Module 8 - Course Overview

Research in Music Education has come to a close.  This course was extremely beneficial to me in regards to the organization and methodology of formal research at a professional level.  Thanks to this course, I feel prepared to begin my research toward a topic for my Capstone Project or Thesis.  The following post is an overview of the major points of the course.

The course focused on the difference between qualitative and quantitative research, and also mentioned that there is a possibility for mixed-methods research.  Qualitative research involves more narrative uses of data and requires significantly more time to analyze and process through.  It can include hundreds of pages of notes from observations which require ample time to organize.  Quantitative research involves numerical data and can be much simpler to analyze.  Mixed-methods research involves both quantitative and qualitative data, which may seem like a daunting task, but could end with much more helpful information for the person who is reading the study.  It was helpful within the course to be given the opportunity to read about and try both quantitative and qualitative data.

Another major focus of the course was on the parts that are required in a research study.  Particularly in the Mertler (2012) text, the course gave specific layouts for action research projects, how to do them, and what steps should be taken.  It is obvious from the study of the Mertler text that action research projects are "up-and-coming" and are vital to the success of teacher-researchers, who need to research to improve teaching methods and effectiveness but are so often faced with extreme time constraints due to overbooked schedules.  I am very interested to incorporate some action research projects into my classroom as a music teacher, because I believe it will improve my teaching and it will improve the learning of my students.

The course also contained an element where the students were given the opportunity to learn about some famous music education researchers.  I was very happy during these short videos to discover that I had heard of all of the music education researchers in my past experience in undergraduate work or in professional development.  The information about current music education researchers was inspiring, as it showed the students in the course that we could someday research the same way that those researchers have, and that we could make a significant impact on music education in the future.

The most important, vital, and meaningful part of the course was the opportunity to actually delve into research that we chose ourselves.  I was able to choose a topic (literacy/fluency and music instruction) that directly affects me right now as a music teacher and do research that will influence my school district (kind of like action research).  It was excellent to experiment with studying research through a topic that is directly important to my current job situation.  There are not many courses that offer this opportunity, so I truly appreciated that.  Choosing a topic can so often be the most difficult part of research, and it was very helpful to read Philips (2008) and Mertler (2012)'s views on how to narrow the topic just enough but not too much.

Overall, this was one of the most tedious courses I have ever taken, but it was also one of the most beneficial and important.  I am appreciative of the opportunity to learn about music education research through this course.

References

Phillips, K.H. (2008). Exploring research in music education and music therapy. New York: Oxford

                University Press.

Mertler, C.A. (2012).  Action research:  Improving schools and empowering educators.  Los Angeles: 

                Sage Publications.

Module 7 - Communicating Research Results

This week in Research in Music Education, the objectives were as follows:  practice communicating about research by creating and narrating an online slideshow presentation, utilize conventions of academic writing, and read and discuss mixed methods research in music education.

Creating the slideshow presentation was a wonderful assignment.  It allowed me to look at and listen to myself making a presentation since it was recorded on a webcam.  I noticed some general things about the ways I perform.  My face is very animated, and I talk very, very fast.  I re-recorded the presentation three times trying to speak slower.  I had little success.  I suppose this is something I should spend time practicing regularly.

Another reason why the slideshow presentation was an excellent assignment is that it was very helpful in organizing the final project that is due later this week.  With the requirement to use minimal text in the slideshow, I was able to summarize the main points of my study very concisely, and, therefore, apply that conciseness to my final project draft.  The ability to summarize the main points proved very beneficial, and I believe it will positively influence my final grade.

The final Research Etude was also due this week.  It allowed me to utilize conventions of academic writing because I had to create a meaningful final draft.  I am thankful for the way the course was structured because it allowed nearly all of the Research Etude to be complete before the day it was due.  Therefore, I was able to spend minimal time editing and thinking objectively through since it had been a week since I had looked at my topic.  I truly enjoyed analyzing the data that I collected and finding such interesting results.

This week, I also read two studies of mixed methods research and discussed them with my classmates.  One study outline the influences of music teachers' choices to become music educators.  It was interesting to discover through the discussion boards that most of my classmates did not fulfill the standard that was found in the study.  The study found that most music teachers choose music education because of the influence of their high school instructors.  Most of the people in my small group, however, chose music education very naturally (as in there was not one specific moment when we chose it; it just sort of happened to us) and we were influenced by our family members and talent encouragement more than our high school music instructors.  We all commented about a sincere passion for music.  It was truly encouraging and meaningful to have those discussions.

Additionally, in preparation for the slideshow presentation, we watched a presentation about presentations by Garr Reynolds, who was a very talented presenter.  Although the video was over an hour long, Mr. Reynolds pointed out many important concepts of presenting well, especially the necessity of images instead of text and the use of interesting supplements instead of just talking.  It was very helpful in preparing my presentation for the class.

