Table 3 - uploaded by Heidi Partti
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This compilation dissertation comprising the summary and four blind peer-reviewed articles examines the culture of music making and musical learning, and the construction of musical identity in the world of digital and virtual media. The main research goal is to increase the knowledge and understanding about where and in what ways do participants i...
Context in source publication
Context 1
... choices were based on the raw field notes (journal) of the events and the initial perceptions I had written while recording the sessions. The process of data reduction was followed by data display, a phase during which I created an observation schedule (see Table 3) to be used as a tool in the further examination and meaning making of the reduced set of data (Huberman & Miles 1994, p. 429). The categories of the observation schedule were generated by utilising the theoretical framework (see Yin 1994) and the preliminary viewings of the observation videos in the data reduction phase. ...
Citations
... Various inventions and technological developments in music education have changed the perspective and way teachers make learning materials [1,2]. Today's teacher view that, to build student awareness of 21st-century competencies, the student-centered learning process that has been carried out so far needs to be integrated with ICT advances, in showing how it works, ICT advances make it easy for teachers to obtain references from various sources. ...
... In recent studies (Hallam et al., 2018;Ojala & Väkevä, 2015;Partti, 2012;Siedenburg & Nolte 2015;Waldron et al., 2017), scholars are calling for a democratic approach to music learning rather than placing formal and informal approaches as two irreconcilable concepts. In a democratic approach, both formal and informal approaches are used simultaneously in the music classroom (Partti, 2012). ...
... In recent studies (Hallam et al., 2018;Ojala & Väkevä, 2015;Partti, 2012;Siedenburg & Nolte 2015;Waldron et al., 2017), scholars are calling for a democratic approach to music learning rather than placing formal and informal approaches as two irreconcilable concepts. In a democratic approach, both formal and informal approaches are used simultaneously in the music classroom (Partti, 2012). Karlsen (2010) admits that it is problematic, even impossible, for tertiary institutions to completely escape formality, but suggests that it is possible for popular music education to be built on informal education principles. ...
Internationally, popular music is developing at an ever-increasing pace and, even though there have been some advances regarding education in popular music in South Africa, these programmes remain the exception at primary, secondary, and tertiary levels of institutionalised music education. South African universities are based on a western model of organisation and remain largely Eurocentric. Although eleven South African universities offer music as a specialised degree option, the music departments predominantly focus on classical music and to a lesser degree, jazz, both music styles offering limited career opportunities. As popular music is the most dominant form of music worldwide with relevancy to the largest audience, this study aimed at obtaining a deeper understanding of the needs in South Africa regarding a tertiary degree offering in popular music.
I identified relevant stakeholders who would benefit from a tertiary degree in popular music. These included learners who selected music as a subject in the FET phase; students studying music at tertiary level; secondary school music educators presenting music at FET level; music lecturers in popular music at South African tertiary institutions; and professional musicians from the music industry. Using a mixed methods investigation, I discovered the general needs of music learners in secondary schools regarding options to study popular music at tertiary level, and the specific needs of qualitative stakeholders to answer the research questions posed in this study.
The theoretical framework underpinning the study is authentic learning. This theory suggests that learning connects concepts and theory to real-life complexities and events, encouraging students to absorb and merge knowledge through realistic and genuine situations. Informal learning practices are a vital part of popular music; at its core is authentic music-making. Authentic learning facilitates musical identity development and provides students with the tools to function effectively within the wider popular music community. Internationally, there has been a push in tertiary curricula for more student-centred courses with pedagogy and curricula that include vocational skills development. An authentic learning approach could aid the successful development and implementation of a tertiary degree in popular music.
This study identified an urgent need for a specialised degree programme in popular music in South Africa. The development of such a degree may attract more students; increase the economic viability of music departments at universities; address issues of decolonisation; meet the needs of the local music industry as a whole; and deliver employable graduates that can effectively manage a portfolio career in a diverse and ever-changing environment.
... While most performing musicians are known to be insufficiently prepared for such a career (López-Íñiguez & Bennett, 2020), little research can be found on composers' changing working landscapes and the consequences of those changes on their professional education. In higher music education, composers' expertise has been considered individualistic (Partti & Westerlund, 2013), and to a great extent based on the mastery of composition techniques for orchestras and traditional ensembles (e.g., Lupton & Bruce, 2010), regardless of the recent significant expansion of the professional field to include electronic music, game music, sound art, multimedia composing, and co-composing (Böndum, 2019;Partti, 2012). ...
