A sneak peek

I'm in full dissertation mode.  The joke in our house has become 'the answer to every question is: dissertation'.  I am consumed, and the only word that stumbles out of my mouth when pressed is....dissertation.

So, since it's such a part of my life at the moment, and since this bloggy is supposedly about my life, here's the rationale I've spent most of last night and this early morning crafting:

...The stories of these children and these questions have led me into further exploration and into the literature regarding young children and young children’s music making, with the aim of discovering how young children take part in their worlds, what it is we can expect from them, and what it is we should be hoping for them.  I am looking to find out what is valuable learning in a piano lesson setting as defined by them, and not defined by my work with older children, the parameters of my own training experience, or the predominant pedagogical resources.  What do young children need in order to have a valuable experience?  It seems to me that they need specific things from me as their ‘teacher’ and from the environment that I—as the adult—have the power to create and control.  I have a responsibility, then, to acquire deep understanding of the lived experience of children.

I approach the understanding of children from a socio-cultural perspective.  A socio-cultural perspective frames an individual child’s development within the social and cultural environments surrounding her (Walsh, 2002).  In those contexts and the relationships between them, the child has a lived experience that fosters and filters the meanings that she makes.  Her lived experience is active, not passive; social, not solitary.   Within the contexts she is situated in, she is a social being with agency who encounters other social beings.  Encounters can become interactions; interactions can grow into relationships.  Encounters, interactions, and relationships are reciprocal processes, in which the child is involved in negotiations of meaning as she learns and develops according to the norms of her culture.

The quality of the meaning made within contexts and in contact with others can be positive or negative, and have long-term effects on the child’s identity, motivation and engagement within specific domains.  As such, the role that adults take when participating with children is crucial for the quality of their long-term being.  An adult who respects and values the child as a being with agency within this sociocultural framework will act as a guide, as a more knowledgeable and experienced being within the culture.  Adult attitudes that recognize the child as an active maker of meaning within contexts and relationships will provide opportunities for children to have optimal experiences of self-directed learning.

This framework is expressed in the five essential human needs identified by Dissanayake (2000).  The five are rooted in and stem from the first: mutuality between mother and infant.  Mutuality is another word for ‘love’, and describes the communicative interactions from the very beginning of the child’s life.  Mutuality is a shared intention from one to another, made of imitation and turn-taking, which extends into other intimate relationships the child becomes a part of.  Those relationships reflect the human need of belonging, as reflected in the ways that children move into group settings and look for value, communication, and emotional connection.  Finding and making meaning is essentially connected to survival, as whatever is valuable resonates with what a human needs in order to exist.  Meaning is thus connected to that which ‘gives life’, ‘feels right’, or ‘makes sense’ (p. 73).  Hands-on competence is the process of making active meaning by being a part of something, successfully. Elaboration is the way that humans extend basic features of sound, expression, and movement and transfer them to ceremony and the arts.  It is an extension beyond basic need that is “an outgrowth, manifestation, and indication to others of strong feeling or care” (p. 130).

These needs resonate deeply in my lived experience as an adult, inseparable from my lived experience as a child.  Acknowledging my own experience of these needs calls up deeply embodied memories that are more than concrete images or specific moments in time.  They are memories that are deeper and richer and fuller; they are holistic and make me whole.  Hence, I have a unique perspective on these needs in the life of children as I dwell in my own experience, as I realize that once a child I am always a child.  Understanding my own experience of Dissanayake’s identified needs points me toward Boyce-Tillman’s (2004) conceptualization of music in our lives.  According to her, our lives cannot be separated out into discrete categories; neither can our knowledge, our music, or our music education.

Boyce-Tillman (2004) rejects the legacy of a science-driven society and its obsession with objective, detached, and impersonal understandings of reality.  Instead, she calls for the inclusion of subjective, belief oriented, and non-causal personal involvement as valid and necessary for understanding humans as beings.....

And now, back to it!