Cultivating musical agency in an undergraduate classroom via a facilitated musical play approach
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Abstract
Musical agency is the combination of “human capacity as music-makers and human capacity to see oneself as initiating and sharing musical ideas” (Wiggins, 2015, p. 102). Developing and demonstrating agentic musical capacities is important in our intensely social and ever-evolving world (DeNora, 2000; Karlsen, 2014; Morley, 2013; Trevarthen, 2005). Although supporting students’ musical agency cultivation is theoretically “at the core of what music education is all about” (Wiggins, 2015, p. 116), students are increasingly dropping out of secondary and higher education school music programs because the programs fail to serve students’ interests and needs that pertain to musical agency (Abril, 2014; McKeage, 2004; Myers, 2007).
For decades, theater educators and children’s music educators have successfully served students’ agency interests and needs through thoughtfully employing and facilitating games and other activities to induce, maintain, and guide group play, where empowering developmental byproducts emerge as the participants focus on fun challenges (Boal, 1979; Halpern & Close, 2001; Johnstone, 1981; Pollock, 2003; Spolin, 1999). However, this facilitated play approach has been noticeably absent in secondary and higher education music programs.
The purpose of this study was to implement and examine a series of undergraduate music workshops that employed a facilitated musical play approach in order to better understand the ways that the approach may have supported the students’ musical agency. The following questions guided the study:
1. How did the participants perceive both the in-the-moment experiences and the lasting impacts of their theoretically-playful workshop activities?
2. In what ways was musical agency demonstrated and supported in the workshop experiences?
I employed a case study methodological approach (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016) that incorporated aspects of action research (Carr & Kemmis, 1986) in examining the workshop series. Data sources included interview transcripts, field notes, participant reflections, and video recordings of the workshops, and I engaged in rudimentary analysis (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016) of the data as it emerged. After all the data had been collected, I then analyzed the data inductively and deductively through open coding and through a priori codes informed by a musical agency framework put forward by Wiggins (2015) and others.
The study findings suggest that self-directed and peer-supported undergraduate agentive musical development can be facilitated in a college classroom environment by a learning professional who actively integrates the playful processes and the group values observed in playground and other informal music-making contexts with elements of formal learning such as facilitator-chosen content and facilitator-imposed challenges. The facilitated musical play workshop approach, a musical adaptation of the games-driven theater education workshop approach described by Spolin (1999), supported the undergraduate participants’ musical agency demonstration and cultivation in a multitude of ways and in an enjoyable, socially meaningful, and sustainable manner (all detailed in this paper).
The findings challenge general assumptions underlying institutionalized, presentation-based practices that dominate undergraduate music education (Green, 2001; Reimer, 2009) and that notably lack musical play (Koops & Taggart, 2011; Campbell, 2009). The findings may be of interest to music education scholars, play scholars, and higher and secondary education music educators who are responsible for supporting students’ musical agency.