Contemporary professional landscapes in classical music fields are rapidly changing and younger generations of musicians are confronting their creative careers, more often than not in connection to self-employment and freelancing. This narrative inquiry investigates the pathways and livelihoods of composers in a changing professional ecosystem through interviews with 10 bigenerational composers in Finland. The analysis is presented in three "factional stories," in which the empirical material is crafted into "fictional form" by an anonymous first-person narrator. The stories depict how the secure, traditional careers of the older generation are found to be bound to traditional orchestras and ensembles, whereas the protean careers of the younger generation of composers involve passionate pathfinding amid pluralizing ecosystems, within but also beyond traditional contexts and through various collaborations. The younger composers are expanding significantly, or consciously distancing themselves from, the traditional model and values of a contemporary composer. Competition is found to be increasing and professional education described as too short and insufficient in its concentration on technique-this does not provide new understandings and skills beyond traditional composing craft needed for navigating the profession and securing livelihoods. Although similarities are found in the pathways of both composers' generations, such as strong career callings and experiences of luck, the "struggle" for a composer to find a place in society is more strongly experienced by the younger generation, for which the development of an ongoing "learner identity" is required to embrace-and not resist-such a challenge. As a whole, the study provides a new understanding of composers' pathfinding through changing ecosystems and suggests that traditional and protean music careers co-exist-even within a single person-while they can also be clearly separated from each other. The study informs higher music education programs in Western countries.
... • self-directed learning opportunities for autonomous learners (Salavuo, 2006;Waldron in press) • new forms of teacher-led online music tuition and pedagogy (Johnson, 2017) • participatory and collaborative learning (Cayari, 2020;Cremata, 2017;Partti, 2012) • game-based learning experiences (Kang & Ritzhaupt, 2021) Given that institutional education focuses strongly on children and adolescents, adults have been overlooked as potential music learners (Harnum, 2007). Although online learning is an emerging field of interest in music education research, adult learners' motivations in participating in online music courses remains an understudied topic. ...
Online learning is an emerging field of interest in music education research. This study focuses on adult learners’ motivations in non-formal online music education. Motivation is approached through, firstly, motivational backgrounds, including earlier experiences, abilities, attitudes as well as contextual factors, such as life situation, and secondly, explicit motives as articulated by learners themselves. The research data consists of thematic interviews with 21 participants of online music courses offered by a commercial service provider. The data was analysed by coding using Atlas.ti software. All participants had previous experiences in online learning either through formal education or workplace training, which possibly increased their willingness to participate on an online music course. Based on the role of music education in the participants’ childhood and adolescence three typical musical pathways leading to the online music course emerged: (1) The first typical pathway was one without formal music education outside of school. The participants on this pathway might have enjoyed music in other ways, such as actively listening to music or attending dance classes. In adulthood they might have music hobbies such as choir or karaoke. (2) Those on the second pathway took private instrument lessons for a few years as a child. Some of them returned to their instrument as adults, either playing for fun or partaking in instrument lessons. (3) A third path included a lengthy education in a public music school in childhood and adolescence. For these participants, music education was a permanent part of their adulthood as well and they also participated in clearly more various forms of music education than participants in other groups. The participants' self-articulated motives for entering the online music course were diverse. Enjoyment that music learning brings was mentioned by all participants. All participants also mentioned particular learning outcomes they were aiming for. Participants also had motives beyond learning music, reaching to the social, meta-cognitive and health benefits of music education.
... Others have suggested that technological integration provides students with learning resources, music making tools, and inspiration to develop musical skills and create technologically mediated performances-or more simply, music that requires the use of technology to exist (Bauer, 2014;Tobias, 2013;Webster, 2012). The ubiquity of the internet has afforded a connectivity between online users that has allowed people to interact with each other in ways that were inconceivable in the 1980s, and internet technologies have allowed musicians to become increasingly innovative and social through digital and virtual means (Cayari, 2016;Partti, 2012;Waldron, 2018). ...
Music is an integral part of video games and the cultures that surround them, and the sound of video games enhances the user’s immersive game-play experience. Video game music (VGM) inspires performance and the creation of derivative music in both online and offline contexts. This study was conducted to explore how musicians perceived how helpful various learning strategies were for gaining the skills to publish VGM online. A cross-sectional, self-administered questionnaire was conducted at Super Music and Gaming Festival™ (Super MAGFest), an annual convention held near Washington DC, to capture data from respondents ( n = 137) who were adult musicians who published VGM online. The questionnaire captured the perceived helpfulness of learning strategies at school, other educational institutions, and informal approaches. Descriptive and inferential statistics analyses were made. Respondents found music theory courses in school and informal music learning strategies were among the most helpful learning approaches for attaining the skills they needed to publish VGM online. This article provides a starting point for the further exploration of VGM and informal music learning in the age of the Internet.
