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Strategic risk-taking in the choral rehearsal
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Strategic risk-taking in the choral rehearsal
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Content
STRATEGIC RISK-TAKING IN THE CHORAL REHEARSAL
by
Scott Rieker
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC THORNTON SCHOOL OF MUSIC
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF MUSICAL ARTS
(CHORAL MUSIC)
May 2019
Dr. Peter Webster, Chair
Dr. Jo-Michael Scheibe
Dr. Tram Sparks
Copyright 2019 Scott Rieker
ii
Table of Contents
Dedication ...................................................................................................................................... vi
Acknowledgements ....................................................................................................................... vii
List of Tables ............................................................................................................................... viii
List of Figures ................................................................................................................................ ix
Abstract ............................................................................................................................................x
Chapter One: Introduction ...........................................................................................................1
Statement of the Problem .....................................................................................................3
Overview of Prior Research Serving as Conceptual Frames ...............................................4
Purpose, Research Questions, Design, and Method ..........................................................22
Independent Variable .........................................................................................................25
Ethical Considerations .......................................................................................................26
Chapter Organization .........................................................................................................28
In Summary ........................................................................................................................29
Chapter Two: Review of Literature on Vulnerability and Risk-Taking ................................31
Fear ....................................................................................................................................32
Shame .................................................................................................................................33
Failure ................................................................................................................................40
Vulnerability ......................................................................................................................42
Risk-taking and Creativity .................................................................................................47
Building a Creative Community ........................................................................................57
Conclusion .........................................................................................................................60
iii
Chapter Three: Review of Literature on Social Network, Emergence, and Motor Learning
Theories .........................................................................................................................................62
A Network, Its Rules, and Its Communities ......................................................................66
Emergence, Influence, and Change ...................................................................................83
Motor Learning ................................................................................................................100
Network Position and Ensemble Intelligence and Personality, the Turn to Music .........104
A Practical Synthesis and Application to the Current Research Project .........................110
Chapter Four: Review of Literature on Failure and the Maker Movement ........................120
Current Practices Regarding Failure ................................................................................121
The Maker Movement and Its Constructivist Roots ........................................................124
The Tangential Treatment of Failure ...............................................................................130
Failure Considered Directly .............................................................................................134
Constructive Failure .........................................................................................................135
Maker Movement/Arts Analogues ...................................................................................140
Summary ..........................................................................................................................141
Application to the Current Study .....................................................................................142
Chapter Five: Informal Pilot Study .........................................................................................146
Statement of the Problem .................................................................................................147
Purpose of the Pilot Study ...............................................................................................148
Definition of Terms ..........................................................................................................148
Research Questions and Hypothesis ................................................................................149
Study Design and Methods ..............................................................................................150
Results ..............................................................................................................................152
iv
Discussion ........................................................................................................................158
Chapter Six: Main Study Procedures and Results ..................................................................162
Procedure .........................................................................................................................163
Description of Variables ..................................................................................................167
Results ..............................................................................................................................176
Conclusion .......................................................................................................................190
Chapter Seven: Summary, Analysis and Discussion. ..............................................................191
Results Borne Out by the Literature ................................................................................193
Difficulties .......................................................................................................................197
Suggestions for Further Research ....................................................................................202
Final Considerations ........................................................................................................203
Suggestions for Practice ...................................................................................................205
Conclusion .......................................................................................................................208
Bibliography ...............................................................................................................................210
Appendices ..................................................................................................................................219
Appendix 1 – Initial Screening ........................................................................................219
Appendix 2 – Discrete Emotion Questionnaire ...............................................................220
Appendix 3 – Newly composed choral work: “La Canción del Caminante” ..................221
Appendix 4 – Lesson Plans/Scripts ..................................................................................227
Appendix 5 – Social Network Survey .............................................................................231
Appendix 6 – Debriefing Statement ................................................................................232
Appendix 7 – Recruiting Statement .................................................................................233
Appendix 8 – Initial Screening [Informal Pilot Study] ....................................................234
v
Appendix 9 – Newly composed musical exercise [Informal Pilot Study] .......................237
Appendix 10 – Parental Permission and Participant Assent Form ..................................238
Appendix 11 – Informed Consent Form ..........................................................................242
vi
Dedication
This work is dedicated to my family, who inspired and fostered my love of music; to my teachers
and professors, who did the same; to those who taught me the importance of kindness and
learning from mistakes; to my students, to whom I try to extend the same courtesy; and to
Jeremy.
vii
Acknowledgements
It is impossible to acknowledge everyone who has accompanied me along the journey, served as
inspiration for my research, teaching, and learning, or provided examples that I can learn from.
However, some deserve special mention and thanks: The exceptional faculty and staff at the
University of Southern California (Jo-Michael Scheibe, Nick Strimple, Cristian Grases, Tram
Sparks, Mary Scheibe, Peter Webster, Beatriz Ilari, and Lynn Helding, to name a few of the
more influential), the exceptional faculty and staff at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln (Pete
Eklund, Donna Harler-Smith, Pamela Starr, Stan Kleppinger, Tony Bushard, and more), my
doctoral colleagues (Irene Apanovitch-Leites, Ernest Harrison, and the rest of you), my
colleagues at Frostburg State University (who are great), Desiree Witt, Jeff Avey, the exceptional
students who let me study them, administration and staff of the school district in which I
conducted my research, the members of choirs I’ve had the privilege of directing and the staff of
their organizations (the Basilica of St. John, St. Mary’s Cathedral, Emerson Unitarian
Universalist Church, the Caruso Catholic Center, the Santa Monica Youth Orchestra, and the
Torrance Civic Chorale, to name a few), and my students, who inspire me every day.
viii
List of Tables
Table 4.1. Attribution matrix .......................................................................................................139
Table 5.1. Mean differences between instruction set and musical learning score .......................153
Table 5.2. Instruction set versus musical learning score .............................................................153
Table 5.3. Instruction set versus score, attempt 6 (retention) ......................................................155
Table 5.4. Instruction set versus musical experience score .........................................................156
Table 5.5. Coefficients for multiple regression ...........................................................................157
Table 6.1. Study timeline, 2018 ...................................................................................................164
Table 6.2. Musicianship Scores in the main study .......................................................................169
Table 6.3. Group musicianship scores .........................................................................................170
Table 6.4. Social network scores .................................................................................................174
Table 6.5. Change in emotion scores (a) ......................................................................................175
Table 6.6. Change in emotion scores (b) .....................................................................................175
Table 6.7. ANOVA (overall pitch score) .....................................................................................176
Table 6.8. Robust tests of equality of means (overall rhythm score) ..........................................178
Table 6.9. Descriptive statistics mean pitch scores per rehearsal, divided by treatment .............180
Table 6.10. Mean rhythm scores per rehearsal by treatment .......................................................182
Table 6.11. Coefficients for social network score .......................................................................185
Table 6.12. Coefficients for musicianship score ..........................................................................186
Table 6.13. Robust tests of equality of means (fourth rehearsal pitch score) ..............................187
Table 6.14. Robust tests of equality of means (fourth rehearsal rhythm score) ..........................188
Table 6.15. Mann-Whitney U test statistics .................................................................................189
ix
List of Figures
Figure 5.1. Box plot: Instruction set versus musical learning score ............................................154
Figure 5.2. Line graph: Instruction set versus score ....................................................................158
Figure 6.1. Mean overall pitch score ...........................................................................................177
Figure 6.2. Mean overall rhythm score ........................................................................................178
Figure 6.3. Trend line for change in pitch scores ........................................................................181
Figure 6.4. Trend line for change in rhythm scores .....................................................................183
x
Abstract
The emerging realms of Social Network and Emergence Theory, along with the well-established
principles of constructivist educational theory provide a strong framework for accepting and
encouraging strategic risk-taking as an integral component of the learning process. Previous
qualitative research has been done in the realms of education and social work to study risk-
taking; however, this quantitative study used a similar research base to study a choral
conductor’s instructions and interactions with amateur high school singers under contrasting
approaches to risk-taking. The purpose of this quantitative study was to determine the effect of
strategic risk-taking choral rehearsal strategies on melodic and rhythmic accuracy of a newly
composed piece of choral music. One group was instructed by encouraging risk-taking in a
positive, experimental condition and another group was instructed in a more traditional teacher-
directed manner. Also considered were the confounding effects of singers’ prior musical
experience, their network centrality, the size of the treatment group, and the singers’ emotions.
Their melodic and rhythmic accuracy of music performance were scored over four attempts and
over five weeks to discover whether the allowances for strategic risk-taking might result in
improved music performance. The group that experienced strategic risk-taking improved their
performances for both pitch and rhythmic accuracy in a statistically significant way.
Confounding variables had mixed interactions with the treatment variable, some statistically
significant and others not.
Keywords: constructivism, maker movement, choral music, risk-taking, amateur
1
Chapter One: Introduction
Risk-taking, vulnerability, fear of failure, and creative behavior are constructs bound
together in the experience of living as a human. It could be argued that a balanced, whole person
emerges when these traits are understood and employed to an individual’s benefit. Choral
educators can be instrumental in facilitating this in their pedagogy. Most conductors equate risk-
taking with failure, and indeed, risk-taking is accompanied by the danger of failure.
1
But, the
danger of failure is a component of every human endeavor. In fact, Deweyan pragmatism, which
Aaron Stoller summarizes very elegantly, holds that “our everyday lives are filled with small
failures that disrupt our expectations, leading to the process of inquiry and the formation of new
understanding… The very structure of human experience, then, is characterized as much, if not
more, by failure than success”.
2
In education, failure may provide for much more learning than success, because failure
allows for the teachable moment. This is why teachers encourage learners to take risks that may
not end successfully.
3
It is well known that Thomas Edison ran through dozens of ideas and
designs for the light bulb before settling on the final version. Author and scholar Kenneth
Robinson once asked famed chemist Sir Harry Kroto why many of his experiments failed, to
which he replied, “failure is not the right word. ‘You’re finding out what doesn’t work.’”
4
When
a learner has experienced success—has “gotten the right answer”—then that learner’s academic
inquiry has reached its conclusion. With success, learning is completed, not initiated. However,
when learning has occurred after taking some sort of risk, learning may be felt to be more
complete and lasting. Thus, it would seem that creating a rehearsal environment where strategic
1
For example, Freer, “The Conductor’s Voice,” 33.
2
Stoller, “Educating from Failure,” 24.
3
For example, Wiggins, “Vulnerability and Agency,” 359.
4
Robinson, Out of Our Minds, 154.
2
risk-taking is expected and encouraged may provide a foundation for growth in knowledge and
skill that would be a foundation for a healthy learning experience. It is reasoned that if
intermittent failure during the learning process is expected and used constructively in rehearsal,
musicians should be more relaxed, which should increase learning and retention in the long run.
The following two examples are offered as apt illustrations of the convergence of risk-
taking and the choral rehearsal. In one situation, when mistakes are made, the conductor guides
the choristers to reflect on their singing and how to improve it by using techniques that
encourage experimentation and risk. In the second scenario, the conductor says, “C’mon, you’re
better than that!” and then has the offending singers repeat the passage until they sing it more
and more tentatively (but not with particularly improved accuracy). This second conductor
concludes that the errors were fixed when they were inaudible, however they were actually still
incorrect, only more deeply embedded. Both conductors have high standards for excellence in
musical performance, but only the first one may have achieved them. Could research evidence
show that this was because the first ensemble was comfortable with taking risks that could end in
mistakes—in “failure”—and thus able to reach the success that the daring can achieve?
If anecdotal evidence is to be believed, the second example occurs to a greater extent in
choral classrooms every day. Outside of the realm of music, learning from failure is standard
practice. Industry, especially the technology sector, “devotes enormous resources to research and
development, a process that acknowledges failure as an essential component.”
5
Emergence
theory, as explained by Johnson, is undergirded by the presence of failure: local information and
an individual’s response to it cause systemic changes when considered on a larger scale.
6
Local
successes and local failures synergize into systemic learning beyond anything attributable to the
5
Ferguson, “Failure IS an Option,” 68.
6
Johnson, Emergence.
3
individual. In the burgeoning “maker movement,” as studied in the work of Kathryn Donahue,
Erica Rosenfeld Halverson and Kimberly Sheridan, Mark Hatch, and others, failure is tacitly
considered integral.
7
And yet, though generally recognized as important, risk-taking itself has
largely not been intentionally included in choral music education pedagogy. Rather, most choral
directors seem risk-averse, and failure is often treated as a pitfall to be avoided at all costs. This
study sought to explore the effect of a conductor’s encouragement of strategic risk-taking in a
constructivist atmosphere versus a conductor-centered approach that provided direct instruction
and discouraged risk-taking that could possibly end in failure.
Statement of the Problem
Constructivist learning theory—endorsed by many scholars, such as Idit Harel and
Seymour Papert, Robinson, and Stoller, and explained in more detail below—holds that learners
create their own meaning with the help of experienced others during the learning process.
8
This
often includes both failures and successes. Constructivist educators provide learners with
opportunities to take risks, explore possibilities, and learn within Lev Vygotsky’s “zone of
proximal development.”
9
The zone of proximal development can be considered that state where
the challenge presented by a task and the learners’ mastery of the required skills are fairly well in
balance.
10
Constructivist theory also includes a “knowledgeable other” in this situation, most
often the conductor in a choral context. However, both Emergence and Social Network
Theories—as studied by the Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler; Steven Johnson; Wenjun
Wang; and Xiaojun Zhang, Viswanath Venkatesh, and Bo-yan Huang—posit that a
7
A representative sample of thoughts on the “maker movement” can be found in Donahue, “Awakening Creative Thinking”;
Halverson and Sheridan, “The Maker Movement in Education”; Hatch, The Maker Movement Manifesto.
8
A representative sample of thoughts on constructivism can be found in Harel and Papert, Constructionism; Robinson, Out of
Our Minds; Stoller, “Educating from Failure.”
9
Papert, The Children’s Machine, 15.
10
Vygotsky, Mind in Society, 86.
4
“knowledgeable other” could just as easily arise organically from among the participants in the
learning community.
11
Applying these concepts to music teaching and learning, it would seem
that in order to provide an optimal learning environment, conductors should not only recognize
that failure can occur in the learning process, but create structures where students are encouraged
to take risks that could result in failure and—subsequently—learning. Interestingly, little
quantitative research has been done to support this in music teaching and learning
Overview of Prior Research Serving as Conceptual Frames
More detailed descriptions of previous research on vulnerability and risk taking (Chapter
Two); social networking, emergence, and Motor Learning Theory, (Chapter Three); and failure
and the Maker Movement (Chapter Four) follow. What follows here are overviews of these
conceptual frames for this study. A brief overview of constructivist epistemology is also
included.
Constructivism
One formulation of constructivism (or, as Papert called it, “constructionism”) can be
found to the writings of Papert, especially Constructionism (1991, with Harel) and The
Children’s Machine (1993). As explored in depth in Chapter Four, constructivism is an
educational philosophy based on the beliefs that “knowledge is formed as part of the learner’s
interaction with the world,”
12
that it is as important to learn process as it is to learn content,
and
that “the product is most likely an explicit representation of the process: product provides insight
into the process.”
13
Peter Webster posited four precepts for constructivism that flow from these
beliefs:
11
A representative sample of the authors’ thoughts on emergence and Social Network Theory can be found in Christakis and
Fowler, Connected; Johnson, Emergence; Wang, “Modeling Influence Diffusion”; Zhang, et al., “Student Interactions and Course
Performance.”
12
Webster, “Construction of Music Learning,” 2.
13
Shively, “A Framework for Beginning Band Classes,” 154.
5
• knowledge is formed as part of the learner’s active interaction with the world,
• knowledge exists less as abstract entities outside of the learner and absorbed by
the learner; rather it is constructed anew through action,
• meaning is constructed with this knowledge, and
• learning is, in large part, a social activity,…[where] issues of social interaction
must be central.
14
Through this process, a learner’s prior knowledge is linked with new information, and the new
understanding that is created can be—rather than one correct answer—one of multiple
outcomes.
15
When applied to music education, constructivist theory holds that a teacher is
constantly evaluating both the learning and the process of learning, where “learning a piece of
music and improving his or her performance of it never truly ceases, [since]…the primary means
of knowledge representation in the…performer's knowledge domain is performance.”
16
According to Webster, a “teacher’s role is to help structure this learning process to help
correct any inaccuracies or misconceptions”; in other words, to serve as the “knowledgeable
other.”
17
Similarly, the “knowledgeable other” can provide scaffolding and is instrumental in
creating conditions for collaborative success.
18
Webster built on Vygotsky’s work, maintaining
that the goal is to move the learner into the “‘zone of proximal development’ which might be
thought of as the difference between where learners are on their own versus where they can be
with the help of a ‘knowledgeable other’ (teachers or more capable peers).”
19
And, instead of
remaining static, the relationship of the learner to said “knowledgeable other” proceeds through a
progression which begins with “the mentor as a model, then coach and critical friend, and then as
a co-inquirer.”
20
This traversing of roles is analogous to Brené Brown’s work in the domain of
14
Webster, “Construction of Music Learning,” 2.
15
Ibid., 4.
16
Shively, “A Framework for Beginning Band Classes,” 158.
17
Webster, “Construction of Music Learning,” 10.
18
Sheridan, et al., “Learning in the Making,” 526.
19
Webster, “Construction of Music Learning,” 11.
20
Ibid., 25.
6
vulnerability and helping, conceptualized as Acompañar theory, which is outlined below and
explored more deeply in Chapter Two.
21
One example of implementing a constructivist framework in the music classroom is the
work of Lucy Green, who studied the learning process of those who make vernacular music.
22
Green allowed members of the music class to divide into small groups (ranging from 2-7
members), and then observed them as they learned to perform a piece of popular music of their
own choosing.
23
Green noted that when teachers intervened, it hindered—rather than assisted—
the learning process of the students. Without specifically citing Emergence Theory, Green also
noted how roles arose organically from the participants and concludes that the freedom to
experiment was crucial to the students’ success.
24
When applied to the choral ensemble, it makes
sense that the conductor can fulfill the role of “knowledgeable other” and assist in maintaining
the ensemble in the “zone of proximal development” when he or she is willing to allow the
musicians a degree of agency to make their own meaning from the musical experience. This type
of leadership may result in greater melodic and rhythmic accuracy, as well as improved learning
and retention as compared to traditional methods of choral instruction.
Social Network, Emergence, and Motor Learning Theories
Chapter Three considers Social Network and Emergence, and Motor Learning Theories.
Sociologists Christakis and Fowler pioneered the field of Social Network Theory, using data
from the well-known Framingham Heart Study
25
to discover both the unexpected connections
between the participants in this exceptionally large data set and the subtle and sometimes hidden
influences that the participants had on people to whom they were only indirectly connected.
21
Brown, “Acompañar,” 53.
22
Green, “The Music Curriculum as Lived Experience,” 27ff.
23
Ibid.
24
Ibid., 29-30.
25
Christakis and Fowler, Connected, 107-109.
7
Because Social Network Theory deals with the connections between and the influences among a
group of people, the study of social networks seems uniquely suited for considering the social
network called a choral ensemble. However, such studies require a radical departure from
previous understandings. As far back as the eighteenth century, groups were considered either
with respect to only the individual members or in terms of only the group as a whole. Social
network theory proposes that the network itself be the object of consideration: the people and the
connections among them.
26
Essential for understanding these connections is an understanding of transitivity and
multiplexity. The transitivity of a person expresses how connected their connections are. For
instance, Person A may be connected to Persons B and C. Person A will be more transitive if
Persons B and C are connected to many people. Person A will be less transitive if Persons B and
C are connected to fewer people. Or, taken another way, a person who knows well-connected
celebrities will almost certainly be more transitive than someone who only knows monks and
hermits. Additionally, any individual is simultaneously inhabiting any number of social
networks, depending on a researcher’s chosen definitions. For instance, two people may attend
the same church, share a workplace, exercise at a specific gym, belong to a political party, sing
in a community choir…the facets that can be considered “networks” are nearly endless. This is
multiplexity, which speaks to these multiple overlapping networks, where a person can have
multiple relationships (connections) with another person across several networks. Multiplexity is
an extraordinarily powerful factor in understanding the structure of any social network.
27
This helps to build a foundation for the complex issue of positional inequality, which is
intimately bound up with the concept of network centrality. Network centrality is the degree to
26
Ibid., 302–303.
27
Ibid., 92.
8
which one’s connections are well-connected. Some people are more central—more well-
connected to well-connected people—than others, often for reasons outside of their own control
or choosing. Sociologists have long considered race, gender, socio-economic status, and other
factors as highly determinative of many aspects of a person’s life. Recently, however, positional
inequality has been found to be more impactful than race, gender, etc., for determining social
outcomes. This simple fact shatters more than a century of prior thought about class and status.
28
The phenomenon of properties arising out of the network that are not present in its
components—in other words, the phenomenon of emergence—is, by far, the most powerful
dynamic of a network and its communities. Through emergence, networks can be employed to
surpass even the combined abilities of a group of people, if members adhere to certain basic
tenets. The first and central tenet of Emergence Theory is that the phenomenon of emergence is
not the result of a leader-directed, top-down creation. Rather, each component of the network
acts according to specific rules which synergize into a whole greater than the sum of its parts.
29
The concept that emergent properties arise without a central guiding figure has profound
implications in the understanding of “control.” According to the classical model of human
behavior going back millennia, actions were considered according to a volitional model. An
individual first senses, then thinks, and finally acts in a linear syllogism from input to output.
Contemporary theorists are increasingly finding that the “act” will influence the subsequent
“sense,” which leads to a circular feedback model instead of the classic linear one. In this way, a
circular feedback model—also appropriately called a feedback loop—can quickly generate
unexpected emergent outcomes.
30
28
Ibid., 300.
29
Johnson, Emergence, 181.
30
Soto-Morettini, “Reverse Engineering the Human,” 67-68.
9
Emergence also pertains to roles. Wang made the striking claim that roles emerge based
on a person’s position in the network and the influence derived from that position. “We argue
that individual roles, influence, and susceptibility are implicitly embedded in the network
topology. In fact, it is influence that not only differentiates individual roles but also acts as the
force holding the individuals together to form and maintain the community.”
31
Since a person’s
centrality will impact which (and how many) needs they encounter—and thereby respond to—
their centrality will effectively determine their role in the network. Combined with network
topology, both a person’s position and their ability to influence the network interact to engender
any given person’s role.
Both Social Network Theory and Emergence Theory applied to the choral rehearsal
would seem to suggest that choristers who are more central to the network will perform better,
and that larger groups will display emergent properties, which ought to enhance learning and
accuracy.
Much of Social Network Theory and especially Emergence Theory may also be aptly
related to the fundamental networks that comprise the human person itself. This is particularly
evident in the developing field of motor learning, especially as it applies to singing. Pioneers in
the field of motor learning, Richard Schmidt and Timothy Lee, defined motor learning as “a set
of processes associated with practice or experience leading to relatively permanent changes in
the capability for skilled movement.”
32
Others have provided similar definitions, such as
“knowing through action”—where ideas are validated through experience by students while they
are scrutinized and affirmed by teachers—or as physically-based learning, as opposed to
31
Wang, “Modeling Influence Diffusion,” 14.
32
Schmidt and Lee, Motor Control and Learning, 327.
10
intellectual learning.
33
All of these definitions are predicated on emergence, a bottom-up learning
model where the body is learning through carefully targeted repetition. In fact, just as with
emergent systems, there is evidence from motor learning experiments that significant learning
can occur without the conscious mind being aware of any learning happening at all.
34
When
combined with a constructivist process, Motor Learning Theory seems to suggest that learning
and accuracy will be improved in unconscious ways as choristers make their own meanings from
the musical experiences.
The Maker Movement: Realization of Constructivism and Emergence
Chapter Four treats the interconnected concepts of the maker movement, constructivism,
and emergence. The maker movement is one example of what a constructivist, emergent learning
environment might look like. The maker movement arises out of a system of creating knowledge
through social interaction. Halverson and Sheridan summarized the maker movement as “a
growing number of people who are engaged in the creative production of artifacts in their daily
lives and who find physical and digital forums to share their process and products with others.”
35
Halverson and Sheridan identified three components of the maker movement: “making as a set of
activities, makerspaces as communities of practice, and makers as identities [italics in
original].”
36
Sheridan, Halverson, Lisa Brahms, Breanne Litts, Trevor Owens, and Lynette
Jacobs-Priebe elaborated on makerspaces, which they defined as “informal sites for creative
production in art, science, and engineering where people of all ages blend digital and physical
technologies to explore new ideas, learn technical skills, and create new products.”
37
These
makerspaces exhibit four essential constituent parts: demonstration lectures (which present open-
33
Seton, “The Ethics of Embodiment,” 13; Soto-Morettini, “Reverse Engineering the Human,” 69.
34
Schmidt and Lee, Motor Control and Learning, 355.
35
Halverson and Sheridan, “The Maker Movement in Education,” 496.
36
Ibid.
37
Sheridan, et al., “Learning in the Making,” 505.
11
ended problems), students at work, critiques, and exhibitions.
38
This broad array of traits makes
for a rather fluid definition of the maker movement, makers, and makerspaces. However, Hatch
noted that nine unifying factors bind the whole movement together. Hatch enumerated them as:
“Make, Share, Give, Learn, Tool Up, Play, Participate, Support, Change,” which explain the
creative, social, exploratory, and transformational nature of the maker movement.
39
Extensive research does not yet exist on the maker movement and its intersection with
constructivism, but the body of work continues to expand. One particular point of note is that
“communities of practice emerge around makerspaces.”
40
In such a schema, “the social
environment of the classroom initially established by the teacher will affect students' comfort
level, feeling of ownership,…relationship with the teacher, relationship with peers, and general
way of being in the classroom,” thereby creating a “community of learners.”
41
In a true
community of practice, “learning is an ongoing part of social interaction rather than a discreet
process.”
42
Every member serves as teacher, and every member serves as learner at some point;
everyone has a role, and these roles change and develop over time. “In these [maker]spaces,
learning happens as a consequence of individuals beginning as legitimate peripheral participants
and moving toward becoming full participants. But learning is not guaranteed; nor is it
regulated… A makerspace approach values individuals moving in and out of a space freely.”
43
This same approach creates learning in a context of expertise and integration, which
allows everyday people to solve their own problems, and where divisions of discreet disciplines
become inauthentic in an atmosphere that crisscrosses the boundary between formal and informal
38
Ibid., 508.
39
Hatch, The Maker Movement Manifesto, 1-2.
40
Halverson and Sheridan, “The Maker Movement in Education,” 502.
41
Wiggins, “Fostering Revision,” 35.
42
Sheridan, et al., “Learning in the Making,” 509.
43
Halverson and Sheridan, “The Maker Movement in Education,” 502.
12
education.
44
A makerspace becomes “a place to learn, not just practice what one already knows,
[where]… participants learn from others’ prior frustrations [that serve to]… alert [them] to false
paths and unproductive approaches when trying a new project.”
45
Webster aptly defined this as
“mutual learning and democratic action.”
46
The maker movement is a widespread and concrete example of how roles emerge based
on a person’s strengths and network position, rather than some external credential or authority. It
also demonstrates that the “knowledgeable other” need not be that externally validated
individual, but can (and often should) be someone from within the community of practice. This
also exemplifies the importance of the network (i.e. the community of practice) per se, and its
emergent properties, which are beyond the mere sum of its parts. In a constructivist makerspace
environment, the learning of the group as a whole transcends and surpasses the learning of any
one individual.
Further, Papert contended that “the purpose of noting that a system can be more reliable
than its components is not a blanket exoneration of mindless sloppiness.”
47
Rather, it serves as
acknowledgement that, in a successful educational situation, a “knowledgeable other” provide
[sic] the students with guidance without setting boundaries based on their own biases,
preconceptions, or limitations.”
48
Joseph Shively summarized this point effectively, writing,
“care must be taken that the teacher introduces the learning environment without prejudicing
how the learner might apply his or her knowledge base or how the learner might interpret the
experience. The teacher can give instructions, but the instructions should not lead the learner’s
44
Halverson and Sheridan, “The Maker Movement in Education,” 498; Sheridan, et al., “Learning in the Making,” 527.
45
Sheridan, et al., “Learning in the Making,” 515.
46
Webster, “Construction of Music Learning,” 43.
47
Papert, The Children’s Machine, 190-191.
48
Ibid.
13
decision making process.”
49
It seems that one could apply the maker movement as a model to the
choral rehearsal, where organic emergence of roles—how both the conductor and members of
the ensemble can serve as “knowledgeable others”—and strategic risk-taking are part and parcel
of a constructivist, emergent experience.
Current Practices Regarding Failure
Because trial-and-error is essential to constructivist learning and Emergence Theory, this
leads to the consideration of failure, which is an integral component to the process. In the current
climate of music education, many authors treat failure as something to wholly avoid, often
because failure (or the acceptance thereof) is equated with the educator espousing low standards.
Freer quoted several musical luminaries in this regard, but the consensus is the same: the
ensemble has to feel like they have accomplished something in rehearsal, and failure is the
antithesis of accomplishment. “Failure does little to win your choir, and success builds the
ensemble’s trust in you as a conductor… Success is paramount in the positive learning curve.”
50
Donahue related that many consider failure as an inchoate offense against human nature, as a
person strives to be “masters of one’s own stuff” and strives for “self-reliance, humility, and
agency.”
51
The countervailing tendency of a “failure phobia” is to strive for perfection at every
moment: in rehearsal, performance, and even in personal practice. In the current model, where
failure is considered dreadful, is it any wonder that the instances of performance anxiety occur so
frequently? Such an emphasis on achievement is not without consequence. Due to an inordinate
49
Shively, “A Framework for Beginning Band Classes,” 205.
50
Freer, “The Conductor's Voice,” 33-34.
51
Donahue, “Awakening Creative Thinking,” 9.
14
emphasis on achievement, “47% [of musicians] blamed [performance] anxiety for their impaired
performance.”
52
In a rehearsal setting, performance anxiety can arise from musicians considering the
rehearsal as an obligation to perform without error for one’s peers. Stoller provided a framework
to relate the fear of failure to performance anxiety. “In particular, deep failure is often
accompanied by feelings of personal flaw and powerlessness… Failure, in this way, is often
understood not as a common event that every live [sic] creature must experience simply because
they live in the world but instead as a sign of weakness or flaw.”
53
Thus, rather than being
acknowledged as a democratizing aspect of humanity, in current practice, failure is treated as
anathema, and the phobias which arise lead to partially or fully debilitating performance anxiety
in nearly half of all musicians. The quest for perfection becomes pathological.
Ironically, perfectionism is not about the actual pursuit of perfection. According to
Brown, “Perfectionism is a defensive move. It’s the belief that if we do things perfectly and look
perfect, we can minimize or avoid the pain of blame, judgment, and shame.”
54
Perfectionism is
inextricably bound to the ideas of trying to earn the approval of others and of a person’s worth
being defined by their accomplishments.
55
Perfectionism is—at its root—shame-based. People
are often willing to do an incredible amount to appear perfect and hide perceived failures.
56
For
Brown, “pursuing perfection can be as dangerous as it is unfulfilling.”
57
Therefore, perfectionism
must be abandoned in favor of realistic growth.
When we choose growth over perfection, we immediately increase our shame resilience.
Improvement is a far more realistic goal than perfection. Merely letting go of unattainable
goals makes us less susceptible to shame. When we believe “we must be this” we ignore
52
Lehmann, et al., Psychology for Musicians, 145.
53
Stoller, “Educating from Failure,” 34.
54
Brown, Daring Greatly, 129.
55
Ibid.
56
Ibid., 185.
57
Ibid., 189.
15
who or what we actually are, our capacity and our limitations. We start from the image of
perfection, and of course, from perfection there is nowhere to go but down.
58
In fact, Brown provided three simple reasons why pursuing growth is superior to
pursuing perfection. First, in the objective sense, “perfection is unattainable.”
59
Second,
perfectionism is about appearing perfect in the eyes of others, and “we can’t control how others
perceive us.”
60
Third, it is physically impossible to do everything “expected of us or that we
expect of ourselves.”
61
Instead, realistic growth goals, not perfection, are the solution.
62
“When
we give ourselves permission to be imperfect, when we find self-worth despite our
imperfections, when we build connection networks that affirm and value us as imperfect beings,
we are much more capable of change.”
63
The treatment of failure has a straightforward
implication on the choral rehearsal in the form of strategic risk-taking in the constructivist
classroom. How failure is addressed directly correlates to how constructivist a conductor’s
rehearsal strategies actually are.
Vulnerability and Risk-taking
Explored carefully in Chapter Two, risk-taking, with its ever-present possibility of
failure, is a central component in the creative process, and creativity is synonymous with growth
and change. With his typical verve, Robinson opined, “If you’re not prepared to be wrong, it’s
unlikely that you’ll ever come up with anything original.”
64
So, how does one encourage people
to change? Traditional motivational practices focus on shame, guilt, and fear. Yet, Brown began
her career-long study of shame, vulnerability, and resilience from one simple realization: “You
58
Ibid., 196.
59
Ibid.
60
Ibid.
61
Ibid.
62
Ibid.
63
Ibid.
64
Robinson, Out of Our Minds, 153.
16
cannot shame or belittle people into changing their behaviors.”
65
Guilt—unlike shame—is a
strong motivator for change.
66
In conventional literature, fear is also often considered a desirable
motivator for change. But Peter Fuda and Richard Badham’s research suggested that “aspiration
[hope] is a far more important motivator, [though]… fear may provide the initial
spark…sustainable change requires the fire of ‘burning ambition.’”
67
The work of Leona Aiken,
Mary Gerend, and Kristina Jackson underscored this, acknowledging that fear can motivate
change up to a certain point, and then—upon reaching a critical threshold—leads to avoidance,
“yielding an inverted U-shaped relation between level of fear and behavior.”
68
Brown’s doctoral dissertation outlined a process for empowering positive change styled
Acompañar, a method of actively accompanying folks through their struggles. When societal
influences encourage shame and isolation, accompaniment is crucial in building a healthy
community. This theory considers a language of paired opposites (e.g. teach/learn, lead/follow,
expert/novice) and occurs in a process of three stages—anchoring, deconstructing, and
traversing—each stage with its own paired binaries.
69
The process of acompañar moves the
participants to learn to traverse those paired binaries and develop fluid roles that are approached
with integrity. There is no set time frame for moving from one stage to the next, and movement
backwards is as possible as progress. Instead, people need to stay in each stage until both are
ready to move forward.
70
This fluidity of roles provides an extra-disciplinary analog to Webster’s
summation of roles in constructivist education considered above.
65
Brown, I Thought It Was Just Me, 1.
66
Ibid., 13.
67
Fuda and Badham, “Fire, Snowball, Mask, Movie,” 3.
68
Aiken, et al., “Subjective Risk and Health Protective Behavior,” 735.
69
Brown, “Acompañar,” 53.
70
Ibid., 85-86.
17
The ability to traverse roles and entertain a fluid power dynamic is based on the
participants’ willingness to be vulnerable. In a classroom setting, empowering learner agency is
key toward enhancing the positive aspects of vulnerability and minimizing the negative.
71
[People] are willing to be vulnerable when our vulnerability is embraced with
acceptance… We cannot nurture the vulnerability, openness, sensitivity necessary for
being a musician in a context that generates resistance, protection and withdrawal…
Especially if there are circumstances embedded in music learning that can cause
participants to feel vulnerable, we must assure that music learning environments nurture
and support learners’ sense of purpose, optimism, autonomy, confidence, self-esteem,
self-efficacy, skill and know-how.
72
“To make music, one should make a presupposition. That presupposition is that one is able to be
open and vulnerable.”
73
Healthy vulnerability is the goal. First, one must understand that “fear
and vulnerability are powerful emotions. You can’t just wish them away. You have to do
something with them.”
74
That “something” involves recapturing a sense of an individual’s
agency, a power to effect change. Part of discovering agency is learning to love and accept
oneself, complete with all one’s gifts and limitations.
75
To be creative, people must be vulnerable. To be creative, people must also take risks.
Vulnerability and risk-taking: these are the two sides of the same creative coin. Because every
person experiences vulnerability, this means that every person will need to take risks every day,
because it is impossible to be invulnerable. Robinson aptly linked risk-taking and creativity, “In
all creative processes we are pushing the boundaries of what we know now, to explore new
possibilities; we are drawing on the skills we have now, often stretching and evolving them as
the work demands.”
76
71
Wiggins, “Vulnerability and Agency,” 355.
72
Ibid., 364.
73
Jordan, Musician’s Soul, 31.
74
Brown, Daring Greatly, 98.
75
Ibid., 106-107.
76
Robinson, Out of Our Minds, 152.
18
Vaibhav Tyagi, Yaniv Hanoch, Stephen Hall, Mark Runco, and Susan Denham
considered “creativity as a multidimensional trait and used both biographical and behavioral
measures of creativity (creative personality, creative achievements in multiple domains, creative
ideation, problem solving, and divergent thinking)…[and] found an inverse relationship between
rigidity and intolerance of ambiguity as a measure of risk and creativity.”
77
The crucial
component to Tyagi, et al.’s study is the consideration—not only of multiple domains of
creativity, but—of multiple domains of risk to discover that some “are more closely associated
with creativity than others.”
78
The study also found support for “‘sensible’ risk taking in
creativity… [where] the risk of being ‘different’ is more important in creativity than risks that
endanger limbs or life.”
79
In fact,
the results from this study demonstrate a strong link between risk taking in the social
domain and personality and biographical inventory based measures of creativity. Other
domains of risk taking were not significantly associated with any measure of creativity.
Social risk taking is particularly interesting to investigate in the context of creativity.
Creative individuals often present their ideas and creative products to social groups, for
evaluation, appreciation, or criticism. This activity involves a high level of social risk
especially since it entails the possibility of the creative idea or product being rejected by
some, or all the individuals forming the social group.
80
Similarly, the importance of an environment that supports sensible risk-taking and
discourages its pathological aspects cannot be overstated. “Taking risks places learners in a
vulnerable position, which is why a safe and supportive learning environment is so essential for
empowering learners.”
81
Consequently, “care must be taken to establish a safe and nurturing
environment where students feel free to experiment and take musical risks.”
82
“A classroom that
encourages rather than squelches creative thinking is one that is psychologically safe, contains
77
Tyagi, et al., “The Risky Side of Creativity,” 2.
78
Ibid.
79
Ibid.
80
Ibid., 5.
81
Wiggins, “Vulnerability and Agency,” 355.
82
Robinson, et al., “The Creative Music Strategy,” 52.
19
many rich sound sources for frequent and engaged exploration, and promotes an atmosphere of
risk taking (allowing for failure).”
83
An environment that is safe for vulnerability is critical to learning, especially in the arts,
as “the creative impulses of most people can be suffocated by negative criticism, cynical
putdowns, or dismissive remarks.”
84
In one of Brown’s studies, 85% of participants had a shame
experience in school that changed how they perceived themselves as learners. Remarkably, 43%
of these shame experiences were what Brown labeled as “creative scars,” when people were
“told or shown that they weren’t good writers, artists, musicians, dancers, or something
creative.”
85
Many students in middle school general music classes consider themselves “failed
musicians… because they had not succeeded in or desired to continue with traditional
performance-based music classes.”
86
Shame can be pervasive where failure is concerned. Brown
is unequivocal: “When shame becomes a management style, engagement dies. When failure is
not an option we can forget about learning, creativity, and innovation.”
87
A lengthy passage from
Nancy Mitchell is particularly lucid:
The environment in which a student learns and his or her relationship with the teacher
play an important role in determining how creative the students will be. In order for a
student to feel comfortable taking risks in their work, they must have a supportive and
trusting relationship with their teacher. Creative products are by nature very personal, and
receiving feedback on these kinds of tasks requires a high degree of vulnerability on the
part of the student. If the students see the teacher as an authoritarian figure and the
evaluation process as a punitive exercise, they will be much more hesitant to experiment
or to try out ideas that might be considered below standard… The students’ own
personalities and motivations also influence their engagement in creative activities.
Highly creative individuals are generally intrinsically motivated and have low levels of
avoidance motivation (meaning they are eager to work towards success rather than trying
to avoid situations in which there is a risk of failure)… Students who feel more confident
83
Hickey and Hickey and Webster, “Creative Thinking in Music,” 21.
84
Robinson, Out of Our Minds, 236.
85
Brown, Daring Greatly, 190.
86
Ruthmann, “A Composer’s Workshop,” 38.
87
Brown, Daring Greatly, 15.
20
when approaching a creative task will be able to take more risks, achieve greater results,
and experience greater personal growth and satisfaction from the experience.
88
“The ideal condition, then, for supporting high intrinsic motivation and high creative output is
one in which individuals perceive that external rewards are low, and the tasks involved are
relatively open.”
89
This is not a process without pitfalls and errors, but—in the end—it is
important to allow children to struggle with adversity, because “hope is a function of struggle.”
90
This shows, then, that a healthy vulnerability and a willingness to traverse roles are essential in
creating a constructivist classroom that encourages strategic risk-taking. Applied specifically to
the choral rehearsal, it seems that this would result in greater learning and accuracy on the part of
the choristers.
Summary
In summary, constructivist educational theory holds that people create their own meaning
and knowledge through their experiences. A teacher serves as a “knowledgeable other,” who can
help guide students, and encourage them to stay in the “zone of proximal development,” where
the challenge of a task and the students’ mastery of the necessary skills are well-balanced. This
creates profound learning experiences that are qualitatively different from more traditional
declarative teaching, where instructors dispense information and learners are expected to absorb
what they are given. Social network theory and Emergence Theory provide further insight into
how a constructivist community might be created. Members’ connections among themselves
allow for often unperceived opportunities for learning due to the mutual and reciprocal influence
shared by members of the ensemble. These connections also give rise to properties of the
ensemble itself, which are greater than any individual or the combined properties of all the
88
Mitchell, “Expected Evaluation,” 36.
89
Hickey, Music Outside the Lines, 18.
90
Brown, Daring Greatly, 29.
21
members. This allows for roles to emerge based on connectedness, ability, and influence,
meaning that the “knowledgeable other” need not always be the teacher. Motor learning theory is
also influential, as it reinforces constructivist beliefs by demonstrating that learning often occurs
in an emergent fashion through experience, rather than through intellectual effort alone.
Therefore, in the quest for knowledge and meaning, it is most effectively acquired—often
unconsciously—through communal, collaborative experience.
In a sense, to call anything so based in experience as constructivist education theory a
“theory” is almost oxymoronic. Therefore, it is illustrative to seek a practical example of the
implementation all of these ideas. Such an example is the so-called “maker movement,” which
creates informal emergent communities with shared power dynamics and fluid roles in the
service of individual and group learning. The maker movement ethos of experimentation and
flexible, organic roles provides a model of theory-in-practice that can be applied to the choral
ensemble.
