Presentations and Publications

doi: 10.1177/1321103X20936380

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Games have the potential to transform students’ experiences of learning. This presentation explored the powerful pedagogy of musical games. Drawing on game and play theories and understandings about of learning and motivation, “why games work” was explained.  A framework of what makes a good game was shared.

Drawing on insights from key play theorists and illustrated by interview extracts with youth, Stewart Rose and Countryman develop a theoretical framework for  musick-play. Musick-play requires a special disposition toward musicking, in which relationships with both musical and social structures provide opportunities for addressing self-care and authenticity. Youth engage in intense musicking because it offers an antidote to distress, allowing them to take temporary control of a world that typically feels beyond their control. Musick-play provides the freedom to reimagine their individual and collective selves. Participants in this study reveal ways in which musick-playing helps them address personal growth, emotion work, vulnerability, social connections and identity issues.  Article to accompany this presentation is under peer review.

This paper explores the idea that wellbeing and healthy development should be the central goal of school music programs. After establishing a framework of student wellbeing, the metaphor of rites of passage experiences is employed—through Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey and Jane McGonigal’s analysis of the benefits of online gaming—as one way to think about high school music programs as potential sites for contributing to optimal adolescent wellbeing. Writing at the nexus of practice and theory the authors analyze two rites of passage examples from their high school music classrooms. Musicking experiences that offer students openings for embarking upon rites of passage hold potential for addressing students’ needs for autonomy, relatedness, and competence—needs Richard Ryan and Edward Deci document as predictive of psychological wellbeing in all cultures and that Dissanayake argues are evolved psychobiological needs.

This presentation shared the possibilities of making “ear training” fun.  The presenters shared how teacher-candidates are using game theory to explore the sounds and symbols of music theory.  Three ear training games were played.

This is a chapter which describes a music lesson on “musical form” through a constructivist game.

This is a chapter which describes a music lesson on “musical form” through a constructivist game.

Analyzes a one-minute play episode involving three boys, age 4, to highlight the richly multimodal and performative nature of much spontaneous play. We focus on sound, gesture, movement, gaze and proximity, revealing children’s abilities as fluent multimodal communicators who interactively shape their role-play as artistic performance. We believe such performances are triumphs of personal and social development and they underscore the reality that aesthetic expression is a human necessity.

Examines children’s (ages 3-12) unprompted vocalizations using Dissanayake’s idea of artification, and specifically her five ‘affective aesthetic devices’—patterning, repetition, exaggeration, elaboration and manipulation of expectation. Children employ these aesthetic devices in their improvised vocalizing, always intermixed with movement and gesture, as expressions of personal communication, social connection and delight.

DOI: 10.1080/14613808.2015.1019440

Explores eight examples of children’s (ages 4-12) self-directed play, using the theoretical devices of figured worlds and multimodality, to highlight the ubiquity of musicking and the self-authoring and social negotiations taking place within play. The joy of collaborative improvisation, creative ownership and participatory consciousness evident in these complex encounters is compelling for educators.

This study emerged from naturalistic observations of children’s self-initiated musical play on the playgrounds of 14 Canadian schools, part of a three-year project anchored by the broad research question: What is the nature of children’s spontaneous musical expressions during selfdirected play? Seven of the dozens of play start-up procedures documented during these observations are analyzed, using ritual theories from a variety of scholarly orientations to establish that these start-up games are genuine ritual acts. While some theorists identify ritual in every aspect of quotidian life, the author proposes that children’s start-up procedures are ceremonial rituals, examples of what Dissanayake termed as artifying. They are characterized by an extended and reverent focus on the performance of a series of formalized rhythmic, kinesthetic actions, sustained by a shared belief that the process is meaningful. Some of the possible benefits that these startup rituals provide are considered, recognizing that, as with all play scenarios, there are issues of inclusion and exclusion. The author suggests that respectful examinations of children’s musical play culture contribute to the project of revisioning music education practice by offering insights into the richness and sophistication of children’s musicking proclivities and abilities. The author proposes specific pedagogical applications.

This article, drawing upon fieldwork from a larger project investigating the nature of children’s self-chosen musical play, explores instances of play that stumble and either morph into something else or are abandoned altogether. Four vignettes of musical play are described, documented during recess observations at several Canadian elementary school playgrounds. Each of the play episodes is analyzed in terms of how the play malfunctions musically and socially, from an adult observer’s viewpoint. Self-determination theory is employed as a tool for analyzing these apparent gaps in proficiencies. Recognizing children as agentive and creative social actors, the author argues for the importance of protecting their free play time at school, where they are uniquely able to practice communicative (including musical) and social skills within a complex and constantly changing social setting. The separation of younger and older children on the playground is identified as one impediment to the apprenticeship learning system through which playground games have long been ‘caught’. From the examination of instances of ‘unsuccessful’ musical play the author suggests implications for elementary music education pedagogy.

doi: 10.1177/1321103X14528456

Documents examples of playground count-out games used by children (ages 5-11) to begin other games. The reverence with which these count-outs are enacted, and the clear belief that they have special power, classifies them as ceremonial rituals. The beauty of form, rhythm, and repetition in count-outs, and the collective emotions they evoke, reveal children’s artistry at play.

Explores examples of children’s improvised vocalizing during self-directed play. Children playfully manipulate language, using rhythmic speech, vocables and song, combined with gestures and kinetic movements. These multimodal mash-ups address needs for belonging, individuality and growth.

Unpacks four examples of inexpert musical play on school playgrounds. These vignettes reveal ways that children redesign and transform play as they simultaneously negotiate the game itself, the social requirements of communal play and the specific demands presented by the particular peer group configuration that day, with its varying social status issues and minute-by-minute transformations.

The study used the video game The Stanley Parable to examine how adolescents respond to a gendered authority figure in a choice-based setting. The sample consisted of 107 high-school students enrolled in English and drama classes in four schools, from four countries: Norway, Denmark, Canada and the United States. The participants ranged from 15 to 19 years old –37 identified as female, 69 as male, and 1 as other. The results indicated that adolescents are more likely to defy an authority figure whose voice is that of their opposite gender.

White paper written for UNESCO that explores how commercial video games can be used to support the work of conflict resolution and peace education. The paper argues for how games might provoke different types of empathy, and can help cultivate intercultural understanding and facilitate virtual contact between groups in conflict.

The chapter outlines the justification, premise and execution of The Ward Game, an alternate-reality game based on Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. The game, which was played for 30 days in an all-boys high school, critiques traditional systems of education while simultaneously enacting alternative modes of instruction and learning. 

The chapter provides an overview of how a commercial video game was implemented as a text for study in a high school English class. In addition to a philosophical justification for a video game being a valid alternative to a novel, play, or short story, a detailed summary of instructional methods and modes of assessment are also discussed.