... Even if the main body of research on informal music education has been conducted where people meet face-to-face, there are also examples of online communities. This has been studied by researchers such as Janice Waldron and Kari Veblen [16,17], Eva Georgii-Hemming [18,19], Heidi Partti [20], and myself [21][22][23][24]. As a sign of the increased interest in this area of research, a new Oxford handbook on the topic came out in 2020 [1]. ...
... In studies that considered the large Finnish forum mikseri.net, which existed simultaneously with Whoa.nu (and still exists), Partti [20] and Salavuo [25] showed that musical learning occurs in forums as a function for aspiring musicians to develop their identities. ...
Whoa.nu started in 2000 as a community where members discussed all aspects of hip-hop in Sweden. The community became the most important place not only for discussions among members but also for releasing free albums and songs to the public and for arranging events. Moreover, the site was an educational hub for members to learn about hip-hop. The core of Whoa.nu was the community, wherein the communicating environment of members developed as artists, audience, and critics. Whoa.nu was not only a place for individuals’ learning processes and development but a place where Swedish hip-hop evolved and changed its regional frames, forming its own identity. The aim of this article was to present an analysis of the development of Whoa.nu as a learning platform for hip-hop in Sweden based on interviews with the two administrators of the site. Further, we wanted to use this as a steppingstone to discuss how listeners learned about popular music online during different eras. Two questions were at the forefront of this research: (1) How do the interviewees describe the internal views of the relation between how Whoa.nu and Swedish hip-hop changed over 13 years? and (2) how can Whoa.nu be understood as a learning environment? I henceforth present insights into how musical learning can happen outside of institutions and how Swedish hip-hop has grown from subculture to mainstream, which is how Whoa.nu outgrew itself. Hip-hop education is currently institutionalized in the same way that jazz and rock once were institutionalized. It went from being rebellious and subversive to being embraced by the larger society and integrated into academia. The results herein present a story of one example where musical learning in a subculture occurred. The insights presented, then, can help educators prepare for similar transformations of learning arenas in future musical subcultures. These insights could aid teachers and educators to assist students involved in music subcultures not discussed in schools. Hopefully, this article inspires additional ways of learning music.
... There are also investigations of professional knowledge and practices. Several studies show an interest in music technology and digital tools (Bang, 2012;Lagerlöf, 2016;Lagerlöf & Peterson, 2018;Partti, 2012;Wallerstedt, 2013;Wallerstedt & Hillman, 2015;Wallerstedt & Pramling, 2015), often in connection with composing or producing music (Falthin, 2011;Gullö, 2010;Lagergren, 2012;Ojala, 2017). But composing and arranging is also covered without an explicit focus on music technology (Grieg Viig, 2017Viig, , 2019Hagerman, 2016;Hultberg, 2011;Mars, 2016). ...
In music education research, as in educational research in general, one frequently encounters analyses using the theoretical concepts “mediation” and “cultural tools,” “artifacts” or “instruments” (henceforth I will use mediational means to refer to the latter three). These concepts are usually ascribed to L. S. Vygotsky, although Vygotsky’s influence is often filtered through sociocultural theory (e.g. Wertsch, 1994; Rogoff, 2003), or activity theory (e.g. Engeström, 1987). The influence of these theories is not limited to the field of music education, nor to the Nordic countries, but mirrors international (or at least, anglophone) developments in the field of educational research since the 1970’s (Hargreaves & Lamont, 2017; Miller, 2011; Valsiner & van der Veer, 2000). The purpose of this paper is to review and critically discuss the use of the concepts “mediation” and “mediational means” in the field of music education research in the Nordic countries.
My interest in this issue originally stems from working on the literature review for my (ongoing) dissertation project. Since I use these concepts in my own research, I took note of the wide variety of phenomena that were categorized as mediational means in studies claiming a Vygotskian theoretical framework (widely defined), and started keeping a list of examples that appeared to stretch the bounds of the theory. In this paper, I expand upon these informal observations in a systematic manner by (i) using a search strategy that is not limited to my own dissertation topic; (ii) using a systematic classification scheme and; (iii) situating the use of the concepts in a historically informed discussion of their role in relevant theoretical frameworks. Such a review and critical discussion could contribute to a better understanding of the state of Nordic music education as a field of research, to more nuanced comparisons of results between studies using similar terminology in slightly different ways, and to theory development in our field.