Finally, in order for a successful constructivist educational environment to emerge, there
must be an appropriate, shared vulnerability among the members, including the director. This
vulnerability includes a fluidity of roles, so that every member is a learner and every member has
something to teach everyone else. It also specifically embraces the importance of strategic risk-
taking by all involved and acknowledges the possibility of failure. In traditional music practice,
failure is an end-state to be avoided at all costs. In a constructivist ensemble, failure is a natural
component of the learning process, which can lead to greater learning as ensemble members
work to find solutions to the difficulties they encounter. When considered together, all of these
disparate strands of thought provide the foundation to study into a constructivist choral rehearsal
that includes strategic risk-taking and strives to maximize the benefits offered by an
22
understanding of social network, emergence, and motor learning theories, based on a model
provided by the maker movement.
Purpose, Research Questions, Design, and Method
Based on the literature from the diverse realms of Social Network Theory, Emergence
Theory, constructivist theory, Motor Learning Theory, and music and creativity, this quantitative
study was designed to offer some empirical evidence that when choristers reflect on their singing
and improve it by using techniques that encourage experimentation and risk, more effective
learning may occur. The work builds on a small-scale, informal pilot study which sought to
explore the impact of initial instruction sets on sight-reading accuracy. It is inspired in part by
Green’s work that focused on the learning of vernacular music in student-directed groups.
91
The
following research questions were proposed:
1. Would the melodic and rhythmic accuracy of singers be greater when a
conductor’s interactions with singers encouraged strategic risk-taking during the
learning process than without that allowance?
2. Would the change in the melodic and rhythmic accuracy of singers between the
first and fourth rehearsals (i.e. the speed of learning) be greater when a
conductor’s interactions with singers encouraged strategic risk-taking during the
learning process than without that allowance?
3. Would certain variables such as prior musical experience, network centrality, size
of group, and participants’ emotions impact the melodic and rhythmic accuracy of
singers and thus confound the findings?
91
Green, “The Music Curriculum as Lived Experience,” 28ff.
23
Procedures and data collection will be considered in detail in Chapters Five and Six.
Briefly described, the main independent variable in this study was the conductor’s interaction
with the singers, and the dependent variables were scores on a researcher-designed melodic and
rhythmic accuracy measurement. Several other independent variables were also analyzed using
various statistical procedures, to examine their interaction on melodic and rhythmic accuracy.
Participants received a musical experience score (assessed by an initial questionnaire) ranging
from 11-44 (see Appendix 1), which was treated as a continuous variable. Participants received a
network centrality score (assessed by an initial questionnaire), which was also treated as a
continuous variable (see Appendix 5). Participants’ emotions were self-reported at the end of
every rehearsal (see Appendix 2). The emotions indicated by the participants were grouped into
eight overarching categories, which were treated as nominal variables. Multiple regression and
other statistical tests were employed to discover the interaction between these independent
variables, the main independent variable of conductor interaction, and the dependent variables of
melodic and rhythmic accuracy.
Informal Pilot Study
The researcher conducted an informal pilot study in the spring of 2017 as part of a class
assignment. The informal pilot study assessed the correlation between initial instruction-set and
sight-reading accuracy. While very little of the data in that study was statistically significant, it
was suggestive. First, the only statistically significant result was that a person’s musical
experience was highly correlated with their musical accuracy. In fact, it appeared that a person’s
musical experience bore so greatly on their sight-singing accuracy that an instruction set alone
could not overcome that predisposition. Contrary to what was hypothesized, an instruction set
that allowed for failure resulted in lower accuracy than an instruction set that demanded accuracy
24
of the sight-singer, even when controlling for musical experience. This result was not statistically
significant and may have been the result of fear serving as a motivating factor for short-term
gains. This seems to illustrate the abovementioned work of Aiken, et al., particularly the
“inverted U-shaped relation between level of fear and behavior.”
92
Thus, the researcher proposed
the following for future study, all of which are incorporated in some manner in the current study:
Much of the literature discusses the role of emotions, so future research could contain
assessments throughout the process where respondents rate their emotions. Constructivist
research also shows that having teachers provide feedback and learners provide strategies
for improvement is the most effective way to increase learning. Adding this dimension to
future research could be very illustrative. Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development is
another area of tantalizing possibility. The “knowledgeable other” could be the instructor,
but it could also be another singer. A study where singers work together in pairs (or
perhaps in slightly larger groups) could provide a host of interesting data, particularly if
each individual is pre-scored for musical experience and pairings are made intentionally
to encompass the possible combinations of novices and experienced… It may also be
illustrative to re-visit the retention [task] after two or three days, which would be more
typical of a rehearsal situation. Additionally, some assessments of musical accuracy
divide the concepts of pitch and rhythm.
93
Sampling
The study considered a population of amateur choral singers at a high school in Western
Maryland. This selection was a sampling of convenience, both given its proximity to the
researcher and because the choral director has often collaborated with the researcher in the past.
This high school is typical of many high schools in the United States, with approximately 700
students, 43 teachers, a 15% minority and 40% economically disadvantaged population.
94
Participants were high-school aged students participating in a choral ensemble at the research
site.
92
Aiken, et al., “Subjective Risk and Health Protective Behavior,” 735.
93
Rieker, “The Courage to Continue,” 30.
94
“Allegany High School,” U.S. News & World Report.
25
Initially, the participants’ past musical experiences were collected (Appendix 1). Once
their responses to the survey were tabulated, participants were placed in one of three equal-sized
pools, based on musical experience: beginner, intermediate, and advanced. This was not
determined by external criteria, but in a norm-referenced manner, by simply dividing the sample
into three equal-sized pools of students. Expanding on Green’s above-mentioned structure,
stratified sampling was used to create groups of varying size (2-7 members) wherein members
possessed varying levels of musical experience, and the average group musical experience score
between all groups was approximately the same. A second stratification occurred to determine
which treatment each group will receive, so that groups of similar size and musical experience
underwent different treatments. For this study, n=54, with a group of 2, a group of 3, a group of
4, a group of 5, a group of 6, and a group of 7 received constructivist rehearsal strategies and
another group of 2, of 3, of 4, of 5, of 6, and of 7 received declarative instruction.
95
The students’
choral conductor was consulted to ensure that groups did not contain combinations of students
who would interact poorly with one another.
Independent Variable
It was acknowledged from the outset that body language, tone of voice, and other non-
verbal aspects of communication may impact the results. However, since the researcher believes
that these are concomitant with the kinds of treatment being applied (e.g. a constructivist
educator is more likely to have “open” body language), non-verbal factors were considered as
inconsequential for the purpose of this study. To further minimize this, the same conductor—
who was also the principal investigator—was used for all experiments.
95
(2+3+4+5+6+7)*2 (treatments) = 54.
26
Treatment A (control): The control group received declarative instruction/augmented
feedback from the conductor as they learn the piece (Appendix 3).
Treatment B (experimental): The experimental group experienced a constructivist
rehearsal, where students were encouraged to listen, analyze their own performance, and take
risks to see what errors they could discover and correct on their own. Rather than providing
direct instruction, the conductor asked questions and encouraged students to discover in their
own way. Direct instruction was occasionally necessary with the experimental group, but it was
kept to a minimum. Each rehearsal added more constructivist elements, always attempting to
maintain a balance between freedom and experience. The first rehearsal introduced the
interrogation and implementation of singer opinions and ideas. The second rehearsal introduced
peer evaluations. The third rehearsal introduced student-directed learning, and the fourth
rehearsal attempted to be almost entirely student led, with the conductor only participating as
requested by the students (see Appendix 4 for a detailed implementation strategy and possible
scripts).
Ethical Considerations
The invitation to participate in the study was initially made by the primary investigator
during music classes. However, since repeated visits by the primary investigator would have
been disruptive, after the initial announcement, recruiting announcements were reiterated by the
high school choral conductor. In that case, there could have been feelings of coercion to
participate on the part of the choir members. When recruiting participants for the study, both the
primary investigator and the choir director were explicit that participation was voluntary and not
tied to a grade or any other aspect of the school’s choral program. They also made clear that
there were neither perceived risks nor benefits for participating, save the societal benefit of
27
improving understanding of music teaching. Students were not punished nor denied something
which they would normally receive if they chose not to participate in this research or chose to
withdraw early from participation. They were given an adequate amount of time to consider
participation in the study relative to the initiation of study procedures. The information presented
to individuals during recruitment and consent reflected that provided in the informed consent
document/informed consent script, and potential participants were given the opportunity to take
the informed consent document home in order to discuss participation with their family, friends
and/or others before making a definitive decision. Since the choir director did not participate in
the research, and since announcements of outside opportunities are common in the choral
classroom, role confusion was minimal-to-non-existent. Finally, the individual participant’s
comprehension of the research and what it meant to participate, including understanding of the
voluntary nature of participating was verbally assessed.
This study required a minimal amount of deception. The participants are informed during
recruiting and at the beginning of the first rehearsal that the study was assessing the impact of
recording technology in the choral rehearsal. It was believed that wearing the personal recording
device was itself enough of an unfamiliar experience for the participants that no further
deception (such as inquiring about the students’ experience with the technology through a survey
instrument) was necessary. Further, it was believed that—if the participants knew that their
response to instructional techniques was being measured—it would have influenced the results in
unpredictable ways. At the conclusion of the research, participants were provided with a
Debriefing Form, allowed to ask questions, and withdraw their participation if they so choose. A
copy of the form is attached as Appendix 6.
28
Participant names and their relationships to one another were collected, which is
considered sensitive information. To mitigate this risk, research procedures were conducted in
person in a private setting, data was captured and reviewed in a private setting, only authorized
research study personnel were present during research related activities, the collection of
information about participants was limited to the amount necessary to achieve aims of the
research, participants were not approached in a setting or location that may constitute an invasion
of privacy or could potentially stigmatize them, and data and/or specimens were labeled with a
code. To help protect participants’ privacy, data was stored in a locked office, with restricted
access to authorized study personnel, on a secure computer/laptop with individual ID plus
password protection. Digital data was encrypted, and security software (firewall, antivirus, anti-
intrusion) was installed and regularly updated in all servers, workstations, laptops, and other
devices used in the study. Access rights would have been terminated when authorized study
personnel leave the study, direct identifiers and/or the key to the codes were destroyed upon
completion of the research (all data/specimens will be stripped of identifying information and/or
the key to codes destroyed, paper documents shredded, electronic files purged, electronic media
securely erased), and the recordings given coded filenames, so that they can only be related to
other data from a given participant. The identifiers/keys which could link data with a specific
participant were destroyed at the end of the study. The data and recordings will be retained by
the investigator for future research use
Chapter Organization
Chapter One: Introduction
Chapter Two: Review of Literature on Vulnerability and Risk-Taking
29
Chapter Three: Review of Literature on Social Network, Emergence, and Motor Learning
Theories
Chapter Four: Review of Literature on Failure and the Maker Movement
Chapter Five: Informal Pilot Study
Chapter Six: Main Study Procedures and Results
Chapter Seven: Summary, Analysis and Discussion
In Summary
In a wide variety of educational settings, teachers are learning to create collaborative
learning experiences and both accept and encourage strategic risk-taking on the part of their
students, as it is a gateway for learning and independent thought. For too long, however,
ensemble directors have viewed the errors that can result from risk-taking in rehearsal as
antithetical to having high standards for the ensemble. When asked about this, directors often
opine that they allow for failure in rehearsal, but—in practice—tend toward habits and behaviors
that make failure unacceptable and risk-taking impossible. This study provides a foray into the
realm of encouraging learning through strategic risk-taking in music teaching and learning,
striving to change practice in the choral rehearsal to include verbiage that encourages risk-taking
and allows for failure. It provides both a strong rationale for encouraging risk-taking, and the
attendant failures, in the choral classroom and a springboard to future studies, including studies
of how directors perceive their openness to failure versus their practice, studies of practices that
encourage risk-taking and failure, and studies of how directors perceive themselves versus how
they are perceived by their ensemble members. It also led to a greater understanding of the
emergent properties of that social network called a “choir,” and how network centrality impacts
30
learning and retention. This is the first step to unlocking incredible potential of independent
music-makers.
31
Chapter Two: Review of Literature on Vulnerability and Risk-Taking
Introduction
Chapters Two, Three, and Four follow with reviews of bodies of important literature that
serve as conceptual frames for this dissertation. The chapters take a similar approach, reviewing
contemporary literature related to the formation of research questions based on this dissertation’s
purpose. In the conclusions of each chapter, work is related to the research questions posed.
Chapter Two focuses in great detail on the role of vulnerability and risk-taking, in order
to provide the initial conceptual frames for considering strategic risk-taking in the choral
rehearsal. Research considering shame in the realm of social work will lead directly to the
discovery of fluidity in roles among singers and conductor. It provides justification for learning
strategies that support singer agency. It explores creativity and the creative process, which is
foundational for assessing and understanding optimal ways to promote creative, self-directed
musicians in a choral ensemble.
With his typical verve, Sir Kenneth Robinson opined, “If you’re not prepared to be
wrong, it’s unlikely that you’ll ever come up with anything original.”
1
Shame researcher Brené
Brown goes so far as to equate joy with risk.
2
Risk-taking, vulnerability, fear, failure, and
creativity are all bound together in the experience of living as a human. Problems may emerge
when any of these individual characteristics are allowed to dominate. When leveraged effectively
together, a holistic person can emerge, and educators can be instrumental in facilitating this
emergence.
This chapter will explore the ideas of fear and shame, especially shame’s consequences
and how to counter shame. It will then consider failure and vulnerability with a brief foray into
1
Robinson, Out of Our Minds, 153.
2
Brown, Daring Greatly, 118.
32
the realm of music performance anxiety. Next it will examine risk-taking and then move into an
exploration of creativity and learning. Finally, this chapter will probe those components
necessary to build an authentic creative community. This knowledge can empower educators to
help the next generation of humanity become integrated and whole persons, capable of great
creativity and empathy. Clearly, this vision does not represent the status quo. Change is
necessary, and this paper will explore ways this change might be effected.
Fear
How does one make people change? Common assumptions center on fear, shame, or
guilt. Brown began a career-long study of shame, vulnerability, and resilience from one simple
realization: “You cannot shame or belittle people into changing their behaviors.”
3
Brown also
discovered that guilt, unlike shame, is a strong motivator for change.
4
Fuda and Badham posited
that fear is considered a desirable motivator for change in conventional literature, but that their
team’s research suggested that “aspiration [hope] is a far more important motivator;” though
“fear may provide the initial spark…sustainable change requires the fire of ‘burning ambition.’”
5
The work of Aiken, et al. underscores this, acknowledging that fear can motivate change up to a
certain point, and then—upon reaching a critical threshold—leads to avoidance, “yielding an
inverted U-shaped relation between level of fear and behavior.”
6
Guilt can facilitate change. Fear
can also facilitate change, to an extent, but shame cannot. Yet shame is a multi-billion-dollar
industry, with its abundant diet products, cosmetics, newer/better/nicer upgrades, and more.
What is the dynamic at work here?
3
Brown, I Thought It Was Just Me, 1.
4
Ibid., 13.
5
Fuda and Badham, “Fire, Snowball, Mask, Movie,” 3.
6
Aiken, et al., “Subjective Risk and Health Protective Behavior,” 735.
33
Shame
In a socio-cultural context, creative people must be vulnerable in a healthy way and be
willing and able to take sensible risks. Understanding shame is the first step toward both of these.
From the outset, one must mark the distinctions between fear, shame, guilt, and humiliation. Fear
can be considered a primary or immediate emotion, based deep in our evolutionary biology. The
primal “fight or flight” mechanism is well-documented. In layperson’s terms, fear is the feeling
that something bad might happen. Guilt is the feeling of I did something bad, shame is the
feeling of I am bad, and humiliation is the experience of being shamed but feeling that it is
undeserved.
7
Thus, shame is more destructive than humiliation, as people in shame feel they
deserve the negative experience.
8
Brown described shame as “an intensely painful feeling or
experience of believing we are flawed and therefore unworthy of acceptance and belonging.”
9
Alternative definitions of shame abound, each of which illuminates another facet of this
complicated experience. Drawing from an analysis of the literature of six pioneers in the field of
shame researchers, Thomas Scheff concluded that shame grows out of a fear of disconnection;
“shame is the feeling of a threat to the social bond [italics in original].”
10
Reviewing clinical
case notes, interviews, and the work of others, Brown also proposed the following additional
definitions, drawn from the experiences of her clients. Shame is valuing others’ opinions so
much that people lose themselves.
11
Shame is the emotion whereby people do not accurately
perceive their strengths and limitations, but “feel alone, exposed, and deeply flawed.”
12
Shame
7
Dearing, et. al., “Distinguishing Shame from Guilt,” 1393.
8
Brown, Daring Greatly, 68-74.
9
Brown, “Shame Resilience Theory,” 45.
10
Scheff, “Shame and the Social Bond, 97.
11
Brown, I Thought It Was Just Me, xvii.
12
Ibid., xxii.
34
feels like having an unwanted identity.
13
“Shame corrodes the very part of us that believes we
can change and do better.”
14
Shame also has a visceral physicality to it. In a study using fMRI images of the brain,
Ethan Kross, Marc Berman, Walter Mischel, Edward Smith, and Tor Wager discovered that
social rejection (shame) and physical pain share the same neurons.
15
This gives rise to one of the
most debilitating aspects of shame: when a deeply shaming past experience is recalled, it is
actually re-experienced, not simply remembered.
16
To help explain this re-experiencing, Brown
outlined three concepts that circumscribe shame. The first is feeling trapped, with very few
options, all of which “expose one to penalty, censure, or deprivation.” The second is feeling
powerless— that is—the inability to counter or even cope with the negative experience. The
third is feeling isolated, which is the most psychologically damaging experience possible for
humans. Not only is there no possibility for human connection in isolation, but one cannot
change it, either. Thus, humans “will do almost anything to escape” the feeling of isolation.
17
If
vulnerability is equated with shame, it is no wonder that vulnerability is avoided.
One can easily imagine that shame must have incredibly detrimental consequences, and
this is often the case. Brown reported a high correlation between shame and “addiction, violence,
aggression, depression, eating disorders, and bullying,” and that no correlation has been found
between shame and positive outcomes.
18
Aiken, et al., agreed, pointing out that “self-
presentation (impression management) may well lead to health risks.”
19
Obvious detrimental
effects aside, shame is also even more insidious. Shame silences individuals’ voices out of fear
13
Brown, “Shame Resilience Theory,” 46-47.
14
Brown, Daring Greatly, 72.
15
Kross, et. al. “Social Rejection,” 6273.
16
Brown, I Thought It Was Just Me, 89.
17
Brown, “Shame Resilience Theory,” 46.
18
Brown, Daring Greatly, 73.
19
Aiken, et al., “Subjective Risk and Health Protective Behavior,” 736.
35
of causing themselves to be disconnected from their social network.
20
A person already feels
disconnected by shame, so they choose to be silent, rather than risk further disconnection. Is it
any wonder that “shame turns very quickly into blame, judgment, and separation”?
21
With so many negative associations, it would seem that people would instinctively reject
shame, but that is far from the case. Brown’s clinical interviews of more than a decade illustrated
that people accept shame for three predominant reasons. First, people are very judgmental of
themselves. Further, shame messages from childhood are extremely powerful. And finally,
people judge others most harshly for having those traits that they dislike in themselves.
22
Shame
messages coalesce and impel people to strive to be perfect, embracing perfectionism as a
response to shame. In other words, whether arising from harsh self-judgment, messages from
childhood, or seeing the worst of oneself in others, “shame is the voice of perfectionism.”
23
Ironically, perfectionism is not about the actual pursuit of perfection. According to Brown,
“Perfectionism is a defensive move. It’s the belief that if we do things perfectly and look perfect,
we can minimize or avoid the pain of blame, judgment, and shame.”
24
Perfectionism is
inextricably bound to the ideas of trying to earn the approval of others and of a person’s worth
being defined by their accomplishments.
25
Perfectionism is—at its root—shame-based.
Acknowledging this is the first step toward shame resilience.
To counteract the shaming nature of perfectionism, the goal must always be improvement
and growth, not perfection. Perfection is not only impossible and dangerous, but it must be
abandoned in favor of realistic growth.
20
Brown, I Thought It Was Just Me, xxv.
21
Ibid., 10.
22
Ibid., 86.
23
Ibid., xxiii.
24
Brown, Daring Greatly, 129.
25
Ibid.
36
When we choose growth over perfection, we immediately increase our shame resilience.
Improvement is a far more realistic goal than perfection. Merely letting go of unattainable
goals makes us less susceptible to shame. When we believe ‘we must be this’ we ignore
who or what we actually are, our capacity and our limitations. We start from the image of
perfection, and of course, from perfection there is nowhere to go but down.
26
“When we give ourselves permission to be imperfect, when we find self-worth despite our
imperfections, when we build connection networks that affirm and value us as imperfect beings,
we are much more capable of change.”
27
Growth goals are not a lazy shortcut to avoid perfection
and accountability, as some would style them. In fact,
growth and goal-setting can feel like more work than dreaming of perfections. When we
try to be perfect, we fail so often that we almost get used to it. After a while, we trick
ourselves into believing that forecasting perfection is nobler than working toward
[incremental] goals… When we set realistic objectives for meeting ‘growth goals,’ we
hold ourselves accountable for today, tomorrow and the day after tomorrow rather than
postponing accountability until six months down the road.
28
Goals must be attainable through concrete, measurable strategies, and—unlike perfectionism—
“growth through goal setting is…not an all-or-nothing proposition—success or failure is not the
only possible outcome… The ability to learn from our mistakes rather than seeing them as failed
attempts at perfection…[is] a necessary part of growth rather than a barrier.”
29
Growth goals
engender hope. They allow people to have and set realistic goals, learn how to achieve them and
stay flexible to develop alternate routes, and to believe in themselves, thereby building up their
shame resilience.
30
Shame—unfortunately—is an inescapable component of the human experience, so people
must find ways to become shame-resilient. Brown’s life’s work has been the clinical study of
shame resilience. Countless interviews have led Brown to posit that shame resilience requires
26
Brown, I Thought It Was Just Me, 196.
27
Ibid.
28
Ibid., 198.
29
Ibid., 199.
30
Brown, Daring Greatly, 239-240.
37
empathy, and that empathy is the opposite of shame, because empathy restores both a sense of
connection and power.
31
Kristin Neff expands this to include the importance—not only of
empathy toward others, but—of self-compassion. “Individuals who are self-compassionate
should evidence greater psychological health than those with low levels of self-compassion,
because the inevitable pain and sense of failure that is experienced by all individuals is not
amplified and perpetuated through harsh self-condemnation.”
32
Brown also noted that the
interpersonal networks that enforce socio-cultural expectations, which can often be used for
shaming, can also be sources of support and connection instead of shame.
33
The network can
bring about connection, which engenders shame resilience.
In theory, shame resilience is quite simple. It consists of accepting one’s personal
vulnerabilities and maintaining a critical awareness of the expectations of others and how those
can change an interpersonal network into a “shame web…[as well as] maintaining mutually
empathic relationships.”
34
“Shame resilience is the ability to say, ‘This hurts. This is
disappointing, maybe even devastating. But success and recognition and approval are not the
values that drive me. My value is courage and I was just courageous. You can move on,
shame.’”
35
Brown’s doctoral dissertation—a grounded-theory qualitative research project—outlined
a process styled Acompañar, a method of actively “accompanying” folks through their struggles.
When societal influences encourage shame and isolation, accompaniment is crucial in building a
healthy community. Brown stated, Acompañar is “being able to be with people on their
journey…not leading and not following…being by their side…effectively sharing your
31
Brown, “Shame Resilience Theory,” 47.
32
Neff, “Self-Compassion,” 93.
33
Brown, “Shame Resilience Theory,” 49.
34
Ibid., 47-48.
35
Brown, Daring Greatly, 67.
38
knowledge and resources while honoring the fact that it is their journey, not your own”
36
This
theory considers a language of paired opposites (e.g. teach/learn, lead/follow, expert/novice) and
occurs in a process of three stages—anchoring, deconstructing, and traversing—each stage with
its own paired binaries.
37
There is no set time frame for moving from one stage to the next, and
movement backwards is as possible as progress. Instead, people need to stay in each stage until
both are ready to move forward, or the process can seem disingenuous or manipulative.
38
The first stage, anchoring, encompasses people entering into a relationship of helping and
approaching one another from the traditional poles (usually “person-seeking-help” and “helper”).
Anchoring’s intentionally archetypal roles and behaviors provide “predictability, security and
clarity.”
39
During anchoring, both parties authenticate one another, upon which the whole
relationship will be predicated. Anchoring also includes extending, which is when the person
needing help asks for help and the helper makes a “voluntary commitment to the person seeking
help.”
40
This provides the basic foundation for moving beyond shame into mutual connection.
The second stage, deconstructing, occurs when both parties demonstrate a willingness to
step outside of traditional roles, to begin “traversing binaries” (e.g. teacher/learner) and
“construct[ing] new positions on the continuum as necessary.”
41
At this stage, both actors in the
process must engage in “use-of-self,” where their individual gifts, struggles, and emotions
become part of the helping process. This is essential, because in deconstructing, the parties
cannot depend on the relevancy of their roles; they must become people, not roles.
42
36
Brown, “Acompañar,” 28.
37
Ibid., 70-71.
38
Ibid., 76.
39
Ibid., 75.
40
Ibid., 82.
41
Ibid., 88.
42
Ibid., 90.
39
Finally, the third stage, traversing, represents the “highest levels of mutual vulnerability
and use-of-self. The actors occupy whatever role best serves the relationship while maintaining
the ethics, rights and responsibilities anchored in their primary roles.”
43
Mentoring is long-term
traversing.
44
As folks move from anchoring to deconstructing to traversing, building healthy
connections and shame resilience, they simultaneously develop critical awareness. Critical
awareness of a problem is not only knowing that the problem exists, but knowing how and why it
is impactful and who receives either benefit or harm from the situation.
45
Critical awareness is
akin to “seeing the big picture,” when a person realizes that they are not the only person
experiencing the situation.
46
Honesty is at the heart of critical awareness, and honesty can be a
double-edged sword. “Just because something is accurate or factual doesn’t mean it can’t be used
in a destructive manner.”
47
Awareness of shame and how it is engendered applies in the realm of
creativity as well. “The creative impulses of most people can be suffocated by negative criticism,
cynical putdowns, or dismissive remarks.”
48
Consequently, shame resilience must be cultivated.
As Brown wrote, shame resilience is “our ability to move past mistakes and failures toward
change and growth…to build empathy through connection networks,” connecting with others in
honesty and mutual vulnerability.
49
Shame, then, is a multifaceted experience that isolates people and has unmitigated
destructive impacts upon their lives. Shame cannot be avoided, as it is part of the human
condition. Shame resilience, permeated by critical awareness, provides a way to counter the
43
Ibid., 96.
44
Ibid., 97.
45
Brown, I Thought It Was Just Me, 93.
46
Ibid., 99.
47
Ibid., 171.
48
Robinson, Out of Our Minds, 236.
49
Brown, I Thought It Was Just Me, 199-200.
40
messages of shame that assail from every aspect of contemporary culture. This is essential,
because shame resilience leads to healthy vulnerability, which undergirds the possibility of
creativity.
Failure
This perspective on shame often arises out of how one deals with failure. An important
part of the creative process is conceptualizing failure as an integral component. Robinson
considered creativity “a constant process of trial and error” and a process “of successive
approximations,” which presupposes occasional—if not frequent—failure.
50
Brown expanded on
that, stating, “innovative ideas often sound crazy and failure and learning are part of
revolution.”
51
Robinson wrote about the symbiotic relationship of creativity and failure at length
in Out of Our Minds, from which this more substantial quotation is drawn.
Usually creative work is more tentative and exploratory... There are likely to be dead
ends: ideas and designs that do not work. There may be failures and changes before the
best outcome is produced. You can see examples of the iterative nature of the creative
process in the successive drafts of poems and novels, of scholarly papers or in designs for
inventions and so on. It is well known that Thomas Edison ran through dozens of ideas
and designs for the light bulb before settling on the final version.
52
Robinson continued with this interesting perspective: “failure is not the right word. ‘You’re
finding out what doesn’t work.’”
53
That is not to say that perceived failure is not a powerful and exceptionally negative
experience with lasting implications. In a series of interviews conducted during research for
Daring Greatly, it was discovered that 85% of people studied had a shame experience in school
that changed how they perceived themselves as learners. Forty-three percent of these shame
50
Robinson, Out of Our Minds, 151.
51
Brown, Daring Greatly, 186.
52
Robinson, Out of Our Minds, 154.
53
Ibid., 154.
41
experiences were noted as “creative scars,” when people were “told or shown that they weren’t
good writers, artists, musicians, dancers, or something creative.”
54
Many students in middle
school general music classes may consider themselves “failed musicians… because they had not
succeeded in or desired to continue with traditional performance-based music classes.”
55
Shame
can be pervasive where failure is concerned. Brown wrote unequivocally: “When shame
becomes a management style, engagement dies. When failure is not an option we can forget
about learning, creativity, and innovation.”
56
The most common outcome of shame and failure for musicians is music performance
anxiety (MPA), which is often caused by a general sense of worry and fear of making mistakes.
This triggers the “fight or flight” response due to a perceived increase in threat or danger.
57
Performance anxiety is a learned behavior. MPA rarely affects young children. It is mostly older
people who are more self-conscious and therefore more susceptible to performance anxiety.
58
Dianna Kenny and Margaret Osborne explained this situation well.
Home environments in which expectations for excellence are high but support for
achieving excellence is low (generalized psychological vulnerability) [and] exposure to
early and frequent evaluations and self-evaluations of their performances in a competitive
environment (specific psychological vulnerability) may be sufficient to trigger the
physiological, behavioral and cognitive responses characteristic of MPA.
59
Individual responses to situations that could induce MPA will be of varying severity,
depending on three variables: a performer’s innate inclination toward anxiety, their “degree of
task mastery” of the given piece to perform, and their “degree of situational stress” in that
particular situation.
60
In general, a higher fear of negative evaluations led to great performance
54
Brown, Daring Greatly, 189-190.
55
Ruthmann, “A Composer’s Workshop,” 38.
56
Brown, Daring Greatly, 15.
57
Kenny and Osborne, “Music Performance Anxiety,” 104.
58
Ibid., 103.
59
Ibid., 104.
60
Ibid., 108.
42
anxiety, while a realistic self-appraisal moderated performance anxiety.
61
Kenny and Osborne
attributed this to perfectionism, which Randy Frost, Patricia Marten, Cathleen Lahart, and Robin
Rosenblate defined as an “excessive concern over making mistakes, high personal standards,
perception of high parental expectations and high parental criticism, the doubting of the quality
of one’s actions, and a preference for order and organization.”
62
The specter of perfectionism has
returned, and it is no wonder that shame follows. Fear and failure engage in a synergistic
relationship, leading to a vicious cycle of shame and consistent feelings of vulnerability.
Vulnerability
It is likely impossible to remove failure from the human experience, so vulnerability must
be explored in terms of both benefits and drawbacks. Someone who is vulnerable is able to be
wounded. This ability—on its face—seems to be something detrimental and which should be
avoided. Yet Jackie Wiggins quoted a successful conducting teacher, who stated, “‘Vulnerability
is the lynchpin in teaching conducting. I have to get students to take risks and try to be
something more—to… go somewhere where they’ve never been.’”
63
Judith Jordan wrote, “We
accept vulnerability as an inevitable part of being alive, important to the development of growth-
enhancing connections, [but]…it still takes courage to explore our vulnerability.”
64
Brown
maintained that there is an unbreakable link between shame resilience and vulnerability.
65
Fuda
and Badham related an anecdote where a leader used his own vulnerability to effect a
monumental cultural shift in his organization. “By exposing himself in this way, he set a
61
Ibid.
62
Kenny and Osborne, “Music Performance Anxiety,” 110; Frost, et. al., “Dimensions of Perfectionism,” 449.
63
Wiggins, “Vulnerability and Agency,” 359.
64
Jordan, “Courage in Connection,” 2.
65
Brown, Daring Greatly, 91.
43
standard—and an agenda—for others to follow; … a cycle of mutual accountability that creates
momentum for change.”
66
In interviews during Wiggins’s research, “participants spoke about how essential it was
for musicians to be vulnerable—meaning open and sensitive—to the music itself, with all its
dimensions and contexts, and vulnerable to ideas and perspectives of fellow music-makers.”
67
They also noted the importance of “being open and willing to grow and explore new paths and
ways of thinking.”
68
Modupe Akinola and Wendy Berry Mendes found that “when individuals
were more biologically vulnerable and exposed to a strong rejecting situation, they performed
better on the artistic creativity task, [and]…that negative emotional changes mediated the link
between biological vulnerability and creativity.”
69
In other words, a person who was more
inclined to be vulnerable performed with greater creativity after experiencing a strong social
rejection, though feeling negative emotions counterbalanced their initial inclinations. These seem
to be quite salutary effects from something that seems so unpleasant. After all, “vulnerability
sounds like truth and feels like courage… [And] the greatest casualties of a scarcity culture are
our willingness to own our vulnerabilities and our ability to engage with the world from a place
of worthiness.”
70
Why, then, are people so hesitant to embrace vulnerability?
Vulnerability is often something that is naturally avoided. People avoid vulnerability “to
avoid the punishing material and social consequences of misguided decisions.”
71
Vulnerability
often arises out of a fear of being exploited, and this fear is often real.
Vulnerability often can constitute a realistic reason for anxiety in a competitive,
nonmutual [sic] system, because the vulnerable are often exploited or dismissed. When
vulnerability feels unsafe, we often deny it in ourselves or others. Then we project our
66
Fuda and Badham, “Fire, Snowball, Mask, Movie,” 4.
67
Wiggins, “Vulnerability and Agency,” 358.
68
Ibid.
69
Akinola and Mendes, “The Dark Side of Creativity,” 1683.
70
Brown, Daring Greatly, 29.
71
Sagarin, et al., “Dispelling the Illusion of Invulnerability,” 539.
44
disavowed feelings onto others and either punish them or control their experience… The
more vehement our denial and suppression of our own vulnerability, the more violent is
our response to it in others.
72
Consequently, “people identify with the ‘strong’ or the ‘weak,’ and neither group is free to
experience wholeness.”
73
An archetypal example of the pathologizing of vulnerability is the
societal expectation that men not appear weak.
74
Aversion to vulnerability also grows from the root of perfectionism, especially (and
predictably) failed perfectionism. People are often willing to do an incredible amount to appear
perfect and hide imperfections.
75
For Brown, “pursuing perfection can be as dangerous as it is
unfulfilling.”
76
Perfectionism attempts to mask vulnerabilities and—in fact—project an aura of
invulnerability. This is a problem, especially where creativity is concerned.
Counterintuitively, people who perceive themselves as invulnerable leave themselves
more open to manipulation and the other consequences that follow from their unacknowledged
vulnerability.
77
“Ironically, this illusion of invulnerability manifested itself in the relatively
meager resistance [to manipulation] displayed by participants whose vulnerabilities had merely
been asserted [rather than demonstrated]. Far from being an effective shield, the illusion of
invulnerability undermined the very response that would have supplied genuine protection.”
78
In
fact, according to Brad Sagarin, Robert Cialdini, William Rice, and Sherman Serna, people
consider themselves invulnerable until they learn that they, personally, are vulnerable to a given
risk.
79
However, once the illusion of invulnerability is dispelled, people may experience strong
72
Jordan, “Courage in Connection,” 2.
73
Ibid.
74
Brown, Daring Greatly, 92.
75
Brown, I Thought It Was Just Me, 185.
76
Ibid., 189.
77
Sagarin, et al., “Dispelling the Illusion of Invulnerability,” 536.
78
Ibid., 538-539.
79
Ibid., 533.
45
motivation not to be fooled again, which could merely serve to reinforce the vicious cycle of
attempting to be invulnerable.
80
The challenge lies in whether this motivation leads to a realistic
acceptance of and an adequate response to vulnerability or to greater (and ultimately futile)
attempts at invulnerability. Similarly, for Fuda and Badham, there were two common negative
responses to the demonstration of vulnerability. “One is to conceal perceived inadequacies and
flaws to preserve the polished facade we have come to expect… The other, more subtle way is to
adopt a certain persona [that one]… feels is necessary for success.”
81
The belief in
invulnerability, then, harms the very people who are trying to use it to protect themselves.
Though there is research in the arenas of social science, leadership, and education, the
danger of invulnerability has been most fully studied in the realm of medicine, through the
concept of perceived risk—“the extent to which individuals believe they are subject to a health
threat.”
82
Based on their examination of the linkage of perceived susceptibility and health
motivation in models of health protective behavior, Aiken, et al., and others have discovered a
direct “linkage of perceived susceptibility to health protective behavior.”
83
That is, people must
both understand and believe that they are vulnerable before engaging in protective behavior. This
is particularly evident in the optimistic bias, where individuals downplay their own
susceptibility. People “overestimate low probabilities and underestimate high
probabilities…[and] are conservative in revising their estimates of probabilities in the face of
new information.”
84
Invulnerability can be dangerous, harmful, and counterproductive. Vulnerability, on the
other hand, may have great benefits and several potential drawbacks. What is a teacher to do? In
80
Ibid., 539.
81
Fuda and Badham, “Fire, Snowball, Mask, Movie,” 4.
82
Aiken, et al., “Subjective Risk and Health Protective Behavior,” 728.
83
Ibid., 729.
84
Ibid., 739.
46
a classroom setting, empowering learner agency—creating the circumstances for a learner to
have the power to act and impact their own educational journey—is key toward enhancing the
positive aspects of vulnerability and minimizing the negative.
85
[People] are willing to be vulnerable when our vulnerability is embraced with
acceptance… We cannot nurture the vulnerability, openness, sensitivity necessary for
being a musician in a context that generates resistance, protection and withdrawal…
Especially if there are circumstances embedded in music learning that can cause
participants to feel vulnerable, we must assure that music learning environments nurture
and support learners’ sense of purpose, optimism, autonomy, confidence, self-esteem,
self-efficacy, skill and know-how.
86
Choral conductor and author, James Jordan, agreed that the importance of a conductor’s
vulnerability could not be overstated. “To make music, one should make a presupposition. That
presupposition is that one is able to be open and vulnerable.”
87
Healthy vulnerability is the goal.
First, one must understand that “fear and vulnerability are powerful emotions. You can’t just
wish them away. You have to do something with them.”
88
That “something” involves
recapturing a sense of an individual’s agency, a power to effect change. Part of discovering
agency is learning to love and accept oneself, complete with all one’s gifts and limitations. After
all, self-love is necessary for loving others. When people believe that they are “enough,” they
give themselves permission to take off the mask of invulnerability.
89
As stated above, critical awareness is necessary when dealing with shame and
vulnerability in teaching settings. Critical awareness is also necessary in terms of what an
individual considers “success.” Brown speaks of a “Viking or victim” mentality, which
convinces people that they must only exist in one of two states: either exercising power over
85
Wiggins, “Vulnerability and Agency,” 364.
86
Ibid., 364.
87
Jordan, Musician’s Soul, 31.
88
Brown, Daring Greatly, 98.
89
Ibid., 116.
47
others (usually arbitrarily) or being a powerless victim.
90
Brown’s response to the “Viking or
victim” construct is succinct. “If we are going to recognize and accept what makes us human,
including our imperfections and less-than-extraordinary lives, we must embrace our fears and
vulnerabilities… How can we be genuine when we are desperately trying to manage and control
how others perceive us? How can we be honest with people about our beliefs and, at the same
time, tell them what we think they want to hear?”
91
“Vulnerability can be the birthplace of love,
belonging, joy, courage, empathy, and creativity. It is the source of hope, empathy,
accountability, and authenticity.”
92
In a real sense, critical awareness is authentic, healthy
vulnerability.
Vulnerability can be, then, both a natural and healthy state of being and an unpleasant
experience. If it is embraced and accepted, the benefits are manifold. However, if people attempt
to hide behind an illusion of invulnerability, they actually increase their vulnerability to the very
thing they are attempting to deny. In sum, critical awareness, including self-love, leads to healthy
vulnerability, which helps to address the task of empowering creativity. There is more.
Risk-taking and Creativity
To be creative, people may well need to be vulnerable. To be creative, people must also
take risks. Vulnerability and risk-taking: these are the two sides of the same creative coin.
Because nearly every person experiences vulnerability, this means that every person will need to
take risks every day, because it is impossible to be invulnerable. What role these risks play in
daily living, and to what degree they should be accepted, is the subject of the next section of this
chapter. Robinson aptly linked risk-taking and creativity, “In all creative processes we are
90
Ibid., 155.
91
Brown, I Thought It Was Just Me, 242.
92
Brown, Daring Greatly, 34.
48
pushing the boundaries of what we know now, to explore new possibilities; we are drawing on
the skills we have now, often stretching and evolving them as the work demands.”
93
Ask a daredevil about taking risks and one is apt to hear about how vital risk-taking is,
and how exhilarating. Ask an accountant the same question and it will likely result in a
profoundly different answer. While risk-taking is a double-edged sword, it can be very
beneficial, especially in the context of creativity. “Risk taking and willingness to fail were cited
as critical for creativeness to occur, and overcoming fear of failure was deemed essential both for
teachers and students alike.”
94
People who take more risks are more likely to produce something
that is both novel and useful.
95
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s famous concept of flow is interwoven
with risk-taking. “The characteristics of flow are clearly recognisable in many worthwhile
pursuits and activities including sports, hobbies... activities which ensure that ‘there is no worry
of failure.’”
96
Risk-taking is necessary for creativity, but is all risk-taking the same? Tyagi, et al.,
considered “creativity as a multidimensional trait and used both biographical and behavioral
measures of creativity (creative personality, creative achievements in multiple domains, creative
ideation, problem solving, and divergent thinking)…[and] found an inverse relationship between
rigidity and intolerance of ambiguity as a measure of risk and creativity.”
97
Tyagi, et al., then
assessed creativity through multiple measures (divergent thinking, compound remote association,
creative achievement, Runco’s Ideational Behavioral Scale, and the Creative Personality Scale).
They then chose to replace the traditional measure of risk-taking—a roulette-style bet—with a
questionnaire that predicted participants’ risk-taking over a variety of domains—social, ethical,
93
Robinson, Out of Our Minds, 152.
94
Webster, “Twenty-Five Years On,” 28.
95
Steele, “Intrinsic Motivation and Creativity,” 103.
96
Byrne, et al., “Assessing Creativity in Musical Compositions,” 280.
97
Tyagi, et al., “The Risky Side of Creativity,” 2.
49
health/safety, recreational, and financial—and correlated the two sets of data. The crucial
component to Tyagi, et al.,’s study was the consideration—not only of multiple domains of
creativity, but—of multiple domains of risk to discover that some domains of risk “are more
closely associated with creativity than others.”
98
The study also found support for “‘sensible’ risk
taking in creativity… [where] the risk of being ‘different’ is more important in creativity than
risks that endanger limbs or life.”
99
In fact,
The results from this study demonstrate a strong link between risk taking in the social
domain and personality and biographical inventory based measures of creativity. Other
domains of risk taking were not significantly associated with any measure of creativity.
Social risk taking is particularly interesting to investigate in the context of creativity.
Creative individuals often present their ideas and creative products to social groups, for
evaluation, appreciation, or criticism. This activity involves a high level of social risk
especially since it entails the possibility of the creative idea or product being rejected by
some, or all the individuals forming the social group.
