This latest volume of the Register of Educational Research in the United Kingdom lists all the major research projects being undertaken in Britain during the latter months of 1992, the whole of 1993 and 1994 and the early months of 1995. Each entry provides names and addresses of the researchers, a detailed abstract, the source and amount of the grant(where applicable), the length of the project and details of published material about the research.
Seventeen authors, whose work represents the best of contemporary research and theory on a constellation of issues concerning the role of the arts in children's lives and learning, address critical issues of development, context, and curriculum from perspectives informed by work with children in formal and informal settings. This anthology draws on various cultural and institutional context and traditional and contemporary practices from different parts of the world.
Choral Conducting is a resource for singers, teachers, and choral conductors, and a college-level text for students of choral conducting. It also includes an overview of what is involved in leading a choral group and examines theories of learning and human behaviour and the history of choral music together with conductor's role. The book also discusses issues of the conductor-vocalist relationship, the mechanics of singing, rehearsal strategies, and more.
Useful work has been done in recent years in the areas of music psychology, philosophy and education, yet this is the first book to provide a wide assessment of what practical benefits this research can bring to the music practitioner. With 25 chapters by writers representing a broad range of perspectives, this volume is able to highlight many of the potential links between music research and practice. The chapters are divided into five main sections. Section one examines practitioners? use of research to assist their practice and the ways in which they might train to become systematic researchers. Section two explores research centred on perception and cognition, while section three looks at how practitioners have explored their everyday work and what this reveals about the creative process. Section four focuses on how being a musician affects an individual?s sense of self and the how others perceive him or her. The essays in section five outline the new types of data that creative researchers can provide for analysis and interpretation. The concluding chapter discusses that key question - what makes music affect us in the way it does? The research findings in each chapter provide useful sources of data and raise questions that are applicable across the spectrum of music-related disciplines. Moreover, the research methodologies applied to a specific question may have broader application for readers wishing to take on research themselves.
The Handbook of Musical Identities explores three features of psychological approaches to musical identities and four real-life contexts in which musical identities have been investigated. The multidisciplinary breadth of the Handbook reflects the changes that are taking place in music, in digital technology, and in their role in society.
Singing has been a characteristic behaviour of humanity across several millennia. Chorus America (2009) estimated that 42.6 million adults and children regularly sing in one of 270,000 choruses in the US, representing more than 1:5 households. Similarly, recent European-based data suggest that more than 37 million adults take part in group singing. The Oxford Handbook of Singing is a landmark text on this topic. It is a comprehensive resource for anyone who wishes to know more about the pluralistic nature of singing. In part, the narrative adopts a lifespan approach, pre-cradle to senescence, to illustrate that singing is a commonplace behaviour which is an essential characteristic of our humanity. In the overall design of the Handbook, the chapter contents have been clustered into eight main sections, embracing fifty-three chapters by seventy-two authors, drawn from across the world, with each chapter illustrating and illuminating a particular aspect of singing. Offering a multi-disciplinary perspective embracing the arts and humanities, physical, social and clinical sciences, the book will be valuable for a broad audience within those fields.
What can infants hear? What are their reactions to music? Is it useful for them to sing and listen to music? Is their auditory sensitivity developed before their birth? At what age do they start singing, and clapping their hands? How can their musical development be improved? These (and other) questions are present in today's debate on music education and the responses are normally given in an intuitive way. It is now necessary and urgent to sketch a developmental profile of infants, starting from their earliest manifestations. In the last 30 years, research in this field has been progressively developed. In most cases research has been devoted to single aspects of more complex problems. Moreover, it has been based on non-homogeneous categories of subjects and by different methods. Motivated by the fact that many open problems need to be solved, Professor Tafuri decided, in 1998, to begin a longitudinal research project devoted to studying the musical development in children from 0 to 6 years, with particular attention on the ability to sing in tune. During these 6 years, the children would have a regular music education experience with their mothers and often other members of the immediate family. This book has two main areas of focus. The first reconstructs the development of human musical abilities. Tafuri systematically reports studies of the development of vocal, rhythmic and motor abilities through the observation of the same participants for three years, beginning with the mothers' experiences in the last three months of pre-natal life. The programme of musical activities and the modalities of the collaboration with the parents are described. The second area of focus puts forward an educational perspective based on the results of the research. The amount and the quality of the collected data can allow parents and educators to plan different activities by considering the starting point for individual participants and the development of the
Music in the Early Years is for teachers working across the 3 to 8 age phase who want to make music integral to the life of the nursery and early years classroom. Music has often been taught as if it were different, something outside the mainstream curriculum, with teaching approaches quite at odds with early years work. This book takes children's development as its basis and works towards building a music pedagogy within early years practice. A readiness to listen, observe and reflect is central to the practice which threads through the book. Based on the authors' extensive experience and drawing on that of other teachers and researchers, lots of well-tried, practical ideas show how teachers, parents and carers can help children fulfil their music potential. Sample activities model ways of working with children and have been written in such a way that they can be substituted with other material and adapted for further use. Earlier and later stages of learning and progression are described as a basis for matching activities with children's learning needs, as well as a companion book, Primary Music: Later Years.
