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Reconsidering Musical Ability Development Through the Lens of Diversity and Bias

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The Oxford Handbook of Care in Music Education addresses ways in which music teachers and students interact as co-learners and forge authentic relationships with one another through shared music-making. Concepts of care addressed in this handbook stem from philosophies of relationship, feminist ethics, musical meaningfulness, and compassionate music teaching. Authors highlight the essence of authentic relationships and shared experiences between teachers and learners, extending previous conceptions of care to meet the needs of contemporary music learners and the teachers who care for, about, and with them. Handbook authors offer approaches to care that intersect with a broad range of topics set within the context of music teaching and learning, including antiracism and antisexism; bullying and harassment prevention; critical perspectives; dialogic education; disability/ability; ecojustice; gender identity and sexual orientation; inclusivity of a range of musical styles and genres; intercultural sensitivity; mindfulness; musical creativity; online/remote learning; nonviolent communication; pedagogy as a culturally sustaining force; self-care; social-emotional learning; transgressive pedagogy for critical consciousness; and trauma-sensitive pedagogies. Principal handbook themes include (a) philosophical perspectives on care and music education; (b) co-creating caring relationships; (c) caring for wellbeing and human flourishing; and (d) care, social activism, and critical consciousness. The handbook offers a comprehensive overview of literature relating to care in music and education, along with practical implications that are applicable to a broad array of music-learning settings.

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The Oxford Handbook of Care in Music Education addresses ways in which music teachers and students interact as co-learners and forge authentic relationships with one another through shared music-making. Concepts of care addressed in this handbook stem from philosophies of relationship, feminist ethics, musical meaningfulness, and compassionate music teaching. Authors highlight the essence of authentic relationships and shared experiences between teachers and learners, extending previous conceptions of care to meet the needs of contemporary music learners and the teachers who care for, about, and with them. Handbook authors offer approaches to care that intersect with a broad range of topics set within the context of music teaching and learning, including antiracism and antisexism; bullying and harassment prevention; critical perspectives; dialogic education; disability/ability; ecojustice; gender identity and sexual orientation; inclusivity of a range of musical styles and genres; intercultural sensitivity; mindfulness; musical creativity; online/remote learning; nonviolent communication; pedagogy as a culturally sustaining force; self-care; social-emotional learning; transgressive pedagogy for critical consciousness; and trauma-sensitive pedagogies. Principal handbook themes include (a) philosophical perspectives on care and music education; (b) co-creating caring relationships; (c) caring for wellbeing and human flourishing; and (d) care, social activism, and critical consciousness. The handbook offers a comprehensive overview of literature relating to care in music and education, along with practical implications that are applicable to a broad array of music-learning settings.
Chapter
The Oxford Handbook of Care in Music Education addresses ways in which music teachers and students interact as co-learners and forge authentic relationships with one another through shared music-making. Concepts of care addressed in this handbook stem from philosophies of relationship, feminist ethics, musical meaningfulness, and compassionate music teaching. Authors highlight the essence of authentic relationships and shared experiences between teachers and learners, extending previous conceptions of care to meet the needs of contemporary music learners and the teachers who care for, about, and with them. Handbook authors offer approaches to care that intersect with a broad range of topics set within the context of music teaching and learning, including antiracism and antisexism; bullying and harassment prevention; critical perspectives; dialogic education; disability/ability; ecojustice; gender identity and sexual orientation; inclusivity of a range of musical styles and genres; intercultural sensitivity; mindfulness; musical creativity; online/remote learning; nonviolent communication; pedagogy as a culturally sustaining force; self-care; social-emotional learning; transgressive pedagogy for critical consciousness; and trauma-sensitive pedagogies. Principal handbook themes include (a) philosophical perspectives on care and music education; (b) co-creating caring relationships; (c) caring for wellbeing and human flourishing; and (d) care, social activism, and critical consciousness. The handbook offers a comprehensive overview of literature relating to care in music and education, along with practical implications that are applicable to a broad array of music-learning settings.