100
Ayhan Kursat Erbas and Selda Bas studied creativity in the Turkish educational system
and came to similar conclusions regarding creativity in mathematics, finding that
openness to experience and consciousness were significantly correlated with creative
ability in mathematics,… intrinsic goal orientation followed by openness to experience
was the most significant predictor of mathematical creative ability, and… intrinsic
motivation facilitates creativity by fostering positive affect, mental flexibility, risk-taking,
and persistence.
101
Erbas and Bas’s work reflected Russell Eisenman’s findings from 1969, where it was reported
that those students who scored “high on the adventurousness cluster were found to engage in
risk-taking in…classroom situations.”
102
This was borne out by Gary Davis, who reported that
some important characteristics of creative people include risk-taking, curiosity, open-
mindedness, the capacity for fantasy, being original, being independent, and being attracted to
98
Ibid.
99
Ibid.
100
Ibid., 5.
101
Erbas and Bas, “Creative Ability in Mathematics,” 300.
102
Eisenman, “Components of Creativity,” 698.
50
complexity/ambiguity.
103
Sawyer expanded on this, noting a strong correlation between the
aspects of children’s play and divergent thinking. Sawyer contended that the “improvisational
nature of social pretend play” is central to that linkage. These improvisational aspects include
contingency (where there are “a broad range of creative acts,” but children’s choices influence
each subsequent action), intersubjectivity (where learning is collaborative), and emergence
(which is explored in depth in Chapter Three, but here refers to the phenomenon of the “shared
play world emerg[ing] incrementally, as each child contributes a small change”).
104
Adrian
Furnham, John Crump, Mark Batey, and Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic found that creative people
are most often “bright, stable, open, [and] extroverted.”
105
As mentioned above, risk-taking is a double-edged sword. The creative, risk-taking
personality can also be detrimental. In an extensive review of literature correlating components
of mental illness with creativity, Shelley Carson concluded that the two concepts may simply be
points along the same continuum. When considering cognitive disinhibition—the “failure of
inhibition…combining irrational and rational elements of creativity, [which]… may factor into
the development of creative genius”—Carson found that “cognitive disinhibition may impart a
qualitative difference in the ability to generate creative ideas. Because cognitive disinhibition is
also a feature of some mental illnesses, it provides an interfacing link between creative genius
and increased risk for psychopathology.”
106
This led Carson to postulate that “some forms of
creative insight…may share a common element with delusional ideas. Indeed, there may be an
irrational component to the creative process.”
107
Carson also studied latent inhibition (LI)—the
general predisposition of someone not to do some action—and found that “eminent achievers
103
Davis, Creativity is Forever, 84.
104
Sawyer, Explaining Creativity, 71.
105
Furnham, et. al., “Personality and Ability Predictors,” 536.
106
Carson, “Cognitive Disinhibition,” 198.
107
Ibid.
51
were seven times more likely to have low rather than high LI scores, while the control subjects
were more likely to have high LI scores.”
108
This assertion is not without controversy, and—by and large—is considered outside of
the mainstream of scholarly thought on creativity. In the original research linking schizotypal
personality with creativity, British psychologist Hans Eysenck created a model that limited the
characteristics of personality to three main traits. Using this model, Eysenck found some
correlation between mental illness and creativity.
109
Chamorro-Premuzic expanded the
conception of personality with the creation of the well-accepted Five Factor Model (also known
as the Big Five). “[The] Five Factor Model [is] a trait theory of personality positing that there are
five major and universal factors of personality, namely, Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness,
Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness.”
110
The personality insights form the Big Five must then
be applied to creative people, and—as considered above with Tyagi, et al.—there are multiple
domains of creativity. Keith Sawyer summarized this in a framework, dubbed “The Four P
Framework.” Within this framework, one can study creativity by studying a product (a creative
output), by studying a person (personality traits), by studying a process (the processes involved
in creative work or creative thought), or by studying press, (those external forces “acting on the
creative person or process”).
111
When the “Big Five” model for the personality traits exhibited in
mental illness is correlated to the “Four P Framework” domains of creativity , no connection is
found between mental illness and creativity.
112
Creativity is correlated with higher risk-taking,
and risk-taking can be pathological in certain circumstances, but the leap to creativity as a mild
108
Ibid., 210.
109
Sawyer, Explaining Creativity, 172-173.
110
Chamorro-Premuzic, Personality and Individual Differences. 53ff.
111
Sawyer, Explaining Creativity, 11; “Press” is sometimes referred to as “Place” in the literature, to describe the environment in
which creativity occurs.
112
Ibid., 172-173.
52
form of mental illness is a bridge too far. Thus, while the trope of the tortured creative genius
may be popular, and even reappear occasionally in the research literature, there exists no
scientific basis for this caricature.
Nevertheless, because of the dual nature of risk-taking, the importance of an environment
that supports sensible risk-taking and discourages its pathological aspects cannot be overstated.
“Taking risks places learners in a vulnerable position, which is why a safe and supportive
learning environment is so essential for empowering learners.”
113
Consequently, “care must be
taken to establish a safe and nurturing environment where students feel free to experiment and
take musical risks.”
114
“A classroom that encourages rather than squelches creative thinking is
one that is psychologically safe, contains many rich sound sources for frequent and engaged
exploration, and promotes an atmosphere of risk taking (allowing for failure).”
115
A lengthy
passage from Mitchell is particularly lucid:
The environment in which a student learns and his or her relationship with the teacher
play an important role in determining how creative the students will be. In order for a
student to feel comfortable taking risks in their work (Simmons and Ren, 2009, p. 400),
they must have a supportive and trusting relationship with their teacher. Creative
products are by nature very personal, and receiving feedback on these kinds of tasks
requires a high degree of vulnerability on the part of the student. If the students see the
teacher as an authoritarian figure and the evaluation process as a punitive exercise, they
will be much more hesitant to experiment or to try out ideas that might be considered
below standard… The students’ own personalities and motivations also influence their
engagement in creative activities. Highly creative individuals are generally intrinsically…
and have low levels of avoidance motivation (meaning they are eager to work towards
success rather than trying to avoid situations in which there is a risk of failure)…
Students who feel more confident when approaching a creative task will be able to take
more risks, achieve greater results, and experience greater personal growth and
satisfaction from the experience.
116
113
Wiggins, “Vulnerability and Agency,” 355.
114
Robinson, et al., “The Creative Music Strategy,” 52.
115
Hickey and Webster, “Creative Thinking in Music,” 21.
116
Mitchell, “Expected Evaluation,” 36.
53
“The ideal condition, then, for supporting high intrinsic motivation and high creative output is
one in which individuals perceive that external rewards are low, and the tasks involved are
relatively open.”
117
The Erbas and Bas study provided an illustrative counterpoint. “In the Turkish education
system, teachers usually try to minimize failure and errors, by which they think they would
maximize academic success. Therefore, students are not usually encouraged to take risks,
experiment, or try unfamiliar approaches. The fear of making mistakes, of appearing less
competent than others, and of failure lead to students not taking risks in the classroom.”
118
Charles Byrne, Raymond MacDonald, and Lana Carlton, as well as Robinson, provided
two parting comments with regard to risk-taking, which apply to teacher and learner alike.
“Remembering that opportunities for success can also be opportunities for failure… activities
can be designed that build on the learner’s existing skills and take account of the level of
challenge presented by any new activity.”
119
“Innovation involves trial and error, being wrong at
times and sometimes having to back up and start again.”
120
Risk-taking has been shown to be essential for creativity, as has a healthy sense of
vulnerability, which is achieved through becoming resilient to shame and fear. However, it is
also important to consider creativity in and of itself. “Human intelligence is profoundly and
uniquely creative. We live in a world that’s shaped by the ideas, beliefs and values of human
imagination and culture. The human world is created out of our minds as much as from the
natural environment. Thinking and feeling are not simply about seeing the world as it is, but
having ideas about it, and interpreting experiences to give it meaning.”
121
117
Hickey, Music Outside the Lines, 18.
118
Erbas and Bas, “Creative Ability in Mathematics,” 304.
119
Byrne, et al., “Assessing Creativity in Musical Compositions,” 287.
120
Robinson, Out of Our Minds, 240.
121
Robinson, Out of Our Minds, xvi.
54
Several definitions exist for creativity, and Sawyer made a concerted effort to encompass
the two main traditions in creativity research. If one is individualist in outlook and considers “a
single person while that person is engaged in creative thought or behavior,…creativity is a new
mental combination that is expressed in the world [italics in original].”
122
If, however, one takes
a socio-cultural approach and “studies creative people working together in social and cultural
systems,…creativity is the generation of a product that is judged to be novel and also to be
appropriate, useful, or valuable by a suitable knowledgeable social group [italics in
original].”
123
In short, according to the accepted definitions, for something to be creative, it must
be something new or novel, it must be useful, and it must exist in the world.
124
Further, “creative
thought involves breaching the boundaries between different frames of reference. Some modes
of thinking dominate in different types of activity: the aural in music, the kinesthetic in dance,
and the mathematical in physics. They often draw on different areas of intelligence
simultaneously.”
125
These aspects of creativity serve in a central role when considering how
strategic risk-taking comes into play in the creative endeavor.
Much work on creativity that is applicable to music is in the socio-cultural vein. Jordan
proposed a relational model, where creative “action informed by fear and supported by the
encouragement of others replaces a notion of solitary accomplishment and suppression of
vulnerability. In particular, the courage to move into conflict is examined… The capacity to
move into ‘good conflict’ is essential to relationships based on mutuality.”
126
The definition of what it means to be a creative person is just as fraught. Some postulate
that creativity is tied to intelligence. Following from this, the threshold theory of creativity holds
122
Sawyer, Explaining Creativity, 7.
123
Ibid., 8.
124
Ibid., 7-8.
126
Jordan, “Courage in Connection,” 1.
126
Jordan, “Courage in Connection,” 1.
55
that a certain baseline IQ of about 120 is necessary for a person to be truly creative, but beyond
that, there is no relationship between creativity and intelligence.
127
Carson reported evidence that
creative people experience neural hyper connectivity and that “we are at our most creative when
rational thought is suspended.”
128
Others argue that this argument only underscores the false,
Enlightenment dichotomy between the rational and the emotional.
129
Further, it is easy to
perceive success as natural giftedness, but “behind every ‘naturally gifted’ person is normally a
huge amount of work, dedication and commitment.”
130
So too, it is easy to confuse creativity
with talent. “Talent is technical ability in a particular domain…Creative ability…involves seeing
connections that others may not see and both finding and solving problems in a novel way…
both creativity and talent are evident in the work of creative geniuses.”
131
People can quickly conclude that they are not creative when they are unable to create a
finished product in one try. This is not surprising, because real creativity also involves
possessing the skills needed to actualize the new ideas. “Children and adults need the means and
the skills to be creative... Most adults say they cannot draw. They are right. They cannot. They
are not incapable of it… They just do not know how.”
132
Drawing on decades of prior research in
creativity, Sawyer wrote about the eight stages of the creative process: find the problem, acquire
the knowledge, gather related information, incubation, generate ideas, combine ideas, select the
best ideas, and externalize ideas.
133
The second step requires that—in order for a person to be
creative in a domain—they must have expertise in that domain, which often takes ten years to
127
Davis, Creativity is Forever, 83.
128
Carson, “Cognitive Disinhibition,” 200.
129
Robinson, Out of Our Minds, 158-159.
130
Brown, I Thought It Was Just Me, 185.
131
Carson, “Cognitive Disinhibition,” 200.
132
Robinson, Out of Our Minds, 159.
133
Sawyer, Explaining Creativity, 89.
56
acquire.
134
“No one can be creative without first internalizing the domain, and this is why
scientists now believe that formal schooling is essential to creativity.”
135
When encouraging
creative output, then, it is essential to provide potential creators with the skills and knowledge
necessary to create a creative product.
And, as with risk-taking, the learning environment is a vital component of encouraging
creative thought. Nearly fifty years ago, Charles Fowler was already noting the importance of
creativity in education, particularly of making use of discovery in the learning process:
“obtaining knowledge for oneself by the use of one’s own mind. The student is no longer a
bench-bound listener, confined to rote accumulation, memorization, and regurgitation. Instead,
he is provided with an opportunity to exercise creative options, imagination, and self-
mastery.”
136
This is not a process without pitfalls and errors, and it is important to allow children
to struggle with adversity, because “hope is a function of struggle.”
137
One unexpected benefit of teaching for creative thinking is the penchant for learners to
transfer skills between activities. Retention and transfer of skills are increased when presented in
an activity that encourages creativity.
138
Risk-taking also factors in to transfer of skills, as in
summarizing Jerome Bruner’s work in this area, Christopher Peterson and Clifford Madsen
noted: “The student must believe that he or she can go beyond what he or she already knows and
that there are new cognitive connections available to him or her.”
139
This can only be
accomplished in a supportive learning environment.
134
Ibid., 93.
135
Ibid., 94.
136
Fowler, “Discovery,” 28.
137
Brown, Daring Greatly, 23-29.
138
Peterson and Madsen, “Encouraging Cognitive Connections,” 25.
139
Bruner, cited in Peterson and Madsen, “Encouraging Cognitive Connections,” 28.
57
Finally, it is important to consider the egalitarian nature of creativity. Robinson wondered
why, as people grow older, they appear to lose their creative abilities. Again, a substantial
quotation reveals remarkable insight.
Most children think they’re highly creative; most adults think they’re not… My starting
point is that everyone has huge creative capacities as a natural result of being a human
being. The challenge is to develop them. A culture of creativity has to involve everybody
not just a select few… In my experience, many, perhaps most people have no idea of
their real capabilities and talents. Too many think they have no special talents at all. My
premise is that we are all born with immense natural talents but that too few people
discover what they are and ever fewer develop them properly… Education and training
are the keys to the future. A key can be turned in two directions. Turn it one way and you
lock resources away; turn it the other way and you release resources and give people back
to themselves.
140
Building a Creative Community
Egalitarian creativity is the goal, and sensible risk-taking and a healthy vulnerability are
prerequisites. When these combine in a social context, they establish a creative community, the
subject of the final section of this chapter. Art is a person’s interaction with reality and with other
people, a description of experience imbued with the artist’s sense of meaning.
141
If a creative
community is to arise, it needs to have a culture that supports the deep importance of art, and
such a culture must be actively fostered. In fact, when approached from the perspective of
individuals’ strengths, the resulting community is powerful indeed.
142
Akin to Robinson’s
thoughts mentioned above, Brown suggested that creative community-building could use
children as a model. “Children are very receptive to learning perspective-taking skills. They are
naturally curious about the world and how others operate in it. They are also far less invested in
140
Robinson, Out of Our Minds, 1, 4, 7, 285.
141
Maritain, Creative Intuition in Art and Poetry, 106-112.
142
Saleebey, “Strengths Perspective,” 303.
58
their perspective being the ‘right one.’”
143
In other words, children can be an excellent example
for how to create a culture based on acceptance and exploration.
Peter Richards, Director of Arts Programs at the Exploratorium in San Francisco, spoke
about what kind of culture he was trying to create at that revolutionary museum. Reflecting the
social and individualistic aspects of the definitions of creativity mentioned above, Richards
explained,
while the initial creative act may be solitary,…it becomes a collaborative effort. The kind
of place that fosters this kind of creativity,…is first and foremost a place that gives
people freedom to take risks; second, it is a place that allows people to discover and
develop their own natural intelligence; third, it is a place where there are no “stupid”
questions and no “right” answers; and fourth, it is a place that values “irreverence, the
lively, the dynamic, the surprising, the playful.”
144
Built into the dynamic of a creative community are also mechanisms for feedback.
“Without feedback, there is no transformative change.”
145
However, feedback is not blame, and
blame is not accountability. Blame attempts to shift responsibility while accountability tries to
repair and renew through agreed-upon systems of evaluation.
146
Creative cultures are
encouraging. They “encourage people to believe in their creative potential and to nurture the
confidence to try... [Creative cultures nurture attitudes of] high motivation and independence of
judgment; a willingness to take risks and be enterprising, to be persistent and to be resilient in the
face of false starts, wrong turns and dead ends.”
147
Brown’s research has illuminated other characteristics of a creative community. A
creative culture is based on compassion, which is a relationship between equals. In compassion,
each person knows their own darkness—that is, to be aware of and accepting of their own
143
Brown, I Thought It Was Just Me, 38.
144
Alliance of Artists Communities, “American Creativity at Risk,” 17.
145
Brown, Daring Greatly, 197.
146
Brown, Daring Greatly, 197; Robinson, Out of Our Minds, 221.
147
Robinson, Out of Our Minds, 269.
59
weaknesses, faults, and limitations—so as to be capable of being with others in their darkness in
shared humanity.
148
A creative culture is also one that empowers the healthy vulnerability
discussed above. This vulnerability must be modeled by leaders, who cannot just expect the
followers to be vulnerable while they maintain their mask of invulnerability. In other words, it is
a healthy atmosphere of mutual vulnerability where all members of the community learn
together.
149
Perhaps the most challenging and troubling aspect of relationship building is the
realization that people can only accompany one another on their own journeys, not journey for—
or even with—them. In truth, “everyone journeys alone and…true accompaniment requires an
acknowledgement and respect of that concept.” In fact, attempting to share a journey makes
accompaniment impossible and voluntary commitment irrelevant.
150
If the union is about
supporting—not about leading and following—“the union itself becomes more powerful.”
151
“The two most powerful forms of connection are love and belonging—they are irreducible needs
of men, women, and children.”
152
A relationship of mutual accompaniment is not about being
perfect, but about paying attention, loving, and being fully engaged with one another.
153
From
these relationships, a creative culture can be born.
From the preceding paragraphs, a remarkable concept becomes clear: “Hope is
learned!”
154
And, it requires that leaders grant people agency to face adversity; take sensible
risks; face their vulnerability.
155
Brown explained leadership in the following ways: Being an
148
Brown, Daring Greatly, 234.
149
Brown, “Acompañar,” 79ff; Brown, I Thought It Was Just Me, 77-82.
150
Brown, “Acompañar,” 171.
151
Brown, “Acompañar,” 172.
152
Brown, Daring Greatly, 145.
153
Ibid., 237.
154
Ibid., 204.
155
Ibid., 204.
60
effective leader is about “creating the space for others to perform,” not about having the best idea
or problem-solving solution.
156
“Real freedom is about setting others free.”
157
Conclusion
This chapter has explored risk-taking, vulnerability, fear, failure, and creativity, which
are all bound together in the experience of living as a human. While any one of these can be
pathological in excess, a holistic person emerges when these characteristics are effectively
leveraged together. Educators are instrumental in facilitating this emergence.
This study grew out of every facet of research considered in this chapter. The realization
that shame is not vulnerability provided support for the idea that taking strategic risks in
rehearsal and possibly making mistakes can be liberating, rather than debilitating, if approached
from authentic vulnerability. In fact, strategic risk-taking can actually bolster shame resilience,
as singers discover a supportive community in the midst of mistakes and successes. The concept
of growth goals is central to effective choral education. No performance will ever be perfect, but
growth goals are the mechanism for retaining high standards of artistry while allowing for a
learning process that may be rife with musical errata. The concept of Acompañar dovetails neatly
with the scripts used in the strategic risk-taking constructionist experimental treatment. Both
conductor and participants began in their archetypal roles, but they were quickly required to
traverse roles as learner and leader, especially by the fourth rehearsal. The use of self was
required of all participants, bringing out each individual’s gifts and talents. And critical
awareness—awareness of the “big picture”—was required for participants to help guide their
own learning and take strategic risks. An understanding of the role of failure and MPA were
crucial in preventing creative scars. Finally, the creative community was the end-goal of the
156
Ibid., 209.
157
Brown, I Thought It Was Just Me, xxvii.
61
experimental experience, and—truly—of the choral rehearsal room: egalitarian creativity,
profound belief in the importance of art, a child-like (not childish) playfulness that does not
require a “right,” answer, encouraging mechanisms for feedback, and an understanding of the
importance of the journey together.
An attentive educator can employ this knowledge to help the next generation of
humanity become integrated and whole persons, willing to learn, grow, and not hide behind the
mask of perfectionism. Again, Brown wrote unequivocally: The answer is creativity. “One of the
most effective ways to start recovering from perfectionism is to start creating.”
158
158
Brown, Daring Greatly, 135.
62
Chapter Three: Review of Literature on Social Network, Emergence,
and Motor Learning Theories
Introduction
It is deceptively simple to attempt to categorize a choral ensemble in terms of its
members (“the first-year choir”; “the TTB chorus”), its function (“the chancel choir”), the time it
rehearses (“the Tuesday night choir”), its director (“Lisa’s choir”), its formal name (“the Concert
Chorale”), or even its relative level of accomplishment (“the ‘good’ choir”; “the ‘beginner’
choir”). All of these taxonomical methods are effective at identifying which choir is being
discussed, but—beyond a certain basic level—unhelpful in learning anything about the ensemble
itself. In fact, using component parts to explain a complex, interrelated group of people (like a
choir) is missing the lion’s share of available information.
Chapter Three contains perhaps the most foreign concepts to the choral director in the
course of this dissertation. Drawing from the realms of computer science, health, and marketing,
the concepts borne out by Social Network, Emergence, and Motor Learning Theories have a
surprisingly immediate application to a choral environment, but one which runs counter to much
of the received wisdom of traditional choral pedagogy. These theories undergird a significant
portion of the conceptual grounding of this dissertation. Social Network Theory, with its
predictions of outcomes correlated to network position, gave rise to the social network
component of the study. Emergence and Motor Learning Theories, with their allowance for
factors to develop independently of a directing leader, shaped the structure of the experimental
rehearsals and the pedagogy included therein. The researcher’s study of constructivism and of
creativity may have given rise to the questions addressed by this dissertation, but the study of
63
Social Network, Emergence, and Motor Learning Theories gave form to the study of those
selfsame questions.
Background
In the past twenty years, two networking theories have developed that have enhanced
society’s understanding of itself and may provide a unique insight into the reality of the
relationships within and the dynamics of a choral ensemble. These two fields, Social Network
Theory and Emergence Theory, concern the most salient property of networks: that networks are
“bigger than the sum of their parts.” These theories grew out of work in social science, computer
science, medicine, and mathematics, but find unexpected application in any musical ensemble.
Interrelated and interdependent, these two realms of inquiry remain somewhat distinct.
Social Network Theory and Emergence Theory both consider the transfer of information, but do
so from different perspectives. Social Network Theory, which came of age through the work of
the acclaimed social scientists Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler, deals with networks of
people exchanging information. This includes how members of a network are connected to one
another, how ideas and materials are spread through a network, and how people’s places within
the network influence their lives. While Social Network Theory is often able to be extrapolated
to examine other sorts of networks, such as the behavior of computers on a network or the
movement of traffic in a city, the focus is most prominently related to people.
Emergence Theory, on the other hand, focuses on those properties that emerge out of a
network that are not attributable to any individual component, nor even to all of the components,
but manifest through the interaction of the members of the network. Most importantly, these
emergent properties are not directed from any one source in a traditional, top-down leadership
model. Rather, they arise from the interactions of the members in a bottom-up manner. Thus,
64
Emergence Theory is related to, but distinct from, Social Network Theory in three primary ways.
First, Social Network Theory is focused on networks of people, while Emergence Theory can
apply to any network. Second, Social Network Theory focuses on individuals and the
connections between them, while Emergence Theory considers what arises from those
connections. Finally, Social Network Theory explores the transfer of information and the effects
that process has on the members of the network, while Emergence Theory examines the effects
that transfer has on the network itself and what is produced. Stated another way, Social Network
Theory could suggest a highly effective way to recruit altos, while Emergence Theory will help
explain why a group of committed altos might result in the whole choir singing more in tune.
The most famous example of Emergence Theory is biologist E. O. Wilson’s work on the ability
of an ant colony to function as an entity without any apparent leadership. Some ants build an ant
hill. Others forage for food. Others care for larvae, and still others defend against predators. Yet
this profound, systemic cooperation arises even though no individual ant, not even the ant queen,
is directing the operation of the colony. Actions at the individual level, without instruction from
a superior, have created a functioning entity that no one ant—or even all the ants considered as a
group of individuals—could ever do.
Research in Social Network Theory and Emergence Theory represents a sea change in
thinking about the relationships among people. For the first time in history, the dynamics of
networks can be observed in action, demonstrating that people do not change primarily due to
single, highly-connected influencers, but through networks. It is no coincidence that this
understanding has arisen with the advent of digital media. The computing power necessary to
study networks requires today’s technology, and today’s networked technology requires an
understanding of how networks can be optimized. These insights can then be applied to the
65
organic network that is the human person, in the form of Emergence Theory called Motor
Learning Theory. For musicians, the concept of feedback in Motor Learning Theory is critical
for optimal learning and foundational to this study. This research helps people understand the
new world that is in more meaningful ways than before, particularly in terms of properties and
behaviors.
Application to Music
While the study of Social Network Theory and Emergence Theory is fascinating even at
the layperson level, this research has been primarily limited to the realm of computer science,
health and epidemiological study, or focused on exploiting the knowledge for increased sales and
the attendant profit. Little or no connection seems to have been made between these theories and
music ensembles such as choral groups. A cursory examination of the key concepts of both
theories may provide an immediate fit in the realm of collaborative music-making. Research on
Social Network Theory and Emergence Theory may provide important implications both for
being an effective leader of an ensemble and for being a valuable member of an ensemble. Such
conceptual bases may demonstrate how people actually influence each other in a different way
than theorists of the past thought.
What is needed is a coherent schema for applying Social Network Theory and Emergence
Theory in the choral setting. To that end, this chapter attempts to synthesize existing research
from five wide-ranging—yet interrelated—vantage points in the disciplines where Social
Network Theory and Emergence Theory are most frequently employed. First, it will consider the
nature of a network, the basic rules governing social networks, and the communities that form
therein. Next, it will explore the crucial concepts of emergence and influence, as well as change
that can flow from the powerful motivators of emergence and influence. Subsequently, this
66
chapter will also briefly relate to Motor Learning Theory to explore the emergent nature of motor
learning and its application to singers, especially in terms of feedback, practice strategies, and
implications for rehearsal pedagogy. It is hoped that the reader will understand the ramifications
of network position (an individual’s connected relationship with everyone else in the network)
and research that suggests that ensembles themselves can have both personality and intelligence.
Finally, the chapter will conclude with a practical synthesis of the application of Social Network
Theory, Emergence Theory, and Motor Learning Theory to this study and to choral recruiting
and retention, including optimal strategies for rehearsal, and a new understanding of group
dynamics.
A Network, Its Rules, and Its Communities
In the twenty-first century, the term “network” conjures images of computers and
technology, and the term “social network” seems synonymous with Facebook. The study of
networks, however, predates contemporary social media and predates computers themselves. To
grasp the foundational concepts explored in both Social Network Theory and Emergence Theory,
it is necessary to first consider three things: the concept of a network, the rules by which social
networks operate, and the communities that form therein.
The Importance of Networks
The study of Network Theory, and the branch of inquiry it would eventually birth, Social
Network Theory, is over 250 years old. In 1763, Swiss mathematician and chair of mathematics
at the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, Leonhard Euler, published his famous The Bridges of
Königsberg problem, which is considered the first example of work in Network Theory.
1
1
Gribkovskaia, et al., “The Bridges of Königsberg,” 1; Euler proved, using the basic concepts of network theory (though it did
not have a name at the time), that one could not take a “closed” walk (beginning and ending at the same locale) through
Königsberg that included crossing every bridge in the city only once.
67
Harnessing the computing power of the twenty-first century, Network Theory, and its derivative
discipline, Social Network Theory, have allowed for the discovery of the intricacies of
humanity’s interconnectedness in ways rarely before noted, or even imagined.
Sociologists Christakis and Fowler built on this foundation, pioneering the field of Social
Network Theory, using data from the well-known Framingham Heart Study
2
to discover both the
unexpected connections between the participants in this exceptionally large data set and the
subtle and sometimes hidden influences that the participants had on people to whom they were
only indirectly connected.
3
Because Social Network Theory deals with the connections between
and the influences among a group of people, the study of social networks seems uniquely suited
for considering the social network called a choral ensemble. However, such studies require a
radical departure from previous understandings. As far back as the eighteenth-century economist
Adam Smith, groups were considered either with respect to only the individual members
(methodological individualism) or in terms of only the group as a whole (methodological
holism). Social Network Theory proposes that the network itself be the object of consideration:
the people and the connections among them.
4
The Biology of Social Networks
More than merely an interesting side note in the development of the human species,
networks seem to play a central role in human evolution and survival. Evolutionarily, networks
provide an adaptive function, building communities through the transmission of emotional states,
material resources, and information. In 2008, Zhang and colleagues conducted an experiment
measuring the online and offline connectivity among fifty-two collegiate students taking the
2
Dawber, et. al., “The Framingham Study,” 279ff.
3
Christakis and Fowler, Connected, 107-109.
4
Ibid., 302–303.
68
same college course in China, where it was noted that networks serve three functions in the
transmission of that information. First, they empower parallelism, which allows multiple
conversations to occur simultaneously. Second, networks provide reprocessibility, which allows
participants to reexamine and revisit information. Third, networks support rehearsability, which
can refine and re-edit information before it is disseminated.
5
From an evolutionary standpoint,
then, networks comprise part of the most basic social undergirding of human society in all its
multiplicity.
While networks are essential to human life, not every member in a network is created
equal. Christakis and Fowler demonstrated that, similar to behavior in other primate species,
these primordial networks are comprised of four classes of individuals—cooperators, free riders,
punishers, and loners—and one’s role is partly determined by one’s genetic history.
6
These four
classes form an uneasy synergy that enables humans to collaboratively accomplish remarkable
achievements. In fact, research that Christakis and Fowler cite provided some evidence that the
human brain may be designed for social networks, as humans are evolutionarily programmed to
cooperate to carry out tasks that would exceed the capacity of any individual.
7
To accomplish
this, a large portion of the brain’s default-state network is seen to support the subtle
communication involved in monitoring social interactions, including facial expression, posture,
and the myriad nonverbal cues of interpersonal contact.
8
This sort of communicative interrelation may not be the sole province of the human
species, and it may not be limited merely to language. In primates—and, presumably human
ancestors—social interaction was frequently the provenance of grooming activity, which
5
Zhang, et al., “Student Interactions and Course Performance,” 4.
6
Christakis and Fowler, Connected, 217ff, 232, 239.
7
Ibid., 240.
8
Ibid., 241.
69
maintained group cohesion, reinforced norms, and built relationships. Connecting through
grooming, while effective, is inherently inefficient. Christakis and Fowler maintained that, as
human communities grew in size and complexity, language evolved as a much more efficient
replacement for grooming.
9
With the advent of language, these networks allowed (and still
allow) for the effective transmission of social norms to larger groups, for the spread of emotions
and ideas, and for yet another unique ability: the ability to interact effectively with unknown
persons.
Language allows members of a group to interact with unknown people in a stylized way
pertinent to the perceived role of the unknown person. For example, if someone meets an
unknown person in a police uniform, that unknown person is recognized as a police officer even
if she is a stranger to the group. This is similar to the reliance on roles Brown’s first step in
Acompañar theory, anchoring, discussed in Chapter Two.
10
In the aforementioned situation, the
individual encountering an unknown person in a police uniform then interacts with the presumed
police officer according to the social protocol that the group accords to members of the police
force.
11
(One can also imagine how, across different social communities, this sort of interaction
might unfold very differently.)
Related to the development of language, it is possible that social networks coevolved
with music. Writing in 2016, Arla Good and Frank Russo proposed that music’s capacity for
social bonding is a further evolutionary development: “The universality of music indicates that it
serves, or at least once served, an adaptive purpose. Several theorists have proposed that music
functions as a social tool that enables groups to develop and preserve bonds, ultimately leading
9
Ibid., 249.
10
Brown, “Acompañar,” 75.
11
Christakis and Fowler, Connected, 251.
70
to cooperative behaviors within the group.”
12
Satoshi Kawase expanded on the factors that make
music an effective catalyst for group cohesion through the identification of common personality
traits in musicians: extraversion, neuroticism, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness to
experience.
13
For effective collaboration, the traits of extraversion, openness, and agreeableness
predominate.
14
Note the parallel here to personality traits of creative people discussed in Chapter
Two.
Humans have another characteristic that is demonstrably consistent with other primate
species and throughout human history. Social networks seem to have a maximum level of
membership, based on the physical size of the brain. For humans, four close friends and 150 total
members seems to be largest group of people who can reasonably know one another.
Historically, this is demonstrated in many ways, such as by the size of ancient villages and the
size of maniples (essentially brigades of soldiers) in the Roman military. Companies in the
contemporary armed forces also number approximately 150 people, which appears to be the
maximum size that still allows for authentic unit cohesion.
15
Beginning with Euler’s The Bridges of Königsberg and continuing in the present with
Christakis and Fowler’s groundbreaking work with the data from the Framingham Heart Study,
Social Network Theory has become a critically important mechanism for understanding human
behavior. These networks seem to be evolutionarily programmed into human genetics and
provide unique evolutionary benefits toward the emergence of human society. Further, the
development of language, and later music, led to the development of large, cohesive
communities.
12
Good and Russo, “Singing Promotes Cooperation,” 340.
13
Kawase, “Associations Among Music Majors,” 294.
14
Ibid., 298.
15
Christakis and Fowler, Connected, 249.
71
Into the Weeds (Fundamental Definitions and Concepts)
Networks, then, may well be essential components of the human condition, but what can
be said beyond knowing that networks exist and are important? The study of networks seems
aptly designed for both the consideration of a musical ensemble and of basic human
communities. To consider a network effectively, however, some basic definitions and a
knowledge of networks’ rules are required. Beginning with a definition, Johnson defined a
network as “a pattern in time,” meaning that the pattern and the connections are important, but so
is the temporal component.
16
Relationships within a network evolve over time, so any mere
“snapshot” of a network’s structure will be insufficient to convey the wealth and complexity of
information that the network contains.
Next, a network consists of nodes and the connections between them, called edges. In a
network of people, a node is a person, and most of the aforementioned connections are mutual
connections, meaning that something passes in both directions between each person.
17
These
connections are central to the consideration of a network, as a node can be connected to many
people or to just a few, and those people can be similarly well connected or not. The transitivity
of a node expresses how connected its connections are. Node A, which is connected to both
Node B and Node C, is more transitive if Nodes B and C are also connected to one another. This
leads to the small world phenomenon, where—for example—the hotel one visits in Richfield,
Utah, might be managed by the uncle of the manager of the hotel visited the week prior in
Lincoln, Nebraska.
18
The small world phenomenon has infiltrated popular understanding in the
well-known six degrees of separation concept demonstrated by American social psychologist
16
Johnson, Emergence, 28.
17
Christakis and Fowler, Connected, 11.
18
Ibid., 19.
72
Stanley Milgram’s famous letter-mailing experiment, where a letter from a random person in
Kansas could reach a specific person in Massachusetts through—on average—six connections
among people who knew one another.
19
“Transivity” is a fascinating concept in Social Network Theory. Xiang Zuo, Jeremy
Blackburn, Nicolas Kourtellis, John Skvoretz, and Adriana Iamnitchi enriched the concept of
transivity with the notion of the Forbidden Triad, where—if B and C have strong ties to A—it is
highly likely that there will be a connection between B and C.
20
A triad where such connections
did not occur would be “forbidden.” In other words, the world is quite likely to be more
connected than a person may imagine.
Transivity relates to another fundamental concept of network theory, multiplexity. Any
individual is simultaneously inhabiting any number of networks, depending on how a researcher
may choose to define them. A person may attend a church, have a workplace, exercise at a
specific gym, belong to a political party, sing in a community choir…the facets that can be
considered “networks” are nearly endless. Multiplexity speaks to these multiple overlapping
networks, where nodes can have multiple relationships (connections) with the same people
across several networks, such as being both friends and coworkers. Multiplexity is an
extraordinarily powerful factor in understanding the structure of any social network.
21
All of this gives rise to consideration of a node’s location within the larger network: how
a person is connected to everyone else in the network. This position is largely invisible at the
first degree or “first hop”—the node’s direct connections. A node knows to whom it is directly
connected but is—at best—only vaguely aware of the connections’ connections. However, as
19
Ibid., 26.
20
Zuo, et al., “The Power of Indirect Ties,” 190.
21
Christakis and Fowler, Connected, 92.
73
those more distant connections are examined, an individual’s position—whether a node that is
more central (well-connected) or peripheral (more disconnected) to the network—becomes
clearer.
22
Network topology is fundamental to the understanding of how networks affect the lives
of the persons within them. The discussion of position is particularly frustrating, however, as
there has yet to emerge a standard definition for “centrality.”
23
Centrality is considered with
greater depth below, so suffice it to say at this point, some people are more central, and others
are more peripheral.
The Rules of a Network
Thus far, a functional understanding of the importance of networks and the fundamental
definitions thereof has been presented. Beyond these basic definitions, Christakis and Fowler
propose five rules of networks, which seem to concisely explain how networks operate in human
society. While they were the first to codify these rules, subsequent authors have expanded upon
them.
Rule One: We shape our networks. Members of a network choose to be around those who
are like them. This inclination is known as homophily.
24
Members also shape their networks by
choosing how many people they are connected to, how densely those connections are connected,
and—thereby—their own centrality.
25
There are a number of measures of network centrality—
including the most common measure, which simply considers the number of connections a node
has, without considering their effect on or importance to an individual. However, in 2016,
researcher Wang used advanced computer modeling and simulations to determine that the most
useful measure of centrality is influence centrality. Influence centrality, according to Wang, is a
22
Ibid., 15.
23
Wang, “Modeling Influence Diffusion,”17–18.
24
Christakis and Fowler, Connected, 17.
25
Ibid.
74
node’s ability to shape the network, or more technically, “the node’s relative significance in
terms of the total amount of influence a node spreads out or the multiple-path reachability of a
node to other nodes.”
26
Centrality itself is neither positive or negative; it is merely descriptive.
Taking a different perspective, reviewing the pertinent literature on social networks and
trust, and performing statistical data analysis on the characteristics of a number of different
social networks in a number of countries, Social Network Theory researcher Kenneth Newton
moved beyond the concept of centrality itself to consider the creation of a network that is healthy
for its members. In shaping a healthy network, Newton identified four important personality
characteristics: trust, optimism, belief in cooperation, and confidence in social and political life.
The converse of these are misanthropy, pessimism, and cynicism.
27
Note again the similarities
with creative people in Chapter Two. Clearly, people shape their network both through their
choices and their personality.
Rule Two: Our networks shape us. In short, the more central people are, the more
susceptible they are to what is flowing through the network.
28
Again, this is neither beneficial
nor detrimental. However, this presents the complex issue of positional inequality, where some
people are more central than others, often through no fault of their own. Sociologists have long
considered race, gender, socio-economic status, and other factors as highly determinative of
many aspects of a person’s life. Recently, positional inequality has been found to be more
impactful than race, gender, or other factors for determining social outcomes. This simple fact
shatters more than a century of prior thought about class and status, but unfortunately, network
position is also harder to measure than those categorical benchmarks.
29
It has only been with the
26
Wang, “Modeling Influence Diffusion,” 15.
27
Newton, “Social Trust and Political Disaffection,” 4.
28
Christakis and Fowler, Connected, 21.
29
Ibid., 300.
75
computing power and datasets available in the last twenty years that this concept could even be
considered.
Rule Three: Our friends affect us. This may be one of the most seemingly self-evident
sentences in this chapter, but it is important to establish from the outset that “no man is an
island.” Friends have an impact in a very particular manner: people influence each other in
dyads.
30
Put another way, every network edge is a relationship between two, and only two,
people.
Rule Four: Our friends’ friends affect us. Drawn first from Christakis and Fowler’s
breakthrough research with the Framingham Heart Study data, the concept of hyperdyadic
spread may be the most radical discovery to arise from the study of social networks. In
hyperdyadic spread, individuals are influenced by people beyond the first degree. A person’s
neighbors, according to the theory, may be making that person fat or fit, happy or sad.
Consideration of hyperdyadic spread becomes central to the discussion of emergence, influence,
and network position.
31
Rule Five: The network has a life of its own. To understand a network, it is necessary to
consider the network itself as an object of study, not just its contingent parts. The network will
“have properties and functions that are neither controlled nor even perceived by the people
within them,” such as “the wave” in a stadium, a flock of birds in flight suddenly changing
direction, or the structure of an online wiki.
32
These are called emergent properties, “new
attributes [that belong to] a whole that arise from the interaction and interconnection of the
30
Ibid., 21.
31
Ibid., 22.
32
Ibid., 24, 25–26, 280.
76
parts.”
33
Because of its focus on the properties of the network itself as they occur over time, Rule
Five serves as the nexus between Social Network Theory and Emergence Theory.
Emergent Properties of Social Networks
The primary emergent property of any social network is the ability to cooperate.
Christakis and Fowler have shown that cooperation arises “spontaneously from the decentralized
actions of people who form groups with connected fates and a common purpose.”
34
Put simply,
cooperation is not the result of a leader or monarch coercing people to work together, but a
consequence of people realizing their common purpose and choosing to work together. This
cannot be done without trust among the members of the network. “[T]rust is one of the most
important synthetic forces within society,” which Newton defined as “a belief that others, at
worst, will not knowingly or willingly do you harm, and at best, will act in your interests.”
35
Spontaneously, from a belief that people will work together for a common goal without harming
one another, cooperation arises to knit the fabric of human society.
Networks have a life of their own in another way as well. This complex interconnection
of cooperation and trust yields a surprising outcome with regard to how members of the network
are affected by one another. Enlightenment philosophers such as Adam Smith advanced reason
as the highest goal of humankind, and thus people were considered capable of being rational
actors, who knew their preferences, were goal oriented, and acted in the manner to best achieve
their goals. Research from the latter half of the twentieth century to the present has shown
definitively that emotions, genetics, and a host of other factors contribute to human decision-
making, far beyond Descartes’s idea of a disembodied consciousness knowing and choosing.
36
33
Ibid., 26.
34
Ibid., 280.
35
Newton, “Social Trust and Political Disaffection,” 2–3.
36
Li, et al., “The Rationality of Emotions,” 294ff.
77
Social Network Theory has confirmed that strict rationality of action rarely appears among
members of a network. Instead, the actions of all of the members of the network combine in
complex and often unpredictable ways to sometimes support, sometimes stifle, the goals of any
one individual, no matter how freely the individual may appear to be acting.
37
Social Networks and Community
Christakis and Fowler’s rules provide an apt framework for the consideration of social
networks, and they highlight the essential nature of cooperation among members of the network.
Cooperation, though, has an outcome that makes the network both enduring and essential:
community. Cooperation forms community, which is yet another way a network exhibits
characteristics that are not present in any individual member or the members as a whole. Wang
contended, “community is one of the most significant structural properties of networks,” and
“nodes on the network are naturally grouped into different communities with dense connections
internally and sparser connections between communities.”
38
Thus, communities may be
considered as little networks within networks, often created through homophily. While it may
seem that these communities would be defined by how the nodes connect densely among
themselves and infrequently to the outside, Christakis and Fowler hold that communities within
networks are defined less by their connections and more by common ideas and behaviors
(norms).
