Abstract
In this qualitative study, I explored the musical processes and music learning processes of students in one fifth-grade beginning band class. Influenced by an earlier study of rock musicians (Davis, 2005), I began to consider how I might incorporate informal learning processes into the context of a formal classroom. Through this 6- month investigation in my own classroom, I became aware of the learning strategies my students were using to create their own musical meaning and, in turn, what I learned about their strategies influenced my teaching and transformed my pedagogical design. As a teacher, I learned that enabling students to discuss their own musical connections (which, in this study, were largely metaphorical) instead of dismissing what may have seemed unrelated to my own way of thinking, enabled students to give birth to their own musical rationality (Greene, 1995) and encouraged their personal investment in their own learning.
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