Chapter
The Oxford Handbook of Care in Music Education addresses ways in which music teachers and students interact as co-learners and forge authentic relationships with one another through shared music-making. Concepts of care addressed in this handbook stem from philosophies of relationship, feminist ethics, musical meaningfulness, and compassionate music teaching. Authors highlight the essence of authentic relationships and shared experiences between teachers and learners, extending previous conceptions of care to meet the needs of contemporary music learners and the teachers who care for, about, and with them. Handbook authors offer approaches to care that intersect with a broad range of topics set within the context of music teaching and learning, including antiracism and antisexism; bullying and harassment prevention; critical perspectives; dialogic education; disability/ability; ecojustice; gender identity and sexual orientation; inclusivity of a range of musical styles and genres; intercultural sensitivity; mindfulness; musical creativity; online/remote learning; nonviolent communication; pedagogy as a culturally sustaining force; self-care; social-emotional learning; transgressive pedagogy for critical consciousness; and trauma-sensitive pedagogies. Principal handbook themes include (a) philosophical perspectives on care and music education; (b) co-creating caring relationships; (c) caring for wellbeing and human flourishing; and (d) care, social activism, and critical consciousness. The handbook offers a comprehensive overview of literature relating to care in music and education, along with practical implications that are applicable to a broad array of music-learning settings.
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Making sense of musicians’ professional learning pathways is of crucial importance to understanding their career progressions, their routes into creative employment, and the relevance of various policies to their professional lives. However, this is a far cry from understanding how critical reflection catalyses diverse learning routes, especially when considering evidence originating from postgraduate musicians’ own accounts of their journeys into job creation. In this study, we invited 5 postgraduate classical musicians who were invested in professional learning through performance programmes in higher education to contribute these types of personal perspectives. The paper explores the value of postgraduate musicians’ own accounts of their journeys, and illustrates how a more nuanced understanding of them can be arrived at through the use of visual-based tools, e.g., Rivers of Musical Experience and Dixit Cards. This constructivist intervention prompted both group and individual critical reflections, as well as sense-making processes that enabled the participants to become more informed about the (typically overlooked or neglected) critical incidents that differently catalyse professional learning pathways. All of the participants articulated sociocultural influences that were situated along historical, present, and future points of departure and arrival, helping them to create meaning and understanding of themselves and their (at times unsettling) professional learning pathways. From the ensuing thematic analyses, we identified a commonality of themes across life phases with three key influential groups of people (parents, peers, and professionals) that strongly affected their professional learning pathways and learner identity-construction. The results indicate that the relationships between these phases and people are complex. The research illuminates the previously unexplored connection between the meaning-making trajectories that are instantiated through critical reflection, and adds to our understanding of the development of musicians’ professional learning pathways and learner identities.
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If you care about securing knowledge, what is wrong with being biased? Often it is said that we are less accurate and reliable knowers due to implicit biases. Likewise, many people think that biases reflect inaccurate claims about groups, are based on limited experience, and are insensitive to evidence. Chapter 3 investigates objections such as these with the help of two popular metaphors: bias as fog and bias as shortcut. Guiding readers through these metaphors, I argue that they clarify the range of knowledge-related objections to implicit bias. They also suggest that there will be no unifying problem with bias from the perspective of knowledge. That is, they tell us that implicit biases can be wrong in different ways for different reasons. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the metaphors reveal a deep-though perhaps not intractable-disagreement among theorists about whether implicit biases can be good in some cases when it comes to knowledge.
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What can we do—and what should we do—to fight against bias? This final chapter introduces empirically-tested interventions for combating implicit (and explicit) bias and promoting a fairer world, from small daily-life debiasing tricks to larger structural interventions. Along the way, this chapter raises a range of moral, political, and strategic questions about these interventions. This chapter further stresses the importance of admitting that we don’t have all the answers. We should be humble about how much we still don’t know and dedicate efforts to gathering as much knowledge as possible. Even so, we know enough now to start making a difference, and this chapter ultimately aims to chip away at the gap between our abstract commitments to treat people fairly and our lived habits and experiences, which continue to be shaped by implicit and explicit prejudices and stereotypes about race, gender, and other social categories.
