Date of Last Revision
2023-05-02 23:47:32
Major
Music - Piano Performance
Degree Name
Bachelor of Music
Date of Expected Graduation
Spring 2017
Abstract
The arts unite vision, hearing, touch, movement, speech, and emotion. Music strengthens spatial and conditional reasoning, problem solving, and creative thinking. For students, it can positively affect academic areas such as mathematics and creative scientific processes. Benefiting urban students in new ways, this project, a two semester after-school music program in inner-city Cleveland, was completed as part of our Honors degrees. Our purpose was to provide students with musical experiences, developing a foundation of basic musical skills that would allow them to be “tuneful, beatful, and artful” throughout their lives. Each weekly class gave students the opportunity to make music and supported the development of skills such as keeping the steady beat and matching pitch. Over the course of our program, we sought to provide students with a safe place to learn and find creative means of expression. As their skills grew, and their behavior was reinforced in positive ways, participants acquired esteem for themselves and others. The bulk of our project was the experiential learning of teaching in the classroom. Due to student transiency, we focused our project on our development as teachers, analyzing the way we changed our classroom management, curriculum, and program structure for greater efficacy. This paper reviews the resources we used, discusses our methodology, and summarizes the content of each weekly class. We draw out common themes, analyzing their effect on our program and study. We also explore avenues for further solutions and program development.
Research Sponsor
Dr. Brooks Toliver
First Reader
Dr. Anne Usher
Second Reader
Dr. Bryan Nichols
Recommended Citation
Dunning, Eden A. and Wessel, Jordan, "Notes of Hope: Experiential Learning in Music Education" (2017). Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects. 556.
https://ideaexchange.uakron.edu/honors_research_projects/556