39
Communities, then, arise from commonalities and reinforce these commonalities
through dense interconnection, while influence to change enters less frequently through the rarer
connections outside the community. This thought about the development of communities seems
37
Christakis and Fowler, Connected, 174–175.
38
Wang, “Modeling Influence Diffusion,” v, 9.
39
Christakis and Fowler, Connected, 108.
78
to parallel the discussion in Chapter Two regarding the creation of the creative community, as
well as creating a healthy ensemble.
Researchers are divided about how communities form within networks. More traditional
theorists contend that communities derive from a “top-down divisive approach, which starts with
all the nodes in one cluster and iteratively splits clusters into smaller ones.”
40
Those who hew
more closely to Emergence Theory are more likely to espouse a “bottom-up agglomerative
approach, which starts with each node in its own singleton “cluster” and iteratively merges the
closest clusters to form larger ones.”
41
Regardless of the method of their formation, communities
often emerge naturally through a productive cross pollination of ideas and norms. Without
connection, ideas and norms simply die out.
42
Furthermore, beyond the “geography” of a
network of interpersonal connections, the physical geography of a place plays a role in the
transmission of ideas and norms as demonstrated by such well-known communities as
fourteenth-century Florentine artisans clustering together to create districts within the city of
Florence and why the School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California would
flourish in Los Angeles as opposed to Boise. “[I]ndustries driven by ideas naturally gravitate
toward physical centers of idea generation.”
43
This would seem to support the bottom-up,
emergent model, the implications of which will be considered later in this chapter when Social
Network Theory and Emergence Theory will be applied to choral music.
As mentioned above, per multiplexity, people belong to a multitude of different
communities, including such diverse groups as their family, their coworkers, their country, and
their friends. Most of the communities a person inhabits are a result of genetics, location of birth,
40
Wang, “Modeling Influence Diffusion,” 30.
41
Ibid., 30.
42
Johnson, Emergence, 108.
43
Ibid., 230.
79
socio-economic status, and other essentially predetermined properties. However, a subset of a
person’s communities are those communities joined intentionally—voluntary communities,
which “are crucial forms of social networking.”
44
Voluntary communities are important precisely
because an individual is choosing to belong and may choose to leave at any time. The
connections made through voluntary communities can be inordinately strong, especially since
participation in voluntary communities actually comprises an astonishingly small percentage of
time, between 8.4%–8.9% of leisure time.
45
(It is important to note that this percentage is of
leisure time only, not of total time, or even of waking time!)
The Transfer of Influence
When considering communities, it is illustrative to consider that there seem to be
particular roles assigned to every member of a network, as well as how these roles guide the
transfer of influence among members of the network. How these roles are defined is a source of
contention among network theorists. As one might expect, theorists in the tradition of Adam
Smith assert a top-down definition, where a leader assigns roles. Others propose an emergent
schema, where people arise organically to address various needs. In the latter, rather than a
leader assessing needs and assigning individuals to address needs, people respond to the needs
they perceive and thereby assume their own role(s) in a network.
Regarding roles, Wang made a striking claim, which based roles on a person’s position in
the network and the influence derived from that position. “We argue that individual roles,
influence, and susceptibility are implicitly embedded in the network topology. In fact, it is
influence that not only differentiates individual roles but also acts as the force holding the
44
Newton, “Social Trust and Political Disaffection,” 2.
45
Ibid., 10.
80
individuals together to form and maintain the community.”
46
Since people’s centrality will
impact which (and how many) needs they encounter—and thereby respond to—their centrality
will effectively determine their role in the network. As discussed above, influence centrality
speaks of a person’s ability to effect change in their network. Combined with network topology,
both position and the ability to influence the network interact to engender any given person’s
role.
Wang continued with a fascinating elaboration on this interrelation between influence
and role, based on the transfer of influence. Wang contended that a person’s role is—in large
part—only as effective as that person’s ability to influence the network beyond themselves,
which is accomplished through the transfer of influence. A person transfers their influence to
their immediate connections and—through those connections—to the people beyond the first
degree. According to Wang, influence may be transferred in one of two ways. In the traditional
view, influence transfer requires activation of other people: they will demonstrate an actual
change in behavior or thought. In this model, influence is transferred when a person is activated
by a new idea and then goes on to activate others. Wang offered a tantalizing alternative by
asserting that a person need not be activated to serve as a conduit of influence but may passively
transfer influence by “tattling” the new idea to others in a way that can either promote or inhibit
its spread. This phenomenon was described at length:
[A] tattler does not have to be activated to be able to spread influence in reality. Many
tattlers are simply messengers passing WOM [word of mouth] messages on to their
friends. They do not have to form opinions of their own. This is an important feature of
WOM communication. For example, Tom bought an iPhone, and told his friend Jeff that
it is cool and he likes it. When Jeff chats with their friend Nick at lunch, he simply tells
Nick the fact that Tom just bought an iPhone and he really likes it. Jeff does not have to
be activated to buy an iPhone of his own or form his opinion about iPhone [sic] at all, but
he does pass indirect/passive/informational influence on to Nick. In fact, messengers play
46
Wang, “Modeling Influence Diffusion,” 14.
81
an important role in WOM marketing, and should be distinguished and included in
influence-diffusion modeling.
47
Wang continued:
An influencer is an active node that originates and spreads its influence in the network. A
messenger is an inactive node that acquires influence and passes the influence it receives
from influencers or other messengers. Once a messenger acquires enough influence
(greater than or equal to its threshold), it is activated and turns into an influencer who
starts to spread out its own influence to others. It is noted that an influencer not only
actively diffuses its influence to others but also acts as a messenger passing along the
influence from other influencers or messengers.
48
Three Degrees of Influence
This entire schema showcases the importance of indirect ties—a tie that exists between
two people who do not know each other and who probably do not even know that the tie exists—
within a community. To help understand how influence is spread through indirect ties, Christakis
and Fowler proposed a relationship amongst network members of three degrees of influence,
where a person three “hops” away can influence an individual. In other words, the doctor of the
dentist of a person’s college roommate can exert influence on that individual.
49
The research
team of Zuo, et al., provided nuance to the notion of three degrees of influence when they noted
that “not all indirect ties are valuable or useful, even at short distances (i.e., 2 hops). For
example, a distant acquaintance of a mere acquaintance is unlikely to have a social incentive for
performing a personal favor… trust is likely diluted under such conditions.”
50
Influence can be
transferred, then, but the nature of the indirect ties through which it is spread is crucial to how
effective the influence transfer is.
47
Ibid., 114–115.
48
Ibid., 123.
49
Christakis and Fowler, Connected, 28.
50
Zuo, et al., “The Power of Indirect Ties,” 188.
82
Beyond the third degree, a node’s influence diminishes to essentially nothing, perhaps
defining the absolute boundary of any extended community. Christakis and Fowler offered three
possible reasons for this diminishing of influence past the third degree. First, it may be intrinsic
decay, where the propagation of error degrades the message until it is useless. This is not unlike
the children’s game of telephone, where—as a message is transmitted from one person to the
next—errors compound until the end result is often unintelligible. Second, this diminishing may
be due to network instability, where beyond the third degree, connections are so ephemeral that
they cease to have meaningful influence. People at the third degree are already rather tenuously
connected to an individual. The roommate’s dentist mentioned above may easily select a new
doctor, thereby breaking all ties beyond the third degree. Third, Christakis and Fowler proposed
that the diminishing of influence may be the result of evolutionary purpose, as people do not
need to be connected further than three degrees for survival.
51
When ensembles are considered
later in this chapter, the concept of three degrees of influence will figure strongly.
Networks, particularly social networks, evolved concurrently with humanity itself,
furthering cooperation and forming communities. Consisting of nodes and edges—the individual
members and the connections between them—these networks are circumscribed by five
overarching rules:
• We shape our networks.
• Our networks shape us.
• Our friends influence us.
• Our friends’ friends influence us.
• Networks have a life of their own.
52
51
Christakis and Fowler, Connected, 28–29.
52
Ibid., 17ff.
83
Abiding by Christakis and Fowler’s five rules, people in networks form communities,
particularly voluntary communities, which serve to propagate an individual’s influence out to the
third degree of separation, and which have emergent properties that are not attributable to any
single individual or to the individuals collectively. The phenomenon of emergence and the role
of influence within a social network will be considered next.
Emergence, Influence, and Change
Social networks abide by Christakis and Fowler’s abovementioned five rules, but three
interrelated ideas guide the way a social network operates, how effectively it operates, or even if
it operates at all. Emergence pertains to those properties of the network that are beyond the
capability of any single member. Influence is the term describing how power flows through the
network and how change is accomplished within the network. And change itself provides a
fascinating object of consideration, as it almost always occurs in an emergent manner.
“Control”
The phenomenon of properties arising out of the network that are not present in its
components—in other words, the phenomenon of emergence—is, by far, the most powerful
dynamic of a network and its communities. Through emergence, networks can be employed to
surpass even the combined abilities of a group of people, if members adhere to certain basic
tenets. The first and central tenet of Emergence Theory is that the phenomenon of emergence is
not the result of a leader-directed, top-down creation. Rather, each component of the network
acts according to specific rules which synergize into a whole greater than the sum of its parts.
53
In fact, without rules, the system would devolve into mere chaos. This concept is itself
counterintuitive, as people (conductors included) generally either seek to discover some
53
Johnson, Emergence, 181.
84
individual controlling every organized set of activities, or they attempt to find the levers of
control and operate those levers themselves. Mark Seton stated succinctly: “people move too
easily from a perception of order in the world to the belief that they can control some part of
it.”
54
The concept that emergent properties arise without a central guiding figure has profound
implications in the understanding of “control.” According to the classical model of human
behavior going back millennia, actions were considered according to a volitional model. An
individual first senses, then thinks, and finally acts in a linear syllogism from input to output.
What contemporary theorists, including Donna Soto-Morettini, have increasingly found is that
the “act” will influence the subsequent “sense,” which leads to a circular feedback model instead
of the classic linear one. In this way, a circular feedback model—also appropriately called a
feedback loop—can quickly generate unexpected emergent outcomes.
55
Emergence
Not every network will give rise to emergent phenomena. Emergent properties require a
certain level of complexity within the network in order to manifest themselves. If a network is
too simple, it will merely follow the traditional input-output schema. And if the components are
too complex, the number of potential outcomes increases exponentially, which actually leads to
nothing occurring at all. A sufficient level of complexity serves as the mechanism of a self-
organizing system and leads to emergent properties. Johnson described this mechanism of self-
organization, and thereby provided an apt definition of emergence. Johnson stated that in an
appropriately complex system, “a linear increase in energy can produce a nonlinear change in the
system that conducts that energy, a change that would be difficult to predict in advance,” for
54
Seton, “The Ethics of Embodiment,” 17.
55
Soto-Morettini, “Reverse Engineering the Human,” 67–68.
85
example, a flower suddenly bursting into bloom after several days of sunshine.
56
Another—
admittedly less attractive—example of a self-organizing system arising from a basal level of
complexity is slime mold. Individual slime mold cells follow two basic rules: emit a certain
chemical, and when a certain amount of that chemical is present, group together to form a large
mass. As mentioned above, rules are required for emergence, and so is complexity, as the slime
mold glob only forms when enough cells are present to create “critical mass.” Through a
mechanism as simple as judging the amount of a chemical present, single cells are able to
“know” whether they should group together or not.
57
The remarkable consideration is that no
individual slime mold cell determines when to form the mass, and no individual cell would be
able to sense the overall pattern that the individuals have formed. Instead, for emergent
properties, the patterns that develop are often only visible from a level above the strictly
individual level.
58
Aside from the necessity of both rules and base-line complexity, the above examples also
show the integral importance of the temporal dimension of a network. Studying a slime mold
system right before the mass forms will not show the researcher a blob of slime mold. Similarly,
studying a flower the day before it blooms from bathing in sunshine will yield the study of a bud
and only hint at the glory of the bloom. Conversely, study of bloom or blob provides only
minimal information about the processes that preceded it. Consequently, it is essential to
recognize that, when considering emergent properties, the study of networks is the study of
patterns over time. It is not merely studying why a network is configured as it is at any given
56
Johnson, Emergence, 38–39, 111.
57
Ibid., 64.
58
Ibid., 40.
86
moment, but studying how and why a certain structure can accomplish a certain thing, and how
the two interact.
59
Independent of Christakis and Fowler’s five rules mentioned above, Johnson provided a
new set of five “rules” specifically addressing emergent behavior, which follow from this local
organization: First, “More is different.” The network changes qualitatively as more nodes are
added. For example, a larger ensemble might be able to endure individuals making more errors
and still present a more convincing performance than a smaller ensemble could. Second, Johnson
stated that “Ignorance is useful.” Simple tasks at every level allow systemic outcomes, but if the
local level becomes too complex, too many possible outcomes arise, and nothing happens. The
slime mold can either form a mass or not by answering the question “is enough chemical present
or not.” Not enough chemical, no mass. If the cells were sensitive to multiple types of inputs and
had multiple possible outputs, forming a mass would be much less likely to occur, as each cell
would be “doing its own thing.”
Johnson’s third rule was “Encourage random encounters.” Random encounters bring new
information into the system. New information is the catalyst for growth and change, and new
information is the most likely factor to disrupt a feedback loop. As a practical implementation of
this idea, Google’s New York City campus was designed so that one is never more than “150
feet from food,…which encourages employees to snack constantly as they bump into coworkers
from different teams within the company,” generating conversations and—presumably—new
ideas.
60
Fourth, Johnson posited that it is important to “Look for patterns in the signs.” Patterns
in outcomes have always been studied. What is novel in Johnson’s formulation is that the search
for patterns should occur in the signifiers to which the local components respond, as these make
59
Ibid., 49.
60
Alter, “Collaborative Office Space,” 99U.
87
changes happen. Johnson suggested that an understanding of emergence arises out of an
understanding of the local signs guiding the members of the network, not simply what occurs
after members of the network have responded to these signs. While one could study the structure
of an ant nest or the behavior of forager ants, E. O. Wilson’s deeper understanding arose from
examining ant pheromones, which are the signs to which the ants responded, turning nest
builders into foragers and vice versa. Perhaps most importantly, Johnson provided a fifth rule for
emergence, “Pay attention to your neighbor…Local information can lead to global wisdom.”
Without paying attention to one’s neighbor, the group becomes simply “a swarm without
logic.”
61
Johnson’s five rules for emergence describe how emergent behavior arises through the
life cycle of a network. Over time, emergent phenomena that help the network are reinforced,
while phenomena that harm it die out, either through a response from the network as a whole or
when the network itself perishes. Therefore, emergence requires both connectedness and
organization, and these are guided by the norms of natural selection.
62
Another key property of an emergent structure is the inherent stability of networks. In the
normal process of a network’s evolution and survival, members come and go.
63
Slime mold cells
or ants die. Tenors leave, or a director gets a different job. In a resilient network, those things
which are communal outlast those which are merely individual, not just in terms of membership,
but in terms of behaviors and outcomes. Quite often in fact, the original members of the network
have long since gone, but whatever mechanisms they put in place (consciously or not) remain
with the new members of the network.
64
The reputation for excellence of the New York
Philharmonic is an apt example of the stability of networks. Long after Bernstein’s death, it
61
Johnson, Emergence, 78–79.
62
Ibid., 118.
63
Christakis and Fowler, Connected, 240.
64
Johnson, Emergence, 82.
88
continues to be one of the premier orchestras in the world. A network’s ability to self-anneal,
where it naturally fills in gaps left by departing members, is crucial to its enduring nature.
65
Emergence, then, is an organic process that arises from a certain level of complexity bound by
rules, which must be studied over time. It is manifested due to the inherent stability of a network
and goes beyond the membership of any individual, and emergent properties develop as
members of the network influence one another in a positive feedback loop.
Influence
To many of the folks who fund the study of social networks, influence is the crucial
factor of Social Network Theory. This is because correctly managed influence can increase sales,
viewership, participation, health outcomes, and—fundamentally—profit. Influence occurs when
one node interacts with another and changes the other’s state: its understanding; its actions; its
beliefs. However, encounters are only influential if they have a chance of altering behavior, and
this is due to the nature of the encounter itself. For example, if a person experiences a
neighborhood’s poverty from the sidewalk instead of from the freeway, it will probably have a
very different effect on that person’s subsequent behavior.
66
Thus, it is the nature of social
contacts, not simply the number of them, which is significant in their influence.
67
As with centrality, there are many kinds of influence, though the most commonly defined
and studied is activation-based influence. In activation-based influence, an influential person (an
influencer) can make other people change their behavior.
68
As a more accurate model, Wang
proposed reachability-based influence. Wang’s novel construct measured people’s influence by
how far they could spread their message, even if some of the nearest nodes did not change their
65
Christakis and Fowler, Connected, 291.
66
Johnson, Emergence, 96.
67
Christakis and Fowler, Connected, 90.
68
Wang, “Modeling Influence Diffusion,” 3.
89
behavior but simply transmitted the message.
69
This applies the same theory discussed above
with regard to Wang’s notion of influence-based centrality, where influence can spread through
non-activated “tattlers.” According to this model, a node’s influence was greater when it was
attached to more influential nodes, as influence could be passed along. This underscores that the
nature of connections, not just their number, is important.
70
Zuo, et al., have created a metric for this sort of reachability-based influence, which they
called a metric of social strength.
71
While a consideration of social strength that does justice to
the topic is beyond the scope of this chapter, Zuo, et al., stated, “multiple types of social
interactions (for example, both professional collaboration and playing tennis after work) result
into [sic] a stronger (direct) relationship than only one type of interaction.”
72
Transfer of Emotion
Influence is the ability to make another node in the network change state. Essential to the
consideration of influence and the behavior of humans in a social network is the consideration of
the spread of emotion, which is called emotional contagion. In this specific case of influence
transfer, emotion becomes a particularly human kind of influence, which can be spread from one
node to another. The spread of emotion through a social network has a distinct evolutionary
function, as emotion conveys meaning more quickly than words.
73
Encountering a terrified
person fleeing from something is a much more effective motivator for others to flee than a
lengthy explanation of the horror that lies just around the corner. The mechanism for emotional
contagion is called affective afference, and it appears to be rooted in facial feedback, where
69
Ibid.
70
Ibid., 58.
71
Zuo, et al., “The Power of Indirect Ties,” 188.
72
Ibid., 189.
73
Christakis and Fowler, Connected, 37ff.
90
people imitate the expressions of others, which is reflected in the well-known saying: “Smile,
and the world smiles with you.”
74
Another evolutionary benefit of affective afference is that it allows people to “read one
another’s minds.” An emotion is conveyed from one person to another, and the second person
concludes that what she is feeling is what the first person is feeling. In fact, the insight that
another person has their own thoughts may have given rise to human self-awareness itself.
75
Similar to the transfer of emotion, in music, influence is transferred among the
performers in an ensemble through the subtle interpersonal communication of music-making,
and this transfer of influence takes place on multiple levels and at multiple timescales. Peter
Keller has explored this topic. At the most basic level, the sounds themselves communicate
information in terms of micro-timing. In each fraction of a second—at levels far smaller than the
beat—differences in sound cause performers to respond and adapt to one another. At a higher
level—the time-span between the length of a beat through the length of several musical
phrases—ancillary movements, such as body sway, serve to convey information. From the most
over-arching perspective, familiarity with co-performers’ parts and the structure of the musical
work allows information and influence transfer among members of an ensemble over the longest
timescale. In short, knowing the information contained in one’s own part is helpful for short
timescale coordination, while knowing others’ parts and their relationship in the larger musical
structure enables long timescale communication.
76
This communication is almost entirely non-
verbal and strikingly akin to affective afference.
74
Ibid., 39.
75
Johnson, Emergence, 203–204.
76
Keller, “Musical Ensemble Performance,” 281.
91
An ensemble—in other words, collaborative, joint music-making—seems to demonstrate
that influence is shared among the performers, rather than simply emanating from the director
outward. Consequently, this type of joint performance builds interpersonal bonds, and
“movement synchrony appears to influence interpersonal affiliation.”
77
Making music together
creates community through its own action: a striking example of Emergence Theory in real life.
“Joint music making may also generate a shift in social categorization whereby the group
moving together becomes a collective social unit. McNeill…describes this as boundary loss or
we-ness.”
78
In fact, singing has been shown to create collective identity and foster cooperation in
diverse groups of children.
79
Emergence and music again seem to be intimately related,
particularly through the effects of the transfer of influence.
Influence transfer does not happen in a vacuum, nor in a static schema of predetermined
pathways. Network structure itself is affected by and affects the transfer of influence, which is
particularly evident with regard to emotional contagion. Through homophily, happy people
cluster together, as do unhappy people. Whether caused by their emotion or an effect thereof
(though research suggests it to be a self-reinforcing combination of the two), happy people tend
to be more central, while unhappy people tend to be more peripheral. However, this does not
mean that there is no hope for unhappy people on the periphery of a social network. Positive
attitude has been repeatedly shown to be contagious and to lead to better outcomes.
80
This
property of emotional contagion can be employed for the benefit of everyone involved.
The importance of the communicability of happiness cannot be overstated. Following the
three degree of influence rule, a person’s happiness is increased by 15% if a person one degree
77
Good and Russo, “Singing Promotes Cooperation,” 340.
78
Ibid., 340.
79
Ibid., 343.
80
Christakis and Fowler, Connected, 49.
92
away is happy, by 10% if a person two degrees away is happy, and by 6% if a person three
degrees away is happy. For perspective, an experiment mentioned by Christakis and Fowler has
shown that having an extra $10,000 has been shown to account for only a 2% increase in
happiness.
81
Happiness is not the only positive property that can be transmitted in a social network.
Treating people well—i.e. kindness—has been found to propagate to three degrees of influence,
too.
82
Emotions, therefore, seem to spread most effectively among those people nearest an
individual within a social network. “All these findings suggest the importance of proximity
among people whose emotions influence each other, and the impact of immediate neighbors
suggests that the spread of happiness may depend as much on frequent face-to-face interaction as
on deep personal connections.”
83
Stated another way, the people one encounters most frequently
have the greatest influence on that person’s emotional state. Even if a person has profound ties to
someone who is physically remote, that remote friend will have less of an impact on that
person’s emotional state than those people encountered most frequently.
It is important to note that the spread of emotion is not an inherently beneficent system.
Loneliness—defined as having one’s needs for intimacy and social connection unmet—is also
contagious within a social network, and solutions for loneliness involve reconnection to the
social network.
84
Once again, the nature of the connections is essential. A person’s connection to
their family has been shown to be far less effective at alleviating loneliness than a person’s
connection to their friends. In fact, loneliness is “much more closely tied to our networks of
optional social connections than to those handed to us at birth.” That is, friends are much more
81
Ibid., 51.
82
Ibid., 298.
83
Ibid., 54.
84
Ibid., 56.
93
influential than family regarding loneliness.
85
Therefore, one of the most effective strategies to
combat loneliness is by helping people reconnect with their network of friends.
This has real application in the educational environment. When relating a student’s
academic success to their position in a social network (both online and offline), Zhang, et al.,
found that “students who occupy central positions in the networks are likely to collaborate more
effectively than those who occupy the peripheral position in the networks. Specifically…the
extent to which individuals are proximal to others in the network was strongly correlated with
their course performance.”
86
It is, therefore, imperative for educators to “identify students who
occupy the peripheral positions in the network and facilitate those students’ interactions with
other students.”
87
Influence is transferrable, and emotions are contagious. A person’s location in
a social network is highly determinative of their outcomes, both in life and in education.
Therefore, establishing an effective system for monitoring, managing, and capitalizing on the
benefits of a social network while minimizing the negative outcomes becomes a goal worthy of
pursuit.
Feedback in Emergent Systems
The above situations—contagious emotion, the transfer of influence, influence-based
centrality, etc.—are examples of positive feedback systems. “Positive” in this sense is not a moral
judgment, addressing whether the outcome is good or bad. Rather, a positive system is a system
that is additive in nature, where added information reinforces the structure of the system, similar
to pushing a child on a swing. Positive systems grow and flourish by their inherent ability to
reinforce their own message. Consequently, positive feedback is used to build the network by
85
Ibid., 57.
86
Zhang, et al., “Student Interactions and Course Performance,” 12.
87
Ibid.
94
amplifying its own signal: supportive relationships expand as the network gains more supportive
relationships. However, unchecked positive feedback forms a feedback loop, where no outside
information is allowed in, and the result is often destructive. Unfortunately, a feedback loop is
very difficult to identify when a person, an ensemble, or a community is in its midst. Feedback
loops are usually only identified at their conclusion, when everybody has adopted the same
meme—a state of mind or understanding—and the proverbial “echo chamber” has been
created.
88
In positive feedback loops, “the rich get richer,” which seems wonderful on its face.
After all, happy people get happier; influential people get more influential; connected people get
more connected. A feedback loop, though, is particularly insidious with regards to peripheral
members of a network. Loneliness can become a feedback loop, causing the “social fabric [to]
fray at the edges” as poorly connected individuals become even less connected.
89
In fact, lonely
people tend to cut the few ties that connect them, but first they infect their few friends with
loneliness, perpetuating the feedback loop.
The solution to a positive feedback loop is negative feedback. Again, “negative” is no
moral pronouncement. Negative feedback simply subtracts from the network. If positive
feedback says “Go!”, negative feedback counterbalances with “No, stop!” Negative feedback
helps regulate a network, like a thermostat turning off the furnace at a certain temperature.
90
For
negative feedback to be effective, two essential principles—scarcity and value—must be met.
First, scarcity is necessary in negative feedback. Too much feedback or competing messages, and
the message gets drowned out. Second, value is also necessary in negative feedback. If the
feedback is not helpful, it is simply rejected.
91
88
Johnson, Emergence, 133.
89
Christakis and Fowler, Connected, 167, 59.
90
Johnson, Emergence, 139.
91
Ibid., 156.
95
The role of feedback has been the subject of research in the transfer of employment-
related skills in the workplace. Here, experimental evidence has shown that the amount of
feedback sources provided to a trainee creates a mathematically positive relationship to transfer
and implementation of training. Additionally, when feedback is considered “helpful” by a
trainee, it has a further positive effect on the transfer of training.
92
Further, helpful feedback from
multiple sources also provides motivation for a trainee to adopt new techniques.
93
In their paper
in the International Journal of Training and Development, researchers Piet van den Bossche,
Mien Segers, and Niekie Jansen studied thirty five academic staff members experiencing a
mandatory, two-day training workshop and concluded that having multiple feedback sources was
the most helpful way to transfer training.
94
When one is centrally located in a social network it is
easier to access multiple feedback sources.
Whether discussing positive feedback building a network or negative feedback regulating
it, both are demonstrations of nodes—people—transferring influence throughout a social
network. The influence can propagate up to three degrees away from an individual, and its most
human incarnation is emotional contagion. Once again, network position is highly determinative
of outcomes, and the research mentioned above has demonstrated that educators need to be
acutely aware of social networks in the educational environment.
Change
With all the rules, examples, manifestations, and functional variations within Emergence
Theory, the complexity experienced by the reader when considering emergence can quickly
devolve sensory overload. To move beyond the confusion, it is helpful to remember that, in a
92
Van den Bossche, et al., “Transfer of training,” 85.
93
Ibid., 91
94
Ibid.
96
basic way, emergent networks are governed by two opposing forces, homophily and influence.
Homophily and influence may be considered as yin and yang to one another. The former causes
like-minded people to cluster, while the latter provides new ideas to an individual or community.
Homophily builds the network through positive feedback. Influence challenges the system to
grow in new ways with potentially disruptive inputs. Combined, they both change the behavior
of the system.
95
Change presents that alluring illusion of control in a social network. Influencers beget
change, and whoever controls the influencers controls the network. After all, change is a natural
property of a network—it is going to occur—so why not attempt to control it? Change, though, is
not automatic in any social network. Traditional network theory posits that influencers in the
network cause other people to change their behavior. An episode of the television series Mad
Men, entitled “A Night to Remember,” reflected this worldview. In the episode, Betty was
influenced to purchase Heineken beer due to Don’s ad campaign. Later, the other employees of
Rogers and Cowan essentially mocked Betty for “falling for” their ad campaign.
96
It appears that
the influencer—Betty’s peer group, which was purportedly purchasing Heineken—was the
crucial component in Betty’s decision. More recent work indicates that, in order for change to
occur, populations must contain both influencers and influenceable people.
97
Having a great idea
is insufficient if there is no one receptive to it. Further, something outside the network—or at
least outside of the community—is required to change norms and behavior.
98
Change requires
something different, and densely connected communities are naturally constructed to maximize
similarities and minimize differences. This means that networks that are too insular are less
95
Wang, “Modeling Influence Diffusion,” 110.
96
Mad Men, “A Night to Remember.”
97
Christakis and Fowler, Connected, 132.
98
Ibid., 81.
97
creative/dynamic, as they have become the aforementioned echo-chambers and not open to new
concepts or ideas. This again parallels Chapter Two, where the creative community is most
effective in the midst of diverse ideas. In fact, concentrated communities—those with excessive
connections within the group—serve to reinforce behavior, while integrated communities—those
with significant connections between groups—are open to change.
99
Of course, there is a balance
that optimizes cohesion and creativity. A community of members more connected outside than
within is no community at all.
100
Change is accomplished in a social network via two vectors, imitation and norms.
101
Ryosuke Shibusawa and Toshiharu Sugawara showed that norms flow in two directions: top-
down from authority and bottom-up from communal interactions.
102
The latter may be
considered emergent norms and would seem likely to spread throughout a network through the
transfer of influence. In fact, their research demonstrated that it was not easy for norms of either
sort (bottom up or top-down) to propagate out to an entire community.
103
Once started, however,
change tended to continue along the initially established trajectory through the process of path
sequence: when one person made a decision, others tended to follow.
104
This is also borne out
when one considers the slime mold or the blooming flower above. These are examples of
threshold models of networks, which demonstrate that when enough nodes adopt a meme (a state
of being or a state of mind), there is a change in the entire system. Path sequence also creates a
synergistic effect; another example of positive feedback and emergence. This synergistic effect
99
Ibid., 117.
100
Ibid., 163.
101
Ibid., 112.
102
Shibusawa and Sugawara, “Norm Emergence Propagation,” 30.
103
Ibid., 37.
104
Christakis and Fowler, Connected, 153.
98
can either accelerate—through positive feedback along the path sequence—or retard—through
negative feedback along the path sequence—adoption of a meme by the larger group.
105
Influencers
Much has been made of the concept of influencers—particularly connected people who
are able to effect change on a large scale—which is embedded in any discussion of change and
influence. Duncan Watts, the mathematician who mathematically proved the concept of six
degrees of separation, when interviewed by Clive Thompson, insisted that “influencers” are a
fictional construct. Using multiple mathematical models of transfer of influence through a
network, Watts and Peter Dodds discovered that “influencers” only appear if one defines the
term ahead of time and defines quite narrowly what “influence” is.
106
To support this contention,
Watts demonstrated that, in the above-mentioned Milgram study, “‘hubs’—highly connected
people—weren’t crucial. They existed, but only 5% of the messages passed through one of these
super connectors. The rest of the messages moved through society in much more democratic
paths, zipping from one weakly connected individual to another, until they arrived at the
target.”
107
Watts concluded that a trend depends little on who starts it, but rather on whether
society is ready to embrace it. In other words, influenceable people are far more important than
influencers. Watts and Dodds wrote, “Under most conditions, we would argue, cascades do not
succeed because of a few highly influential individuals influencing everyone else but rather on
account of a critical mass of easily influenced individuals influencing other easy-to-influence
people.”
108
In other words, “‘If society is ready to embrace a trend, almost anyone can start
one—and if it isn’t, then almost no one can.’”
109
In fact, Watts contended that trends occur
105
Juul and Porter, “Synergistic Effects in Threshold Models,” 3.
106
Watts and Dodds, “Influentials, Networks, and Public Opinion Formation,” 453-454.
107
Thompson, “Is The Tipping Point Toast?”.
108
Watts and Dodds, “Influentials, Networks, and Public Opinion Formation,” 454.
109
Thompson, “Is The Tipping Point Toast?”.
99
essentially at random, amplified by path sequence, and has made mathematical models that
appear to demonstrate this.
110
Not everyone agrees with Watts and Dodds. Traditional marketing and human behavior
theorists tend to be deeply invested in the notion of influencers. By comparing four strategies for
propagating influence through a network, Oliver Hinz, Bernd Skiera, Christian Barrot, and Jan
Becker asserted firmly that influencers are very real.
111
Hinz, et al., studied the spread of
concepts in a network when these ideas were presented (seeded) to people with varying amounts
of influence.
112
Summarizing the work of Hinz, et. al., Wang wrote, “Empirical results showed
that seeding to well-connected individuals (social hubs) is most successful, which can be up to
eight times more successful than other seeding strategies.”
113
It also appeared that an individual’s
friends and family are their most powerful influencers, at least in terms of advertising. Wang
continued, “according to the Nielsen Global Trust in Advertising Report released in 2015, 83%
of online respondents in 60 countries said they trusted the recommendations of friends and
family,” and “the most credible form of advertising comes straight from the people we know and
trust, and the referral from a friend conveys a direct and strong endorsement of the product.”
114
Shibusawa and Sugawara seemed to support this view. They used a synthetic network to model a
node’s weight of influence and how that influence changed as nodes were provided with either
positive or negative feedback. Their models indicate that a node’s weight of influence grew as a
node is rewarded for “correct” behavior.
115
According to both papers, success bred success.
Weight of influence propagated through links and coordinated groups grew.
116
110
Ibid.
111
Hinz, et. al., “Seeding Strategies,” 55.
112
Ibid., 55ff.
113
Wang, “Modeling Influence Diffusion,” 104.
114
Ibid., 101.
115
Shibusawa and Sugawara, “Norm Emergence Propagation,” 31.
116
Ibid., 35.
100
Emergence, influence, and change are interrelated concepts that are central to social
networks. Emergence allows a network to exhibit properties that are greater than the sum of its
parts. Influence is the capacity to effect change within one’s network, and a person’s influence is
related to their position in the network. Emotional contagion is a primal form of influence
transfer and has an exceptional power to cause change within a network, for good or for ill.
Regardless, change tends to occur in an emergent fashion, from the bottom up. Influencers seem
to be present, but unless there are influenceable people, there will be no change. These heady
considerations have a very practical application in the developing field of Motor Learning
Theory, which is slowly moving from the realm of sports into other domains like music and the
performing arts.
Motor Learning
Up to this point, this chapter has been primarily concerned with social networks:
networks where nodes are people. However, much of Social Network Theory and particularly
Emergence Theory may also be aptly related to the fundamental networks that comprise the
human person itself. This is particularly evident in the developing field of motor learning,
especially as it applies to singing. Pioneers in the field of motor learning, Schmidt and Lee,
defined motor learning in an emergent way as “a set of processes associated with practice or
experience leading to relatively permanent changes in the capability for skilled movement.”
[italics in original]
117
In other words, results emerge from practice or repeated experiences, not
simply by knowing something. This is very much an emergent, bottom-up approach to
understanding a specific type of learning. Others provide similar definitions for motor learning,
such as “knowing through action,” where ideas are validated through experience by students
117
Schmidt and Lee, Motor Control and Learning, 327.
101
while they are scrutinized and affirmed by teachers or physically-based learning, as opposed to
intellectual learning.
118
All of these definitions are predicated on emergence, a bottom-up
learning model where the body is learning through carefully targeted repetition. In fact, just as
with emergent systems, there is evidence from motor learning experiments that significant
learning can occur without the conscious mind even being aware of any learning happening at
all.
119
The most recent understandings present a nuanced view, showing a symbiosis between
mind and body in motor learning, and leading to an emergent understanding of motor learning
that more closely resembles Soto-Morettini’s circular feedback model than Wilson’s ant colony.
From a theoretical level, Jason Stanley and John Krakauer have articulated a cogent
schema, whereby some declarative knowledge is necessary for successful motor learning.
120
Research by Charles Limb and Allen Braun using functional MRI scans of jazz musicians
improvising demonstrated that certain areas of the brain are—in fact—suppressed during
improvisation.
121
Specifically, the areas suppressed are those that are closely coordinated with
human “executive function…[and which are critical in the human] ability to plan, to make
decisions, to form judgments, to assess risk, and to formulate insight.”
122
Further research at
Johns Hopkins by Gabriel Summer Rankin, Monica Lopez-Gonzalez, Patpong Jiradejvong, and
Charles Limb, focused on the jazz activity of “trading fours,” where two musicians alternate
improvising four-bar phrases. In this case, they found the expected deactivation of certain areas
of the brain, but also discovered that “[t]rading fours was characterized by activation of the left
IFG (Broca’s area) and left posterior STG (Wernicke’s area)…[and that the] right hemisphere
118
Seton, “The Ethics of Embodiment,” 13; Soto-Morettini, “Reverse Engineering the Human,” 69.
119
Schmidt and Lee, Motor Control and Learning, 355.
120
Stanley and Krakauer, “Motor Skill Depends on Knowledge of Facts,” 10.
121
Limb and Braun, “Neural Substrates of Spontaneous Musical Performance.”
122
López-González and Limb, “Musical Creativity and the Brain,” 4.
102
homologues of Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas were also activated.”
123
Performers must react
correctly and immediately, without conscious thought. It would simply take too long for the
brain to assess and adapt to every input using the complicated architecture of the frontal lobe.
Instead, the several discreet areas of the brain—and perhaps other parts of the body—bound by
simple routines or rules created through targeted rehearsal, create a synergistic, emergent
performance all on their own.
Musically, there are three key activities in this process: anticipation, attention, and
adaptation. In anticipation the body creates and makes use of two models that allow pre-planned
reactions to situations. In other words, the body has been trained to predict what action is most
likely to occur next in a given sequence of actions, so that it will be ready to perform that action
when the time comes. This is eventually done without conscious thought.
124
The next key
activity is attention, which requires a three-way split of focus. The individual must be
simultaneously aware of their own actions, the actions of others, and the total ensemble sound.
125
Finally, two kinds of adaptation create the small changes that keep the ensemble coherent.
Assimilative adaptation copies small fluctuations in collaborators in order to stay together. In
other words, if the soloist drops a fraction of a beat, through assimilative adaptation, the
remainder of the ensemble does likewise to maintain the integrity of the performance.
Compensatory adaptation is the internal error correction within the musician that resynchronizes
an individual’s internal functions when there is an error.
126
In the example above, the musician’s
inner tempo adjusts by that fraction, so that she remains in sync with the ensemble. These three
123
Donnay, et al., “Neural Substrates of Interactive Musical Improvisation,” 7.
124
Keller, “Musical Ensemble Performance,” 275–276.
125
Ibid., 277.
126
Ibid., 278.
103
emergent processes—anticipation, attention, and adaptation—provide the foundation for
successful motor learning and will have immediate application in musical pedagogy.
Feedback in the Context of Motor Learning
Just as in Chapter Two, where feedback was critical to building a creative community,
feedback is also crucial in learning, whether in motor learning or in the traditional sense.
Schmidt and Lee posited two types of feedback: inherent and augmented. Inherent feedback is
immediate sensory input to the person performing an action through the working of the action
itself.
127
In other words, it does not require an outside entity to provide information to the actor.
Conversely, “augmented feedback is information provided about the action that is supplemental
to, or that augments, the inherent feedback” [italics in original].
128
Lynn Maxfield specifically researched the role of augmented feedback (which he called
extrinsic feedback) in student singers, and its emergent components are striking. In general,
“extrinsic feedback…can serve to motivate a learner, reinforce a behavior, inform the learner,
and/or produce a dependency on the feedback.” [italics in original]
129
This augmented feedback,
however, serves as a course correction for a system, not as a central authority directing the
learning. Maxfield’s research confirmed that low-frequency extrinsic feedback was a better
strategy for experienced singers, while high-frequency extrinsic feedback was more
advantageous for novices. This is referred to as bandwidth, or bandwidth theory.
130
With a little
reflection, this is actually common sense. A singer who does not know much will require greater
feedback, but a more trained singer will have developed an emergent system for self-correction,
127
Schmidt and Lee, Motor Control and Learning. 393.
128
Ibid., 394.
129
Maxfield, “Application of Motor-learning Theory,” 17.
130
Ibid., 163.
104
and extrinsic feedback may actually become a barrier to learning. Keller’s work underscored this
by demonstrating that advanced ensembles needed less guidance than beginning ensembles.
131
Emergent networks are guided by feedback. Some feedback is positive, which builds the
network. Other feedback is negative, which regulates the network. In a basic sense, feedback in
the form of a reward is more likely to increase behavior, while punishment decreases the
behavior.
132
However, a subtler distinction emerged for Maxfield, as positive reinforcing
feedback was more effective than negative reinforcing feedback, but both were more effective
than punishment at achieving optimal outcomes.
133
These discoveries appear to be just the
beginning of what could be possible if Motor Learning Theory were applied systematically to the
domain of music. However, research on motor learning in music is still in its infancy more than
thirty years after the pioneering music psychologist Robert Sidnell lamented the lack of study in
this very area.
134
Network Position and Ensemble Intelligence and Personality: The Turn to Music
It has already been demonstrated how a person’s social network centrality is crucial to
one’s influence, one’s susceptibility to emotional contagion, and one’s ability to create change in
a network. What has not yet been addressed, however, is in what specific ways centrality affects
individuals, nor has this chapter considered what emergent properties may be present in
ensembles. These key areas are addressed forthwith.
As previously mentioned, a person’s social network centrality has been shown to have
more of an influence on their life outcomes than any other single factor. Summarizing Marlene
Burkhardt and Daniel Brass, Zhang, et al., stated “centrality is conceptualized as ‘ease of access
131
Keller, “Musical Ensemble Performance,” 279.
132
Maxfield, “Application of Motor-learning Theory,” 3.
133
Ibid., 18.
134
Sidnell, “Motor Learning in Music Education,” 7.
105
to others.’”
135
They elaborated with concepts from Mark Granovetter, stating, “the structure of
the network will explain an individual’s behavior in a social framework beyond what is
explained by the characteristics of the individual, as most behavior is closely embedded in
networks of interpersonal relations.”
136
In other words, people’s behavior is, in very large part,
due to their network position. Further, “a dense network can reduce the obstacles to initiate
coordination and can result in more interactions among actors than a sparse network can.”
137
Here is yet another example of positive feedback in a network setting, where highly connected
nodes are able to coordinate even more effectively.
A central network position often gives rise to the complementary effect, where
synergies or fit of [community] resources … lead to enhanced [community] performance.
‘Fit’ indicates resources are complementary. When there is a fit, the impact of these
complementary resources on the performance outcome is far beyond the simple addition
of these complementary resources.
138
This seems to indicate that network centrality is key to emergent properties in a network.
Kawase’s research discussed above supported this assertion with its exposition of personality
traits that lead to successful musical collaboration. Kawase continued, “given that these
personality traits are prosocial, friendly characteristics that facilitate successful interaction with
other people, performers with these traits may be better adapted for the interpersonal work of
ensemble performance.”
139
Again, the traits which build a robust social network also undergird
an ensemble and make the emergence of a successful ensemble performance highly likely.
