Creating Multiple Sites of Engagement for Music Learning

Music education exists in multiple spaces. Within formal approaches to music education in academic institutions, there has been an acknowledgment that more informal pedagogical approaches can be useful (as evidenced in the work of movements such as Musical Futures). However, constructive links between formal and informal contexts for music education remain difficult to navigate for many teachers. Within the United Kingdom, the newly defined roles for music education hubs have made some headway in recasting these relationships in a more productive direction. Similarly, social media has an important role to play in developing new relationships between key agencies within music education. Like any specific technology, there are positive affordances and more negative limitations to such approaches. People have a complex relationship with technology, but they are not gadgets! Lanier’s (2010) thesis argues strongly that recent cultural developments can deaden personal interaction, stifle genuine inventiveness, and change people. Within an educational setting, careful consideration needs to be given to the affordances and limitations of social media. For teachers and designers of learning spaces and opportunities, pedagogy should be underpinned by careful, mindful choices—including wise choices about the tools that teachers and students are using. It is about a focus on the core, asking: What is the key learning that this music lesson is facilitating? Is this tool the best one for the job? Does this tool or approach allow one to teach music musically? Done skillfully and conscientiously, social media can help develop collaborative approaches to music education that provide teachers with pedagogical strength and security. They result in mindful teaching and mindful learning that will last a lifetime. They can also help teachers develop meaningful relationships with students that help them make sense of their musical experiences in whatever context they have emerged through: a truly, “joined-up” approach to music education with the student at the core.

Afterword

We all feel the implications of the force of social media—for good and for ill—in our lives and in our professional world. At the time of this writing, Facebook continues with its struggle to “clean up its act” as more revelations surrounding breaches of trust and hacked user data surface in the news and various countries attempt to hold Facebook to account. Despite this, social media use continues to grow exponentially, and the potential for responsible, ethical, and transparent social media to transform the ways in which we interact with and learn from each other increase with it. As we wait to see what the future holds for social media in society, we are reminded once again that it is the careful selection of pedagogical tools such as social media, as well the guided awareness of the challenges and benefits of those tools, that remains constant, even as tools may change, disappear, or fall out of fashion.

Envisioning Pedagogical Possibilities of Social Media and Sonic Participatory Cultures

Contemporary society is rich with diverse musics and musical practices, many of which are supported or shared via digital and social media. Music educators might address such forms of musical engagement to diversify what occurs in music programs. Realizing the possibilities of social media and addressing issues that might be problematic for music learning and teaching calls for conceptualizing social media in a more expansive manner than focusing on the technology itself. Situating people’s social media use and musical engagement in a larger context of participatory culture that involves music and media may be fruitful in this regard. We might then consider the potential of social media and musical engagement in participatory cultures for music learning and teaching. This chapter offers an overview of how people are applying aspects of participatory culture and social media in educational contexts. Building on work in media studies, media arts, education, and curricular theory, the chapter develops a framework for translating and recontextualizing participatory culture, musical engagement, and social media in ways that might inform music pedagogy and curriculum. In this way, it may help music educators move from an awareness of how people engage with and through music and social media in participatory culture to an orientation of developing related praxis.

New Materiality and Young People’s Connectedness Across Online and Offline Life Spaces

This chapter examines new materiality perspectives to explore the influence of social media on young people’s music learning lives—their sense of identity, community and connection as they engage in and through music across online and offline life spaces. The aim is to provide an interface between activity, materiality, networks, human agency, and the construction of identities within the social media contexts that render young people’s music learning experiences meaningful. The chapter also emphasizes what nomadic pedagogy looks like at a time of transcultural cosmopolitanism and the positioning of youth-as-musical-resources who “make up” new musical opportunities collaboratively with people/materials/time/space. This involves moving beyond the notion of music learning as an educational outcome to embrace, instead, a nomadic pedagogical framework that values and supports the process of young people deciphering and making meaningful connections with the world around them. It is hoped that implications stemming from this discussion will provide insights for researchers, educators, and policymakers with interests in innovative pedagogical approaches and the creation of new learning and digital cultures in music education.

“Tradition,” Vernacularism, and Learning to Be a Folk Musician With Social Media

This chapter considers the role of social media (broadly conceived) in the learning experiences of folk musicians in the Anglophone West. The chapter draws on the findings of the Digital Folk project, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK), and begins by summarizing and problematizing the nature of learning as a concept in the folk music context. It briefly explicates the instructive, appropriative, and locative impacts of digital media for folk music learning before exploring in detail two case studies of folk-oriented social media: (1) the phenomenon of abc notation as a transmissive media and (2) the Mudcat Café website as an example of the folk-oriented discussion forum. These case studies are shown to exemplify and illuminate the constructs of traditional transmission and vernacularism as significant influences on the social shaping and deployment of folk-related media technologies. The chapter concludes by reflecting on the need to understand the musical learning process as a culturally performative act and to recognize online learning mechanisms as sites for the (re)negotiation of musical, cultural, local, and personal identities.