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This article begins with a brief survey of the recent update of the Differentiating Model of Giftedness and Talent (DMGT). The DMGT defines talent development as the transformation of outstanding natural abilities (called gifts-G) into outstanding knowledge and skills (called talents-T). Two types of catalysts, intrapersonal (I) and environmental (E), actively moderate the talent development process (D). These causal components of talent development have biological underpinnings; I propose here a way to integrate these biological roots to the DMGT in the form of 'basements' that exert their influence upwards to moderate the development of natural abilities, as well as many intrapersonal catalysts like temperament, needs, interests, and volition. This new tri-dimensional approach to the structure of talent development leads to two hitherto unpublished proposals. The first one is a Developmental Model for Natural Abilities (DMNA), in which biological building blocks create a diversity of natural abilities, through a developmental process based on maturation and informal learning, and with the necessary contribution of both sets of I and E catalysts. The second one integrates the new DMNA and the DMGT into an Expanded Model of Talent Development (EMTD) that begins with the biological foundations and ends with high level expertise. © 2013 International Research Association for Talent Development and Excellence.
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This article provides a conceptual overview of a self-determination theory approach to motivation in music education. Research on motivation in music learning is active and has influenced the field considerably, but it remains theoretically patchy, with a vast array of theoretical perspectives that are relatively disconnected. Reflecting motivation research more generally, music education still lacks a parsimonious, unified theoretical approach to motivation. Self-determination theory offers a way to address this issue, because it is a broad theory of motivation that examines the nature and sources of motivational quality. This article describes two key components of self-determination theory. First, the tendency towards personal growth and a more unified sense of self is supported through the fulfilment of the basic psychological needs of competence, relatedness, and autonomy. Second, behaviour is more enjoyable and contributes more to personal wellbeing when motivation is internalized and more closely aligned with the self. These two features of self-determination theory are related, such that motivation is internalized to the extent that basic psychological needs are fulfilled. These processes are supported by recent self-determination theory research in music education. Previous research on motivation from other theoretical perspectives also lends support to the self-determination theory approach. The approach therefore provides a means of theoretically unifying previous research. An integrated model is presented as the basis for future research on motivation for music learning in the context of psychological wellbeing more broadly.
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This article addresses individuals' decisions to continue or cease playing a musical instrument from a basic psychological needs perspective. Participants began learning music 10 years prior to the study and were the subject of previous longitudinal research. They completed a survey investigating the three psychological needs of competence, relatedness, and autonomy in the contexts of when they were most engaged in playing their instrument during high school, and in the time leading up to when they ceased playing. Decisions to cease music instruction or playing an instrument were associated with diminished feelings of competence, relatedness, and autonomy, compared to when they were most engaged. Open-ended responses to a question about why they ceased playing supported this finding and showed that participants refer to reasons directly related to feelings of psychological needs being thwarted. This article therefore proposes that motivations to cease or continue playing a musical instrument demonstrate a natural propensity to more vital, healthy forms of behaviour. The study offers preliminary evidence for a framework that may help to unify previous research in music and supports motivational research in other areas.
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This study is the second in a series of investigations attempting to clarify relationships between variables that impact on a young musician's ability to perform music (as assessed on a graded music examination). Consistent with studies on school academic subjects, our previous investigation demonstrated the importance of self-efficacy in predicting young musicians’ performance examination results. In the current study, structural equation modelling allowed us to compare two different types of graded music performance examinations. Although differences emerged between the two sets of data, self-efficacy was again found to be the most important predictor of achievement in the examinations. Implications arising from this finding are discussed in the final section of the article.
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The theoretical framework presented in this article explains expert performance as the end result of individuals' prolonged efforts to improve performance while negotiating motivational and external constraints. In most domains of expertise, individuals begin in their childhood a regimen of effortful activities (deliberate practice) designed to optimize improvement. Individual differences, even among elite performers, are closely related to assessed amounts of deliberate practice. Many characteristics once believed to reflect innate talent are actually the result of intense practice extended for a minimum of 10 yrs. Analysis of expert performance provides unique evidence on the potential and limits of extreme environmental adaptation and learning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
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Talents that selectively facilitate the acquisition of high levels of skill are said to be present in some children but not others. The evidence for this includes biological correlates of specific abilities, certain rare abilities in autistic savants, and the seemingly spontaneous emergence of exceptional abilities in young children, but there is also contrary evidence indicating an absence of early precursors of high skill levels. An analysis of positive and negative evidence and arguments suggests that differences in early experiences, preferences, opportunities, habits, training, and practice are the real determinants of excellence.