135
Zhang, et al., “Student Interactions and Course Performance,” 2.
136
Ibid., 3.
137
Ibid.
138
Ibid., 5.
139
Kawase, “Associations Among Music Majors,” 299.
106
Domains of Connection
Centrality is also determinative in student educational outcomes. Zhang, et al., studied
learning with respect to a student’s position in both online and offline social networks. The
results were profoundly informative.
Students interact with each other more effectively when a social structure enables them to
access a larger base of contacts and makes the exchange of information faster,…when
students interact with each other, they also transform the network structure in which they
are embedded…and such network structure will in turn enable or constrain their
interactions…When the structure of the network changes, the way students interact with
each other changes accordingly, [and]…students who occupied central positions in
various networks, e.g., communication network, advice network, friendship network or
collaborative learning network, achieved better course grades.
140
In the age of Facebook and the omnipresent online incarnations of social networks, it is
important to remember that offline social networks have existed for as long as humanity. While
similar, these two types of networks are not identical. Zhang, et al., compared outcomes from
online versus offline social networks. One might assume that “connected is connected,” and that
the medium of connection is irrelevant. Another might assume that “real world” connections are
the only authentic way to interact, and that an online social network is only ersatz connection at
best. The results from Zhang, et al., were more nuanced than might be thought at first read, and
they are predicated on the type of communication necessary to a given interaction. The two are
complementary. Online connectivity is a better choice when individuals’ availability is a
concern, when giving everyone a chance to speak is important, and when the group wishes to be
able to revisit the history of its collaboration. Conversely, offline connectivity is more effective
at correcting misunderstandings, conveying context, and providing personal focus.
141
With
regard to education, they found that
140
Zhang, et al., “Student Interactions and Course Performance,” 2.
141
Ibid., 7.
107
offline closeness centrality was found to be positively related to course performance and
the correlation was significant… Online closeness centrality was found to be positively
related to course performance but the correlation was not significant… When both online
and offline closeness centrality were high, students had the best course grades, indicating
a synergistic effect… and offline centrality is more important than online centrality in
determining course performance.
142
Emergent Properties of an Ensemble
Network position is integral to an individual’s relationship to the network as a whole, and
the complexity of the network gives rise to emergent properties. Ensembles are networks, so a
legitimate question arises: Do ensembles have emergent properties? Common experience
contends that an ensemble could have a personality. For instance, ensembles often develop
reputations—the well-known examples are usually negative—based on a sort of emergent
identity. It is sadly common to hear of an ensemble that has difficulty retaining a director due to
the personality of said ensemble. Further, Emergence Theory seems to maintain that an ensemble
can even have an intelligence. While there has been no direct inquiry into whether either
personality or intelligence do—in fact—emerge in ensembles, several sources provide tantalizing
clues to both. Keller posited, “musical ensemble performance is a social activity to the extent
that it involves cooperation and the communication of aesthetic ideas between individuals.”
143
As shown above, community is the primary outgrowth of a social network, which gives rise to
emergent properties, so it seems that both ensemble personality and intelligence should be
possible.
Seton built on the idea of an artistic social activity building connections and creating
community by including the audience in consideration of the performance experience. Seton
stated that performers and audience “profoundly form each other and are formed by each other.”
142
Ibid., 11.
143
Keller, “Musical Ensemble Performance,” 280.
108
[italics in original]
144
For this formation to occur, vulnerability is necessary for the performer,
but also for the audience, so that they may affect one another.
145
Therefore, good performance is
not something that the performers create by themselves. Rather, Soto-Morettini stated that it
occurs in the intersubjective space between performer and the audience.
146
The social dimension
of performance is again underscored as a way to build community. Perhaps this could be called
emergent performance.
Within Seton’s mutually formative dynamic, power circulated in a “mutual though not
necessarily equitable interdependency,” where “students always looked to the teachers for
guidance, approval and recognition. The…teachers looked to the students to be willing,
vulnerable and self-disciplined.”
147
For Seton, “asymmetrical relations of power…ensured
teachers seemed always in possession of knowledges [sic]. Students implicitly understood that
they must submit and become vulnerable in order to be recognized.”
148
Chapter Two asserted,
and Seton agreed, that vulnerability is at the core of the performing arts and must not be excised
from the learning process.
149
To Seton, these seemed to be component parts in a larger whole,
which follow a set of rules and have reached a necessary level of complexity. Combined with the
research above about how emotions propagate within a network, the research seems to indicate
that an ensemble personality could emerge.
For an ensemble’s capacity to have intelligence, several authors provided insight. Soto-
Morettini noted that collaborative music-making creates an “environmental, responsive
144
Seton, “The Ethics of Embodiment,” 6.
145
Ibid., 17.
146
Soto-Morettini, “Reverse Engineering the Human,” 74.
147
Seton, “The Ethics of Embodiment,” 8.
148
Ibid., 12.
149
Seton, “Ethics of Embodiment”, 14; In critiquing actor training methods, Seton seemed to imply that this power-relationship
had negative connotations for the students, as they were easily exploitable by the teachers. For Seton, since the students were
expected to be constantly vulnerable, their teachers were able to coerce them into doing things—such as reliving highly traumatic
experiences without the benefit of a licensed mental health professional—that would be repugnant in other contexts.
109
performance,” not unlike a jazz combo improvising, which is more than one would get from a
top-down approach.
150
This would seem to indicate that an ensemble has an intellect all its own,
at least during performance. Keller stated that
ensemble performers in the western classical tradition (and indeed many other traditions)
invest considerable time into collaborative rehearsal in order to establish shared
performance goals, i.e. unified conceptions of the ideal integrated ensemble sound.
Shared performance goals ensure that expressive variations in performance parameters—
including timing, intensity, articulation, and intonation—are aligned across musicians.
151
This alignment, and the coordination required to achieve it, are suggestive of an ensemble
intelligence, as well. Good and Russo acknowledged that “group singing typically requires a
high level of cooperation among members,” and that collaborative performance provides
“emphasis on creative expression and the need for synchronization of body movements.”
152
Again, if emergent intelligence arises from a social network, it is in order to accomplish a task.
Musical performance appears to fit that criterion. Finally, Christine Reardon MacLellan explored
what choir members gained from their ensemble membership. “[C]hoir students derived meaning
from reaching out to others, meeting new people, and group interaction… [C]hoir students
valued social activities, friendships, and being part of the group.”
153
Both ensemble personality
and intelligence, when employed in a healthy manner, served to build up the individual
members, creating an atmosphere of collaboration and productive risk-taking. Again, there are
multiple parallels to the creative community of Chapter Two. And, in a rudimentary sense then,
it would seem that ensembles can possess a sort of emergent intelligence, particularly during
performance.
150
Soto-Morettini, “Reverse Engineering the Human,” 73.
151
Keller, “Musical Ensemble Performance,” 274.
152
Good and Russo, “Singing Promotes Cooperation,” 340.
153
Reardon MacLellan, “Differences in Myers-Briggs Personality Types,” 94.
110
Network centrality is crucial in an individual’s outcomes, providing ease of collaboration
and giving rise to the complementary effect. Further, online and offline networks differ in the
kind of communication they enhance, but the two are complementary when looking to maximize
an individual’s connectivity and centrality. These concepts flow into the realm of musical
ensembles as well. While no research has been done specifically in this area, it appears that
ensembles can exhibit both emergent personality and emergent intellect.
A Practical Synthesis and Application to the Current Research Project
Thus far, this chapter has considered four overarching topics: networks and communities,
emergence and influence, Motor Learning Theory, and the importance of network position and
an ensemble’s emergent personality and intelligence. All of these, while interesting in their own
right, become powerful tools for the choral director who wishes to understand how people
influence each other and create a dynamic ensemble. Thus, this chapter concludes with a
synthesis of these topics, especially in relationship to recruiting and retention of choral ensemble
members, and specifics on how these ideas influenced the current study. The empirical
consideration of these same topics with respect to melodic and rhythmic accuracy is the subject
of this dissertation and will be discussed in subsequent chapters.
Recruiting
The sea-change in understanding based on research in Social Network Theory and
Emergence Theory presents profound implications both for being an effective leader of and
ensemble and for being a valuable member of an ensemble, as it demonstrates how people
actually influence one another, not as may have been postulated in the past or as people may
desire. As presented above, it is the nature of networks for members to come and go.
Consequently, recruitment is a continual task for choral conductors. When seeking to build an
111
ensemble or increase the number of members, it seems most appropriate to first consider
community and its emergence. Community, arising from cooperation, is foundational to social
networks. Further, communities arise spontaneously from shared interests and goals. Therefore, a
savvy director will work to capitalize on the common aspirations of potential members to create
an attractive opportunity for them to share their talents and build a functioning, supportive
community. In this study, community was designed to arise from a common purpose—learning a
new piece of music—and a shared interest in singing. In fact, little communities were predicted
to arise in each rehearsal group.
Next, it is illustrative to consider influence. Since people most readily rely on
recommendations from friends and family, personal invitations from current members to their
friends are a key source of influence. Additionally, because influence can be transferred both
actively and passively out to three degrees of influence, it is important that even people who are
not activated to join the ensemble be encouraged to spread the invitation to their connections. In
this case, however, it seems essential that the initial invitation be particularly attractive, as the
passive conduit of influence can act to either promote or inhibit the spread of the message. In
other words, the recruiting should be relatable to people who are not initiates of the performing
arts, and recruiting messages must be formulated with an awareness of social stigmas that may
exist around choral music, such as a perceived lack of masculinity. Given sufficient influence
from a variety of sources, it is possible that the passive node could even eventually be converted
to an active node.
Further, there is a fine balance to maintain between casting a wide net and squandering
limited resources on too broad of a campaign. First, it seems important that recruiting be done
frequently and to a broad audience. If many voices are inviting new members to join the
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ensemble, the complementary effect can occur, which—if done positively—can accelerate the
speed of recruiting. Conversely, recruiting must be targeted. Change occurs when there is an
influencer and influenceable people. Messages tailored to those likely to be influenced will be
most effective. So too, the strength of indirect ties is important. It will be much more effective
for recruiters to ask people with whom they have a strong relationship than those they barely
know. Striking the proper balance will depend on many considerations, not the least of which are
available resources and member engagement. For the purposes of this study, the recruiting
process made use of these strategies. Friends talking to one another transferred the researcher’s
influence throughout the ensemble. Additionally, the ensemble teacher’s support (analogous to a
friend or family members discussed above by Wang) provided greater weight to the recruiting
than if it had been left solely to the researcher, a stranger.
Retention
Within the bailiwick of influence also lies the notion that success breeds success. This is
another incarnation of the complementary effect. As the group grows and experiences success,
the members will be more apt to recruit on their own, thereby ostensibly increasing both the
group’s size and success. Therefore, it is also crucial that the experiences of the ensemble be
positive. In the study groups, this component was deeply troubling to the researcher. In one
sense, the researcher had to make the “traditional” ensemble experience very teacher-directed
and critical, and perhaps unfamiliar to the participants, who were used to a somewhat warm and
collaborative choral classroom. In another sense, it was incumbent upon the research to not cause
creative scars to the participants and make them feel unsuccessful or shameful. This tightrope
was not always navigated successfully, as one student chose not to participate and another
considered dropping out of the study. (In that case, the influence of his friends convinced him to
113
remain in the study.) In the end, “success” for the Traditional Rehearsal group was effectively
defined as singing the correct notes and rhythms, regardless of how they were treated by the
conductor.
Emergence Theory has much to say about how a successful ensemble will be managed
(versus being directed). Since members and potential members are simultaneously inhabiting any
number of emergent, bottom-up networks at any given moment, an authoritarian model will not
function effectively in the twenty-first century. Seton’s asymmetrical power relationship will still
exist, but the individual contributions of the members will be essential in guiding the course of
the ensemble. Additionally, norms flow both upward and downward in a group. Embracing
positive norms spreading from the “grass roots” will be more effective than attempting to dictate
norms. If this is done correctly, positive change will continue due to path sequence. One person
“on board” tends to lead to many people “on board.” Negative norms may also emerge from the
bottom-up. In this case, the director and key influencers—ensemble members who are
particularly central—provide negative (subtractive) feedback, providing a check on the emergent
negative norms. Countering a negative norm with a positive norm and providing multiple
pathways to reinforce the desired norms will be particularly effective. In the rehearsal groups for
this study, emergent properties did arise, including norms, ensemble personality, work ethic, and
tuning/intonation. While this was—to some extent—a function of the size of the rehearsal group,
it occurred to some degree in all of them. The effect of group size on the emergent properties of
pitch and rhythmic accuracy were specifically studied in this research, and—as predicted in the
literature—positive and negative (additive and subtractive) feedback from members was
instrumental in emergent properties arising.
114
For retention, one needs only to examine the role of network centrality. Community is
evolutionarily programmed into the human DNA. For an ensemble to be successful, it first must
create an authentic community. A student’s centrality is directly related to success. Recall that
Zhang, et al, found a significant correlation between a student’s centrality and performance in
academics. Therefore, if a director wants student and ensemble success, she will work to make
multiple connections among the students and connect them both online and offline. An increase
in both transivity and multiplexity of every ensemble member will synergistically undergird the
fabric of the ensemble itself. Increased transivity will create a denser, more supportive network
of singers as the number of the connections of connections will increase, leading to a greater
number of people who have meaningful relationships. Increased multiplexity will increase the
depth of individual relationships, as singers will have connections both due to the ensemble and
outside of it. Group social outings would be just one way to foster multiplexity. In this study,
multiplexity entailed the relationships amongst participants who shared classes with one another
outside of choir, shared sports teams, churches, as well as interactions they may have had
previously with the researcher (such as singing in the researcher’s honor choir) outside of the
research setting.
Related to the consideration of a student’s network position is consideration of the spread
of emotions. Both happiness and loneliness are contagious, so—without being fraudulent—the
director must foster the former. In this study, participants whose participation was often
peripheral were encouraged to participate by the researcher in the direct-instruction groups, and
by their peers in the Strategic Risk-Taking groups. Based on information referenced above, a
happy conductor can increase the happiness of the members of his ensemble by 15%, the
members’ friends by 10%, and their friends’ friends by 6%. Further, it has been shown that
115
receiving $10,000 increases a person’s happiness by only 2%.
154
If extrapolation is true in this
instance, and if $10,000 really increases a person’s happiness by 2%, then the happy choral
conductor could be worth $90,000 per member. Even if—in actuality—these numbers are
exaggerated, a happy choral conductor will still have a measurable impact on increasing his
ensemble members’ happiness.
Ensemble Management
The study of Social Network Theory and Emergence Theory can provide a director with
incredible understanding of her ensemble, and one of the first insights will be that “control” is a
concept of the past. Instead, a director will maximize each individual’s talents and abilities,
which can be done by focusing on each member’s organic role in the ensemble. After all, every
member of the ensemble will have a role to play, primarily determined by his or her location in
the network. These roles can both support and stymie an individual’s gifts. Christakis and Fowler
speak of cooperators, free riders, punishers, and loners. These roles can be optimized—for
example, free riding minimized, loners connected, cooperators empowered, and punishers given
appropriate boundaries—if the conductor understands how they function. This was another
concept that the researcher attempted to leverage in this study, as roles were never optimized in
the direct instruction group, but in the student-led rehearsals for the treatment group, roles were
allowed to emerge and often supported the shared goal of the group.
Perhaps counterintuitively, it is also important that the ensemble not get so connected
within itself that it loses the creativity and influence of new ideas that originate from outside the
group. A choir that functions as a clique will not effectively gain members nor will it continue as
a healthy ensemble for long. Unfortunately, the “echo chamber” is difficult to spot as it is
154
Christakis and Fowler, Connected, 51.
116
occurring, so building in a few negative feedback structures (even simple questions like “when
was the last time the ensemble recruited a really ‘different’ member?”) can accomplish a great
deal in disrupting a feedback loop. The director must also remember that participation in
voluntary communities usually accounts for less than 10% of a person’s total leisure time, so the
demands made on members’ time should be commensurate with the benefits derived from the
experience. For this reason, the rehearsals during this study were limited to twelve minutes, so as
not to monopolize an extensive portion of the participants’ total leisure time.
Emergence Strategies
Johnson’s five rules for emergent behavior apply directly to the ensemble and were
directly informative to this study as well. “More is different.” The ensemble experiences
qualitative changes as more members join, and this was studied by having the research groups
range in size from two to seven members. “Ignorance is useful.” For Johnson, every member of a
group knowing everything can actually inhibit emergence. Each member accomplishing simple
tasks is more advantageous than excessive knowledge. In an ensemble setting, the director must
scaffold the educational experience, so that singers are not introduced to everything at once.
Singers can be encouraged to take risks and make mistakes, as this should result in a deeper
understanding of their own role, which was the purpose of this study. “Encourage random
encounters.” New members bring new perspectives. Additionally, new perspectives can help
enhance the social justice aspect of choral music through deeper and more diverse connections,
though this only bore indirectly on the current research. “Look for patterns in the signs.” The
director must focus on the process, not only the product. Changes in the signifiers that influence
individual behavior can inform a director when change is needed “on the fly.” “Pay attention to
your neighbor.” Great ensemble performance is just that: an ensemble performance, which
117
cannot occur without communication among the members. This also reflects back on the need
for maximized transivity and multiplexity for members of the ensemble. The last two rules
combined undergirded the entire current research project. When everyone—not just the
conductor—is looking for patterns in the signs and paying attention to their neighbors,
everything improves.
Emergence Theory also has something to say about how the pedagogical aspect of
rehearsal is conducted. The conductor’s feedback will motivate, reinforce, and inform. However,
there is the danger that it will create dependency as well. To avoid dependency, the conductor
can employ strategies straight out of Emergence Theory and imbue each individual member with
a set of rules that will build up the ensemble. These rules can be summarized in the motor
learning terms of anticipation, attention, and adaptation. If the singer is focused on these three,
they will improve on their own, and the feedback of the instructor will only help them achieve
more quickly. Positive reinforcing feedback is the most effective, such as “increase your
airflow.” Negative reinforcing feedback is less effective, such as “stop raising your eyebrows.”
However, both are more effective than punishment, which is food for thought for any director
who has held an ensemble late or assigned extra rehearsals as a consequence. Lessons from
Motor Learning Theory also apply. Singers must be taught to recognize and respond to inherent
(intrinsic) feedback. Then, following the bandwidth theory, augmented (extrinsic) feedback is
provided based on the experience level of the ensemble. With less experienced groups, more
frequent feedback is very helpful. For more advanced groups, the opposite is true. For the
treatment group in this study, the scripts for the gradual assumption of leadership by the
participants represent a concrete application of Emergence Theory and Motor Learning Theory
to choral pedagogy.
118
Perhaps the most interesting insight from all of the research reviewed in this chapter is
Soto-Morettini and Seton’s notions that excellent performance occurs in the intersubjective space
between performer and audience,
155
and that the performer and audience both form and are
formed by one another.
156
A great performance does not arise from only having great performers,
nor does it arise simply from having a great audience. It is the complementary effect of every
aspect of the performance that makes it great. The importance of the audience may speak to the
benefit of having sections perform for each other, for having visitors in the rehearsal room, for
having multiple concerts, and for having the singers visualize an audience during rehearsal.
These concepts represent areas of future research and were not considered in this study.
Whether creating an ensemble, building an ensemble, or working to maintain an
ensemble, Soto-Morettini’s circular feedback model is very applicable: Sense to Think to Act
and back to Sense, and so on.
157
A healthy system will support itself as it adapts and changes to
new sensations, and new properties will emerge that are greater than anything attributable to the
individual members. The whole will be greater than the sum of its parts. All of which bring this
chapter full-circle.
Conclusion
Christakis and Fowler’s five rules of social network, applied explicitly to the musical
ensemble, are a fitting conclusion to this wide-ranging excursion. Musicians shape their
networks by choosing with whom to associate and how many connections to have (thus
determining centrality). Musicians are shaped by their networks, as the more connected people
become, the more susceptible they are to what flows through the network. Musicians’ friends
155
Soto-Morettini, “Reverse Engineering the Human,” 74.
156
Seton, “The Ethics of Embodiment,” 6.
157
Soto-Morettini, “Reverse Engineering the Human,” 67–68.
119
influence them, because every relationship is—at its heart—a dyad. Musicians’ friends’ friends
affect them due to hyperdyadic spread and the transfer of influence. And, the ensemble has a life
of its own—even its own personality and intellect—meaning that directors must be deliberate
about inputs when building a network and remain vigilant in watching it grow and mature if they
wish to create the sort of ensemble that they would want to be a part of for years to come.
120
Chapter Four: Review of Literature on Failure and the Maker Movement
Failure (or the danger thereof) is a component of every human endeavor. In fact,
Deweyan pragmatism maintains that small failures are experienced every day, which hopefully
lead to individual inquiry and the creation of knowledge out of these disrupted expectations. The
human condition is, in a real sense, built more upon failure than success.
1
Chapter Four represents the conclusion of the review of literature for this dissertation.
Where Chapter Two studied how shame, vulnerability, risk-taking, and creativity interact, and
Chapter Three considered how the unseen forces of interpersonal networks shape an ensemble,
this chapter explores how one possible outcome of risk-taking—failure—is treated in the
literature, and how the maker movement intersects with that consideration. The research on the
maker movement in this chapter provides a conceptual analogue to what a constructivist choral
rehearsal could look like. The consideration of responses to failure and those things that promote
a constructive approach to failure inspired the study itself. Together, they shaped the
justifications for choices made in instructional techniques and language in the experimental
rehearsals.
The concept of failure is not unfamiliar in everyday life. It is imbedded in the iterative
nature of the scientific method, outlined in John Dewey’s five elements of reflective practice:
suggestions, problem, hypothesis, reasoning, and testing.
2
Industry, especially the technology
sector, “devotes enormous resources to research and development, a process that acknowledges
failure as an essential component.”
3
In the burgeoning maker movement, failure is tacitly
considered integral.
4
And yet, though universally implicit, failure itself has not been extensively
1
Stoller, “Educating from Failure,” 24-25.
2
Dewey, How We Think, 19-12.
3
Ferguson, “Failure IS an Option,” 68.
4
A representative sample of thoughts on failure and education in the “maker movement” can be found Halverson and Sheridan,
“The Maker Movement in Education”.
121
studied in constructivist, maker, or music education research.
5
Rather, failure is often ignored or
treated as a pitfall to be avoided at all costs. However, the maker movement and its constructivist
framework present the best model for a healthy incorporation of the concept of failure into music
education.
To address this issue, this chapter will first outline the current thought and practices
regarding the role of failure and its consequences in music education. Then, through the lens of
constructivist educational philosophy, it will provide background on the maker movement,
though in many ways, the phenomenon defies labels. Once addressed, the chapter will synthesize
several aspects of constructivist (and constructionist) thought that tangentially treat upon failure,
followed by an explicit discussion of failure from a Deweyan aesthetic viewpoint and an
exploration of the literature on the theory of constructive failure. The chapter will then highlight
some of the writing done at the intersection of the maker movement and the arts. Finally, it will
apply the concepts contained in Chapters Two through Four to this research project. In doing so,
a snapshot of the current thinking regarding failure and music (and arts) education will be
offered and its relation to this dissertation will be established.
Current Practices Regarding Failure
In the current state of music education, many authors treat failure as something to wholly
avoid, often because failure (or the acceptance thereof) is equated with the educator embracing
lower standards of musical performance or learning than those who demand what they style
excellence or perfection at any cost. Patrick Freer quoted several musical luminaries in this
regard, but the consensus is the same: the ensemble must feel like they have accomplished
something in rehearsal, and failure is the antithesis of accomplishment. According to one giant in
5
One scholarly approach to failure is work by Stoller, which will be referenced below.
122
the field, “failure does little to win your choir, and success builds the ensemble’s trust in you as a
conductor… Success is paramount in the positive learning curve.”
6
Margaret Clifford quoted the
maxim, “nothing succeeds like success,” and referenced the movement in education,
characterized in William Glasser’s 1969 Schools Without Failure, that strove “maximized
academic success and minimize failure and error-making in educational settings” to underscore
this.
7
Donahue related that many consider failure as an inchoate offense against human nature, as
humans strive to be “masters of our own stuff” and to strive for “self-reliance, humility, and
agency.”
8
Failure undermines these crucial components of humanity.
The countervailing tendency of a “failure phobia” is to strive for perfection at every
moment: in rehearsal, performance, and even in personal practice. Chapter Two dealt with—
among other things—the pitfall of perfectionism as a response to feelings of vulnerability. It
became clear through review of that literature that perfection is not only impossible, but also
harmful to those individuals who strive to attain it. Brown and others espoused growth models,
which sought measurable improvement in each iteration as an antidote to the common upshot of
perfectionism: concluding that it was nobler to continue to fail at achieving perfection than to
strive for growth at every turn. In the most commonly encountered model of music education
today, where failure is considered dreadful, is it any wonder that the instances of performance
anxiety occur so frequently? Such an emphasis on achievement is not without consequence. Due
to an inordinate emphasis on achievement, “47% [of musicians] blamed [performance] anxiety
for their impaired performance.”
9
6
Freer, “The Conductor's Voice,” 33-34.
7
Clifford, “Constructive Failure,” 108.
8
Donahue, “Awakening Creative Thinking,” 9.
9
Lehmann, et al., Psychology for Musicians, 145.
123
In music performance anxiety, three factors combine in unique ways to activate the
musicians’ “fight-or-flight” mechanisms during performance anxiety: the musicians themselves,
the environment and circumstances, and the musicians’ mastery of the music.
10
The musicians
themselves may worry about disappointing people, “worry about making mistakes, such as
forgetting things, [worry about] being unable to play expressively, looking foolish,
hyperventilating, or even blacking out and fainting on stage.”
11
This can lead to self-
handicapping, self-sabotage, and perfectionism, which creates a vicious cycle of destructive
behaviors; precisely an incarnation of the harmful feedback loop considered in Chapter Three.
12
Andreas Lehmann, John Sloboda, and Robert Woody expanded upon this, writing, “the state of
affairs may be exacerbated by the social context of our Western concert tradition, which is
marked by strict observance of performance conventions and great psychological separation of
the performer from the audience.”
13
Charles Schmidt also found that fear of failure is in the top
half of contributing motivations for performance achievement in instrumental music for students
in high school instrumental ensembles.
14
One need only apply the lessons learned from emergent
performance—contained in the work of Soto-Morettini and Seton cited in Chapter Three, which
held that performance actually occurs in the intersubjective space between performer and
audience, who profoundly form and are formed by one another—to discover that this older view
of performance, with its existential chasm between performer and audience, is both harmful and
factually inaccurate.
In a rehearsal setting, performance anxiety can arise from the above causes, as well as the
musician considering the rehearsal as an obligation to perform without error for one’s peers.
10
Ibid., 146.
11
Ibid., 149.
12
Ibid., 152-153.
13
Ibid., 155.
14
Schmidt, “Relations Among Motivations,” 140.
124
Stoller provided a framework to relate the fear of failure to performance anxiety. “In particular,
deep failure is often accompanied by feelings of personal flaw and powerlessness… Failure, in
this way, is often understood not as a common event that every live creature must experience
simply because they live in the world but instead as a sign of weakness or flaw.”
15
In this way, it
is similar to shame, as discussed in Chapter Two, which people tend to accept in spite of all
evidence to the contrary. In fact, when people feel like they work hard and nevertheless fail, they
tend to attribute that failure to lack of ability, rather than the more likely lack of appropriate
strategy.
16
Thus, rather than being acknowledged as a democratizing aspect of humanity, in
current practice, failure is treated as anathema, and the phobias which arise lead to partially or
fully debilitating performance anxiety in nearly half of all musicians.
The Maker Movement and Its Constructivist Roots
The first intersection of constructivism (or, as he called it, “constructionism”) and the
inchoate maker movement is Papert, especially writing in Constructionism and The Children’s
Machine, but constructivism has roots stretching further back into the past. Constructivism was
considered in a somewhat cursory manner in Chapter One. Here, it is important to consider this
theory of learning more deeply. Constructivism is an educational philosophy based on the beliefs
that “knowledge is formed as part of the learner’s interaction with the world (italics in
original),”
17
that it is as important to learn process as it is to learn content,
18
and that “the product
is most likely an explicit representation of the process: product provides insight into the
process.”
19
Webster posited four precepts for constructivism that flow from these beliefs:
15
Stoller, “Educating from Failure,” 30, 34.
16
Austin and Vispoel, “Motivation After Failure,” 19.
17
Webster, “Construction of Music Learning,” 8.
18
Halverson and Sheridan, “The Maker Movement in Education,” 501.
19
Shively, “A Framework for Beginning Band Classes,” 154.
125
1. knowledge is formed as part of the learner’s active interaction with the world,
2. knowledge exists less as abstract entities outside of the learner and absorbed by the
learner; rather it is constructed anew through action,
3. meaning is constructed with this knowledge, and
4. learning is, in large part, a social activity,…[where] issues of social interaction must be
central.
20
Through this process, a learner’s prior knowledge is linked with new information, and the new
understanding that is created can be—rather than one correct answer—one of multiple
outcomes.
21
When applied to music education, constructivism holds that a teacher is constantly
evaluating both the learning and the process of learning, where “learning a piece of music and
improving his or her performance of it never truly ceases,” since “the primary means of
knowledge representation in the…performer's knowledge domain is performance.”
22
The maker movement, which is gaining popularity around the country,
23
also arises out of
a system of creating knowledge through social interaction. Halverson and Sheridan summarized
the maker movement as “a growing number of people who are engaged in the creative
production of artifacts in their daily lives and who find physical and digital forums to share their
process and products with others.”
24
They identify three components of the maker movement:
“making as a set of activities, makerspaces as communities of practice, and makers as identities
[italics in original].”
25
Sheridan, et al., elaborated on makerspaces, defining them as “informal
sites for creative production in art, science, and engineering where people of all ages blend
digital and physical technologies to explore new ideas, learn technical skills, and create new
products.”
26
They held that makerspaces are a “key component of the larger maker movement.”
27
20
Webster, “Construction of Music Learning,” 2, 5.
21
Ibid., 4.
22
Shively, “A Framework for Beginning Band Classes,” 158.
23
See, for example, Hatch, “Maker Movement Manifesto,” 13-18.
24
Halverson and Sheridan, “The Maker Movement in Education,” 496.
25
Halverson and Sheridan, “The Maker Movement in Education,” 496.; One wonders if—by analogy—these could become
singing, performance spaces, and singers.
26
Sheridan, et al., “Learning in the Making,” 505.
27
Ibid.
126
Hatch, former CEO of TechShop, a chain of for-profit makerspaces originating in California,
elaborated further on the ethos of a makerspace.
A makerspace is a center or workspace where like-minded people get together to make
things. Some makerspace members are designers, writers, practitioners of medicine or
law, architects, and other white-collar types who come in and start making things for
themselves, their families, and friends. They spend time in makerspaces because they just
love to make things. They don’t need to make Christmas presents; they want to [italics in
original].
28
According to Sheridan, et al., makerspaces exhibited four essential constituent parts:
demonstration lectures (which present open-ended problems), students at work, critiques, and
exhibitions.
29
These four constituent parts aptly parallel Webster’s four bases of constructivism,
and they also strongly resemble elements of the creative process, as set out by Sawyer in Chapter
Two: find the problem, acquire the knowledge, gather related information, incubation, generate
ideas, combine ideas, select the best ideas, and externalize ideas.
30
This broad array of traits
makes for a rather fluid definition of the maker movement, makers, and makerspaces. However,
Hatch believed that nine unifying factors bind the whole movement together. Enumerated in
Maker Movement Manifesto, they became: “Make, Share, Give, Learn, Tool Up, Play,
Participate, Support, Change,” which explained the creative, social, exploratory, and
transformational nature of the maker movement.
31
While constructivist thought has become more mainstream in many facets of education
and would seem to undergird the philosophical foundations of the maker movement, actual
scholarly research is not extensive on the intersection of the maker movement with
constructivism, but the body of work continues to expand. One particular point of note is that
28
Hatch, The Maker Movement Manifesto, 13.
29
Sheridan, et al., “Learning in the Making,” 508.
30
Sawyer, Explaining Creativity, 89.
31
Hatch, The Maker Movement Manifesto, 1-2.
127
“communities of practice emerge around makerspaces.”
32
In such a schema, “the social
environment of the classroom initially established by the teacher will affect students' comfort
level, feeling of ownership,…relationship with the teacher, relationship with peers, and general
way of being in the classroom,” thereby creating a “community of learners.”
33
In a true
community of practice, “learning is an ongoing part of social interaction rather than a discreet
process.”
34
Every member serves as teacher, and every member serves as learner at some point;
everyone has a role, and these roles change and develop over time. Note the distinct parallel
between the fluidity of roles in makerspaces and the traversing of roles that is a crucial element
of Brown’s Acompañar theory considered in Chapter Two. “In these [maker]spaces, learning
happens as a consequence of individuals beginning as legitimate peripheral participants and
moving toward becoming full participants. But learning is not guaranteed; nor is it regulated… A
makerspace approach values individuals moving in and out of a space freely.”
35
Also reflective
of Chapter Two, the makerspace approach is analogous to the components required to build a
creative community: a community with fluid, supportive roles; a community that acknowledges
one another’s’ gifts and limitations; a community that does not strive after a single “right”
answer.
This same approach creates learning in a context of expertise and integration, which
allows everyday people to solve their own problems, and where divisions of discreet disciplines
become inauthentic in an atmosphere that crisscrosses the boundary between formal and informal
education.
36
A makerspace becomes “a place to learn, not just practice what one already knows,”
where “participants learn from others’ prior frustrations” that serve to “alert [them] to false paths
32
Halverson and Sheridan, “The Maker Movement in Education,” 502.
33
Wiggins, “Fostering Revision,” 35-36.
34
Sheridan, et al., “Learning in the Making,” 509.
35
Halverson and Sheridan, “The Maker Movement in Education,” 502.
36
Sheridan, et al., “Learning in the Making,” 526-527; Halverson and Sheridan, “The Maker Movement in Education,” 498-499.
128
and unproductive approaches when trying a new project.”
37
Since the makerspace environment is
predicated on self-directed tasks, the work of Clifford, Ahyoung Kim, and Barbara McDonald
also applies. Their research confirmed that “self-attributed tasks produce more constructive
responses to failure than other attributed tasks.”
38
In other words, a person is more likely to
persist in the face of failure doing tasks that a person begins on their own volition, rather than
one they have been compelled to do. This can give rise to the fluid boundaries discussed above,
as well as people investigating numerous courses of action at once. Webster aptly defines this as
“mutual learning and democratic action.”
39
It may seem that such an informal conception would be rife with chaos, and that little
actual learning would occur. To a casual observer, it may appear so. However, Chi-Der Chen
concluded that “constructivist teaching is different from laissez faire curriculum. Students are
empowered to construct the knowledge within a ‘controlled’ learning situation or within a
guiding frame. In constructivist teaching, teacher and students alike are constructors.”
40
In a
constructivist makerspace environment, the learning of the group as a whole transcends and
surpasses the learning of any one individual. This represents the perfect embodiment of emergent
learning, as discussed in Chapter Three, where choices and experiences at the individual level
have outcomes at the network level, which would be impossible for any one individual. Papert
contended that “the purpose of noting that a system can be more reliable than its components is
not a blanket exoneration of mindless sloppiness.” Rather, it serves as acknowledgement that, in
a successful educational situation, a “knowledgeable other” provides the students with guidance
without setting boundaries based on their own biases, preconceptions, or limitations.
41
Shively
37
Sheridan, et al., “Learning in the Making,” 514-515.
38
Clifford, et. al., “Responses to Failure,” 21.
39
Webster, “Construction of Music Learning,” 43.
40
Chen, “Constructivism in General Music Education,” 136.
41
Papert, The Children’s Machine, 190-191.
129
summarized this point effectively, saying, “care must be taken that the teacher introduces the
learning environment without prejudicing how the learner might apply his or her knowledge base
or how the learner might interpret the experience. The teacher can give instructions, but the
instructions should not lead the learner's decision-making process.”
42
This reflects insights from
Social Network Theory, as considered in Chapter Three. Networks are inherently stable, and
norms outlast individuals. Therefore, real caution must be exercised over what norms are
established, consciously or unconsciously, when embarking on these processes.
Deweyan philosophy essentially describes the role of this “knowledgeable other” in the
person of a teacher. The teacher serves as the aforementioned “knowledgeable other,” providing
“questions and suggestions” as the students need prompting, but “the children work this out for
themselves.”
43
Further, in the Deweyan, constructivist classroom, students are truly creating their
own knowledge and understanding through experiential learning. The teacher serves primarily as
a guide.
44
In fact, Dewey is scathing in his critique of “traditional schooling,” where it is
assumed “that there are certain ready-made materials which are there, which have been prepared
by the school superintendent, the board, and the teacher, and of which the child is to take in as
much as possible in the least possible time.”
45
Similarly, the “knowledgeable other” can provide scaffolding and is instrumental in
“creating conditions for collaborative success.”
46
Webster built on Vygotsky’s work, maintaining
that the goal is to move the learner into the “‘zone of proximal development’ which might be
thought of as the difference between where learners are on their own versus where they can be
42
Shively, “A Framework for Beginning Band Classes,” 205.
43
Dewey, The School and Society, 15.
44
Ibid., 13-15.
45
Ibid., 22.
46
Sheridan, et al., “Learning in the Making,” 520.
130
with the help of a ‘knowledgeable other’ (teachers or more capable peers).”
47
And, instead of
remaining static, the relationship of the learner to said “knowledgeable other” proceeds through a
progression which begins with “the mentor as a model, then coach and critical friend, and then as
a co-inquirer.”
48
“The catalyst for this movement is friendship, which, in an educative
environment, can be found in the mentor/student relationship and through the teachable
moment.”
49
Note how closely this resembles Brown’s theory of the traversing of binary
relationships explored in Chapter Two. Wiggins considered this collaborative nature of learning
so important that it became the central concept for the third edition of Teaching for Musical
Understanding.
50
Nevertheless, in all its consideration of scaffolding, problem solving, and
social constructivist learning, Wiggins’s work never explicitly treated the role of failure.
The Tangential Treatment of Failure
As stated at the outset, failure is at least tacitly acknowledged in every aspect of human
life, but its formal treatment in constructivist and maker movement literature is rare. The closest
analogues to the discussion of failure lies in the discussion of what is alternatively called
iterative design, the scientific method, and the Piagetian model of knowledge acquisition.
51
These presuppose an initial interaction with the environment where the learner attempts “to
assimilate this object or idea into a currently understood schema (mental structure that represents
some aspect of the world). If it does not match [failure has happened], disequilibrium occurs and
the individual tries to accommodate the object or idea by creating a new schema [italics in
original].”
52
47
Webster, “Construction of Music Learning,” 11.
48
Ibid., 25.
49
Stoller, “Educating from Failure,” 29.
50
Wiggins, Teaching for Musical Understanding, xi-xiii.
51
Litts, “Making Learning,” 9.
52
Webster, “Construction of Music Learning,” 9-10.
131
This process can be considered iterative learning, where discovery of new problems
arises from prior problems solved.
53
Iterative learning is essential in the age-old process that is
sometimes called “trial and error”
54
or “evaluation, feedback, and revision.”
55
Ernst von
Glasersfeld noted this as well. A disjunction between what is believed and what is discovered
caused by the interaction with others can create “perturbations for the developing cognitive
subject.”
56
Shively expanded to note that an interpretation is viable to an individual as long as
interaction with others does not present too great a challenge to that individual's current internal
representation.”
57
This pattern engenders “ongoing construction and revision of mental
representations.”
58
Thus,
for learners, evaluation is a continuing act that reflects the tentative nature of a
knowledge base. A learner's constant reworking of his or her own knowledge base
reflects an evaluative process. The learner is hopefully aware of whether his or her
present knowledge base is sufficient for the interpretation of an experience or if the
experience requires rethinking or expanding his or her knowledge base.
59
All of these concepts presuppose an element of failure, which—in its broadest sense—
may be termed a disconnection between what was willed or understood and what is or what
occurred. In short, “if we are unable to resolve our action in the world harmoniously, disharmony
and failure results.”
60
Applied to a makerspace/constructivist paradigm, great import rests upon wrestling with
ideas, where students are allowed to re-visit and experiment without feeling at risk. In these
circumstances, “children can assume control over given situations and select the important issues
53
Sheridan, et al., “Learning in the Making,” 524.
54
Ibid., 523.
55
Wiggins, “Fostering Revision,” 36-37.
56
Von Glasersfeld, “Cognition,” 13.
57
Shively, “A Framework for Beginning Band Classes,” 35.
58
Sheridan, et al., “Learning in the Making,” 507.
59
Shively, “A Framework for Beginning Band Classes,” 209.
60
Stoller, “Educating from Failure,” 26.
132
they want to deal with.”
61
For example, when Papert’s students were tasked to collaboratively
write a computer program, they were allowed to work together to try different ideas and different
computer code. Each iteration brought a different result, so the students continued to explore new
and different ideas and discovered the computer’s response to each. For each false start—each
failure—there was no antipathy; simply a re-calibration and another attempt.
62
In this model,
“failure is predicated on the fact that life occurs not simply within an environment but in
interaction within that environment… A mark of a well-adapted creature is the ability to
overcome a unique set of conditions, returning both to harmony as well as reaching beyond
toward higher meanings and values.”
63
Mistakes can be seen as missteps, or one can “use a
navigation of midcourse corrections… [One can] have goals but set out to realize them in the
spirit of a collaborative venture.”
64
This, too, reflects the importance of the growth goals of
Chapter Two, where incremental progress is far superior to striving for an unattainable
perfection.
Failure is essential beyond the context of discreet, task-based learning. In constructivism,
failure is crucial in developing a metacognitive awareness. Not only do students develop
problem-solving skills, they also develop problem-finding skills. Once again, constructivism
dovetails with Sawyer’s conception of the creative process. Here, there first step in the creative
process—learning to find the problem—is fundamental to further learning. Papert’s students had
a realistic sense of what they were able to do and of what they would be able to figure out. The
students who were consistently exposed to the iterative learning process in the Instructional
61
Harel and Papert, Constructionism, 136.
62
Papert, The Children’s Machine, 120-2.
63
Stoller, “Educating from Failure,” 25.
64
Harel and Papert, Constructionism, 169.
133
Software Design Project (ISDP) “could optimize, modularize, and debug…better and faster”
than non-ISDP students.
65
Harel wrote at length about this phenomenon.
Contrasted with these students in the control groups, “many of the ISDP students tried
[the assigned task on the posttest] more than once…, and finally found the right solution;
but the students in the control classes who had gotten it wrong in their first trial were
apparently not motivated or determined to try again or to find the right solution. Many of
them simply wrote ‘I don’t know how to do it,’ and went on to the next task on the test.
66
For the students who were not in the ISDP program, the risk of failure was simply too
great to make multiple attempts at solving the problem. “As long as…knowledge was [the]
teacher’s knowledge regurgitated, [the student] was emotionally safe; the risk of poor grades is
less threatening than the risk of exposing one’s own ideas.”
