The effects of in-school stave notation learning on student's symbolising behaviour and musical perception

Abstract

Facing the ambiguous status of in-school music literacy, this follow-up eight-year study aims to touch on the effects of traditional staff notation (SN) learning on student's intuitive symbolizing behavior and musical perception. Subjects were 47 second-graders attending a religious Jewish school in Israel. One ‘pre-literate’ meeting, in which students graphically represented a ‘Darbuka rhythm’, was held prior to any formal in-school SN learning. Following this, two replica meetings were held: a ‘literate’ meeting as these students entered the sixth-grade and participated in a SN in-school course; and a ‘post-literate’ meeting as they entered the ninth-grade. Some 51 notations were collected from 17 students who participated in the three meetings (17×3). In order to study the effects of formal learning in isolation from the process of maturation, replica meetings were held with 87 ‘non-literate’ ninth-graders who had never learned SN. All 138 notations were classified under four categories of perception: A: associative images; P: pictogram-musical instruments; F: formal response—representations of sound-sequences, and G: Gestalt—representations of musical units. Results indicate that SN learning significantly affected the students’ symbolizing behaviour and musical perception. A change from intuitive F responses to integrated A/F reactions was typical of SN learners. Findings bear practical implications for pedagogy.

Notes

1. The content and process of the course are discussed under the title ‘the SN course’.

2. The ‘control’ students came from two classes in one High School (n=42); one religious school (n=22); one private dance school (n=7); and one suburban school (n=16).

3. About 12 students in the ‘control’ classes who indicated SN experience were excluded from the analysis.

4. MSC had been developed and implemented in my doctoral study (Elkoshi, 2000), and has proved validity and reliability in a recent work (Elkoshi, 2006).

5. According to John Dewey, one of the greatest of educational fallacies is the belief that students learn only what it is that they are studying at the time (Eisner, 2001). Eisner (2001) comments, ‘It is hardly ever the case that what one learns is singular. Collateral learning is always going on. … We are always, as they say, ‘‘multitasking’’ ’.