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Human beings can be proactive and engaged or, alternatively, passive and alienated, largely as a function of the social conditions in which they develop and function. Accordingly, research guided by self-determination theory has focused on the social-contextual conditions that facilitate versus forestall the natural processes of self-motivation and healthy psychological development. Specifically, factors have been examined that enhance versus undermine intrinsic motivation, self-regulation, and well-being. The findings have led to the postulate of three innate psychological needs--competence, autonomy, and relatedness--which when satisfied yield enhanced self-motivation and mental health and when thwarted lead to diminished motivation and well-being. Also considered is the significance of these psychological needs and processes within domains such as health care, education, work, sport, religion, and psychotherapy.
Chapter
Investigation of the role of music in early life and learning has been somewhat fragmented, with studies being undertaken within a range of fields with little apparent conversation across disciplinary boundaries, and with an emphasis on preschoolers’ and school-aged children’s learning and engagement. The Oxford Handbook of Early Childhood Learning and Development in Music brings together leading researchers in infant and early childhood cognition, music education, music therapy, neuroscience, cultural and developmental psychology, and music sociology to interrogate questions of how our capacity for music develops from birth, and its contributions to learning and development. Researchers in cultural psychology and sociology of musical childhoods investigate those factors that shape children’s musical learning and development and the places and spaces in which children encounter and engage with music. These issues are complemented with consideration of the policy environment at local, national, and global levels in relation to music early learning and development and the ways these shape young children’s music experiences and opportunities. The handbook also explores issues of music provision and developmental contributions for children with special education needs, children living in medical settings and participating in music therapy, and those living in sites of trauma and conflict. Consideration of these environments provides a context to examine music learning and development in family, community, and school settings including general and specialized school environments. Authors trace the trajectories of development within and across cultures and settings and identify those factors that facilitate or constrain children’s early music learning and development.
Chapter
The Oxford Handbook of Care in Music Education addresses ways in which music teachers and students interact as co-learners and forge authentic relationships with one another through shared music-making. Concepts of care addressed in this handbook stem from philosophies of relationship, feminist ethics, musical meaningfulness, and compassionate music teaching. Authors highlight the essence of authentic relationships and shared experiences between teachers and learners, extending previous conceptions of care to meet the needs of contemporary music learners and the teachers who care for, about, and with them. Handbook authors offer approaches to care that intersect with a broad range of topics set within the context of music teaching and learning, including antiracism and antisexism; bullying and harassment prevention; critical perspectives; dialogic education; disability/ability; ecojustice; gender identity and sexual orientation; inclusivity of a range of musical styles and genres; intercultural sensitivity; mindfulness; musical creativity; online/remote learning; nonviolent communication; pedagogy as a culturally sustaining force; self-care; social-emotional learning; transgressive pedagogy for critical consciousness; and trauma-sensitive pedagogies. Principal handbook themes include (a) philosophical perspectives on care and music education; (b) co-creating caring relationships; (c) caring for wellbeing and human flourishing; and (d) care, social activism, and critical consciousness. The handbook offers a comprehensive overview of literature relating to care in music and education, along with practical implications that are applicable to a broad array of music-learning settings.
Chapter
This handbook seeks to present a wide-ranging and comprehensive survey of social justice in music education. Contributors from around the world interrogate the complex, multidimensional, and often contested nature of social justice and music education from a variety of philosophical, political, social, and cultural perspectives. Although many chapters take as their starting point an analysis of how dominant political, educational, and musical ideologies serve to construct and sustain inequities and undemocratic practices, authors also identify practices that seek to promote socially just pedagogy and approaches to music education. These range from those taking place in formal and informal music education contexts, including schools and community settings, to music projects undertaken in sites of repression and conflict, such as prisons, refugee camps, and areas of acute social disadvantage or political oppression. In a volume of this scope, there are inevitably many recurring themes. However, common to many of those music education practices that seek to create more democratic and equitable spaces for musical learning is a belief in the centrality of student agency and a commitment to the too-often silenced voice of the learner. To that end, this Handbook challenges music educators to reflect critically on their own beliefs and pedagogical practices so that they may contribute more effectively to the creation and maintenance of music learning environs and programs in which matters of access and equity are continually brought to the fore.