67
Papert’s students also developed cognitive flexibility through their frequent encounters
with failure. Harel continued,
They learned to adjust their cognitive efforts to match the difficulty of the problem…
When they realized that too much effort was needed to accomplish a simple or
‘unimportant’ design, they stopped working on it and moved on to an aspect that was
more crucial…or decided to redesign [that particular faced of the project]… As a result
the ISDP students were not rigid in their solution process.
68
The creation of knowledge through the creation of artifacts—such as a computer
program—provided the opportunity to wrestle with ideas, develop metacognitive skills and
cognitive flexibility, but this creating possessed a profundity that went beyond mere learning. As
mentioned in above and in Chapter Two, the final outcome of the creative process is an
artifact—something that has been realized in the world. For the maker/constructivist, “the artifact
65
Ibid., 68.
66
Ibid., 58.
67
Ibid., 71.
68
Ibid., 68.
134
itself functions as an evolving representation of the learner’s thinking.”
69
“The difference…is not
in quality of product, it is in the process of creating it [italics in original].”
70
Failure Considered Directly
While the maker/constructivist literature does not provide extensive treatment of failure,
Deweyan and aesthetic philosophy have a more well-rounded treatment. Stoller provided an
illustrative summary in this lengthy quotation.
While the discourse of philosophical aesthetics has long included categories such as the
beautiful, the good, and the virtuous, the seeds for achievement of these ideals are planted
in the soil of disharmony, uncertainty, and failure… It is often failure, rather than beauty,
that provides the foundation for unlocking the unique potential of students and helping
them cultivate their capacity for creative thought and action… For Dewey, existence is
not an object or essence but an event that is always undergoing negotiation, adjustment,
and revision. Each individual’s process of learning and growth begins not in knowing,
but in unknowing—in the soil of disequilibrium and lack, where desire, imagination, and
creative action can take root… When the rhythm of life is disrupted, the disruption is
accompanied by feelings, out of which emotions are cognized through reflection, leading
to the restoration of habits and ultimately the creation of meanings and values.
71
Stoller continued,
An experience of failure equally binds together personal choices, values, relationships,
meanings, hopes, and aspirations into a moment of extreme chaos and disruption. In
doing so it opens the possibility for cultivating new meanings and values as well as
pruning away previously miscognized meanings and values… There is also the danger
that, like Dewey’s account of criticism, the event will be reduced to an isolated element
without accounting for the rich context and experience of the event itself.
72
Therefore, failure is integral to education, and it need not be catastrophic. Stoller stated it
eloquently.
Deep failure becomes profoundly educative if we understand that underlying all effort is
an impulsion toward a relatively stable harmony, and if we look at the teachable moment
not simply as a way to re/vision the meaning of one’s efforts but also to cultivate and
foster students’ unique creative capacities for future action.
73
69
Sheridan, et al., “Learning in the Making,” 507.
70
Harel and Papert, Constructionism, 172.
71
Stoller, “Educating from Failure,” 24.
72
Ibid., 32-33.
73
Ibid., 25.
135
As with any sustained instructional activity, “the duration of the project means that
makers are engaged in multiple design/revise/test cycles that encourage failure and iteration as
powerful forms of learning.”
74
Sheridan, et al., discovered that frequent experience with failure
and iteration lead to a dispositional shift in the learners and their approach to difficulty. Said one
participant in her study, “‘I am more patient. I stick with things more when they’re not
working.’”
75
These outcomes of the maker movement parallel what Papert and Harel discovered
in the ISDP considered above, namely that iterative learning from failure was essential, and that
students who engaged in the project were more likely to be tenacious and open to new pathways
when one possibility resulted in failure.
Teachers frequently engage in the same kind of self-reflection. They spend summers
reviewing the previous year’s successes and failures, and then re-calibrate for the coming year.
76
Like the space program in The Right Stuff, “with every mistake or miscalculation, there was a
retreat back to the drawing board and a concerted effort to learn from that mistake in order to
make the next attempt better for it.”
77
“In the fragility of the experience of failure, we find the
danger and power of the teachable moment… In fact, moments of student success are often less
teachable than moments of deep failure, because students [who have succeeded] have resolved
their process of inquiry.”
78
Constructive Failure
There exists one theory that treats failure directly and considers its impact on learning
and performance. Pioneered by Clifford in the early 1980s, it is called the theory of constructive
failure. Clifford used insights from Attribution Theory to determine ways in which failure could
74
Sheridan, et al., “Learning in the Making,” 516.
75
Ibid., 518.
76
Scheibe, “From the President,” 4.
77
Ferguson, “Failure IS an Option,” 69.
78
Stoller, “Educating from Failure,” 33-34.
136
impel one toward further growth, rather than a cessation of inquiry. Clifford stated, “the
successful attainment of that goal [academic success] is not incompatible with failure experience.
In fact, academic success may at times be ensured by failure experiences.”
79
Noting that failure-
minimization strategies in education had not improved student achievement or student
psychological development, Clifford provided three pieces of rationale for incorporating
constructive failure in the learning experience, contained in this lengthy quotation:
[W]e cannot protect students from failure and error-making without greatly reducing or
virtually eliminating the elements of risk and challenge—elements essential to intrinsic
motivation, and elements where to a great extent determine the value of
success.…[B]uilding in students a tolerance for failure and teaching them strategies for
dealing with failure may encourage them to expose themselves to more of the
unknown,…tolerance for failure may encourage them to focus attention on maximum
performance and learning rather than on minimum competency levels of learning,…[and]
practice in dealing constructively with failure and error-making in learning might help
develop and strengthen the general coping skills of our youth.
80
Clifford expanded beyond this 1984 research in 1988 to explore how tolerance of failure
impacted a student’s academic risk-taking. 233 students in grades 4-6 took an exam that
resembled the standardized assessments they were used to, containing math, spelling, and
vocabulary multiple-choice questions of varying difficulties, where the students were allowed
some freedom to choose which questions they wanted to answer. It measured both a student’s
tolerance of failure and their academic risk taking, per a metric developed by Clifford. Clifford
discovered that students tended “to select items that [were] considerably below their ability
level,…[and] this item-ability discrepancy increase[d] with grade.”
81
Clifford concluded that the
procedures in everyday classrooms that discourage risk-taking and failure, “reinforcements
typically associated with errorless academic performance and ‘perfect papers,’…behavioral
79
Clifford, “Constructive Failure,” 108.
80
Ibid., 116.
81
Clifford, “Failure Tolerance and Risk-Taking,” 24.
137
consequences of academic error-making and failure,…[and] attributional comments which often
accompany error making and imply low ability or lack of effort on the part of students,”
undermine risk-taking as an essential component of the learning experience.
82
Clifford, et al., applied Clifford’s earlier work to quantify how different attributions of
failure, and an individual’s failure tolerance, would interact to produce various outcomes. Their
goal was stated as “identifying the conditions under which constructive responses to failure (e.g.,
positive expectations for future performance, renewed determination, correction of errors) are
likely to occur [to] help ensure persistence, continued achievement, and intrinsic motivation.”
83
Clifford, et al., used specific components of Attribution Theory in their study. They
attempted to discover how outcomes were different if the task (which ultimately ended in failure)
were self-initiated or other-initiated. They also attempted to discover how attribution of the
failure (whether it was attributed to lack of effort, lack of ability, or lack of proper strategy)
impacted future actions.
84
To accomplish this, they studied “181 male Navy recruits in their final
2 weeks of training…representing four companies from a single Navy training center,” by
soliciting their responses to a negative evaluation of a fictitious sailor in one of multiple
circumstances, which represented every permutation of the task-initiation and failure attribution
listed above.
85
They discovered that failure due to lack of effort was perceived poorly, but that
an individual who believes failure is due to the use of inappropriate strategy is likely (a)
to think of a failure event as a problem-solving situation that requires a search for a better
strategy (implying persistence and an investment of effort), (b) to experience less guilt
than an individual who attributes failure to lack of effort and less shame than one who
attributes failure to lack of ability, (c) to resist ability attributions and their self-debasing
effects, (d) to focus more on future success than on past failure, and (e) to experience less
negative evaluation from others than individuals who attribute failure to effort or
ability.
86
82
Ibid., 25.
83
Clifford, et. al., “Responses to Failure,” 19-20.
84
Ibid., 22.
85
Ibid., 23-26.
86
Ibid., 20-21.
138
James Austin and Walter Vispoel expanded on Clifford, et. al., by applying failure
attribution to the music performance of elementary and junior high school students. They used a
similar procedure, soliciting student reaction to the failure of a fictitious performer. They
selected this method specifically because it allowed them to control the variables in a way not
possible during actual performance, and it prevented the researchers from needing to inflict
actual failure on student participants.
87
They sought to study not only the results of differing
attributions of failure, but also the classroom structures that would support constructive failure.
Similar to the findings by Clifford, et. al., regarding failure due to lack of effort, Austin
and Vispoel’s findings stated that “while effort expenditure is endorsed and rewarded by
teachers, the combination of high effort and failure implies low ability and humiliation. As a
result, many students intentionally reduce effort to maintain their image of self-worth and uses
excuses to deflect teacher criticism.”
88
They continued, stating that
music instructors commonly exhort students to “keep trying” and “work hard.”…Yet in
many instances, effort expenditure does not translate into improved knowledge or
skills—students end up spending hours of practice time ‘spinning their wheels’ rather
than making progress. The results of this study suggest that music teachers must move
beyond telling their students to simply ‘go home and practice.’ They must promote
strategic effort [and] share successful learning strategies.”
89
Austin and Vispoel also wrote at length regarding classroom and pedagogical structures
as a foundational component to their study.
Classroom goal structures—the way in which students are evaluated and/or rewarded—
appeared to elicit distinct patterns of motivation and achievement…In competitive
structures, where individuals vie for the same goal or reward, one person’s success
requires another’s failure. Classroom competition has been linked to ability attributions
for failure.… and task avoidance behaviors, including inappropriate goal setting, minimal
effort expenditure, and procrastination.…In individualistic goal structures, students work
toward independent goals and accordingly, one student success should not eliminate or
87
Austin and Vispoel, “Motivation After Failure,” 7-8.
88
Ibid., 4.
89
Ibid., 17.
139
devalue the success of another. When individualistic goals are based on personal
progress, students (a) cite effort attributions for failure, (b) exhibit task mastery
orientations, and (c) monitor their learning strategies.
90
Just as with the outcome of the Clifford, et. al., study, they concluded that music teachers must
recognize that “ability attributions produce the least constructive response to failure…[and]
strategy attributions produce the most constructive response to failure.”
91
They continued,
stating,
placing excessive emphasis on “ability” as the key to success in the music classroom,
whether intentional or by accident, may undermine the motivation of the average or
struggling music student. Rather than reinforcing the notion that “you either have it or
you don’t,” music teachers should strive to promote alternative conceptions of ability,
namely, the musical ability is both expendable and multi-faceted in nature.
92
Three studies—by Edward Asmus, Asmus and Carole Harrison, and later Roy Legette—also
applied the principles of Attribution Theory to success or failure in music. This research relied
on a four-by-four matrix of possible attributions. Attributions could be either internal or external,
and they could be either stable or unstable, the results of which are shown in table 4.1.
TABLE 4.1. Attribution matrix
Internal External
Stable ability task difficulty
Unstable effort luck
90
Ibid., 5.
91
Ibid., 17.
92
Ibid., 17.
140
They all found that effort and ability (the intrinsic unstable and the intrinsic stable factors in
Attribution Theory, respectively) were far more likely to be considered impactful by students
than the extrinsic counterparts (luck and task difficulty).
93
The following year, Vispoel and Austin studied the impact of emotion in creating a
constructive response to failure in the music classroom. They concluded that emotions correlated
with statistical significance with behaviors tied to the constructive response to failure.
Specifically, they found that upset, anger, and guilt correlated with constructive responses, while
embarrassment and shame correlated with non-constructive responses to failure.
94
This finding
corresponds neatly with Brown’s work in Chapter Two about the differences between guilt and
shame in motivation.
95
This also serves as the foundational concept for studying participants’
emotions in the current study. It is important to note, however that these studies, representative
of the Attribution Theory and Constructive Failure literature in music teaching and learning, still
treat failure as an “end state,” rather than a component of the learning process.
Maker Movement/Arts Analogues
Little has been written about the intersection between the maker movement and the arts,
yet they are a most apt pairing. The characteristics defining the movement are so broad that the
created “artifact,” which is the representation of evolving learning, could range from something
as concrete as a repaired radio to something as ephemeral as a musical performance. The nine
points in Hatch’s Manifesto above could—without substantial modification—apply equally well
to the arts and music. However, Kylie Peppler, stated, “despite the theory’s explicit ties to the
93
Asmus, “Sixth Graders’ Achievement Motivation,” 6; Asmus and Harrison, “Characteristics of Motivation,” 261ff; Legette,
“Causal Beliefs of Public School Students,” 109-110.
94
Vispoel and Austin, “Constructive Response to Failure in Music,” 121.
95
Brown, I Thought It Was Just Me, 13.
141
arts and design, constructionism has not heavily influenced the existing work on the arts and arts
education.”
96
Halverson and Sheridan elaborated on that, writing,
We argue that art making is fundamentally a representative domain and therefore
resonates with a constructionist perspective on learning. Research on making in education
embraces the constructionist frame of progressive education while stretching further our
understanding of how making things that matter can be a successful lever in formal
environments, especially when it includes the tools of artistic practice.
97
This relationship to the arts can be effectively expanded to the maker movement’s acceptance of
the role of failure as well. To provide only one example out of a myriad possible choices, jazz
improvisation itself is predicated on the risk of failure.
98
“When done productively, creating
meaning and value from the moment of failure is no different from artistic creation, both of
which rely on a sophisticated ability to intuit and work from the affective background of
thought.”
99
Summary
While the experience of and the response to failure is nascent in every human endeavor,
little formal study has been done on failure in the realm of constructivist educational philosophy.
Even the constructivist-begotten maker movement contains little explicit exploration of failure.
Nonetheless, the maker movement provides the most advantageous method of incorporating
failure into music education. To that end, this chapter considered the current state of music
education, especially with regard to failure and performance anxiety. Then, it explored
constructivism and the maker movement, as well as their nexus in the creation of knowledge
through the creation of artifacts. Constructive Failure was considered, followed by an exploration
of, first, the literature in constructivist and maker research that treats failure in a tangential
96
Peppler, “Media Arts,” 2122.
97
Halverson and Sheridan, “The Maker Movement in Education,” 498.
98
Kaplan, “Success, Failure, and Improvisation,” 68.
99
Stoller, “Educating from Failure,” 26.
142
manner, and then the explicit treatment of failure from a Deweyan perspective. This chapter then
considered a few of the intersections between the maker movement and the arts. Throughout, it
becomes increasingly evident that in arenas where the fear of failure is lessened or non-existent,
student learning is broader, deeper, and more effective. As Webster wrote, “Students are
motivated to create because of what they sense is a safer and less threatening environment.”
100
Application to the Current Study
Three substantial chapters reviewing wide-ranging literature from fields seemingly
unrelated to music conclude here. Throughout, hints and allusions suggested how these disparate
considerations might converge to undergird the current study. Though interesting for their own
sake, every major theory and nearly every digression bore in a tangible way on either the
creation of this research project and/or the analysis of its data. The researcher believes that a few
paragraphs making those connections explicit will benefit the reader.
As stated at the outset, this project grew from watching amateur singers respond much
more successfully to difficult music when given permission to make mistakes. Consequently,
research on mistake-making and failure were indispensable. Since these topics had rarely been
treated prima facie, it was illustrative to consider how failure had been treated in tangential
contexts, how Dewey approached failure, and how failure could be constructive. Participants in
this study were going to be asked to take risks in the learning process, and these could end in
failure, so review of this branch of literature was essential.
Making mistakes or failure in any context are not aspirational goals for any reasonable
person. Rather, mistakes and failure are merely potential outcomes of risk-taking, other possible
outcomes being learning and success. For this study, it was important to consider what sort of
100
Webster, “Construction of Music Learning,” 56.
143
risks were appropriate for a creative endeavor. It was also important to consider creativity, as
risk-taking and creativity go hand-in-hand. A determination about how best to encourage
strategic risk-taking grew from the literature in these areas of risk-taking and creativity.
Specifically, that the tasks asked of the treatment group should allow them to discover problems
on their own, try their own strategies, incubate their ideas from week to week between
rehearsals, to select the most effective methods, and to produce an artifact—a musical
performance—at the end of the rehearsal.
Requisite to risk-taking is vulnerability in all involved. The research in Chapter Two on
fear, shame, failure, and vulnerability, all indicated that there were both appropriate and
inappropriate vulnerability, specifically that vulnerability mishandled quickly devolves into fear
and shame. The review of literature considered these topics in great detail, so that the tasks asked
of the students were never freighted with the specter of shame. Concomitant with this
consideration were the facets of Attribution Theory and Constructive Failure, which indicated
that the focus of rehearsals—even student-led rehearsals—needed to be on improving strategies
and creating growth goals. Student-led assessments were immediate and focused on progress,
versus attempting to attain some ideal. A student’s ability was never referenced, but rather the
strategies that were being employed to learn the composition.
One of the pitfalls of contemporary music education and performance is a fixation on
perfectionism, which leads to music performance anxiety (MPA). MPA grows out of
perfectionism, which is itself an ineffective strategy to combat shame. The literature on MPA
and perfectionism stated, as mentioned above, that growth goals were crucial to becoming
resilient to both MPA and perfectionism/shame. It also mentioned that a sort of parity between
student readiness and task difficulty was important. To that end, student musical experience was
144
compiled at the beginning of the study and correlated to performance. Additionally, this research
highlighted the importance of emotions in the performers. This research project attempted to
examine that with an emotion questionnaire completed by every student at the end of every
rehearsal.
The most foundational literature to the construction of this study was actually the work in
Social Network, Emergence, and Motor Learning Theories. The research in Social Network
Theory demonstrated that understanding connections among members of a group were essential
to understanding outcomes. Consequently, a social network survey was given at the beginning of
the study. Also, the choir director’s knowledge of the students’ connections was leveraged to
ensure that students in conflict were not in the same research group. Finally, the connections
developed within an ensemble were respected, as research groups consisted only of students
from the same ensemble, though this had an impact on scheduling and basal musicianship score.
Wang’s work in Social Network Theory about the emergence of roles corresponded with
Brown’s theory of Acompañar and literature in constructivism and the maker movement. This
literature, with analogues in constructivism and the maker movement, focused on the fluidity of
roles and leadership, and it was fundamental in constructing the rehearsal scripts for the risk-
taking research groups, which moved from more teacher-directed to more student-led learning
experiences. Further, by having members with a variety of skill levels in each research group, it
was hoped that roles would emerge based on individuals’ strengths, as per the literature.
Emergence Theory and the work of Green drove the structure of the rehearsal groups.
Because an increase in quantity of members in an ensemble has a qualitative impact on the
group, groups of different sizes were investigated to search for correlations between group size
and accuracy of pitch and rhythm. Similarly, Motor Learning Theory drove the decisions about
145
how to provide feedback to students during the rehearsals. Because of bandwidth theory, the
experimental group was weaned away from extrinsic feedback over the course of four rehearsals
and encouraged to experience and assess their own intrinsic feedback. A great deal of ink was
spilled on the intricacies of Social Network, Emergence, and Motor Learning Theories. Because
these concepts were so fundamental to this study, and because they are so foreign to most
musicians and music educators, the researcher concluded that a “deep dive” was warranted.
Finally, since growth goals and scaffolded learning were at the heart of this research
project, one of the most important findings would be whether or not students in the experimental
group learned more quickly than their peers in the Traditional Rehearsal group.
Unacknowledged until this paragraph is the belief held by the researcher, whose
undergraduate degree is in Philosophy, that all knowledge is useful, and disciplines
interpenetrate one another. Simply looking to research in music to study music would not have
elicited the findings contained in this study. Rather, by combining insights from computer
science, medicine, occupational health, social science, mathematics, philosophy, education,
psychology, business and management, the dramatic arts, social work, creativity, the maker
movement, marketing, politics, and music, it is hoped that a robust foundation had been laid to
create an insightful and truly meaningful and applicable contribution to the choral and music
education literature.
146
Chapter Five: Informal Pilot Study
In the spring of 2017, the researcher conducted a study as a final project for a quantitative
research in music teaching and learning class at the University of Southern California, Thornton
School of Music, in the Department of Music Teaching and Learning. This informal pilot study
sought to test the first stages of the ideas in this dissertation. It was designed to be both an
exploration of quantitative research and a springboard to further research. Much of the
conceptual framework for the main study reported in Chapters One-Four is also at the heart of
this pilot work, but here the focus was on the role of failure. The researcher sought to consider
the role of failure in music teaching and learning and crafted an experiment that was designed to
tease out this concept. This chapter is devoted to describing this pilot work.
Since failure is integral to learning and development as reviewed in prior chapters, it
would seem that creating a rehearsal environment where failure is expected and provides a
foundation for growth in knowledge and skill would be a prerequisite for a healthy learning
experience. If intermittent failure during the learning process is expected and used constructively
in rehearsal, it should follow that musicians will be more relaxed, which should increase learning
and retention in the long run. The following vignette might serve to illustrate how being open to
failure can speed learning while attempting to minimize failure serves to compound and
reinforce unconstructive behavior.
In 2010, the Roman Catholic Church instituted a new English translation of its worship
service, which necessitated new musical settings for the ordinary of the Mass. The
Basilica of Saint John in Des Moines, Iowa, introduced two new settings: one in an
accessible, popular idiom and the other in a style that included unprepared modulation,
rhythmic complexity, and a large vocal range. In introducing the former, the Music
147
Director indicated to the congregation that the setting was easy and should be able to be
learned in a few Sundays. In introducing the latter several weeks later, the director
explained that the setting was much more difficult, that there would be frequent mistakes
as the congregation learned, and that it would probably take several weeks to master it.
Contrary to expectation, the first setting had not been mastered by the congregation after
six weeks, while the more difficult setting took only two weeks before the congregation
was singing comfortably and with full voice. Something was at work in these two very
different attempts by amateur singers to master new music.
Failure itself has not been extensively studied in constructivist, maker, or music
education research. Rather, failure is either ignored or treated as a pitfall to be avoided at all
costs. This pilot work sought to address one aspect of this lack of research by exploring the effect
of a conductor’s acknowledgement of failure in the initial learning of a piece of music versus a
conductor minimizing the role of failure.
Statement of the Problem
Constructivist theory holds that learners create their own meaning through their
experiences during the learning process, which will include both failures and successes.
1
Within
the “maker movement,” which is a promising initiative that has its roots in constructivism, the
reality of failure is tacitly accepted and learning occurs as a collaborative effort that grows out of
failure.
2
Transferring this idea to the realm of music and the choral arts, it would seem that in
order to provide an optimal learning environment, conductors must not only recognize that
1
Stoller, “Educating from Failure,” 24.
2
A representative sample of thoughts on failure and education in the “maker movement” can be found Halverson and Sheridan,
“The Maker Movement in Education”.
148
failure can occur in the learning process, but create structures where students are encouraged to
take risks that could result in failure and—subsequently—learning. However, little research has
been done about whether this would be effective in music. What was needed was a study that
began to capture the empirical results when failure was both accepted and encouraged, perhaps
even cherished.
Purpose of the Pilot Study
It was the purpose of this informal pilot study to study the presence and absence of
verbiage in the initial instruction set for a choral rehearsal that allowed for failure and
encouraged risk-taking. To accomplish this, the study was designed as an experiment to discover
whether the hypothesis was borne out in terms of music based on pertinent literature regarding
constructivism, the “maker movement,” and failure. Of interest was whether during rehearsal
when a conductor’s initial instructions allowed for (and even encouraged) failure, would the
singers demonstrate greater accuracy and retention than singers who received instruction that did
not allow for failure.
This study measured the speed of learning and overall accuracy of two groups of singers
as they learned a new piece of music when each group was presented with differing instructions
at the outset. It also measured the degree of a singer’s retention after an elapsed period of time.
The researcher then compared the results between the two groups to determine if application of a
constructivist, “maker movement-esque” paradigm to the choral rehearsal resulted in a more
successful experience for all involved.
Definition of Terms
• Failure – performing a selection of music inaccurately and in a public or quasi-public
setting (such as a rehearsal).
149
• Amateur – having a basic familiarity with musical notation, sight-reading, choral singing,
etc., but not being a member of the top auditioned choir at the University of Southern
California (USC) (which, presumably, would indicate an advanced level of
musicianship).
• Maker Movement – hands-on, experiential learning schema with roots in constructivist
educational philosophy, specifically directed toward the production of a product.
• Retention – the ability to sing a selection of music accurately after an elapsed period of
time.
Research Questions and Hypothesis
1. Drawing on the experiences inchoate in the “maker movement,” would the musical
learning and retention of singers—as assessed by measures of musical accuracy, speed of
learning over time, and retention—be greater when a conductor’s instructions allow for
failure during the learning process than without that allowance?
2. In addition to this major question, subsets of the data provided useful information, such
as: Did certain confounding variables such as the years of experience in choral singing or
the years of piano lessons impact the accuracy, speed of learning, and retention of
singers? Did certain confounding variables insulate or exacerbate the differences between
groups in terms of accuracy and retention?
It was hypothesized that: learning would be greater, overall accuracy would be higher, and
retention of knowledge would be more lasting when an instruction set includes acceptance of
failure during the learning process. The independent variable in this study was the instructions
given to the participants, which should have a direct effect on their accuracy and retention
(dependent variables).
150
Study Design and Methods
Grounded in the constructivist philosophy of the “maker movement,” this quantitative
study was designed to measure the impact of the initial instruction set on the speed and accuracy
of acquisition and the degree of retention of a singing task, specifically when the initial
instruction allows for the possibility of failure while learning.
Sampling
The study consisted of a population of 30 amateur choral singers at the University of
Southern California, where “amateur” was defined as having a basic familiarity with musical
notation, sight-reading, and choral singing, but not being a member of the top auditioned choir
(which, presumably, would indicate an advanced level of musicianship). Participants were
recruited via announcements made in choral ensembles and on Facebook.
In the initial data collection, the participants’ majors (and major instruments, where
appropriate) were noted, as were their year in school, whether or not they have perfect pitch,
their past participation in musical activities, the participation in USC choral ensembles, and their
biological sex (see Appendix 8). To participate, one must not be a member of the USC Chamber
Singers. All participants who met that criterion were eligible, and participants’ status as a music
major did not qualify or disqualify them from participation. Participants were randomly assigned
to one of two groups. Each group received differing instructions, but after the instructions were
given, the study proceeded in exactly the same manner for all participants.
Procedure
To minimize the influence of body language and tone of voice, the instructions were
presented in written form and read aloud by an automated voice. The instructions for each group
were as follows:
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Group 1: “You are going to be asked to sing a piece of new music that some find
challenging. You may use any method you choose, including solfege, numbers, or the written
nonsense syllable. You are expected to sing as accurately as possible.”
Group 2: “You are going to be asked to sing a piece of new music that some find
challenging. You may use any method you choose, including solfege, numbers, or the written
nonsense syllable. You’re probably going to make some mistakes, but that’s okay. You have five
chances to sing it accurately.”
Participants were then given six attempts to correctly sing a newly composed musical
example, which conformed to commonly accepted standards of melody: diatonic, predominantly
stepwise melodic motion, range of no more than an octave, in a comfortable tessitura, and of
moderate dynamic (see Appendix 9). The example was accompanied with MIDI piano. The
example was brief, consisting of eight bars of singing preceded by a two-bar introduction.
The participants’ accuracy on each of the six attempts was assessed in situ by the
researcher, and the respondent’s accuracy was not communicated to the participants during the
study. There were twenty-four pitches in the newly composed melody. A note was scored
correctly if the correct pitch was sung at the correct time. If the pitch and/or rhythm were
incorrect, the note was marked as incorrect. The score for each attempt, then, ranged from 0–24.
If a participant sang the example accurately twice in a row during attempts 1–5, the participant
then proceeded to the next task, and the remaining attempts were scored as 24 (completely
accurate). Regardless of accuracy, after five attempts, the participant moved to the next task.
Once five attempts were completed (or if the participant sang the example accurately two
times in a row), the participant was then asked to listen to a recording of an accompanied choral
work (Johannes Brahms’s Geistliches Lied Op. 30, performed by the Choir of New College
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Oxford) and then to write for two minutes about what they believe the piece to be about. This
component of the study served to legitimize a five-minute pause between attempt five (or the
second correctly sung attempt) and attempt six, which was used to measure retention. To aid in
distracting the participant from the newly composed piece, the recording contained essentially
the same elements as the newly composed piece—diatonicism, predominantly stepwise motion, a
range of no more than an octave, in a comfortable tessitura, and of moderate dynamic—though it
was in a different key than the newly composed piece and was unlikely to be known by the
participant. At the conclusion of the recording, the participants were asked to write for two
minutes about what they believe the piece was about. If the participant finished writing before
the two minutes had elapsed, they then proceeded to the next task. If they were still writing when
the two minutes had elapsed, they were instructed to stop writing.
At the conclusion of the listening/writing component, the participants sang the newly
composed piece a sixth time, and their accuracy was again measured in situ by the researcher
according to the above-mentioned standard. At the conclusion of the study, the participants were
thanked.
Results
Research question number one—which sought to discover if the initial instruction set
impacted accuracy, speed of learning, and retention—was answered in two parts. First, a t-test
was applied to the Musical Learning Score, which was the difference between a respondent’s
scores on Attempt 1 and Attempt 5.
3
The t-test returned a score of .551 with a significance level
of .586, which demonstrates that—for this data set—there was no statistically significant
difference in the musical learning between Group 1 and Group 2. The data for this finding is
3
This score could be negative, if the respondent was less accurate in Attempt 5 than in Attempt 1.
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presented in table 5.1. In fact, the data indicated that any difference would occur by chance
nearly 60% of the time. Descriptive statistics for this data set seemed to indicate the opposite of
the presumption in research question number one, where respondents in Group 1 (who did not
have permission to make errors) actually performed better. These descriptive statistics are
presented in table 5.2.
TABLE 5.1. Mean differences between instruction set and musical learning score
Levene’s Test for t-test for Equality of Means
Equality of Variance
F Sig. t df Sig. Mean Std.
(2-tailed) Dif. Error
Musical Learning Score 1.1 .292 .551 28 .586 1.200 2.177
TABLE 5.2. Instruction set versus musical learning score
Group 1 Group 2
Mean 4.67 3.47
Median 3.00 2.00
Mode 0.00 1.00
An attempt was also made to find correlations between the Musical Learning Score and
Group. First, the researcher attempted to apply a Point-Biserial Correlation to the data for the
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Musical Learning Score versus Group. However, the data failed the Shapiro-Wilk test for normal
distribution, and there were three significant outliers, as shown in figure 5.1.
FIGURE 5.1. Box plot: Instruction set versus musical learning score
Several transformations were attempted to achieve a normal distribution, including square root,
logarithmic, and inverse transformations, but none were successful in normalizing the
distribution. Failing to apply a parametric statistic, the non-parametric Somers’s Delta and
Kendall’s tau-b tests were applied to the Musical Learning Score versus Group, and both
indicated that there was not a statistically significant correlation between these, as p = .821.
To measure retention, a t-test was applied to the scores in Attempt 6, the Retention Score.
The test returned a value of p = .051, which lies just beyond the convention for statistical
Mu
sica
l
Lea
rnin
g
Sco
re
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significance. Setting aside that convention for a moment, the descriptive statistics again seemed
to indicate the opposite of hypothesis one, in that the mean was actually higher for the
respondents in Group 1, as shown in table 5.3.
TABLE 5.3. Instruction set versus score, attempt 6 (retention)
Group 1 Group 2
Mean 18.67 12.13
Median 23.00 8.00
Mode 24.00 3.00
None of the relationships in this data set contained statistical significance with regard to Musical
Learning, Retention, and Instruction Set. While this study could not satisfactorily answer
research question one, it appears that the answer tended toward “no.”
To address research question two, exploring whether the confounding variables of past
experiences influenced the results, a Musical Experience Score was calculated from the values a
respondent entered on question 5 of the survey, indicating the number of years the respondent
had participated in a given musical activity. “0-1 years” was coded as 1; “1-3 years” as 2; “3-5
years” as 3; “more than 5 years” as 4. These were then summed for each respondent, creating a
Musical Experience Score that ranged from 12 (respondent entered “0-1 years” on all twelve
activities) to 48 (respondent entered “more than 5 years” on all twelve activities). A quick
perusal of the descriptive statistics in table 5.4 shows that the musical experience score for Group
1 is, on average, almost 5 points higher. As the scale for musical experience ranges from 12 to
48, this represents a 13% higher score for Group 1 versus Group 2. Given that there was a large
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difference between Groups 1 and 2 in terms of Musical Experience Score, one might conclude
that it may have had an effect on the outcome.
TABLE 5.4. Instruction set versus musical experience score
Group 1 Group 2
Mean 24.13 19.20
Median 22.00 19.00
Mode 18.00 17.00
A multiple regression was run to predict the Score, Attempt 5 from Instruction Set and
Musical Experience Score. There was linearity as assessed by partial regression plots and a plot
of studentized residuals against the predicted values. There was independence of residuals, as
assessed by a Durbin-Watson statistic of 2.160. There was homoscedasticity, as assessed by
visual inspection of a plot of studentized residuals versus unstandardized predicted values. There
was no evidence of multicollinearity, as assessed by tolerance values greater than 0.1. There
were no studentized deleted residuals greater than ±3 standard deviations, no leverage values
greater than 0.2, and values for Cook's distance above 1. The assumption of normality was met,
as assessed by Q-Q Plot. The multiple regression model statistically significantly predicted
Score, Attempt 5, F(2, 27) = 7.308, p = 003, adj. R
2
= .303. Only the Musical Experience Score
added statistically significantly to the prediction, p < .05. Regression coefficients and standard
errors can be found in table 5.5 below. One could conclude that the Musical Experience Score
was so influential as to completely overpower any affect the Instruction Set may have had on the
score in Attempt 5.
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TABLE 5.5. Coefficients for multiple regression
Model Unstandardized Coefficients Standardized Coefficients
B Std. Error Beta Sig.
1 (Constant) 3.620 7.779 .645
Instruction Set -2.229 3.010 -.123 .465
Musical Experience Score .710 .220 .537 .003
The researcher also attempted to discover more granular relationships by running
multiple regressions including the components of the Musical Experience Score, as well as the
ensemble in which respondents participated. For the components of the Musical Experience
Score, the data failed the assumptions of leverage (almost all of the leverage scores were well
above 0.5, which is considered “risky”) and influence (most of the Cook’s Distance scores were
above 1). The ensemble participation failed both the assumptions of leverage (one third were
above the “safe” level of 0.2) and of homoscedasticity, specifically with the respondents who
participated in University Chorus. Thus, this data set is also unsatisfactory at addressing research
question two, whether confounding variables interact with the instruction set. Instead, it appears
that—rather than interacting—they overwhelmed.
It was hypothesized that Group 1 would be more accurate at first, but would not improve
significantly from attempt to attempt, while Group 2 would initially be less accurate, but would
be more accurate than Group 1 by the fifth attempt. A line graph in figure 5.2 shows that, for this
data set, this hypothesis was incorrect. Respondents in Group 1 were initially more accurate, but
they actually experienced musical learning at a higher rate than respondents in Group 2, whose
average accuracy never exceeded the lowest average score for Group 1. This result was only of
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Sco
re
limited value, as it had already been determined that this relationship was not statistically
significant in this data set.
FIGURE 5.2. Line graph: Instruction set versus score
One correlation was strongly statistically significant, namely there was a strong positive
correlation (.492) with a significance of p = .006 between a respondent’s comfort with sight-
singing and their score in Attempt 5. Interestingly, the correlation between a respondent’s self-
predicted accuracy and actual accuracy was a positive correlation of .347, but it had a
significance of p = .06, so one can only note trends. There was no statistically significant
correlation between biological sex and accuracy, nor was there a statistically significant result
when a t-test was applied in the same situation.
Discussion
Limitations
This study encountered two substantial limitations in the design and experimentation
process. First, the researcher had initially intended to use the SmartMusic software as the
assessment tool in order to provide an objective standard of measurement. However, at the time
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
16
18
20
1 2 3 4 5
Group 1 Group 2
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of the experiment, SmartMusic had just released an entirely new version of the program, which
did not allow educators to upload accompaniment tracks for custom assessments. This was true
for both the free platform and the paid version. Thus, the researcher opted to assess in situ,
which—though possibly less accurate—was hopefully consistent.
Second, the level of musical inexperience of many of the respondents caused the
researcher to modify the experimental process during the course of data collection. While the
starting pitch was never provided, the researcher occasionally provided hints from the score for
the respondent to find the starting pitch. Further, the researcher often resorted to conducting the
first two bars, to provide a cue for the respondent to begin singing. Even informing the
respondent that the exercise was “in three” was insufficient for many to begin correctly. The
researcher concluded it was more authentic to provide these scaffolds than to allow the
respondent to simply score repeated zeros purely from not knowing “when to come in.”
Conclusions
While very little of the data in this study was statistically significant, it was suggestive. It
appeared that a person’s musical experience bore so greatly on their sight-singing accuracy that
an instruction set alone could not overcome that predisposition. A respondent’s comfort with
sight-singing was predictive of their accuracy, but perhaps this was circular, as comfort may lie
in the knowledge of one’s ability to sight-sing accurately. One possible finding of this pilot work
was that instruction set alone may not be determinative of accuracy in sight-singing situations.
The literature on risk-taking, failure, and constructivist learning suggested a more
nuanced (and substantial) study would be necessary to elicit the sort of information desired.
Thus, this informal pilot study was the genesis for the current research in this dissertation. Much
of the literature discussed the role of emotions, so the current research contained assessments
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throughout the process where respondents rate their emotions. Constructivist research also
showed that having teachers provide feedback and learners provide strategies for improvement
was the most effective way to increase learning. Thus, this dimension was added to the main
research study. Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development was another area of tantalizing
possibility. The “knowledgeable other” could be the instructor, but it could also be another
singer. Therefore, the main study was designed where singers worked together in pairs or in
slightly larger groups to provide a host of interesting data, particularly since each individual was
pre-scored for musical experience and pairings were made intentionally to create groups of
participants with a range of musical experience scores. The current main study was also designed
to re-visit the retention score after several days, which would be more typical of a rehearsal
situation.
Some assessments of musical accuracy divide the concepts of pitch and rhythm. During
more than one instance during the informal pilot study, the researcher watched a respondent
successfully master one component (pitch or rhythm), only to score with frequent errors due to
the other component (e.g. one respondent used hand-sign solfege to correctly sing every pitch in
the exercise and then scored in the single digits due to rhythmic inaccuracies). For the main
study, it was considered fruitful to determine authentic ways rhythmic and pitch accuracy could
be separated from one another. This sort of study would also make use of the burgeoning field of
Social Network Theory, particularly the concept of degrees of influence. Finally, the main study
explored Clifford’s theory of constructive failure. Sadly, the researcher happened upon this
literature after the data collection for the informal pilot study was complete, and thus the
structure of the experiment was not informed by literature on constructive failure.
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This informal pilot study provided the first foray into the realm of encouraging learning
through failure in music teaching and learning to include verbiage that allows for failure and
encourages risk-taking. While the results were not statistically significant, the informal pilot
study provided a springboard to the current research studying of practices that encourage risk-
taking and failure. Understanding the power of accepting failure in music-making to facilitate
learning parallels the acceptance of failure by those involved with the “maker movement,” and it
is the first step to unlocking the incredible potential of independent music-makers.
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Chapter Six: Main Study Procedures and Results
Introduction
As noted in Chapter One, the purpose of this quantitative study was to determine the
effect of strategic risk-taking choral rehearsal strategies on melodic and rhythmic accuracy when
learning a newly composed piece of choral music. One group was instructed by encouraging
risk-taking in a positive, experimental condition, and another group was instructed in a more
traditional teacher-centered manner. Also considered were the confounding effects of singers’
prior musical experience, their network centrality, the size of the treatment group, and the
singers’ emotions. Three research questions were posed:
1. Would the melodic and rhythmic accuracy of singers be greater when a conductor’s
interactions with singers encouraged strategic risk-taking during the learning process than
without that allowance?
2. Would the change in the melodic and rhythmic accuracy of singers between the first and
fourth rehearsals (i.e. the speed of learning) be greater when a conductor’s interactions
with singers encouraged strategic risk-taking during the learning process than without
that allowance?
3. Would certain variables such as prior musical experience, network centrality, size of
group, and participants’ emotions impact the melodic and rhythmic accuracy of singers
and thus confound the findings?
The main independent variable in this study was the conductor’s interaction with the
singers, and the dependent variables were scores on a researcher-designed melodic and rhythmic
accuracy measurement. Several other independent variables were also analyzed using various
statistical procedures, to examine their interaction on melodic and rhythmic accuracy.
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Participants received a musical experience score (assessed by an initial questionnaire)
ranging from 11-44 (see Appendix 1), which was treated as a continuous variable. Participants
received a network centrality score (assessed by an initial questionnaire), which was also treated
as a continuous variable (see Appendix 5). Participants’ emotions were self-reported at the end
of every rehearsal (see Appendix 2). The emotions indicated by the participants were grouped
into eight overarching categories, which were treated as nominal variables. Multiple regression
and other statistical tests were employed to discover the interaction between these independent
variables, the main independent variable of conductor interaction, and the dependent variables of
melodic and rhythmic accuracy.
Both the independent variable of teacher interaction and the dependent assessment
variables were refined based on the pilot study reported in Chapter Five, and a brief second pilot
with college singers described below. This chapter contains further details about the procedures
and results of the main study.
Procedure
After the initial informal pilot study was completed at the University of Southern
California in the spring of 2017 and reported in Chapter Five, the main study began in a new
location in Western Maryland in the fall of 2018. This main study began with a second pilot
experiment involving six first-year collegiate students at the university where the researcher was
newly employed. This short pilot was designed to determine: (1) if the procedures set forth in
Chapter One would be effective, (2) how to assess accuracy, and (3) whether the recording
equipment functioned as hoped. The work occurred early in October 2018. It demonstrated that
the procedures were effective, and that the recording technology worked, though the resulting
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audio files required considerable amplification. A timeline of the study may be found in table
6.1.
TABLE 6.1. Study timeline, 2018
April May June July August September October November December
Proposal X
IRB Approval X
Recruitment X
Data Collection X X
Data Analysis X
Write-Up X X
Sampling
Between the informal pilot study and this research, the researcher made a conscious
decision to move the target of data collection from the college setting to an active choral program
on the high school level. This was done for several reasons. First, the conceptual frames
developed in the early chapters of this dissertation apply equally well across several age groups,
the high school years are profoundly formative in terms of music education, and that age group
seemed best-suited for this research. Second, the practical implications of this research seem
more suited to the secondary classroom than the collegiate level. Many aspects of constructivism
and the other philosophical frames are already included in many areas of the secondary
curriculum, so adding them to the choral rehearsal seems a more straightforward task. Finally,
the research was focused at the high school level because it is simply more useful there. There
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are more high school singers than collegiate singers, so the study may have its greatest impact
with that demographic.
