Melbourne Conservatorium of Music - Research Publications

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    Arts programs in schools : Seven models and a decision-making matrix for school leaders
    McFerran, K ; Hattie, J ; McPherson, G ; Crooke, A ; Steele, M (Australian Council for Educational Leaders, 2019-09-01)
    The provision of arts programs in Australian schools is diverse. Studies of music have shown that the quality of music education in private schools is high and well resourced, but in government-funded schools there is greater variation with schools in some states offering little to no embedded programs. Because the arts are not considered core, school leaders have the freedom and responsibility to determine how much, how often, and what kinds of programs should be offered. Without mandated guidelines, our research shows that this is often influenced by leaders' personal experiences of music in their history or family context. School leaders have also described needing to overcome significant barriers in order to justify the provision of programs. Further complicating the picture are the varying views held by school leaders and staff about exactly which benefits arts programs afford. While most agree on the intrinsic value related to artistic skills and creativity more generally, some are less sure about additional benefits such as psychosocial wellbeing benefits or community building, with a diversity of perspectives also reflected in policy documents.
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    Playing an Instrument
    MCPHERSON, G ; Davidson, J ; Evans, P ; McPherson, G (Oxford University Press, 2016)
    Learning to play a musical instrument is one of the most widespread musical activities for children. While much research in the past century has focused on the assessment of musical abilities and the content of their lessons, more recent research has focused on children’s interactions with their social environments and how these interactions impact their ongoing ability and motivation to learn and play music. This chapter explores these social and cognitive developments starting with how children and their parents select an instrument and negotiate the commencement of formal music learning, through to the task related cognitive strategies children use to overcome the difficulties associated with learning and practice, and the ways they may eventually become able to integrate an identity as a musician with their own sense of self. Aspects of self-regulation and self-determination theory are discussed.
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    Intra-individual change and variability in intentional self-regulation: A concert cellist optimizing performance
    López-Íñiguez, G ; McPherson, G (The International Symposium on Performance Science, 2019)
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    Developing Tests of Music Performance Improvisation
    McPherson, G ; Brophy, T (Oxford University Press, 2019)
    This chapter presents a survey of research on the development and validation of a measure to assess instrumentalists’ ability to improvise music. It begins by framing efforts to distinguish between visual, aural, and creative forms of music performance, and the types of assessment tasks required to evaluate music performance improvisation. The chapter surveys a range of related measures that have been used to assess improvisational abilities in young developing musicians and provides a detailed description of the author’s own Test of Ability to Improvise (TAI) that he has used with beginning, intermediate, and advanced level school instrumentalists. Included also are examples of the instrumentalists’ improvisations and a discussion of the implications of the research findings for conceptions of musical development and practical applications within music education.
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    Developing Tests of Music Performance Improvisation
    McPherson, GE ; Brophy, TS (Oxford University Press, 2019-03-08)
    This chapter presents a survey of research on the development and validation of a measure to assess instrumentalists’ ability to improvise music. It begins by framing efforts to distinguish between visual, aural, and creative forms of music performance, and the types of assessment tasks required to evaluate music performance improvisation. The chapter surveys a range of related measures that have been used to assess improvisational abilities in young developing musicians and provides a detailed description of the author’s own Test of Ability to Improvise (TAI) that he has used with beginning, intermediate, and advanced level school instrumentalists. Included also are examples of the instrumentalists’ improvisations and a discussion of the implications of the research findings for conceptions of musical development and practical applications within music education.
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    Eye-movement efficiency and sight-reading expertise in woodwind players
    Zhukov, K ; Khuu, S ; McPherson, GE (Bern Open Publishing, 2019)
    The ability to sight-read traditional staff notation is an important skill for all classically trained musicians. Up until now, however, most research has focused on pianists, by comparing experts and novices. Eye movement studies are a niche area of sight-reading research, focusing on eye-hand span and perceptual span of musicians, mostly pianists. Research into eye movement of non-piano sight-reading is limited. Studies into eye movement of woodwind sight-reading were conducted in the 1980s and early 2000s, highlighting the need for new research using modern equipment. This pilot study examined the eye movements of six woodwind (flute, clarinet) undergraduates of intermediate-to-advanced skill level during sight-reading of scores of increased difficulty. The data was analysed in relation to expertise level and task difficulty, focusing on numbers of fixations and fixation durations. The results show that as music examples became more difficult the numbers of fixations increased and fixation durations decreased; more experienced players with better sight-reading skills required less time to process musical notation; and participants with better sightreading skills utilised fewer fixations to acquire information visually. The findings confirm that the efficiency of eye movements is related to instrumental and sightreading expertise, and that task difficulty affects eye movement strategies.
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    Children's Creativity: A Theoretical Framework and Systematic Review
    Kupers, E ; Lehmann-Wermser, A ; McPherson, G ; van Geert, P (SAGE PUBLICATIONS INC, 2019-02-01)
    Within education, the importance of creativity is recognized as an essential 21st-century skill. Based on this premise, the first aim of this article is to provide a theoretical integration through the development of a framework based on the principles of complex dynamic systems theory, which describes and explains children’s creativity. This model is used to explain differing views on the role of education in developing children’s creativity. Our second aim is empirical integration. On the basis of a three-dimensional taxonomy, we performed a systematic review of the recent literature (2006–2017, 184 studies) on primary school students’ creativity. Our results show that creativity is most often measured as a static, aggregated construct. In line with our theoretical model, we suggest ways that future research can elaborate on the moment-to-moment interactions that form the basis of long-term creative development, as well as on the mechanisms that connect different levels of creativity.
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    Developing tests of musical improvisation performance
    McPherson, G ; Brophy, TS (Oxford University Press, 2019-03-28)
    This volume also looks at technical aspects of measurement in music, and outlines situations where theoretical foundations can be applied to the development of tests in music.
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    Overcoming the 'tyranny of distance' in instrumental music tuition in Australia: The iMCM project
    Stevens, RS ; McPherson, GE ; Moore, GA (Intellect, 2019-08-01)
    Instrumental and vocal music students in regional and remote areas of Australia are often significantly disadvantaged in their development by the lack of local teachers who specialize in the instrument being learned. The current rollout of National Broadband Network (NBN) across Australia offers the potential for overcoming this geographical disadvantage by providing specialist online tuition through videoconferencing. This article reports on an investigation of technical and pedagogical issues associated with synchronous online instrumental tuition. The outcomes from laboratory- and field-based trials included identification of optimal hardware and software delivery systems and pedagogical considerations for optimizing online instrumental learning.
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    The molecular genetic basis of music ability and music-related phenotypes
    Tan, YT ; McPherson, G ; Wilson, SJ ; Hambrick, DZ ; Campitelli, G ; Macnamara, BN (Routledge, 2018)
    In the past decade, researchers have sought to uncover potential genes that underlie various musical traits through molecular genetic approaches once the genetic basis of a musical trait has been established using behavioral genetic methods. Since the 1980s, progress in molecular genetic technology and bioinformatics has brought about the advent of human molecular genetic approaches, especially for elucidating the genetic mechanisms of complex diseases. In contrast, the investigation of the molecular genetic basis of music ability only began to surface in recent years, with Irma Järvelä, a clinical geneticist at the University of Helsinki, Finland, and her collaborators contributing a sizeable and significant research output on this topic. Although this field is still in its infancy, some exciting and converging results are already beginning to emerge.