Article
This chapter provides our explanation of why certain teachers are able to leave such a positive impact on their students’ love for performing music. It draws on the work of John Hattie, whose explanation of how to make learning visible details ten mindframes that have been shown through extensive research to explain successful learning and inspirational teachers. Because this chapter is placed within a book on music performance, our adaptation of these ten mindframes relates to how they might be relevant within the context of studio instrumental and vocal teaching that are typical in many music institutions internationally. The chapter argues that teachers of music performance will be in a much better position to cater to the needs of the diverse range of student abilities we observe in music institutions internationally if they apply the mindframes outlined in this chapter. When we recalibrate our teaching to focus on questions of why as well as what and how, we position ourselves to take on a much broader and more impactful role as a performer-teacher who really cares about students, who wants to spark their interest, who encourages them to live their musical dream, and who helps developing musicians exceed what they think is their full potential.
Article
This chapter surveys research dealing with musical potential, musical giftedness, and musical talent to dispel some of the myths and misconceptions about the nature and scope of musical development. It addresses the issue of whether we are all born musical, before exploring ways of how to define and explain musical potential, giftedness, and talent. Attention is given to debates about the extent to which there are individual differences in musical potential, and the complex interactions between genetic and environmental factors that can help explain this concept. Environmental, intrapersonal, and developmental processes acting on the realization of musical talent are each discussed separately, with a final section rounding this explanation off to provide a framework for understanding talent development in music. The chapter shows that music is a universal feature of our human design and that virtually everyone can successfully engage with music, if they so choose. For musicians who wish to take their talent development to a much higher level, the topics covered provide greater awareness of what exactly is taking place on the road to developing expertise, from the earliest stages of learning right through to the types of transformational achievement that distinguishes the world’s leading musicians.
Article
This chapter addresses diversity, inclusion, and access through four perspectives: (a) historical trends; (b) social cognition; (c) social constructionism; and (d) critical and postmodern philosophies. This multi-lens approach is intended to elucidate systemic challenges and possibilities that exist for individuals who value performance in the Western classical tradition. The chapter intentionally avoids taking a “deficit” perspective regarding any social identities, focusing instead on creating a space for dialogue about differences and potentials within every individual. Our intention is to provide a catalyst for multi-dimensional understandings of power, marginalization, inclusiveness, and access, thereby providing a way for classical music stakeholders (e.g., performers, arts administrators, educators, audience members, donors) to envision new possibilities for music learning and performance.
Article
We present a model for talent development in music that resulted from applying a general framework for Talent development in Achievement Domains (i.e., the TAD framework; Preckel et al., 2020) to the domain of music. The talent development model in the musical domain (TAD music model) draws on the existing literature on musical talent development but also specifies a rigorous framework drawn from empirical research that can be used to identify predictors and indicators of musical talent. The TAD music model provides a multidimensional, dynamic view of talent development in music. Cognitive abilities, personality traits, and psychosocial skills that can potentially serve as predictors at different levels of talent development in music are suggested. The TAD music model can be used to further understandings about the nature of musical talent and its development, for the construction of diagnostic procedures, for empirical investigations of talent development in music, for the training of music teachers’ diagnostic skills, and for the identification and promotion of musically talented children.
Article
Adult music learners may expect to be more independent and therefore more inclined to engage in self-directed learning than younger learners; however, adults may not feel encouraged or supported to self-direct. In this qualitative study, the relationships between six adult instrumentalists and their teachers were examined using Grow’s Staged Self-Directed Learning (SSDL) Model to determine if there was congruence or a mismatch between individual student learning needs and their teachers’ strategies. Teachers reported a willingness to accommodate the self-direction needs of their students. Even in cases of teacher–student mismatch, more direction from the teacher was welcomed when they encountered technical difficulty or an unfamiliar style. Students who reported that they had little experience playing were more inclined to have low to moderate levels of self-direction, whereas more advanced players reported intermediate to high levels of self-direction. Cultural expectations were found to play an important role in determining if students desire to be self-directed learners. The quality of the teacher–student relationship and communication were both found to be an important determinant of successful collaboration. These findings suggest that the theoretical application of the SSDL model could provide teachers a means to assess and discern their adult students’ learning needs.