Drawing on examples from articles and dissertations on music education-relevant topics, published in Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Denmark during the last decade, I will sketch out three related areas of tension in how the concepts “mediation” and “mediational means” are used:
1. The distinction between mediator and mediated
2. The conceptualization of unmediated activities and relations
3. The distinction between (physical) tools and signs
I will argue that 1 and 2 leads to a proliferation of things classified as mediational means, which undermines the explanatory value of the model of mediated activity at the heart of these theoretical traditions. I will also argue that 2 and 3 creates difficulties with conceptualizing learning, which creates a need to reinvent the wheel by reintroducing the tool-sign distinction in other theoretical terms.
References
Engeström, Y. (1987). Learning by Expanding: An Activity-Theoretical Approach to Developmental Research (2nd ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139814744.004
Hargreaves, D., & Lamont, A. (2017). The psychology of musical development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Miller, R. (2011). Vygotsky in perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Rogoff, B. (2003). The cultural nature of human development. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Valsiner, J., & van der Veer, R. (2000). The social mind: Construction of the idea. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wertsch, J. V. (1994). The primacy of mediated action in sociocultural studies. Mind, Culture, and Activity, 1(4), 202–208. https://doi.org/10.1080/10749039409524672
... Attempts to secure social cohesion with an anti-difference model do not seem sustainable in a society characterized by diversity and "supercomplexity" (Barnett 2009). Musical identities can be even more complex, as pointed out by Partti (2012); they are often personal rather than cast in a single cultural mold, and they are constructed "of diverse and even rival elements, created within diverse contexts" (Partti 2012, p. 91). Even that is not entirely new: we need only think of Bach's French Suites or Mozart's "Italienisches Singspiel" Le Nozze di Figaro to realize that creative mixing and merging of musical practices and experiences has been the norm in Europe for a long time. ...
... Every day, millions of people stream audio and video over the Internet, using services like Spotify and YouTube (Cayari, 2016;IFPI, 2017;Partti, 2012;Waldron, 2012Waldron, , 2013. While "real-time transmission of audio data over the Internet has become relatively commonplace" (Cooperstock & Spackman, 2001), Internet streaming services are ". . . ...
... 395 chipmusic.org/forums/topic/14483/how-to-make-really-really-noob-track-better/ compositions and blogs (Partti, 2012). Within chipmusic.org, ...
... and collaborations with other members were voluntary, which is a characteristic among virtual communities (V. Miller, 2011), digital music cultures (Partti, 2012), and affinity spaces (Gee, 2004(Gee, , 2008Gee & Hayes, 2010). Such a characteristic differs from formalized educational spaces that mandate the ways people collaborate or engage with music. ...
This study examined discussion forum posts within a website dedicated to a medium and genre of music (chiptunes) with potential for music-centered making, a phrase I use to describe maker culture practices that revolve around music-related purposes. Three research questions guided this study: (1) What chiptune-related practices did members of chipmusic.org discuss between December 30th, 2009 and November 13th, 2017? (2) What do chipmusic.org discussion forum posts reveal about the multidisciplinary aspects of chiptunes? (3) What import might music-centered making evident within chipmusic.org discussion forum posts hold for music education? To address these research questions, I engaged in corpus-assisted discourse analysis tools and techniques to reveal and analyze patterns of discourse within 245,098 discussion forum posts within chipmusic.org. The analysis cycle consisted of (a) using corpus analysis techniques to reveal patterns of discourse across and within data consisting of 10,892,645 words, and (b) using discourse analysis techniques for a close reading of revealed patterns.
Findings revealed seven interconnected themes of chiptune-related practices: (a) composition practices, (b) performance practices, (c) maker practices, (d) coding practices, (e) entrepreneurial practices, (f), visual art practices, and (g) community practices. Members of chipmusic.org primarily discussed composing and performing chiptunes on a variety of instruments, as well as through retro computer and video game hardware. Members also discussed modifying and creating hardware and software for a multitude of electronic devices. Some members engaged in entrepreneurial practices to promote, sell, buy, and trade with other members. Throughout each of the revealed themes, members engaged in visual art practices, as well as community practices such as collective learning, collaborating, constructive criticism, competitive events, and collective efficacy.
Findings suggest the revealed themes incorporated practices from a multitude of academic disciplines or fields of study for music-related purposes. However, I argue that many of the music-related practices people discussed within chipmusic.org are not apparent within music education discourse, curricula, or standards. I call for an expansion of music education discourse and practices to include additional ways of being musical through practices that might borrow from multiple academic disciplines or fields of study for music-related purposes.