Feminist Cyber-Artivism, Musicing, and Music Teaching and Learning

This chapter asks an important, yet seemingly illusive, question: In what ways does the internet provide (or not) activist—or, for present purposes “artivist”—opportunities and engagements for musicing, music sharing, and music teaching and learning? According to Asante (2008), an “artivist (artist + activist) uses her artistic talents to fight and struggle against injustice and oppression—by any medium necessary. The artivist merges commitment to freedom and justice with the pen, the lens, the brush, the voice, the body, and the imagination. The artivist knows that to make an observation is to have an obligation” (p. 6). Given this view, can (and should) social media be a means to achieve artivism through online musicing and music sharing, and, therefore, music teaching and learning? Taking a feminist perspective, this chapter interrogates the nature of cyber musical artivism as a potential means to a necessary end: positive transformation. In what ways can social media be a conduit (or hindrance) for cyber musical artivism? What might musicing and music sharing gain (or lose) from engaging with online artivist practices? In addition to a philosophical investigation, this chapter will examine select case studies of online artivist music making and music sharing communities with the above concerns in mind, specifically as they relate to music education.

Reports From the Field: “Vini Ansanm” Come Together for Inclusive Community Music Development in Port-au-Prince, Haiti

Haiti has experienced a series of catastrophic natural disasters in recent decades, resulting in significant loss of life and long-term damage to infrastructure. One critical outcome of these disasters is that there are approximately 400,000 orphans in the small population of just over 10 million. Throughout Haiti, children with disabilities are often considered cursed, and thus are rejected by the community in which they live. Haitian children with disabilities need creative and educational activities that will help them grow, develop, enjoy their lives, and become accepted members of the community. This chapter on the Haitian Center for Inclusive Education presents a case study of social media engagement and music learning, with an emphasis on social justice that has contributed to sustainable efforts.

Reports From the Field: Confessions of a Facebook Punk, or How Not to Do Social Media

The author is rarely certain of his purpose in life—a condition that is heightened by a busy yet reluctant level of engagement with social media. The author utilizes Facebook and Twitter to promote activity around popular music education and sociology of music education. There is considerable overlap in the author’s life between professional and personal domains, which seems amplified by social media. Facebook and Twitter provide less formal, more direct means to engage with the world than traditional modes of peer-reviewed communication among academic colleagues. Social media provide a platform for working through ideas and for addressing problems with urgency and immediacy. As such, and despite some messiness and increased levels of vulnerability and risk, the author encourages peers to engage with social media’s immediate and powerful, punk pedagogical potential.

Online Collaboration in Supporting Music Teaching and Learning

Drawing from Jordan’s (2008) notion of deterritorialization, this chapter explores ways in which music teachers collaborate and exchange ideas in digitally mediated spaces. One such way is through Facebook. With over 1.1 billion unique monthly visitors, Facebook has changed the spaces for sharing music teachers’ pedagogical approaches and techniques, making it a potentially powerful tool for music teaching and learning. This chapter will examine the use of two private Facebook groups: Music Teachers (32,000+ members) and Little Kids Rock Teachers (1600+ members). Utilizing guidelines of content analysis outlined by Bauer and Moehle (2008), we examined over 800 written posts from these Facebook groups to better understand the ways teachers use Facebook to build community, share resources, and collaborate. We surveyed participants who are the most active posters on these two social media sites to develop an understanding of how these tools function as a vehicle for music teaching and learning. Building off Salavuo’s (2008) notion of social networks as a medium for sharing and providing information for music learning, this chapter examines the content of teachers’ engagement. An examination of emergent themes found in the content of Facebook posts reveals insights into the sorts of collaborations music teachers have in social media.

Twenty-First-Century Implications for Media Literacy and Music Education

Digital media’s convergence continually influences teaching and learning in the arts and interdisciplinary fields through freely accessible technology. Similarly, the rise of democratized participatory communities of new media composers on the internet affords new collaborative opportunities for all levels of creation. This chapter examines media literacy’s relationship with participatory culture and digital technology in music education. Establishing a baseline theoretical understanding of media literacy and its possible implications for teaching and learning sheds light on how these tools advance collaborative praxis, creative expression, and thoughtful teacher-facilitators in the traditional and virtual music classroom. Key questions include: How can educators and students unpack challenging concepts by producing collaborative new media content with digital technology? In what ways do music and media educators advance critical thinking, reflective learning, and new modes of networked creativity through “making” philosophy and curriculum?