Chapter
In this chapter, I argue that conceptions of giftedness are problematic in that they derive from what Dai and Chen have identified as “the gifted-child paradigm,” which has dominated the thinking of scholars and practitioners in gifted education since the field’s advent. However, I believe that the gifted-child paradigm encompasses beliefs that are untenable and that have rendered the field nugatory. The central tenet of the gifted-child paradigm is the seemingly unexceptionable belief that there is a distinct subgroup in our school-age population known as gifted students. I argue that this foundational belief is belied by, among other things, the fact that, about a century on, there is no consensus as to what a gifted student is, as the table of contents of this volume reveals. Instead, I believe that giftedness is a social construction unanchored to a body of empirical data and unhelpful in developing defensible curriculum and instruction for capable students. I suggest that our field’s focus should not be existential (“Is this student gifted?”) but should rather be educational (“What form (s) of instruction are appropriate for this student at this time?”).
Article
We examined collective efficacy beliefs, including levels of within-group agreement and correlation with performance quality, of instrumental chamber ensembles (70 musicians, representing 18 ensembles). Participants were drawn from collegiate programs and intensive summer music festivals located in the northwestern and western regions of the United States. Individuals completed a five-item survey gauging confidence in their group’s performance abilities; each ensemble’s aggregated results represented its collective efficacy score. Ensembles provided a video-recorded performance excerpt that was rated by a panel of four string specialists. Analyses revealed moderately strong levels of collective efficacy belief and uniformly high within-group agreement. There was a significant, moderately strong correlation between collective efficacy belief and within-group agreement (rs =.67, p <.01). We found no relationship between collective efficacy belief and performance quality across the total sample, but those factors correlated significantly for festival-based ensembles (rs =.82, p <.05). Reliability estimates suggest that our collective efficacy survey may be suitable for use with string chamber ensembles. Correlational findings provide partial support for the theorized link between efficacy belief and performance quality in chamber music settings, suggesting the importance for music educators to ensure that positive efficacy beliefs become well founded through quality instruction.
Chapter
My earliest memory of being in awe of music was listening to the Gospel Choir sing those lyrics. I remember watching tears stream down my grandmother’s face as she sang in the choir and gently swayed side-to-side like a pendulum on a grandfather clock. I was no more than five or six at the time, and the image of a strong Black woman being moved to a seemingly different universe is still etched into memory.
Book
I: Background.- 1. An Introduction.- 2. Conceptualizations of Intrinsic Motivation and Self-Determination.- II: Self-Determination Theory.- 3. Cognitive Evaluation Theory: Perceived Causality and Perceived Competence.- 4. Cognitive Evaluation Theory: Interpersonal Communication and Intrapersonal Regulation.- 5. Toward an Organismic Integration Theory: Motivation and Development.- 6. Causality Orientations Theory: Personality Influences on Motivation.- III: Alternative Approaches.- 7. Operant and Attributional Theories.- 8. Information-Processing Theories.- IV: Applications and Implications.- 9. Education.- 10. Psychotherapy.- 11. Work.- 12. Sports.- References.- Author Index.
Chapter
We survey three interlocking talent development models: the Differentiating Model of Giftedness and Talent (DMGT), the Developmental Model for Natural Abilities (DMNA), and their merging into a Comprehensive Model of Talent Development (CMTD). The authors use the CMTD framework to analyse the phenomenon of musical prodigiousness, defined as a quantitatively extreme level of talent (T component). We then explore the gifts (G component) that contribute to musical prodigiousness, as well as its typical developmental process (D component). Two types of catalytic causal influences are explored: intrapersonal characteristics (I component) and environmental influences (E component). Within each section, we briefly discuss the biological foundations of the various constructs. We finally integrate these five analyses into a dynamic developmental perspective and propose a tentative answer to the key question: “Which causal influences better ‘explain’ the early manifestation and development of musical prodigiousness?” In other words: “What makes a difference?”
