Faculty of Education - Theses

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Subject: music × Subject: cross-cultural transition × Type: Masters Research thesis ×

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    Beyond words: newly-arrived children's perceptions of music learning and music making
    HOWELL, GILLIAN ( 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.