-level music educators. Those experiencing IP are typically successful individuals yet with impostor feelings that may include debilitating…

As fundraising has become a key component of American public school music educators' professional responsibilities, in many places, parent organizations have taken an increasingly outsized role in raising private funds to supplement public school music budgets. The purpose of this study was to understand the finances of public school music…

The purpose of our phenomenology was to investigate the lived experiences of emerging female vocal identity development (ages 19-35 years) and how participants' lived experiences shaped their future as musicians and music educators. Thirty-nine participants, freshmen through graduate students, enrolled in vocal music education or vocal performance…

The purpose of this study was to fit theoretical models of prediction to urban students' decisions to enroll and persist in music ensembles using academic achievement, socioeconomic status (SES), number of parents/guardians at home, mobility, ethnicity, and sex as explanatory variables. Through multinomial logistic regression, I built predictive…

The purpose of this study was to explore features of university environments that support well-being as perceived by undergraduate lesbian, gay, bisexual, and questioning (LGBQ) music and art students. Data were drawn from the 2013-2015 administrations of the College Student Report (CSR) by the National Survey of Student Engagement. Responses of…

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of conductor expressivity on the evaluation of rehearsal instruction. We video recorded two conductors in rehearsal with a university band. We extracted a 3.5-min excerpt of their rehearsals that featured alternation between conductor talk and expressive conducting. For one of the conductors (the…

This study tested the effect of the motor learning paradigm of internal and external focus of attention (FOA) with middle school band students. A total of 56 second-year band students (woodwinds n = 28; valved brass n = 18; trombones n = 10) practiced isochronous, alternating pitch patterns (e.g., eighth notes C-A-C-A-C-A-C) in three conditions:…

Previous studies have demonstrated that active engagement in musical activities benefits auditory and cognitive processing. However, it is still unclear whether musical experience improves domain-general mechanisms reflected in superior functioning in language or the enhancement is selective and limited to musical abilities. In the present study,…

This meta-analytic study examined the validity of Gordon's music aptitude tests as predictors of other musical variables. The four tests analyzed were the Music Aptitude Profile (1965), Primary Measures of Music Audiation (1979), Intermediate Measures of Music Audiation (1982), and Advanced Measures of Music Audiation (1989). Separate analyses…