Book
This book is a handbook of musical development from conception to late adolescence. Within twenty-four chapters it celebrates the richness and diversity of the many different ways in which children can engage in and interact with music. Arranged in five sections, the first section examines the critical months and years from conception to the end of infancy. It looks at how the musical brain develops, ways of understanding musical development, and the nature of musicality. Section two scrutinizes claims about the non-musical benefit of exposure to music, for example that music makes you smarter. Section three focuses on those issues that help explain and identify individual differences. It includes chapters examining how children develop their motivation to study music, and two chapters on children with special needs. Section four covers skills that can develop as a result of exposure to music. The final section of the book discusses five different contexts and includes: a chapter on historical perspectives providing information for making comparisons between how children have learned and developed their musical capacities in the past, with current opportunities; two additional chapters that focus on children's involvement in music in non-Western cultures; and two final chapters focusing on youth musical engagement and the transition from child to adult.
Article
Many misunderstandings about the expert-performance approach can be attributed to its unique methodology and theoretical concepts. This approach was established with case studies of the acquisition of expert memory with detailed experimental analysis of the mediating mechanisms. In contrast the traditional individual difference approach starts with the assumption of underlying general latent factors of cognitive ability and personality that correlate with performance across levels of acquired skill. My review rejects the assumption that data on large samples of beginners can be extrapolated to samples of elite and expert performers. Once we can agree on the criteria for reproducible objective expert performance and acceptable methodologies for collecting valid data. I believe that scientists will recognize the need for expert-performance approach to the study of expert performance, especially at the very highest levels of achievement.
Article
Many decades of research on achievement in schools has shown that motivation is a key ingredient for student success. As most band directors might testify, this is true in the study of music. However, there are many ways in which band directors conceive of and try to affect the motivation of their students as they strive to inculcate a sense of commitment, high levels of musical participation, and personal growth through learning an instrument. In this study, self-determination theory (SDT) was used to explore motivation in band, and answer questions about the type, in addition to the amount, of motivation that is evident in students who are enrolled in high school band programs. SDT offers an approach to motivation, which couples the concept of control with perceived satisfaction of psychological needs, to explain the types of support mechanisms that result in intrinsic motivation and autonomous regulation. Questionnaire and interview data were collected to examine key factor relationships, determine if students’ characteristics or enhancement opportunities were related to aspects of their motivation profiles, and better understand how those factors are experienced through the eyes of high school band students. In order to facilitate this inquiry, a sequential mixed-method study was developed. A methodology was formulated based on a review of the literature, the development and implementation of questionnaire scales from previous research, as well as interviews of students with characteristic motivation profiles. Multiple regression analysis assisted in determining the linear relationships that existed among the self-determination theory constructs and in the creation of a summary model of significant factor interactions in the high school band context. Key findings demonstrated positive relationships between student perceptions of (a) components of psychological needs satisfaction and intrinsic motivation, (b) low amounts of pressure and psychological needs satisfaction, (c) intrinsic motivation and attitudes about future engagement in music activities, and (d) between high levels of engagement in enhancement opportunities and the variables of autonomous regulation and attitudes about future engagement. The results suggest that teachers can better prepare students for meaningful, lifelong engagement with music by focusing on more student-centered approaches that provide support for psychological needs and intrinsic motivation.
Outliers: The story of success. Little, Brown and Company
  • M Gladwell
Gladwell, M. (2008). Outliers: The story of success. Little, Brown and Company.
The weirdest people in the world?
  • J Henrick
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  • A Norenzayan
Henrick, J., Heine, S. J., & Norenzayan, A. (2010). The weirdest people in the world? (RatSWD Working Paper Series, 139). Berlin, Germany: Rat für Sozial-und Wirtschaftsdaten (RatSWD). http://hdl.handle.net/10419/43616
The sources of self-efficacy: Educational research and implications for music. Update: Applications of Research in Music Education
  • K S Hendricks
Hendricks, K. S. (2016). The sources of self-efficacy: Educational research and implications for music. Update: Applications of Research in Music Education, 35(1), 32-38.
Compassionate music teaching
  • K S Hendricks
Hendricks, K. S. (2018). Compassionate music teaching. Rowman & Littlefield.
Counternarratives: Troubling majoritarian certainty. Action, Criticism, & Theory for Music Education
  • K S Hendricks
Hendricks, K. S. (2021a). Counternarratives: Troubling majoritarian certainty. Action, Criticism, & Theory for Music Education, 20(4), 58-78. https://doi.org/10.22176/act20.4.58
Authentic connection in music education: A chiastic essay
  • K S Hendricks
Hendricks, K. S. (2021b). Authentic connection in music education: A chiastic essay. In K. S.