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Abstract
Our inquiry centres on a hopeful tale about creative teaching and learning, trusting one's teaching intuition and processes, caring for children, and believing that children will respond to opportunities to learn music when they are invited with thoughtful care. Though the process of writing, both our young student and ourselves, we evoke the notion of autoethnography as pedagogy. By considering autoethnography as creative, didactic non-fiction, our essay sings out with a call for transformation in how we engage with children in teaching and learning piano – on how we engage in a ‘listening pedagogy’ to transform piano teaching and learning into a much more expressive, meaningful, playful and positive learning experience. Our inquiry also includes a discussion of early childhood music research and different forms of pedagogy, presented in a holistic way that invites new understandings of the relationships between early childhood music practitioners and young music learners.
Funding
This paper was produced with the support of a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) – Insight grant (2013), What matters most: Music making of adolescents in the 21st century.
Notes on contributors
Peter Gouzouasis is a Professor (full) of music education and a member of the A/r/tography Research Group at The University of British Columbia. More about Peter can be seen at http://edcp.educ.ubc.ca/faculty-staff/peter-gouzouasis/.
Jee Yeon Ryu is a Doctoral student and a member of the A/r/tography Research Group at The University of British Columbia.
Notes
1. ‘X bar’ () is the symbol used to designate the mean of the sample, and ‘s’ is the standard deviation of the sample.
2. Data were collected using four-point Likert-type rating scales to assess 10 statements regarding the student experience and quality of teaching.
3. It was not uncommon, in 1990, to ‘defend’ doing observational research, or ‘action research’, by using multiple measures and to downplay the role of teacher (herself) as researcher who could influence the data, thus the affect the validity of the findings.
4. We sense that if this study were written in 2013, Mackworth-Young would use autoethnography to more effectively describe and relate her experiences as a young child learning piano to those of the subjects in her study.
5. We believe that there is a paradigmatic conflict between what we have written and the research that we have cited, as well as some qualitative works (see Miller Citation2012) that is more ‘realist’ (Sparkes Citation2002) in nature. Many qualitative researchers who self-identify as arts-based educational researchers would argue that there is very little that can be gleaned from the ‘conclusions’ of ‘other’ research forms. In our inquiry, we seek to fuse literary, prosaic, fictional, factual, ‘factional’, (auto)ethnographic writing and other creative representations, where no one form is privileged over the other (see Denzin Citation2001, 7). Not all ‘narrative inquiries’ showcase those features and others, (e.g. poetic representation; newly composed and found poetry) particularly in reference to ‘narrative research in music education’. With no intention of demeaning existing work, it seems the majority of what has been published in our profession, to date, in the name of ‘narrative research’ may be characterised as qualitative work written in the style of 5th (postmodern period of ethnography) or 6th moment (post-experimental inquiry; see Denzin Citation2001). We believe that the story of the present paper may be positioned in the 7th (fractured future) or 8th moment (which moves us beyond ‘evidence-based’ social research). This explains the somewhat different structures, features and writing style of the present inquiry. Autoethnography is neither better nor worse – it is different, more progressive and usually offers writers a wider latitude of expression. And claiming an autoethnographic stance is a personal decision based on the features we have discussed in our inquiry.
6. The literature on young children’s attention spans is expansive. The impact of electronic and digital media on attention deficits of young children is also very broad (see Christakis et al. Citation2004a, Citation2004b; and related articles). Generally speaking, attention spans of younger children are shorter than those of older children (see Ruff and Lawson Citation1990).
7. Creech and Hallam (Citation2003) take a systems approach to the explanation of parent–student–teacher interactions and intrapersonal communications. As an interpretive approach to research, ours is the antithesis of a ‘systems approach’. We are not suggesting a ‘systems approach’ (Creech and Hallam Citation2003, 41) to working with very young children and would not adopt a ‘formal’ perspective. Autoethnography leads us in a very different direction of interpreting teacher and child (and to some extent, parent) expectations and the ways that we communicate in piano lessons. We do not use language such as, ‘positive outcomes for each of the human actors involved’ (41) because we view the relationship of Eric and his teacher in a more humanistic, holistic, subjective manner and acknowledge the uncertainty of (1) what happens when very young children are engaged with private piano lessons (2) (for whatever reasons) parents’ decisions to discontinue private piano lessons, and that individual young children, their teachers, and the complexities of their relationships resist formulaic categorisation.
8. Autoethnography does not employ ‘thick description’, along the lines of Geertz (Citation1973), and that is one major feature that distinguishes autoethnography from more traditional narrative inquiries.
9. The terms ‘fact, fiction, and faction’ have been discussed and elaborated by Gouzouasis (Citation2008a, Citation2008b) and Sparkes (Citation2002). Also, see Haley (Citation2007). The term was coined by Haley to describe the presentation of facts, based on empirical evidence, in a fictional style.
10. The prefix ‘auto’ has multiple meanings in the Greek language – self (i.e. αυτό, pronounced ‘afto’), him and her (αυτόν, afton and αυτί, afti), them (εαυτών, eafton), those (αυτά, afta), they (αυτοί, afti) and that (also referred to as αυτό).
11. In Greek, a particular culture is ethos (ἔθος) and character of being is eethos (ἦθος). No distinctions are made between those two words in the English language. Not coincidentally, the words ‘ethos’ and ‘eethos’ share the same suffix (ος) and definitional aspect of ‘auto’ (άυτος; ‘autos’ means ‘other’).
12. Specifically, Eric never completing a piece of music during his lessons.
13. In Greek, φωνή.
14. As Elliott Eisner (Citation1971) suggests, ‘One does not, and cannot, measure quantitative differences between a Matisse and Larry Poons’ (36).
15. The nickname ‘Little Buddha’ is not a reflection of Eric’s Chinese family heritage, traditions or religion. As the unfolding story illustrates, the nickname is a metaphor for Eric’s own unique ways of ‘being’ in presence with his piano teacher. Later in the paper, we will discuss our understanding of the concept of ‘being’ when learning to play the piano, and teaching the piano, as well as the ways that a sense of ‘being’ contributes to meaningful music learning experiences for young beginner piano students.
16. The factual aspect of our tale, based on a particular relationship as well as our numerous experiences with young children and music making, was sufficient to depict a story that is an account not only of one particular teacher and child, but also of many teachers and children. Moreover, the process of writing these experiences as autoethnography resulted in the creation of a story that resonates with many teachers and children, in music education and general early childhood education. For a more detailed discussion of verisimilitude, and of structural representation in general, see Eisner (Citation2004, 16–24).
17. Didactic literature is designed to expound theoretical or practical knowledge, and to present it in an imaginative, creative way so that the narrative or drama adds a dimension of the aesthetic to the teaching and learning experience. We are aware that ‘Even since Plato banished the poets from his republic, the relation between literature and doctrine has been a point of contention in a continuing dispute about the nature and function of art’ (see Beckson and Ganz Citation1960, 43).
18. We share a photograph of the string of beads at the end of the present paper.
19. We feel it is important to note that in many contemporary journals, this story could have stood on its own with an abstract that positioned it in autoethnographic research. Readers would be familiar with the classic texts we have cited herein to build our rationale to connect research (theory) and practice, and there would not be a need to recapitulate texts from the 1990s and 2000s. Also, in the future, there would be little need, if any, to cite quantitative studies since they provide very little insights to the ways qualitative researchers make meaning from empirical evidence.
20. The authors possess over 75 years of collective experiences in learning and teaching in music studio settings, with young children ages 12 months to adolescents 21 years of age.