Faculty of Education - Theses
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ItemThe impact and local implementation of standards-based music curriculum policy frameworks and music education programs for students with disabilities and impairments in Victoria: a qualitative evaluation( 2006-11)This study is in response to national, state and local curriculum issues. Curriculum work is taken to embrace curriculum research and theory, and curriculum development and implementation. This study is a critical reflection on current curriculum work as a day-to-day experience. This study is about the impact and local implementation of standards-based curriculum frameworks for students with disabilities and impairments. The focus is to develop an improved understanding of the extraordinary complexities that encompass standards-based music curriculum policy frameworks for these students in the State of Victoria. For most people, a better understanding of these extraordinary complexities may much reduce fear, unease and distrust. The phenomenon would seem logical. This study explores ways in which public curriculum policy is developed and implemented in modern societies like Australia. This study is a critical reflection on moves to change curriculum, curriculum policy framework initiatives and the institutional contexts that shape the impact and implementation of curriculum. Public curriculum policy formation is challenged by competing pressures and limitations including an increasing emphasis on ‘partnerships’ and ‘networking’. There are difficulties and complex challenges to ensure that all students share in the benefits.
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Item"A terrible honesty": the development of a personal voice in musical improvisation( 1996-06)Australia mostly with a focus on the performance of African-American music or jazz. In this majority of these the emphasis is on the performance of those styles which were conceived and developed up to the end of the 1950s and the beginning of the free jazz era. However, there is one course which, although it is rooted in African-American music, promulgates the notion that Australian students in the 1990s should endeavour to develop a personal musical “voice”. This is Improvisation Studies, a three year degree program at the Victorian College of the Arts in Melbourne, Australia. This study sought to clarify what was meant by a personal voice by monitoring the development of selected students. Given that the notion of a personal voice as an outcome is a novel one, the study adopted an investigatory discovery-based approach. This required intensive study of selected students on the grounds that the development of a personal voice manifests itself in different ways. A second major purpose of the study was to investigate factors which affected the development of the personal voice. Key factors included the ways in which the VCA course encouraged the development of this voice, as well as the characteristics that students brought to the course and which possibly reflected their musical educational background.
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ItemStudents' music preferences in three schools in the western suburbs of Melbourne, 1989( 1990)A study of 225 year 7 and 8 secondary students was undertaken in 1989 to examine their school music preferences. The survey, in questionnaire format, was administered to those secondary schools (Private, High and Technical) in the western suburbs of Melbourne. Music preferences of those surveyed indicated that most subjects were in favour of studying and listening to pop music and that the parents of students in both Private and Government systems want pop music taught in school music programmes. The fact that students indicated a very strong interest in learning pop music at school may be and indication that students want to incorporate their interest in pop culture into their formal school life. If it is not provided in the school students will pursue their interest in pop music outside school hours. So why not capitalize on a medium which has after all captured the students interest and imagination? The new VCE does exactly this. It endeavours to cater for and introduce students to a wide range of musical styles and genres, including pop music. Thus why not use a medium which appeals to the students’ tastes and interests and which after all deserves a legitimate place in the school music curriculum. For contrasting Private and State schools attention was focused on the female results. Parents of female students in both Private and State schools want pop music taught in the school music curriculum, but contrasts of boys and girls could only be made for those in State schools. Another finding revealed that more parents of girls from the Private system would like classical music taught at school and more parents of boys from the High school would like pop music taught at school. Recommendations are made concerning the incorporation of popular music into the music curriculum.
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ItemBeyond words: newly-arrived children's perceptions of music learning and music making( 2009)This thesis examines the way refugee and immigrant children, newly-arrived in Australia, perceive and describe music learning and music making. Sited in a specialist English Language School for primary school-age new arrivals, it explores the meaning that children from diverse cultural backgrounds and prior schooling experiences ascribe to their music classes and experiences, inviting their perceptions of what they are learning, how they learn it, what aspects of the music program most engage and motivate them, and what sense they make of the music program and its existence at this school. The study also focuses on the methodological issues at play in a research context where multiple languages, culture shock, and pre-adolescent children with unknown pre-migration experiences, coincide with a subject matter that does not lend itself easily to spoken descriptions. These include issues of interpretation and assigning meaning, and the way that different cultural values and expectations can influence participants’ responses. The researcher sought to develop research methods and tools that would effectively elicit the children’s responses, supporting them in the unfamiliar research environment, while remaining sensitive to their preferred ways of communicating. This is a qualitative multiple case study that focuses on three individual students from diverse cultural and schooling backgrounds, with the school’s music program being the issue or concern upon which they offer their different perspectives. Both within-case and cross-case analysis was utilised, and a phenomenological approach to the inquiry was embedded within the case-study structure and research design. Data were gathered by means of interviews and participant observation, and were analysed and interpreted for emergent categories and themes, and for the additional meanings hidden between what was not said, or within awkward language, using interpretive poetics methods and direct interpretations of individual instances. Discussion points and conclusions include the significance of the music pedagogy in building shared understanding among culturally-diverse children, the impact of culture shock on children’s perceptions, the importance of social learning contexts for newly-arrived children, and methodological challenges and recommendations for research with a similar cohort of children.