The model of the ‘Space of Music Dialogue’: three instances of practice in Australian homes and classrooms

ABSTRACT

Multimodal analysis of classroom music interactions, using the model of the ‘Space of Music Dialogue’ in video analysis of students' music improvisation, was useful to inform teachers of students' collaborative achievements in music invention. Research has affirmed that students' cognitive thinking skills were promoted by improvisation. Students purposefully selected from many modes such as movement, gaze and spatial relations as domains of learning. The students, for example, rearranged these modes to promote musical arrangements and a growing sensitivity to visual and rhythmic perception. Students selected and rearranged modes to solve problems. Over time, students realised cognitive relations of modes in music, for example, through a deeper understanding of the elements of music: pitch, rhythm, dynamics, structure, phrasing. Only some students reached the realm of transmodal redesign, made possible as students became familiar with the music mode, and the conceptual elements of music. Choices in problem solving in the arts, through multiple choices in multimodal redesign, granted all students the ability to build their self-esteem through transformational redesign. New challenges allowed students to develop conceptual understanding. Students succeeded at problem solving in music, and the model assisted in the analysis of events including improvisation.

KEYWORDS:

• Music education
• improvisation
• transformational redesign
• transmodal redesign
• multimodality
• creativity

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Michelle M. Tomlinson is a music educator who draws on experience of teaching and research to design music programs in Early Childhood, Primary and Tertiary sectors of Education. Michelle was founding Head of Early Childhood Studies at the Queensland Conservatorium of Music, and Director of Performing Arts at a Private school on the Gold Coast. In 2011 she was selected for a special research project at IOE, University College London (Autumn 2011). As scholarship holder at Griffith University, her PhD thesis drew on multimodal redesign and communication, applying it to children's improvisation in rural and urban cross-cultural classroom music practices. Michelle presents at National and International Conferences and has published many journal articles. She was an invited scholar to Cambridge University in the Autumn term 2014. She applies multimodal analysis to ongoing video research in Primary school Arts Education.