The study considered a population of amateur choral singers at a high school in Western
Maryland. This selection was a sampling of convenience, both given its proximity to the
researcher and because the choral director had often collaborated with the researcher in the past.
This high school is typical of many high schools in the United States, with approximately 700
students, 43 teachers, a 15% minority and 40% economically disadvantaged population.
1
Participants were high-school aged students participating in a choral ensemble at the research
site.
Initially, the participants’ past musical experiences were collected (Appendix 1).
Participants were then stratified by the ensemble to which they belonged. Once their responses to
the initial survey were tabulated, participants in each ensemble were assigned a musicianship
score, which was used to place them in one of three equal-sized pools, based on musical
experience: beginner, intermediate, and advanced. This was not determined by external criteria,
but in a norm-referenced manner, by simply dividing the sample for each ensemble into three
equal-sized pools of students. Stratified sampling was again used to create groups of varying size
(2-7 members) wherein members possessed varying levels of musical experience. By ensuring
that groups had beginner, intermediate, and advanced members, the average group musical
experience score between all groups was approximately the same. A third stratification occurred
to determine which treatment each group would receive, so that groups of similar size and
musical experience underwent different treatments. For this study, n=54, with a group of 2, a
group of 3, a group of 4, a group of 5, a group of 6, and a group of 7 receiving constructivist
1
“Allegany High School,” U.S. News & World Report.
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rehearsal strategies and another group of 2, of 3, of 4, of 5, of 6, and of 7 receiving declarative
instruction.
2
The students’ choral conductor was consulted to ensure that groups did not contain
combinations of students who would interact poorly with one another.
Approach to Data Collection
Concurrently with completion of this second pilot with college students, generous
permission was obtained from the local school district in the town situated close to the
researcher’s university. The music curriculum coordinator, high school choral teacher, high
school principal, and the chief academic officer of the school district all agreed to allow the
research to occur.
To introduce the study, the high school choral teacher scheduled a meeting with all of the
choral students during the lunch break, where the researcher presented the study, its importance,
and its procedures. It was clearly explained that the research would take place during the
regularly-scheduled choral rehearsal, and that there would be no penalty for non-participation,
nor any benefit to participating. Per the IRB approval, the potential participants were deceived as
to the nature of the study, being told it was to explore the use of recording technology in the
classroom. This was done out of the belief that students—being generally good-natured—would
attempt to work harder in one setting or the other if they knew that the study was exploring the
impact of disparate instructional methods. This approach was based on a desire to control a
source of experimental internal validity known as the “Hawthorne Effect.”
3
Consent forms were sent home to parents of minors, which included assent forms for the
minors to sign (see Appendix 10). Students eighteen years of age or older were given consent
forms (Appendix 11). No students turned eighteen during the data collection. All signed consent
2
(2+3+4+5+6+7)*2 (treatments) = 54.
3
Cook, “The Hawthorne Effect,” 116.
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and assent forms were returned to the high school choral teacher. The high school choral teacher
provided multiple reminders to the students to return their consent and assent forms. One student
elected not to participate.
4
Scheduling times for research proved to be a challenge. While the principal and choral
teacher were welcoming, aligning the high school calendar, space reservations within the school,
and the researcher’s calendar provided three significant hurdles. In the end, it was decided to
conduct research twice during the week of October 29, 2018, once during the week of November
5, and once during the week of November 12. Then, a week break—designed to measure
retention—corresponded to the week of Thanksgiving. Finally, data would be collected twice
during the week of November 26. Instead, snow days cancelled the research during the week of
November 12, so that data collection was moved to the Monday before Thanksgiving. This
substantial alteration of the data collection schedule resulted in data collected approximately
every ten days.
Description of Variables
Teaching style
It was acknowledged from the outset that body language, tone of voice, and other non-
verbal aspects of communication may impact the results. However, since the researcher believed
that these are concomitant with the kinds of treatment being applied (e.g. a constructivist
educator is more likely to have “open” body language), non-verbal factors were considered as
inconsequential for the purpose of this study. To further minimize this, the same conductor—
who was also the principal investigator—was used for all experiments.
4
This decision not to participate would have consequences later, as considered in the Chapter Seven.
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• Treatment A (control): The control group received declarative instruction/augmented
feedback from the conductor as they learn the piece (Appendix 3).
• Treatment B (experimental): The experimental group experienced a constructivist
rehearsal, where students were encouraged to listen, analyze their own performance, and
take risks to see what errors they could discover and correct on their own.
Rather than providing direct instruction, the conductor asked questions and encouraged students
to discover in their own way. Direct instruction was occasionally necessary with the
experimental group, but it was kept to a minimum. Each rehearsal added more constructivist
elements, always attempting to maintain a balance between freedom and experience. The first
rehearsal introduced the interrogation and implementation of singer opinions and ideas. The
second rehearsal introduced peer evaluations. The third rehearsal introduced student-directed
learning, and the fourth rehearsal attempted to be almost entirely student led, with the conductor
only participating as requested by the students (see Appendix 4 for a detailed implementation
strategy and possible scripts).
Assessment of melodic and rhythmic accuracy
Upon consultation with the dissertation supervisor, it was decided to measure accuracy
with two separate scores for melody and for rhythm, a more refined way than was done in the
pilot reported in Chapter Five. The researcher listened to each recording several times, counting
the number of correct pitches sung during the 12-minute experimental rehearsal and compared
that to the number of pitches possible. Pitches were determined to be “correct” by the researcher
using the following criteria: would this pitch be considered acceptable in the researcher’s own
choir, or would it require addressing during the rehearsal? The participant was then assigned a
percentage score, indicating percentage of correct pitches sung of the total pitches possible. A
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similar process was used to assess correct rhythms and assign a percentage score for correct
rhythms. This was felt to be a more accurate approach to assessment. The work with college
students in the second short pilot used this procedure and the success experienced there added to
the assessment approach and set the stage for the main study.
Other variables of importance
Similar to the approach in the pilot study, participants first filled out an Initial
Assessment (see Appendix 1) as a Google Form. Their experience in a variety of music-making
activities was tallied to assign a Musicianship Score. For each question regarding years of
experience at a particular activity, one point was assigned for 0–1 years, two points for 1–3
years, three points for 3–5 years, and four points for 5 or more years. These were then summed.
There were eleven questions, so a participant’s Musicianship Score could range from 11–44. For
the fifty-four participants, data on their scores are presented in table 6.2.
TABLE 6.2. Musicianship Scores in the main study
Mean 15.7
Median 14.0
Mode 14.0
Max 28.0
Min 11.0
Range 17.0
This form also collected information on the participant’s grade in school, whether or not they
self-reported perfect pitch, and self-reported comfort with sight-singing and self-predicted
accuracy with sight-singing.
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Stratified random sampling occurred to create groups for the students. Because of the
researcher’s interest in Emergence Theory, groups were created consisting of two, three, four,
five, six, and seven participants, to see if group size had an impact on musical accuracy. Students
were stratified by the ensemble of which they were a member and by their musicianship score.
This ensemble-based stratification caused one additional student to be unable to participate, as
the class had an odd number of students, and there was no room remaining in paired groups.
5
For
the first stratification, all of the students within any given group belonged to the same ensemble
to facilitate experimental rehearsal times. In the second stratification, students in each ensemble
were randomly assigned to groups, but in such a way that each group contained a mixture of
high, medium, and low musicianship scores, and that paired groups (e.g. two groups of five, one
receiving the control experience and one receiving the experimental instruction) had nearly
identical average musicianship scores. For the twelve groups, data about their scores are
presented in table 6.3.
TABLE 6.3. Group musicianship scores
Mean 15.4
Median 15.8
Mode 13.7
Max 17.0
Min 13.7
Range 3.3
5
The high school choral teacher suggested that the excluded student would be a better choice than one already included, due to
attendance issues. However, because the groups were random, it was decided to maintain the groups as-is.
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Growing out of the researcher’s interest in Social Network Theory, all participants were
asked to complete a Social Network Survey (Appendix 5) as a Google Form, which allowed
them to self-report how connected they felt they were to the other participants. The researcher
needed to explain this process in person to each ensemble, because most participants confused
the concept of being connected to someone with the concept of liking someone.
The backstage area at the school contained an electronic piano, so that space was set
aside for the experiment. Students were summoned from their regular ensemble rehearsal, went
to the backstage area, donned a digital recorder and lavalier microphone, and were provided with
paper copies of the newly composed work, La Canción del Caminante (Appendix 3), written by
the researcher. They were not told that this piece was written by the researcher, and all
identifying information was removed from the paper copy. Rehearsals then proceeded in one of
two ways, either according to standard choral pedagogy or according to the Strategic Risk-
Taking Scripts (Appendix 4), for twelve minutes. Four rehearsals were held for each group over
the course of five weeks. At the end of each rehearsal, participants were asked to complete the
Discreet Emotion Questionnaire (Appendix 2) as a Google Form, indicating how strongly they
felt each of thirty-two feelings.
At the conclusion of each research session, the researcher would assess the recordings
according to the following process. First, the recordings were amplified so that their content was
audible. Then, they were played, and the researcher counted correct pitches using a computer
mouse to click once for every correct pitch, using the website OpenProcessing.org’s application
“Count the Clicks!”. The recordings were played a second time, and correct rhythms were
counted. Depending on the volume of the singer and the clarity of the recording, several
listenings were sometimes needed. The researcher then used the paper copy of the musical score
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to determine how many notes were possible during the twelve-minute rehearsal period and noted
both the actual scores and the percentages (e.g. 289/314 and .9204). The researcher did all of the
assessments, so the assessments should be self-consistent. Further, the researcher re-assessed
approximately 1% of the recordings, and discovered that the re-assessed scores were essentially
the same as the first assessment. This data was entered into a spreadsheet and associated with a
unique, randomly assigned ID number for each participant. A change in pitch accuracy and
rhythmic accuracy was also computed by subtracting the scores from the first rehearsal from the
scores of the fourth rehearsal. This number could be—and sometimes was—negative. When a
student was absent for a rehearsal, the data from the rehearsal immediately prior or afterwards
was copied into the missing cells. Thirty-two of 432 data points were modified in this way
(sixteen pitch, sixteen rhythmic). Of those thirty-two data points, six were from the fourth
rehearsal (three students were absent), so data from the third rehearsal was substituted for those
students. An overall percentage score was also computed for both pitch and rhythm,
encompassing the four rehearsals. The percentage scores for pitch for each rehearsal were
summed, and then divided by four to create a score indicating pitch accuracy across four
rehearsals. This process was repeated for rhythm scores.
Social Network Scores were computed using a spreadsheet. First, a matrix was created,
with the participants’ names listed both down the left and across the top. Then, the data was
reduced to a binary: either a pair of people was connected, or they were not. At each intersection
of two names, connections were coded as “1”; otherwise “0.” The self-connection was coded as
“0.” A person’s “first-hop” score was computed by summing all of the connections in their row.
6
The “second-hop” score was calculated in a two-step process. First, using the above-mentioned
6
For example, if a person reported a connection to thirty eight of the fifty-four participants, the sum—and the first-hop score—
would be 38.
173
matrix, in a given column, if a 1 was present to indicate a connection between two participants,
another field was added, which would contain the first-hop score of the person to whom the
participant on the left was connected (the column header). These values were then summed to the
left, and a second-hop score was computed. The “third-hop” score was created in the same way,
except that it used the value of the second-hop score in lieu of the first-hop score when a
connection was present. Social Network theory maintains that beyond the third hop, the
connections fade in importance to essentially nothing, so no further “hop” scores were
computed.
7
At the conclusion of this process, each participant had three scores: a first-hop score,
a second-hop score, and a third-hop score. Because the first-hop relationships are more important
than second-hop, and second-hop more than third-hop, the scores were adjusted to attempt to
account for this difference in importance. The first-hop score was squared, and squared again.
8
The second-hop score was squared once.
9
The third-hop score was left as-is. These three
numbers were then summed to create a combined Social Network Score for each participant.
table 6.4 displays data on Social Network Scores. Note the wide distribution of these scores,
indicating that some students were very connected, while others were barely connected at all.
7
Christakis and Fowler, Connected, 28–29.
8
For example, ((38)
2
)
2
= (1,444)
2
= 2,085,136. That person’s adjusted first-hop score was 2,085,136.
9
For example, a second-hop score of 1,223 was treated as: (1,223)
2
= 1,495,729. That person’s adjusted second-hop score was
1,495,729.
174
TABLE 6.4. Social network scores
Mean 3,408,868
Median 2,432,090
Mode N/A
Max 11,623,626
Min 110,786
Range 11,512,840
Emotion Scores for each rehearsal were calculated with a spreadsheet. According to the
Discrete Emotion Questionnaire, the thirty-two feelings reduce to eight over-arching emotions—
Anger, Disgust, Fear, Anxiety, Sadness, Desire, Relaxation, Happiness—with four feelings for
each emotion. The participants’ scores were summed from the component feelings to create the
emotion score for each of the eight over-arching emotions. This was done for every rehearsal. A
change in emotion score was also created by subtracting the scores from the first rehearsal from
the scores of the fourth rehearsal. This score could be—and frequently was—negative. The
change in emotions as the study progressed are in table 6.5 and table 6.6. Note that for the
“negative” emotions of Anger, Fear, and Anxiety, a substantial number of the scores went down.
For the positive emotions or Relaxation and Happiness, the results are less clear, but the mean
score did rise for both. Further, the largest changes belonged to a twenty-four point reduction in
anxiety and a nineteen point increase in relaxation.
175
TABLE 6.5. Change in emotion scores (a)
Anger Disgust Fear Anxiety Sadness Desire Relaxation Happiness
Increase 4 8 4 7 10 9 24 23
No change 29 35 17 13 29 26 7 9
Decrease 21 11 33 34 15 19 23 22
TABLE 6.6. Change in emotion scores (b)
Anger Disgust Fear Anxiety Sadness Desire Relaxation Happiness
Mean -2.4 -0.4 -3.0 -4.0 -0.4 -0.6 0.9 1.3
Median 0 0 -2 -2.5 0 0 0 0
Mode 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Min -17 -10 -24 -24 -12 -6 -14 -12
Max 2 7 12 12 10 5 19 15
Range 19 17 36 36 22 11 33 27
When a student was absent for a rehearsal or neglected to complete the Emotion
Questionnaire, the data from the rehearsal immediately prior or afterwards was copied into the
missing cells. 256 of 1,152 data points were modified in this way (thirty-two for each emotion).
Of those 256 data points, forty were from the fourth rehearsal (three students were absent and
two failed to complete the questionnaire), so data from the third rehearsal was substituted for
those students.
176
Results
Research Question One
Once the data were collected, a number of statistical tests were done. A one-way
ANOVA was used to assess whether there was a statistically significant difference in overall
pitch accuracy during the four rehearsals between the treatment and control groups. There were
three outliers of more than 1.5 standard deviations and one greater than three standard deviations.
These outliers were determined to be unusual data points (rather than errors in coding) and were
retained in the data. (The test was run without these outliers, and the results had an even greater
statistical significance. Because the researcher believed in the validity and importance of these
data points, they were retained.) The overall pitch scores were normally distributed, as assessed
by visual inspection of a Normal Q-Q Plot. There was homogeneity of variances, as assessed by
Levene's Test for Equality of Variances (p = .415). The overall pitch score was statistically
significantly different between groups that received the treatment and those that did not, F=
7.250, p = .01, as shown in table 6.7. While this difference is significant, also note that the mean
overall pitch score for the Traditional Rehearsal group is higher than for the experimental group.
The mean scores for overall pitch accuracy between the two groups are shown in figure 6.1.
TABLE 6.7. ANOVA (overall pitch score)
Sum of squares df Mean Square F Sig.
Between Groups .275 1 .275 7.250 .010
Within Groups 1.974 52 .038
Total 2.249 53
177
FIGURE 6.1: Mean overall pitch score
A one-way ANOVA was used to assess whether there was a statistically significant
difference in overall rhythmic accuracy during the four rehearsals between the treatment and
control groups. There was one outlier of more than 1.5 standard deviations. This outlier was
determined to be an unusual data point (rather than an error in coding) and was retained in the
data. (The test was run without this outlier, and the results had an even greater statistical
significance. Because the researcher believed in the validity and importance of this data point, it
was retained.) The overall pitch scores were normally distributed, as assessed by visual
inspection of a Normal Q-Q Plot. Homogeneity of variances was violated, as assessed by
Levene's Test of Homogeneity of Variance (p = 0.037). The overall rhythm score was
statistically significantly different between groups that received the treatment and those that did
not, Welch's F(1, 46.643) = 9.443, p =.003, as shown in table 6.8. While this difference is
significant, also note that the mean overall rhythm score for the Traditional Rehearsal group is
73%
65%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
Traditional Rehearsal Strategic Risk-Taking
Mean Overall Pitch Score
178
higher than for the experimental group. The mean scores for overall pitch accuracy between the
two groups are shown in figure 6.2.
TABLE 6.8. Robust tests of equality of means (overall rhythm score)
Statistic
a
df1 df2 Sig.
Welch 9.443 1 46.643 .003
a. Asymptotically F distributed.
FIGURE 6.2: Mean overall rhythm score
With regard to the first research question—“Would the melodic and rhythmic accuracy of
singers be greater when a conductor’s interaction with singers encourages strategic risk-taking
during the learning process than without that allowance?”—the answer in this data set appears to
be “no.” Based on the results of the ANOVA tests for both pitch and rhythm, the hypothesis that
melodic and rhythmic accuracy of singers will be greater when a conductor’s interaction with
70%
66%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
Traditional Rehearsal Strategic Risk-Taking
Mean Overall Rhythm Score
179
singers encourages strategic risk-taking during the learning process than without that allowance
is not supported for either melodic and rhythmic accuracy.
10
Research Question Two
It was also hypothesized that students in the Strategic Risk-Taking group would learn
faster than those in the Traditional Rehearsal Setting. Hotelling's T
2
was run to determine the
speed at which students learned pitch content, given two rehearsal treatments. Data for this
statistical test is presented in table 6.9.
The students’ pitch accuracy was measured during four rehearsals. Students received one
of two rehearsal treatments: Traditional Rehearsal or Strategic Risk-Taking. Data are expressed
as mean and standard deviation. Preliminary assumption checking revealed that data was
normally distributed, as assessed by visual inspection of a Normal Q–Q Plot.
There were ten univariate outliers as assessed by boxplot. After square root, logarithmic,
and inverse transformations were run, the outliers were not corrected, so they were removed
from the dataset for this calculation. There was one multivariate outlier, as assessed by
Mahalanobis distance (p > .001). This outlier was retained, as its Mahalanobis distance of 19.72
was only slightly higher than the critical value of 18.47 There were linear relationships, as
assessed by scatterplot; no multicollinearity (|r| < .9). The assumption of homogeneity of
variance-covariance matrices was violated, as assessed by Box's M test (p < .001).
Data are expressed as mean ± standard deviation. Students in the Traditional Rehearsal
group, while showing an initial increase in pitch accuracy, regressed for the fourth rehearsal, and
ended less accurate than they began (.79 ± .061, .83 ± .093, .85 ± .076, .77 ± .115 respectively).
10
Chapter Seven discusses potential limitations of this finding, including the timescale of the experiment and the absence of any
metric for differentiating difficulty of task.
180
TABLE 6.9. Descriptive statistics mean pitch scores per rehearsal, divided by treatment
Treatment Mean Std. Deviation N
Pitch Score 1 Traditional Rehearsal .788437 .0609361 21
Strategic Risk-Taking .591520 .2883524 27
Total .677671 .2394202 48
Pitch Score 2 Traditional Rehearsal .833353 .0932153 21
Strategic Risk-Taking .623623 .2966643 27
Total .715380 .2518708 48
Pitch Score 3 Traditional Rehearsal .847731 .0758077 21
Strategic Risk-Taking .654516 .2261456 27
Total .739047 .2002981 48
Pitch Score 4 Traditional Rehearsal .773622 .1147173 21
Strategic Risk-Taking .743415 .1893680 27
Total .756631 .1602091 48
Students in the Strategic Risk-Taking group demonstrated a steady increase in pitch
accuracy (.59 ± .288, .62 ± .297, .65 ± .226, .74 ± .189 respectively). There was a statistically
significant difference between the treatments on the combined dependent variables, F(4, 43) =
6.662, p < .0005; Pillai's Trace = .383; partial η
2
= .383. A Bonferroni adjusted α level of
.016667 with a simultaneous 98.33% confidence level was used. Mean pitch scores for students
in the Strategic Risk-Taking group were 0.20 higher (98.33% CI, .038 to .356) for the first
rehearsal, 0.21 higher (98.33% CI, .042 to .377) for the second rehearsal, 0.19 higher (98.33%
CI, .065 to .321) for the third rehearsal, and 0.03 higher (98.33% CI, -.086 to .147) for the fourth
181
rehearsal than those in the Traditional Rehearsal setting. There was a statistically significant
difference in pitch accuracy scores for the two groups during the first three rehearsals, (p = .004,
p = .003, p < .0005 respectively) but not for the fourth rehearsal, p = .523. A scatter plot with the
trendlines showing pitch accuracy scores is presented in figure 6.3.
FIGURE 6.3: Trend line for change in pitch scores
Hotelling's T
2
was run to determine the speed at which students learned rhythmic content,
given two rehearsal treatments. Data for this statistical test is presented in table 6.10. The
students’ rhythmic accuracy was also measured during four rehearsals. Students received one of
two rehearsal treatments: Traditional Rehearsal or Strategic Risk-Taking. Data are expressed as
mean ± standard deviation. Preliminary assumption checking revealed that data was normally
distributed, as assessed by visual inspection of a Normal Q–Q Plot. There were 23 univariate
outliers as assessed by boxplot. They were similarly distributed between the treatment and the
control group, so they were retained in the dataset. There was one multivariate outlier, as
assessed by Mahalanobis distance (p > .001). This outlier was retained, as its Mahalanobis
distance of 19.76 was only slightly higher than the critical value of 18.47. There were linear
0.5
0.55
0.6
0.65
0.7
0.75
0.8
0.85
0.9
1 2 3 4
Traditional Rehearsal Strategic Risk-Taking
Linear (Traditional Rehearsal) Linear (Strategic Risk-Taking)
182
relationships, as assessed by scatterplot; no multicollinearity (|r| < .9). There was homogeneity of
variance-covariance matrices, as assessed by Box's test of equality of covariance matrices (p =
.03). Data are expressed as mean ± standard deviation. Students in the Traditional Rehearsal
group, while showing an initial increase in rhythmic accuracy, regressed for the fourth rehearsal,
and ended less accurate than they began (.70 ± .144, .68 ± .162, .73 ± .137, .70 ± .135
respectively).
TABLE 6.10. Descriptives of mean rhythm scores per rehearsal, divided by treatment
Treatment Mean Std. Deviation N
Rhythm Score 1 Traditional Rehearsal .700513 .1437006 27
Strategic Risk-Taking .633083 .1938382 27
Total .666798 .1723961 54
Rhythm Score 2 Traditional Rehearsal .676172 .1622374 27
Strategic Risk-Taking .612751 .2269321 27
Total .644461 .1979898 54
Rhythm Score 3 Traditional Rehearsal .732216 .1366162 27
Strategic Risk-Taking .666182 .1849222 27
Total .699199 .1644449 54
Rhythm Score 4 Traditional Rehearsal .699148 .1348017 27
Strategic Risk-Taking .735304 .1366782 27
Total .717226 .1356891 54
Students in the Strategic Risk-Taking group demonstrated an increase in rhythmic
accuracy (.63 ± .194, .61 ± .227, .67 ± .185, .74 ± .137 respectively). There was a statistically
183
significant difference between the treatments on the combined dependent variables, F(4, 49) =
4.558, p =.003; Pillai's Trace = .271; partial η
2
= .271. A Bonferroni adjusted α level of .016667
with a simultaneous 98.33% confidence level was used. Mean rhythm scores for students in the
Traditional Rehearsal group were 0.07 higher (98.33% CI, -.047 to .182) for the first rehearsal,
0.06 higher (98.33% CI, -.069to .196) for the second rehearsal, and 0.07 higher (98.33% CI, -
.043 to .175) for the third rehearsal than those in the Strategic Risk-Taking setting. For the fourth
rehearsal, the mean rhythm score for students in the Strategic Risk-Taking group was 0.04 higher
(98.33% CI, -.128 to .055) than those in the Traditional Rehearsal setting. There was no
statistically significant difference in rhythmically accuracy scores for the two groups during any
of the rehearsals, but they are certainly suggestive, (p = .152, p = .243, p = .142, p = 332
respectively). A scatter plot with the trendlines showing pitch accuracy scores is presented in
figure 6.4.
FIGURE 6.4: Trend line for change in rhythm scores
With regard to the first research question—“Would the change in the melodic and
rhythmic accuracy of singers between the first and fourth rehearsals (i.e. the speed of learning)
0.6
0.65
0.7
0.75
1 2 3 4
Traditional Rehearsal Strategic Risk-Taking
Linear (Traditional Rehearsal) Linear (Strategic Risk-Taking)
184
be greater when a conductor’s interactions with singers encouraged strategic risk-taking during
the learning process than without that allowance? “—the answer appears to be “yes.” Based on
the results of the Hotelling's T
2
tests for both pitch and rhythm, the hypothesis that students will
learn faster when a conductor’s interaction with singers encourages strategic risk-taking during
the learning process than without that allowance is supported for both melodic and rhythmic
accuracy.
Research Question Three – Social Network Score
A multiple regression was done to predict change in pitch accuracy from treatment
variable and social network score. There was linearity as assessed by partial regression plots and
a plot of studentized residuals against the predicted values. There was independence of residuals,
as assessed by a Durbin-Watson statistic of 1.873. There was homoscedasticity, as assessed by
visual inspection of a plot of studentized residuals versus unstandardized predicted values. There
was no evidence of multicollinearity, as assessed by tolerance values greater than 0.1. There
were two studentized deleted residuals greater than ±3 standard deviations, no leverage values
greater than 0.2, and values for Cook's distance above 1. The assumption of normality was met,
as assessed by a Q-Q Plot. The multiple regression model statistically significantly predicted
change in pitch accuracy, F(2, 51) = 5.269, p = .008, adj. R
2
= .14. The treatment variable added
statistically significantly to the prediction, while the social network score was indicative, but not
statistically significant (p =.003 and p = .152, respectively). Regression coefficients and standard
errors can be found in table 6.11.
A multiple regression was done to predict change in rhythmic accuracy from treatment
and social network score. The multiple regression model was not a good fit for consideration of
rhythmic accuracy versus social network score and treatment variable due to a Durbin-Watson
185
statistic of 1.124. No other statistical test was deemed appropriate, so it is possible to conclude
that there is no meaningful relationship between pitch accuracy and treatment and social network
score for this dataset.
TABLE 6.11 Coefficients for social network score
Model Unstandardized Coefficients Standardized Coefficients
B Std. Error Beta
1 (Constant) .049 .043
Treatment .154 .049 .404
Social Network Score -1.301E-8 .000 -.189
Research Question Three – Musicianship Score
A multiple regression was done to predict change in pitch accuracy from treatment and
musicianship score. There was linearity as assessed by partial regression plots and a plot of
studentized residuals against the predicted values. There was independence of residuals, as
assessed by a Durbin-Watson statistic of 1.793. There was homoscedasticity, as assessed by
visual inspection of a plot of studentized residuals versus unstandardized predicted values. There
was no evidence of multicollinearity, as assessed by tolerance values greater than 0.1. There
were two studentized deleted residuals greater than ±3 standard deviations. There were two
leverage values greater than 0.2, both at 0.21, which were retained in the data. There were no
values for Cook's distance above 1. The assumption of normality was met, as assessed by a Q-Q
Plot. The multiple regression model statistically significantly predicted pitch change, F(2, 51) =
4.850, p = .012, adj. R
2
= .16. The treatment variable added statistically significantly to the
prediction, while the musicianship score was somewhat indicative, but not statistically
186
significant (p =.006 and p = .243, respectively). Regression coefficients and standard errors can
be found in table 6.12.
TABLE 6.12. Coefficients for musicianship score
Model Unstandardized Coefficients Standardized Coefficients
B Std. Error Beta
1 (Constant) .129 .105
Treatment .140 .049 .369
Musicianship Score -.008 .006 -.152
A multiple regression was run to predict change in rhythmic accuracy from treatment and
musicianship score. The multiple regression model was not a good fit for consideration of
rhythmic accuracy versus musicianship score and treatment variable due to a Durbin-Watson
statistic of 2.753. No other statistical test was deemed appropriate, so it is possible to conclude
that there is no meaningful relationship between rhythmic accuracy and treatment and
musicianship score for this dataset.
Research Question Three – Group Size
Multiple regression and hierarchical multiple regression tests were run to predict change
in pitch and rhythmic accuracy from treatment and group size score. None of these tests
produced results of statistical significance. However, a one-way ANOVA was done to assess
whether there was a statistically significant difference in the pitch accuracy scores from the
fourth rehearsal depending on how many people were in the group. There was one outlier of
more than 1.5 standard deviations. These outliers were determined to be unusual data points
(rather than errors in coding) and were retained in the data. The pitch accuracy scores from the
187
fourth rehearsal were normally distributed, as assessed by visual inspection of Normal Q-Q
Plots. Homogeneity of variances was violated, as assessed by Levene's Test of Homogeneity of
Variance (p = 0.16). The pitch accuracy scores from the fourth rehearsal were statistically
significantly different depending on group size, Welch's F(5, 15.344) = 7.31, p =.001, as shown
in table 6.13.
TABLE 6.13. Robust tests of equality of means (fourth rehearsal pitch score)
Statistic
a
df1 df2 Sig.
Welch 7.301 5 15.344 .001
a. Asymptotically F distributed.
Also, a one-way ANOVA was done to assess whether there was a statistically significant
difference in the rhythmic accuracy scores from the fourth rehearsal depending on how many
people were in the group. There were no outliers of more than 1.5 standard deviations. The
rhythmic accuracy scores from the fourth rehearsal were normally distributed, as assessed by
visual inspection of Normal Q-Q Plots. Homogeneity of variances was violated, as assessed by
Levene's Test of Homogeneity of Variance (p = 0.23). The rhythmic accuracy scores from the
fourth rehearsal were statistically significantly different depending on group size, Welch's F(5,
15.706) = 3.709, p =.021, as shown in table 6.14.
188
TABLE 6.14. Robust tests of equality of means (fourth rehearsal rhythm score)
Statistic
a
df1 df2 Sig.
Welch 3.709 5 15.706 .021
a. Asymptotically F distributed.
Research Question Three - Emotions
Multiple statistical tests were run to determine any relationships between the change in
participants’ emotional states and their pitch and rhythmic accuracy. No statistically significant
relationship was found, whether treating both the impact of the treatment and the change in
emotion as independent variables in multiple regression tests, treating treatment as the
independent variable and change in emotion and accuracy as dependent variables in a
MANOVA, in treating change in emotional state as a dependent variable and treatment as an
independent variable (without reference to the treatment) in independent sample t-tests, or
whether the emotions were considered in aggregate or separately. In fact, the instances when the
results seemed suggestive from a statistical significance point of view were those cases that had
the most outliers. A Mann-Whitney U test was run to determine if there were differences in any
of the change of emotion scores between the two treatments. Distributions of the change in each
of the emotion scores for the treatment groups were similar, as assessed by visual inspection.
Median change in emotions score for Traditional Rehearsal participants and Strategic Risk-
Taking rehearsal participants was not statistically significantly different, using an exact sampling
distribution for U (Dineen & Blakesley, 1973). Table 6.15 contains this data.
189
TABLE 6.15. Mann-Whitney U test statistics
Change in:
Anger Disgust Fear Anxiety Sadness Desire Relaxation Happiness
U 349 326 283 290 301 278 360 346
z 727 704 661 668 679 656 738 724
p .763 .429 .150 .191 .228 .112 .931 .741
It is therefore determined that no relationship exists between emotions, accuracy, or treatment in
this dataset.
With regard to the third research question—“Did certain confounding variables such as
prior musical experience, network centrality, size of group, and participants’ emotions impact the
melodic and rhythmic accuracy of singers?”—the answer was highly nuanced. Based on the
results of multiple regression tests, social network score had a statistically significant impact on
change in pitch accuracy, but not on change in rhythmic accuracy. Using multiple regression
tests, it was discovered that musicianship score was predictive of change in pitch accuracy, but
not in change of rhythmic accuracy. A one-way ANOVA demonstrated that group size did have
a statistically significant impact on both change in pitch and rhythmic accuracy. After multiple
statistical tests were done, no relationship could be found between emotional state and either
treatment or accuracy. The third hypothesis, that certain confounding variables will impact
melodic and rhythmic accuracy, is partially confirmed and bears further investigation.
190
Conclusion
Using data on melodic and rhythmic accuracy gathered at a high school in Western
Maryland from fifty-four choristers over the course of four rehearsals, this research attempted to
investigate three hypotheses:
1. Melodic and rhythmic accuracy of singers would be greater when a conductor’s
interactions with singers encouraged strategic risk-taking during the learning process than
without that allowance,
2. The change in the melodic and rhythmic accuracy of singers between the first and fourth
rehearsals (i.e. the speed of learning) would be greater when a conductor’s interactions
with singers encouraged strategic risk-taking during the learning process than without
that allowance, and
3. Certain variables such as prior musical experience, network centrality, size of group, and
participants’ emotions would impact the melodic and rhythmic accuracy of singers and
thus confound the findings.
For this dataset, using one-way ANOVA tests, it was determined that the first hypothesis was not
supported, as students receiving traditional instruction were more accurate over the course of
four rehearsals. Using Hotelling's T
2
tests, it was determined that the second hypothesis was
supported, as students encouraged to take strategic risks learned more quickly than their peers in
a Traditional Rehearsal setting. Using a variety of statistical tests, it was determined that the third
hypothesis was confirmed in some respects—namely the importance of social network, prior
musical experience, and group size—and not supported in the case of the role of emotions. The
implications of these findings are considered in the final chapter.
191
Chapter Seven: Summary, Analysis and Discussion
Summary
The current research project was a quantitative study of the allowance for strategic risk-
taking in the high school choral rehearsal setting—with the concomitant possibility of failure—
and the addition of constructivist pedagogical techniques to the high school choral rehearsal
setting. Constructivist and maker movement research seemed to indicate that risk-taking and
open-ended prompts could lead to greater accuracy and learning among students. Social Network
Theory seemed to suggest that a student’s level of connectedness to his or her peers would
influence outcomes, and Emergence Theory seemed to imply that—given a certain level of
ensemble size and complexity—synergies would occur to make rehearsal even more successful.
Motor Learning Theory seemed to promise innovative rehearsal strategies that built on the way
humans actually learn, and studies in shame research seemed to provide a pathway through the
dangers of risk-taking to capitalize on its advantages.
Based on these conceptual frames, fifty-four choristers from a high school in Western
Maryland learned a new piece of music under one of two conditions, either a traditional, teacher-
directed, top-down approach, or an emergent, constructivist approach that encouraged strategic
risk-taking and allowed for failure. These young people were further divided into groups of
different sizes (ranging from two to seven) to explore the impact (suggested by Emergence
Theory) of group size on accuracy. These groups were constructed based on a prior assessment
of students’ musicianship, so that every group had approximately the same corporate level of
musical experience. They were also constructed so that students were in groups that consisted
solely of other members of their own school choral ensemble. This construction, in addition to an
explicit inventory of self-reported social connectedness, sought to explore the impacts (suggested
192
by Social Network Theory) of network position on outcomes. The rehearsal strategies in the
constructivist rehearsal were based in research in the Theory of Constructive Failure,
Constructivism, the Maker-Movement, Motor Learning Theory, and the study of shame, and
individual gifts and roles were allowed to emerge, based on Social Network Theory.
Student accuracy in pitch and rhythm were assessed via recording over four twelve-
minute rehearsals, seeking to mimic the length of time a piece may be rehearsed in a standard
choral rehearsal. Student accuracy was assigned a percentage score, based on the total pitches or
rhythms sung correctly versus the number of pitches that could have been attempted in each
rehearsal. After each rehearsal, participants were asked to self-rate their degree of intensity
experiencing thirty-two emotions, which reduced down to eight over-arching emotions. All of
these numeric scores were subjected to a number of statistical tests to discover connections
among these many disparate concepts being considered. All of this was done in service to the
following three research questions:
1. Would the melodic and rhythmic accuracy of singers be greater when a conductor’s
interactions with singers encouraged strategic risk-taking during the learning process than
without that allowance?
2. Would the change in the melodic and rhythmic accuracy of singers between the first and
fourth rehearsals (i.e. the speed of learning) be greater when a conductor’s interactions
with singers encouraged strategic risk-taking during the learning process than without
that allowance?
3. Would certain variables such as prior musical experience, network centrality, size of
group, and participants’ emotions impact the melodic and rhythmic accuracy of singers
and thus confound the findings?
193
The conclusions drawn from this research suggested with statistical significance that
overall accuracy in pitch and rhythm were not improved by allowing for strategic risk-taking
(Question One). However, possible limitations to the value of this finding are discussed below.
Further, these results seemed to be mitigated by the second statistically significant finding, that
students learned more quickly when strategic risk-taking was allowed, possibly indicating that—
over the larger timescale of a quarter or semester—accuracy may indeed be greater as well
(Question Two). Finally, this research suggested that certain variables (such as prior musical
experience, size of group, and emotions) may have statistically significant impacts on accuracy,
but that social network position did not seem to have any relationship to accuracy in either pitch
or rhythm. From these conclusions, it seems fruitful to consider their implications in the choral
classroom.
Results Borne Out by the Literature
In a wide variety of educational settings, teachers are working to create collaborative
learning experiences, and both accept and encourage strategic risk-taking on the part of their
students, as it is a gateway for learning and independent thought. For too long, however,
ensemble directors have viewed the errors that can result from risk-taking in rehearsal as
antithetical to having high standards for the ensemble. When asked about this, directors often
opine that they allow for failure in rehearsal, but—in practice—tend toward practices that make
failure unacceptable and risk-taking impossible.
Statistically speaking, the results of this study provide: (1) quantitative support for those
practitioners who espouse a constructivist choral classroom, (2) a direct contradiction to those
who would strive to emulate the risk-averse totalitarians of the past, and (3) a caveat to those
194
conductors who may pay lip service to encouraging strategic risk-taking but—in practice—
discourage errors, and thereby, risk-taking.
The research basis for supporting strategic risk-taking, further undergirded by this study,
is robust, though woefully lacking in the arena of music. While it is important to note that the
students in the Traditional rehearsal were more accurate overall, the trend-line of ever-increasing
accuracy in the risk-taking group would seem to attenuate this finding, suggesting that—if
research had been conducted over a larger timescale—it is definitely possible that students
engaged in strategic risk-taking would be more accurate over the course of a quarter or a
semester. With reference to the literature, it should also be no surprise that students learned more
quickly when they were allowed to engage in trial-and-error and become responsible for their
own learning and learning pathways. Harel and Papert noted this as far back as 1991 in
Constructionism and their other work with the MIT Media Lab.
1
Recent scholarship in a number
of areas provides further nuance.
While Social Network Theory’s suggestion that musical accuracy might be linked to
social network position (Question Three) was not supported by this study, research in Social
Network Theory did correctly predict that organic roles would emerge as groups gained identity.
This was borne out in the rehearsals of the Strategic Risk-Taking group as—based on their innate
gifts and interests—some students began to provide leadership, some followed, and others
simply participated, while still others chivied distracted folks to remain on-task, and some
observed at a safe emotional distance. This is a textbook example of Christakis and Fowler’s
proposition of four prototypical roles in any social community: cooperators, free riders,
punishers, and loners.
2
1
For example, see Harel and Papert, Constructionism, 136.
2
Christakis and Fowler, Connected, 217ff, 232, 239
195
The study of makerspaces is analogous to Christakis and Fowlers’ research and predicted
that—in the Strategic Risk-Taking group—instructional boundaries between teacher and student
would become fluid, and anyone could serve as a “knowledgeable other.” Opinions, skills, and
goals were shared multi-directionally among all participants, and students actually kept
themselves in the “zone of proximal development,” rather than relying on the person in the
formal role of teacher. Rarely did the researcher have to either challenge the Strategic Risk-
Taking group to work harder or to encourage them to take on a simpler task. Instead, the students
knew what needed done and worked collaboratively to achieve it. The goal-oriented, but low-
pressure environment of the rehearsals for the Strategic Risk-Taking group bore out what Maude
Hickey predicted, “the ideal condition, then, for supporting high intrinsic motivation and high
creative output is one in which individuals perceive that external rewards are low, and the tasks
involved are relatively open.”
3
This underscored the finding that, while students in the Strategic
Risk-Taking group were initially less accurate than their Traditional Rehearsal counterparts, by
the fourth rehearsal, they had essentially reached parity, and—following the trend line—the
Strategic Risk-Taking students were on pace to overtake their Traditional Rehearsal peers in a
hypothetical fifth rehearsal.
Emergence Theory correctly predicted that group size would bear on group success. Just
as with slime mold not coalescing until a critical mass of cells is reached, so the accuracy of the
groups was impacted by the presence of more singers.
4
This particular point needs further study,
as the data on how group size impacted accuracy was inconclusive, probably due to a small
sample size.
3
Hickey, Music Outside the Lines, 18.
4
Johnson, Emergence, 64.
196
The research into vulnerability, shame, and performance anxiety was also exceptionally
pertinent. The expected “failure phobia” was present in the experimental rehearsals, especially
with inexperienced or unconfident singers, who then sang too softly to hear without greater
amplification, would not answer questions, and were generally afraid to be wrong. This is
performance anxiety related to Lehmann, et. al.
5
The participants may have experienced worry
about disappointing people, “worry about making mistakes, such as forgetting things, [worry
about] being unable to play expressively, looking foolish, hyperventilating, or even blacking out
and fainting on stage.”
6
Thus, it was initially difficult to convince students to be vulnerable and
potentially make mistakes in front of their peers, particularly in smaller groups. To counteract
this, the researcher used strategies such as waiting an uncomfortable amount of time to “force” a
student response, asking probing questions, and even instructing the students to sing only wrong
notes, so that “nothing else you sing today could be worse than that.” The researcher also
occasionally provided strategies to the students, when requested, and the progress of learning
over multiple rehearsals increased the confidence of most of the singers in the Strategic Risk-
Taking group. The outgrowth of addressing fear, guilt, and shame was the students’ creation of
growth goals for themselves in the Strategic Risk-Taking groups. They strove to improve on
every repetition, rather than focusing on “getting it right.” In situations where the participants
experiencing Traditional Rehearsal pedagogy were more likely to get frustrated with repeated
mistakes, students in the Strategic Risk-Taking group simply reassessed and recalibrated their
learning activities.
Some interesting discoveries also occurred during the study. In general, by the fourth
rehearsal, the students in the Strategic Risk-Taking group had completely assimilated the style of
5
Lehmann, et al., Psychology for Musicians, 146.
6
Ibid., 149.
197
rehearsal and had full ownership of their own learning, trying different strategies and vying with
one another for who’s strategies worked the best. Following Papert’s coding experiment,
7
in
which students in constructivist classrooms were more likely to stick with a task and try creative
solutions, as well as jettison unsuccessful pathways in favor of more effective strategies, the
group in the Strategic Risk-Taking rehearsals was far more likely to dive into the two-part music
on their own, to try harder, and to be more successful.
8
And, while the Traditional rehearsal
contained more notes sung and faster pacing in the traditional sense, the results show that this
may not necessarily lead to greater accuracy over a normal rehearsal timescale of a quarter or a
semester. Additionally, sharp correction in these rehearsals led to a quick fix, but that correction
was not sustained in subsequent rehearsals, as the individual recordings demonstrated. Maybe a
somewhat more loosely-paced lesson with more time for the students’ independent critical
thought and judgment would be helpful.
Difficulties
Since no project is as easy to carry out as it is to propose, this experiment underwent a
number of minor modifications, usually due to the realities of experimenting with actual people
in an actual classroom situation.
Location
Securing a research location was the first difficulty. After receiving IRB approval in the
spring of 2018, the initial research location rescinded their offer, due to the late timeframe in the
school year, but they offered to welcome the researcher back in the fall. Then, midway through
the summer, the researcher accepted an academic position in Maryland, and thus needed a new
site. With great generosity, the local school district, the music curriculum coordinator, a high
7
Papert, The Children’s Machine, 120-2.
8
Harel and Papert, Constructionism, 58.
198
school choral teacher, principal, and the school district’s chief academic officer all agreed to
allow the research to proceed in a school district in Western Maryland.
Scheduling
As noted in Chapter Six, the initial schedule for research and data collection was
significantly altered by inclement weather. Rather than having three data collections, each one
week apart, followed by a week of no data collection, and then a fourth data collection the
following week to measure retention, the scheduled shifted to regular data collections
approximately once every ten days, Consequently, the fourth data collection was inappropriate
for measuring retention.
Confusion Over Measurement Instruments
After approval by the school district, students who had returned their consent and assent
forms were asked to complete two instruments online as Google Forms: the Initial Screening and
the Social Network Survey. While the Initial Screening was accomplished in a straightforward
manner, the Social Network Survey proved to be thornier. As mentioned in Chapter Six, students
were frequently confused as to whether it was asking about connections or friendship. Further,
one student opted not to participate. When the high-school choral director was attempting to
explain the Social Network Survey, some students in that class took that opportunity to scold that
student for non-participation and began to criticize the student’s musical abilities. The school
counselor became involved in the dispute and recommended that the Social Network Survey be
scrapped. However, with the researcher’s assurance that it would be explained in-person to every
ensemble, it was allowed to go forward. This seems to underscore the importance of the
deception in the experiment. If the students were so emotionally invested in a study of recording
199
technology, it seems highly likely that their emotions would have colored (either consciously or
unconsciously) their approach to differing instructional methods.
Recording Technology
Some difficulties were encountered with the recording technology. First, operator error
caused one student’s recording to not be captured. That caused the discovery of a “lock” button
on the recorders. Further, the placement of the microphone on the student’s body, as well as the
student’s confidence and subsequent volume greatly impacted the clarity of the recording. And,
if the lavalier was jostled during the rehearsal, that portion of the recording usually became
nearly unintelligible. Truly, it is possible that this actually was a study about recording
technology, where the take-aways would hinge on microphone placement, training of students,
and purchasing the highest-quality equipment possible.
Sung Text
One item that the researcher had not considered in the planning stages was the substantial
impact that singers singing text (rather than tone syllables or something else), especially text in a
foreign language, would have on this experiment. Unfamiliarity with the language quickly and
substantially impacted the musical outcomes, especially in the first rehearsal. For those students
who were experiencing the traditional choral pedagogy, the researcher could immediately
address the language issues. For those in the constructivist, risk-taking environment, it was up to
the students whether language would be an item of consideration. Some groups became so
focused on language early-on that they initially sang very little.
Assessment of Accuracy
Another musical difficulty was with octave displacement. Many young male singers
experiencing or having recently experienced the voice change sang an octave below the notated
200
pitch. Inexperienced female singers occasionally did this as well, as this low range and belting
style is common in popular music. The researcher chose to treat notes displaced by an octave as
correct, though in traditional choral pedagogy rehearsals, octave displacement was addressed.
Additionally, since rhythm and pitch were considered separately, the researcher chose to
consider a pitch correct if it was sung correctly at any time during the note’s duration. While this
accommodated those students who sing by ear and often “slide around” looking for the correct
pitch as a learning strategy, it may have inflated the correct pitch scores. Related to this, most
singers did not sing in perfect tune. The researcher’s discretion was invoked when determining
whether a note that was slightly sharp or flat was judged “close enough.” This is the same
decision that conductors make every day in rehearsal when determining the most important issue
to address at any given time during rehearsal, so it seemed to be a legitimate standard for
determining correctness of pitch.
Further, in assessing rhythm, the researcher only considered hit-points. Whether a note
was sustained for the correct duration was not considered. However, in more than one of the
Strategic Risk-Taking rehearsals, students noticed the difficulties with duration and addressed
them, specifically: that some notes were being truncated, and that notes held for incorrect
durations negatively impacted subsequent entrances.
Other Musical Considerations
Because of the limited scope of this study, certain important musical considerations were
unaddressed. Questions of tone, breath management, pronunciation, and articulation, were all left
unanswered. This study also struggled with how to quantify the difficulty of singing multiple
voice parts at the same time versus only singing in unison. In the end, no distinction was made
for the difference in difficulty, though this could have actually diluted the power of the final data
201
and account for the lower accuracy scores for the students in the Strategic Risk-Taking groups.
The Traditional Rehearsal-style choral group (the control group) were taught sequentially, with
sections the researcher identified as difficult taught first, connections made between sections, and
generally a scaffolded learning experience provided. The Strategic Risk-Taking groups
immediately perceived the difficulty of singing in two parts in a foreign language and chose to
address the hardest parts first, rather than working to master more approachable challenges—
such as learning the melody and learning it on a neutral syllable—before proceeding to more
difficult items, such as singing in two parts in Spanish. It is possible that this made the
Traditional Rehearsal group appear to be more accurate, and the Strategic Risk-Taking group to
appear less accurate, leading to the rejection of the first research hypothesis. Combined with the
above-mentioned difficulties concerning correct pitch and rhythm, these certainly provide
avenues for future research.
Another takeaway from this research experience was the importance of being sure every
student was paying attention all of the time. At times when students talked or were distracted,
their scores on an individual attempt during a rehearsal were significantly lower or even zero.
Related to this was the importance of being certain that directions were clearly given and
understood, as this produced the same result as off-task student behavior: significantly lower
scores or zeros. Listening to the recording also caused the researcher to reflect on those times
when it was necessary to give direct instructions. The researcher quickly discovered how
important it was to be specific about to whom the directions were intended. Many people who
were singing correctly assumed instructions were intended for them, and many who were singing
incorrectly either did not know they were being addressed, did not know they were wrong, or did
not know how to correct the error, as demonstrated by the singing they did immediately
202
following the direct instruction. It is not only important to teach choristers how to sing correctly,
but also how to identify when they are wrong, and how to correct those errors.
Suggestions for Further Research
The researcher believes that this study provides multiple pathways to fruitful future
research. The first such pathway might be to explore student accuracy over the aforementioned
longer timescale of a quarter or a semester. It may also be illustrative to include multiple
assessors of student accuracy, and experiment at multiple research sites, in order to account for
difference in teaching styles of the students’ teachers. While this would require a substantially
larger investment of time and resources, the results could clarify some of the ambiguity in
whether or not strategic risk-taking results in greater accuracy.
Further research could also be rewarding if the questions presented in this dissertation are
applied to other sorts of choral ensembles: community choirs, church choirs, collegiate choirs,
elementary school choirs, et cetera. Each of these types of ensembles would have their own
unique dynamics. Data on how they are similar to and different from a high school choir could
provide useful strategies for successful learning, retention, and building esprit de corps, given
their particular situation in the larger choral landscape.
It may also be useful to actually study the effects of individual recording on student
outcomes, as suggested in the initial deception. Using multiple types of equipment, as well as
multiple microphone placements, and a variety of student participants, best practices may emerge
about how to effectively record individual students in an ensemble setting. Further, this may
yield results that could overlap with the realm of individual student assessment, leading to
authentic individual assessment even in an ensemble environment.
203
As indicated in the data considering group size and accuracy, it may be fruitful to
experiment with rehearsal ensembles of larger size. Emergence Theory suggests that larger
networks should have more emergent properties. Perhaps larger groups would make it easier to
explore these contentions.
Further research with a more systematic application of Social Network Theory may be
fruitful, as well. The literature seemed to indicate strongly that there should have been a
connection between network position and accuracy.
9
Thus, the failure of this research to find
such a connection was surprising. A more robust instrument to measure social connectedness
may also be needed. Further, this research could well supplement work on health and ensemble
participation.
Finally, a more thoroughgoing assessment of pitch and rhythm, including duration, as
well as research into risk-taking’s impact on tone, breath management, pronunciation, and
articulation, should all provide avenues for meaningful discovery. This may also provide an
opportunity to measure how students approach musical tasks of varying difficulties when given
permission to take risks, when roles are allowed to emerge authentically.
10
Final Considerations
This study was conducted in a simulated rehearsal setting, meant to emulate many of the
aspects of a workaday choral rehearsal: an actual choral composition (versus an experimental
exercise), an ensemble of students (versus individuals), a brief amount of time spent on an
individual piece (twelve minutes), and some substantial elapsed time between each encounter
with the piece. Everything a normal public-school teacher has to deal with on a regular basis—
9
Zhang, et al., “Student Interactions and Course Performance,” 12.
10
Clifford, “Failure Tolerance and Risk-Taking,” 24.
204
attendance issues, socio-economic issues, family issues, special education considerations—
occurred during this research. The research experienced common external factors that impacted
scheduling, including snow days, early dismissals, and one student who went on an extended
vacation with family. Given the statistically significant findings of this study, what this may
highlight is that these constructivist, strategic risk-taking behaviors are effective even under
everyday conditions and ought to be incorporated in the regular choral rehearsal.
The researcher encountered much skepticism in the early stages of this study, usually in
the form of choral directors (both seasoned and new to the field) assuming that this study was
simply a rationale to lower the standards of performance. The evidence seemed to suggest just
the opposite. While a conductor cannot abdicate the responsibilities of the podium, it has now
been clearly demonstrated that giving students ownership of their own learning experiences leads
to improved performance, not lowered outcomes.
During the course of the study, in the constructivist rehearsal setting, the researcher
provided open-ended strategies like asking students to assess their own accuracy, or to adjust
their own vocal production and then having students assess their own results. The researcher also
asked the students which things they thought they needed to work on, and the researcher waited a
sufficient amount of time to allow students (especially those unfamiliar with such a radical
departure from traditional choral pedagogy) to respond thoughtfully. There were many times
when the researcher needed to provide strategies to help the students experience success and
feedback on what kinds of risks were appropriate to take, so the role of teacher was never
surrendered. However, once these strategies were in place, students began to incorporate them on
their own, especially when asked to be reflective on the immediately precedent musical
experience.
205
The researcher also had to become comfortable with conversation in the choral rehearsal
and to distinguish actual constructive learning dialogues from chatter. A simple question to a
group of off-task students, such as, “what do you think?” was invariably sufficient to return them
to the task at hand, and it often elicited thoughtful responses that the students assumed the
researcher had not actually wanted to hear. For instance, students often assumed that the
researcher was interested in correct pronunciation or pitch, but the students really wanted to
know what the text meant. They were reluctant to ask that, but when they learned what it meant,
it added to their musicality and appeared to improve their melodic and rhythmic accuracy.
Suggestions for Practice
Strategies Suggested by This Study
The data suggests that choral music educators would benefit from encouraging their
students to attain increased autonomy. Pedagogical strategies based on Emergence Theory help
prevent the ensemble from becoming mindlessly dependent on the conductor. Instead, they foster
independence of thought and individual and corporate ownership. Motor Learning Theory is
based on the three principles of anticipation, attention, and adaptation.
11
Just as with Motor
Learning Theory, students need time and space to work out what strategies are effective for
themselves. As they learn these individualized strategies, they can anticipate the next challenge,
commit their attention to the task at hand, and adapt as they receive new input from their own
immediate self-assessment. As this progresses, the feedback bandwidth needed from the
conductor decreases, just as Maxfield and Keller predicted.
12
A one-size-fits-all rehearsal
technique may get the music learned for a concert or a contest, but it will be less effective than
11
Keller, “Musical Ensemble Performance,” 275ff.
12
Maxfield, “Application of Motor-learning Theory,” 163; Keller, “Musical Ensemble Performance,” 279.
206
empowering student ownership of the educational task and eventually lead to a less accurate
performance that what would have otherwise been possible.
Experientially, this study also demonstrated that—even in the most constructivist of
rehearsals—there may be a time for a director to step in and provide direct instruction. The
researcher notes this with an abundance of caution, as this could easily become a rationalization
for ever-greater conductor control. This endorsement of conductors initiating some direct
instruction is tempered by the work of three researchers, which seem to indicate that minimizing
direct instruction is the ideal state. First, Green noticed that when music educators interrupted
student-directed learning in an attempt to assist, the teacher input actually slowed student
learning.
13
Second, as mentioned above, Keller discovered that the Motor Learning concept of
“bandwidth” applied to singers: that, as singers’ abilities increase, external or augmented
feedback needed to decrease.
14
Finally, Maxfield found that providing excessive extrinsic
feedback actually created a dependency of singers on the teacher, rather than creating
independent musicians.
15
So, if the conclusion is drawn from this study that some teacher-
initiated direct instruction may necessary, it is predicated upon a substantial caveat provided by
Green, Keller, and Maxfield, all encouraging the smallest possible intrusion of direct instruction
into a constructivist, emergent rehearsal atmosphere.
Based on the strategies the researcher used, this study suggested that the following be
incorporated into regular rehearsals to create a constructivist choral classroom and enhance the
possibility of individual and corporate success:
13
Green, “The Music Curriculum as Lived Experience,” 29-30.
14
Keller, “Musical Ensemble Performance,” 279.
15
Maxfield, “Application of Motor-learning Theory,” 17.
207
• Managing an ensemble, not directing it, so that meaningful learning, knowledge, and
norms flow both upward and downward,
• providing open-ended strategies for student learning,
• requiring student self-assessment and student-led attempts at improvement,
• treating unsuccessful student attempts at growth and learning (i.e. “failures) as teachable
moments rather than opportunities to criticize or—worse yet—musical tragedies,
• allowing organic roles to develop in the group, based on students’ interests and skills,
• allowing for student-guided rehearsals,
• having the instructor serving as “knowledgeable other” only when absolutely necessary,
• allowing for conversation and debate amongst choristers, and
• gentle guiding only when needed.
There would certainly be “growing pains” as students and teachers adapt to this new reality, and
it is reasonable to assume that choirs in the first semester or year dedicated to incorporating this
worldview might experience a decline in the amount or difficulty of repertoire being performed.
However, in the long run, the trend-line shows that—once these strategies are in place—learning
is faster, and accuracy should be greater. It simply takes that initial investment of time and
willingness to fail, reassess, and try again.
Strategies Suggested by Research Literature
Several other strategies were suggested by the literature, though they were not explicitly
studied here. Social Network Theory suggests that members’ social networks be leveraged and
that meaningful connections (like those between family members or friends) be capitalized upon
to maximize a recruiting message. That message should be optimized, so that even those who
merely serve as passive conduits for the message present it in a positive manner. In order to
208
retain members, it will be important to build on the principles of Social Network Theory as well.
Creation of a shared identity and mission, which grows organically from the ensemble, will
foster a sense of belonging that undergirds retention. If a conductor builds the members’
transivity and multiplexity by providing opportunities to interact outside of rehearsal and by
connecting members with folks from other ensembles, other classes, or even other walks of life,
the connections within the group will be strengthened and membership retention will increase.
Accuracy of pitch and rhythm should increase as well. And, if a conductor scaffolds the
educational experience in such a way that the group consistently feels successful, path sequence
suggests that more success will follow, and members will stay with the group.
16
All of these
suggest avenues for fruitful further research.
Conclusion
Changing the choral culture is no easy task. Conductors have been taught to teach as their
teachers taught. The scientific contributions of Constructivism, Constructive Failure, Motor
Learning Theory, Social Network Theory, and Emergence Theory considered in this dissertation
are frequently counter-intuitive and almost always present uncomfortable pathways to choral
educators. Further, the field is rife with conductors who purportedly espouse the idea of
independent musicianship of singers and encouraging strategic risk-taking, only to revert to
“tried and true,” quasi-dictatorial methods in the face of impending concerts, contests, and
conferences. The researcher would assert that this actually does more harm than a straight-
forward “control-freak,” because it lulls the students into a false sense of self-determination that
is snatched away when the director believes that the outcome really matters. One wonders, in
16
Christakis and Fowler, Connected, 153.
209
situations such as these, is the musical experience predominantly for the singers, or for the
conductor?
Strangely, the common thread and the solution to all of this is respect. Making music
without regard for the conductor’s ego and social position is the apogee of student-centered
learning. Strategic risk-taking, the promotion of independent musicianship, and guiding students
toward self-actualization is born out of a love and respect for those singing in the choir. Respect
allows for mistakes. Respect provides pathways to learn from risks-gone-wrong. Respect
engenders a dynamic of mutual learning that brings the entire enterprise to successful
performances. The data demonstrates that this is true. The goal of music is not something
consequentialist like increased test scores or more conscientious citizens, but rather nothing less
than the full actualization of the human person and the ensemble’s shared humanity. Therefore, it
is now incumbent upon more members of the choral community to authentically incorporate the
findings of this research into their rehearsals and daily interaction with choristers. Perhaps then
the lofty goal of music edifying the fabric of humanity can come closer to becoming a reality.
210
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219
Appendix 1
Initial Screening (done as a Google Form)
• Please indicate your academic standing (select one): Freshman, Sophomore, Junior,
Senior
• Please indicate the number of years you have done the following:
o Scale: (0-1years)(1-3 years)(3-5 years)(more than 5 years)
o Singing in a choir in elementary/middle school
o Singing in a choir in high school
o Singing in a community choir
o Singing in a church choir (that is: any choir affiliated with a house of worship)
o Singing in a non-traditional ensemble (e.g. a cappella group, rock band,
barbershop, etc.)
o Taken private voice lessons
o Taken private piano lessons
o Taken private instrumental lessons (not including piano)
o Played in an instrumental ensemble (at any level)
o Studied music theory (at any level)
o Experience improvising (not necessarily jazz)
• Do you have perfect pitch? Yes, No
• How comfortable are you with sight-singing (singing an unfamiliar piece of music for the
first time): Very uncomfortable, uncomfortable, neutral, comfortable, very comfortable
• How accurately do you feel that you sight-sing (singing an unfamiliar piece of music for
the first time): Very inaccurately, inaccurately, neutral, accurately, very accurately
220
Appendix 2
Discrete Emotion Questionnaire (done as a Google Form)
1
Please indicate your response using the scale provided.
While participating in today’s rehearsal, to what extent did you experience these emotions?
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Not at all Slightly Somewhat Moderately Quite a bit Very
much
An extreme
amount
Anger (Ag) Scared (F)
Wanting (Dr) Mad (Ag)
Dread (Ax) Satisfaction (H)
Sad (S) Sickened (Dg)
Easygoing (R) Empty (S)
Grossed out (Dg) Craving (Dr)
Happy (H) Panic (F)
Terror (F) Longing (Dr)
Rage (Ag) Calm (R)
Grief (S) Fear (F)
Nausea (Dg) Relaxation (R)
Anxiety (Ax) Revulsion (Dg)
Chilled out (R) Worry (Ax)
Desire (Dr) Enjoyment (H)
Nervous (Ax) Pissed off (Ag)
Lonely (S) Liking (H)
Ag = Anger items, Dg = Disgust items, F = Fear items, Ax = Anxiety items, S = Sadness items,
Dr = Desire items, R = Relaxation items, H = Happiness items.
1
Harmon-Jones, et al., “The Discrete Emotions Questionnaire.”
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1518-3
La Canción del Caminante
Antonio Machada
SBMP 1518
221
Appendix 3
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222
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227
Appendix 4
Lesson Plans/Scripts
Declarative Rehearsals
1) Sing through once (4 minutes)
2) Address problem spots as identified by the conductor, using strategies supplied by the
conductor. (Traditional choral methodology – 8 minutes)
Constructivist Rehearsals
Sequence of adding constructivist elements
1) Interrogating singer opinions
a. Questions (Rehearsal 1)
i. What do you think needs work?
ii. What would you like to differently about that part?
iii. What would you like to try to see if it will accomplish that?
iv. Did it work? If no, what would you like to try next
b. Instructor intervention:
i. If the participants are unable to arrive at a strategy after repeated
questioning, the director will provide a possible solution.
ii. Once that solution is attempted, the interrogative process begins again.
2) Peer Evaluations (Rehearsal 2)
a. Including the Questioning strategy from Rehearsal 1, peer evaluations are added.
b. Some of the participants sing for the remaining members of the group.
i. Singers are asked to share what they thought they did well, and what they
would like to improve.
ii. Listeners are asked to share one thing they thought went well, and one
thing they thought could be improved.
iii. Singers are asked what they would like to try for the next attempt.
iv. Singers make adjustments, and process repeats
c. Instructor intervention:
i. If peer feedback is consistently positive or consistently negative, the
director will provide a limit to feedback.
ii. If peer feedback is non-existence, the director will engage in questioning
the listeners to elicit feedback.
3) Working Without Comment from Director (Rehearsal 3)
a. Including the Questioning and Peer Evaluation strategies from Rehearsal 2,
working without comment from the director is added, hopefully to be the majority
of the rehearsal.
b. Director asks the students to inform him what they would like him to do, when to
start the accompaniment, etc.
c. Instructor intervention:
i. The director will only intervene if the rehearsal is significantly off-task.
ii. If off-task behavior predominates, the director will engage in questioning
and peer evaluation strategies.
228
4) Minimal Director Involvement (Rehearsal 4)
a. For Rehearsal 4, the director will encourage participants to work without him. If
they feel that they are unable to work without some guidance, he will employ
questioning and peer evaluation strategies.
Script for Rehearsal 1
Director: Welcome and thanks for being here. As you know, we are studying recording
technology in music education and are going to try to learn this piece over four
rehearsals. This is two-part music, so Sopranos and Tenors, please sing together on
Part I. Altos and Basses, please sing together on Part II. Let’s begin by singing
through the piece from top to bottom.
Sing through piece
Director: What would you like to work on first? Do you want to work on the part that was the
hardest, or try to fix some easier spots first?
Once the students decide on a place to work:
Director: What would you like to differently about that part? What would you like to try to see
if it will accomplish that?
Once the students decide what they would like to do, sing through that section.
Director: Did that accomplish what you hoped it would? What would you like to try
differently/next?
This process repeats through the rest of the 12 minutes. At the end:
Director: Thank you for being here. I’ll see you next week!
Script for Rehearsal 2
Director: Thanks again for being here. Remember, we are studying recording technology in
music education and are going to try to learn this piece over four rehearsals.
Remember, this is two-part music, so Sopranos and Tenors sing Part I, and Altos and
Basses sing Part II. Let’s begin by singing through the piece from top to bottom.
Sing through piece
Director: Based on what we just sang, what would you like to work on?
Once the students decide what to work on:
Director: Today, I’d like to introduce a new strategy, peer evaluations. In peer evaluations,
some of you sing for others. There are many ways you can configure this: Part I can
229
sing for Part II, or vice versa, or a mixture of Parts I and II can sing for the rest of
you, or some other configuration I haven’t considered. How would you like to divide?
After the students decide, sing through the selected part. If the students are
uncomfortable deciding:
Director: Do you think it would be most beneficial to hear one part alone or a mixture of parts?
Which part do you think would be most beneficial to hear first? Both parts will get to
go.
After students decide, sing through selected part.
Director: Thanks, singers. Can you list one thing you thought you just did really well, and one
thing you’d like to improve?
Singers state their ideas.
Director: Now, listeners, can you list one thing you thought they did really well and one thing
you’d like to see them do differently?
Listeners state their ideas.
Director: Singers, you’ve heard what you and the other people here think you did well and how
you think you could improve. What would you like to do on this run-through to
accomplish this?
Singers state their plan. Singers sing through the section.
Director: Singers, did you accomplish what you’d hoped? Let’s repeat the peer evaluation
process one more time, and then the other group can go.
This process repeats through the rest of the 12 minutes. At the end:
Director: Thank you for being here. I’ll see you next week!
Script for Rehearsal 3
Director: Thanks again for being here. Remember, we are studying recording technology in
music education and are going to try to learn this piece over four rehearsals.
Remember, this is two-part music, so Sopranos and Tenors sing Part I, and Altos and
Basses sing Part II. Let’s begin by singing through the piece from top to bottom.
Sing through piece
230
Director: Today I’d like to introduce another new strategy, where you work basically without
comment from me. I’m here to help if you have technical questions. However, using
the skills you gained in the last two rehearsals, please work on the piece. Let me
know what ways you’d like me to assist you, but this is your rehearsal.
This process continues through the rest of the 12 minutes. At the end:
Director: Thank you for being here. I’ll see you next week!
Script for Rehearsal 4
Director: Sorry I had to be gone last week. Thanks for being here today! This rehearsal is
yours. Just tell me how you’d like me to be involved, and I’m happy to help as a
resource.
This process continues through the rest of the 12 minutes. At the end:
Director: Thank you for your assistance in this study!
231
Appendix 5
Social Network Survey (done as a Google Form)
Below is a list of every participant in this study. On a scale of 0-5, please indicate how connected
you feel to this person. If you encounter someone daily with whom you’re not particularly
emotionally close, you might actually be more connected to that person than someone you like
but see infrequently. Remember that your best friend and your worst enemy would both be
marked as 5: people to whom you are strongly connected. This survey measures how connected
you are to people, not how much you like them.
List Names (not connected at all) 0 1 2 3 4 5 (strongly connected)
232
Appendix 6
Debriefing Statement
Thank you for participating in this study! We hope you enjoyed the experience. This form
provides background about our research to help you learn more about why we are doing this
study. Please feel free to ask any questions or to comment on any aspect of the study.
You have just participated in a research study conducted by Scott Rieker, a doctoral student in
Choral Music at the University of Southern California.
You were told that the purpose of this study was to explore the impact of recording technology in
the choral rehearsal. In actuality, we were interested in exploring how pitch and rhythmic
accuracy were impacted by different forms of instruction provided by the conductor. To protect
the integrity of this research, we could not fully divulge all the details of this study at the start of
the procedure.
As you know, your participation in this study is voluntary. If you so wish, you may withdraw
after reading this debriefing form, at which point all records of your participation will be
destroyed. You will not be penalized if you withdraw.
We expect to do follow-up experiments that will continue into future semesters. Because of this,
it is important that you do NOT talk (or write or e-mail, etc.) about this project. The main reason
for this is that YOUR COMMENTS could influence the expectations, and therefore,
performance of a future participant, which would bias our data. Failure to comply with this
request may have severe repercussions with regards to the accuracy of the data. YOUR
COMMENTS could compromise months of hard work preparing this experiment. We hope you
will support our research by keeping your knowledge of this study confidential.
You may keep a copy of this debriefing for your records. If you have questions now about the
research, please ask. If you have questions later, please e-mail Principal Investigator: Scott
Rieker, 840 W. 34
th
St. Los Angeles, CA 90089; 402-202-8435, rieker@usc.edu; Faculty
Sponsor: Peter Webster, 840 W. 34
th
St. Los Angeles, CA 90089; 213-740‑3214,
peterweb@usc.edu. If, as a result of your participation in this study, you experienced any
adverse reaction, please contact the University Park Institutional Review Board (UPIRB), 3720
South Flower Street #301, Los Angeles, CA 90089-0702, (213) 821-5272 or upirb@usc.edu
233
Appendix 7
Recruiting Statement
My name is Scott Rieker, and I am a doctoral student in choral music at the University of
Southern California’s Thornton School of Music. I want to learn about the impact of recording
technology on high school choral rehearsals. I am inviting you to participate in my research
study. Your participation is completely voluntary, and there are no risks to participate, nor any
benefit to you from participating, except for the societal benefit of improving our understanding
of music teaching.
This study is open to high school students at Allegany High School who participate in music and
have at least a basic understanding of written musical notation. If you want to take part, you will
be asked to sing with a small group in four 12-minute choral rehearsals over a four-week period.
These rehearsals will occur at AHS during your regular choral class. You will also be asked to
fill out surveys about your emotions, your past musical experiences, and your connections to
others in the study. You will be audio-recorded during the rehearsals.
For further information, you can contact the researchers: Principal Investigator: Scott Rieker, 840
W. 34th St. Los Angeles, CA 90089; 402-202-8435, rieker@usc.edu; Faculty Sponsor: Peter
Webster, 840 W. 34th St. Los Angeles, CA 90089; 213-740‑3214, peterweb@usc.edu.
234
Appendix 8
Initial Screening (done as a Google Form) [Informal Pilot Study]
MTAL 720 Sight-singing study
You are about to take part in a study about sight-singing (that is, singing an unfamiliar piece of
music for the first time) for a MTAL 720 project at USC Thornton. This study will take about 15
minutes or less. Participation is purely voluntary, and you may withdraw at any time. If you
withdraw, your responses will not be included in the final study.
• Please enter the 4-digit number provided by the researcher
Background
• Please indicate your academic standing (select one):
o Freshman
o Sophomore
o Junior
o Senior
o Graduate
o Faculty/Staff/Community Member/Other
• Please indicate your major(s): __________________
• Please indicate your biological sex:
o (Some research indicates that sight-reading varies by gender, which used to be
considered synonymous with biological sex. Since gender is a fluid concept, this
survey has chosen to use the term "biological sex" to maintain the dichotomy
present in past research.)
o Female, Male, Prefer Not To Disclose
• Please indicate which USC Choirs you sing with (check all that apply):
235
o Concert Choir
o Apollo Men’s Chorus
o Oriana Women’s Choir
o University Chorus
o None of these
• Please indicate the number of years you have done the following:
o Scale: (0-1years)(1-3 years)(3-5 years)(more than 5 years)
o Singing in a choir in elementary/middle school
o Singing in a choir in high school
o Singing in a choir in college
o Singing in a community choir
o Singing in a church choir (that is: any choir affiliated with a house of worship)
o Singing in a non-traditional ensemble (e.g. a cappella group, rock band,
barbershop, etc.)
o Taken private voice lessons
o Taken private piano lessons
o Taken private instrumental lessons (not including piano)
o Played in an instrumental ensemble (at any level)
o Studied music theory (at any level)
o Experience improvising (not necessarily jazz)
• Do you have perfect pitch? Yes, No
• How comfortable are you with sight-singing (singing an unfamiliar piece of music for the
first time): Very uncomfortable, uncomfortable, neutral, comfortable, very comfortable
236
• How accurately do you feel that you sight-sing (singing an unfamiliar piece of music for
the first time): Very inaccurately, inaccurately, neutral, accurately, very accurately
237
Appendix 9
Newly composed musical exercise [Informal Pilot Study]
238
Appendix 10
University of Southern California
Department of Choral & Sacred Music
840 W. 34
th
St.; Los Angeles, CA 90089
PARENTAL PERMISSION & PARTICIPANT ASSENT
FOR NON-MEDICAL RESEARCH
STRATEGIC RISK-TAKING IN THE CHORAL REHEARSAL
Parents/Legally Authorized Representatives: Your child is being invited to participate in a
research study conducted by Scott Rieker, a doctoral student, under the supervision of Peter
Webster, Faculty Advisor, in Choral Music at the University of Southern California, because they
are involved with the music program at their high school. Your child’s participation is voluntary.
You should read the information below, and ask questions about anything you do not understand,
before deciding whether your child is allowed participate. Please take as much time as you need
to read the consent form. You may also decide to discuss participation with your family or friends.
If you decide to allow your child to participate, you will be asked to sign this form. You will be
given a copy of this form. Your child will then be given the choice of whether or not to participate.
If they choose to participate, they will indicate their assent by signing below.
Participants:
You are being invited to participate in a research study conducted by Scott Rieker, a doctoral
student, under the supervision of Peter Webster, Faculty Advisor, in Choral Music at the University
of Southern California, because you’re are involved with the music program at your high school.
Your participation is voluntary. You should read the information below, and ask questions about
anything you do not understand, before deciding whether you want to participate. Please take as
much time as you need to read the consent form. You may also decide to discuss participation with
your family or friends. If you decide to participate, you will be asked to sign this form indicating
your assent. You will be given a copy of this form. If you turn 18 years old during the course
of the study, you will be asked to sign an additional Informed Consent Form at that time.
PURPOSE OF THE STUDY
This study is designed to explore the impact of recording technology in the choral rehearsal.
STUDY PROCEDURES
If your child agrees to participate in this study, they will be assigned randomly, much like tossing
a coin, into one of twelve groups of varying size, with some consideration made of musical
experience, and asked to sing in four 12-minute choral rehearsals over a four-week period, These
rehearsals will occur during the regular choral music time, or at a mutually convenient time
during the school day, immediately before or after. They will also be asked to fill out surveys
about their past musical experiences, and their connections to others in the study, which will take
less than ten minutes total. After every rehearsal, they will be asked to complete a survey about
239
the emotions they experienced during the rehearsal, which can be completed in 1-2 minutes. If
you would like to see a copy of the questions asked of your child, please contact the researcher
using the information at the end of this form.
Your child will be asked to wear audio-recorded during the rehearsals, so that the recordings can
be analyzed by the researcher outside of rehearsal.
POTENTIAL RISKS AND DISCOMFORTS
The anticipated risks associated with this study are minimal, and may include discomfort at singing
in a small group or being recorded.
POTENTIAL BENEFITS TO PARTICIPANTS AND/OR TO SOCIETY
There are no anticipated individual benefits associated with this study. However, the study itself
hopefully will advance our understanding of choral music education.
CONFIDENTIALITY
We will keep the records for this study confidential as far as permitted by law. However, if we are
required to do so by law, we will disclose confidential information about your child. The members
of the research team and the University of Southern California’s Human Subjects Protection
Program (HSPP) may access the data. The HSPP reviews and monitors research studies to protect
the rights and welfare of research subjects.
The data will be stored on an encrypted computer. Participant identities will be shielded by
assigning each participant a number, and only aggregate data (all data combined) will be reported.
The audio recordings and student responses will be maintained indefinitely, but all identifying
information will be destroyed at the end of the study. This de-identified information may be used
in future research studies and/or shared with other researchers. If you do not want your child’s data
used, or shared, in future studies, your child should not participate in this study. Only researchers
will have access to the data.
PARTICIPATION AND WITHDRAWAL
Your child’s participation is voluntary. Your refusal to allow your child to participate, or your
child’s refusal to participate will involve no penalty or loss of benefits to which you or your child
are otherwise entitled. You may withdraw your consent at any time and discontinue participation
without penalty. You are not waiving any legal claims, rights or remedies because of your child’s
participation in this research study.
ALTERNATIVES TO PARTICIPATION
If your child doesn’t want to participate in this study, they will be asked to attend their normal
classroom activities.
INVESTIGATOR’S CONTACT INFORMATION
240
If you have any questions or concerns about the research, please feel free to contact Principal
Investigator: Scott Rieker, 840 W. 34
th
St. Los Angeles, CA 90089; 402-202-8435,
rieker@usc.edu; Faculty Sponsor: Peter Webster, 840 W. 34
th
St. Los Angeles, CA 90089; 213-
740‑3214, peterweb@usc.edu
RIGHTS OF RESEARCH PARTICIPANT – IRB CONTACT INFORMATION
If you have questions, concerns, or complaints about your child’s rights as a research participant
or the research in general and are unable to contact the research team, or if you want to talk to
someone independent of the research team, please contact the University Park Institutional
Review Board (UPIRB), 3720 South Flower Street #301, Los Angeles, CA 90089-0702, (213)
821-5272 or upirb@usc.edu
SIGNATURE OF RESEARCH PARTICIPANT’S PARENT/LEGAL GUARDIAN
I have read the information provided above. I have been given a chance to ask questions. My
questions have been answered to my satisfaction, and I agree to allow my child to participate in
this study. I have been given a copy of this form.
Name of Participant’s Parent/Legal Guardian
Signature of Participant’s Parent/Legal Guardian Date
SIGNATURE OF RESEARCH PARTICIPANT
I have read the information provided above. I have been given a chance to ask questions. My
questions have been answered to my satisfaction, and I agree to participate in this study. I have
been given a copy of this form.
Name of Participant
Signature of Participant Date
SIGNATURE OF INVESTIGATOR
I have explained the research to the participant and answered all of his/her questions. I believe that
he/she understands the information described in this document and freely consents to allow his/her
child to participate.
241
Name of Person Obtaining Consent
Signature of Person Obtaining Consent Date
242
Appendix 11
University of Southern California
Department of Choral & Sacred Music
840 W. 34
th
St.; Los Angeles, CA 90089
INFORMED CONSENT FOR NON-MEDICAL RESEARCH
STRATEGIC RISK-TAKING IN THE CHORAL REHEARSAL
You are being invited to participate in a research study conducted by Scott Rieker, a doctoral
student, under the supervision of Peter Webster, Faculty Advisor, in Choral Music at the University
of Southern California, because you are involved with the music program at your high school.
Your participation is voluntary. You should read the information below, and ask questions about
anything you do not understand, before deciding whether you will participate. Please take as much
time as you need to read the consent form. You may also decide to discuss participation with your
family or friends. If you decide to participate, you will be asked to sign this form. You will be
given a copy of this form.
PURPOSE OF THE STUDY
This study is designed to explore the impact of recording technology in the choral rehearsal.
STUDY PROCEDURES
If your agree to participate in this study, you will be assigned randomly, much like tossing a
coin, into one of twelve groups of varying size, with some consideration made of musical
experience, and asked to sing in four 12-minute choral rehearsals over a four-week period, These
rehearsals will occur during the regular choral music time, or at a mutually convenient time
during the school day, immediately before or after. You will also be asked to fill out surveys
about your past musical experiences, and your connections to others in the study, which will take
less than ten minutes total. After every rehearsal, you will be asked to complete a survey about
the emotions you experienced during the rehearsal, which can be completed in 1-2 minutes. If
you would like to see a copy of the questions, please contact the researcher using the information
at the end of this form.
You will be asked to wear audio-recorded during the rehearsals, so that the recordings can be
analyzed by the researcher outside of rehearsal.
POTENTIAL RISKS AND DISCOMFORTS
The anticipated risks associated with this study are minimal, and may include discomfort at singing
in a small group or being recorded.
POTENTIAL BENEFITS TO PARTICIPANTS AND/OR TO SOCIETY
243
There are no anticipated individual benefits associated with this study. However, the study itself
hopefully will advance our understanding of choral music education.
CONFIDENTIALITY
We will keep the records for this study confidential as far as permitted by law. However, if we are
required to do so by law, we will disclose confidential information about you. The members of the
research team and the University of Southern California’s Human Subjects Protection Program
(HSPP) may access the data. The HSPP reviews and monitors research studies to protect the rights
and welfare of research subjects.
The data will be stored on an encrypted computer. Participant identities will be shielded by
assigning each participant a number, and only aggregate data (all data combined) will be reported.
The audio recordings and student responses will be maintained indefinitely, but all identifying
information will be destroyed at the end of the study. This de-identified information may be used
in future research studies and/or shared with other researchers. If you do not want your data used,
or shared, in future studies, you should not participate in this study. Only researchers will have
access to the data.
PARTICIPATION AND WITHDRAWAL
Your participation is voluntary. Your refusal to participate will involve no penalty or loss of
benefits to which you are otherwise entitled. You may withdraw your consent at any time and
discontinue participation without penalty. You are not waiving any legal claims, rights or remedies
because of your participation in this research study.
ALTERNATIVES TO PARTICIPATION
If you don’t want to participate in this study, you will be asked to attend your normal classroom
activities.
INVESTIGATOR’S CONTACT INFORMATION
If you have any questions or concerns about the research, please feel free to contact Principal
Investigator: Scott Rieker, 840 W. 34
th
St. Los Angeles, CA 90089; 402-202-8435,
rieker@usc.edu; Faculty Sponsor: Peter Webster, 840 W. 34
th
St. Los Angeles, CA 90089; 213-
740‑3214, peterweb@usc.edu
RIGHTS OF RESEARCH PARTICIPANT – IRB CONTACT INFORMATION
If you have questions, concerns, or complaints about your rights as a research participant or the
research in general and are unable to contact the research team, or if you want to talk to someone
independent of the research team, please contact the University Park Institutional Review Board
(UPIRB), 3720 South Flower Street #301, Los Angeles, CA 90089-0702, (213) 821-5272 or
upirb@usc.edu
SIGNATURE OF RESEARCH PARTICIPANT
244
I have read the information provided above. I have been given a chance to ask questions. My
questions have been answered to my satisfaction, and I agree to participate in this study. I have
been given a copy of this form.
Name of Participant
Signature of Participant Date
SIGNATURE OF INVESTIGATOR
I have explained the research to the participant and answered all of his/her questions. I believe that
he/she understands the information described in this document and freely consents to allow his/her
child to participate.
Name of Person Obtaining Consent
Signature of Person Obtaining Consent Date
Abstract (if available)
Abstract
The emerging realms of Social Network and Emergence Theory, along with the well-established principles of constructivist educational theory provide a strong framework for accepting and encouraging strategic risk-taking as an integral component of the learning process. Previous qualitative research has been done in the realms of education and social work to study risk-taking
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Asset Metadata
Creator
Rieker, Scott Edward
(author)
Core Title
Strategic risk-taking in the choral rehearsal
School
Thornton School of Music
Degree
Doctor of Musical Arts
Degree Program
Choral Music
Publication Date
04/24/2019
Defense Date
05/10/2019
Publisher
University of Southern California
(original),
University of Southern California. Libraries
(digital)
Tag
accuracy,amateur,choir,choral,constructivism,emergence theory,maker movement,motor-learning theory,OAI-PMH Harvest,quantitative,risk-taking,social network theory,strategic risk-taking
Format
application/pdf
(imt)
Language
English
Contributor
Electronically uploaded by the author
(provenance)
Advisor
Webster, Peter (
committee chair
), Scheibe, Jo-Michael (
committee member
), Sparks, Tram (
committee member
)
Creator Email
rieker@usc.edu,scott@scottrieker.com
Permanent Link (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c89-142927
Unique identifier
UC11675600
Identifier
etd-RiekerScot-7227.pdf (filename),usctheses-c89-142927 (legacy record id)
Legacy Identifier
etd-RiekerScot-7227.pdf
Dmrecord
142927
Document Type
Dissertation
Format
application/pdf (imt)
Rights
Rieker, Scott Edward
Type
texts
Source
University of Southern California
(contributing entity),
University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses
(collection)
Access Conditions
The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...
Repository Name
University of Southern California Digital Library
Repository Location
USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA
Tags
amateur
choral
constructivism
emergence theory
maker movement
motor-learning theory
quantitative
risk-taking
social network theory
strategic risk-taking