As the course comes to a close, I am feeling very comfortable and pleased with my education in research, and I feel prepared to apply the concepts I have learned to "real" research that I will do in the future.  I am finally beginning to see myself as a researcher.

Module 6: Data Analysis

This week in Research in Music Education, the objectives were as follows:  describe qualitative and quantitative data analysis procedures, calculate descriptive statistics and correlations, and read and discuss experimental research in music education.

Data analysis is a subject of interest to me because it is possibly one of my favorite things.  Since I was a young child, I found great pleasure in organizing things, and according to Mertler (2012), data analysis is basically organizing data from the large, overwhelming form in which it begins to a manageable, readable form that will be used in the research paper.  Qualitative and quantitative data are analyzed differently because of the content of the data.  Qualitative data is narrative information such as transcriptions of interviews, observations from the classroom, or field notes that require extensive and careful reading and grouping.  Quantitative data is presented in numerical form, which may not require quite as much time to analyze but still must be done carefully.

It was interesting to me that Mertler pointed out in his video that researchers will often find data analysis to be the most frustrating and difficult part of research, because I believe that I would find it invigorating.  The hard part is finished and now the researcher gets to help it all make sense!  I suppose I'll have to do some research before I can truly make this determination.

Another thing that I greatly enjoyed about the material for this week was the calculation of descriptive statistics and correlations for the purpose of data analysis.  The reasoning behind my enjoyment is two-fold:  we learned about the basis of this statistical analysis for our Assessment course earlier this year, so I already had a good foundation in the topic, and descriptive statistics is math, which I have always enjoyed.  I believe this is another reason why I tend to associate myself more with quantitative research; it is easier for me to "mathemetize" data in my head, which is obviously easier to do with numerical data.

The discussion of experimental research was in the Phillips (2008) text, in which he discussed three different articles and provided a commentary (for the first one) of the ways the articles were examples of experimental studies.  He classified the articles based on whether they were true-experimental or quasi-experimental, but it was difficult for me to determine the differences between the two.  I suppose I should conduct further research on the specifications of the differences to understand better.

Overall, this week proved to be one of the more relaxed and enjoyable weeks of research study for my mathematical and organization-loving mind as the content was directly relatable to my strengths.  I look very forward to analyzing the data from the questionnaire I distributed earlier this week as I receive it from my participants.

References:

Phillips, K.H. (2008). Exploring research in music education and music therapy. New York: Oxford

                University Press.

Mertler, C.A. (2012).  Action research:  Improving schools and empowering educators.  Los Angeles: 

                Sage Publications.

Module 5: Collecting Data & Quantitative Inquiry

This week in Research in Music Education, our objectives were to describe data collection techniques that may be used for quantitative and qualitative research studies, develop a research questionnaire, discuss the importance of accuracy, credibility, dependability, validity, and reliability in research, and explain the attributes of quantitative research in music education.

Studying about the data collection techniques and developing a research questionnaire were very interesting this week.  Both Phillips (2008) and Mertler (2012) discussed that quantitative data collection techniques will be more based on close-ended numbers while qualitative data collection techniques will be more based on narrative thought.  I greatly enjoyed using quantitative (and a bit of qualitative) data collection techniques to develop my questionnaire about the formal education in music of currently employed worship leaders in the Southern Baptist churches in Illinois.  I look forward to editing, creating a final draft, and administering the survey this week and analyzing the results.

Another topic that was discussed this week was the importance of authentic data collection.  Mertler discussed in detail the importance of validity and reliability in research.  It is important that data is as accurate as possible and that it measures what it is supposed to measure.  If data is compromised, the entire study will be rendered useless.  It is of utmost importance for the researcher to very carefully consider all forms of data, how questions are worded, and what outside influences may chance or affect the data that is collected.

Additionally, coursework included watching a video about Patricia Sheehan-Campbell and her thoughts about what she would say to President Obama about the importance of music education if given a chance.

The majority of time spent for the course this week was on reading the articles for and constructing a literature review.  While extremely time consuming, the completion of a successful literature review was quite the highlight of the week.

References:

Phillips, K.H. (2008). Exploring research in music education and music therapy. New York: Oxford

                University Press.

Mertler, C.A. (2012).  Action research:  Improving schools and empowering educators.  Los Angeles: 

                Sage Publications.

Module 4 - The Literature, Design, Ethnics, & Qualitative Inquiry

This week was a busy one in Research in Music Education.  The objectives were to develop a research topic and research questions, begin to review the literature related to research topics, describe the characteristics of various research designs, discuss the ethical considerations when conducting research, and explain the attributes of qualitative research.

Developing a research topic and research questions, it turns out, are rather difficult!  There is a lot of preliminary research that needs to happen before the researcher can choose a final topic.  In fact, from the reading assignments this week, researchers often develop and change their already developed research topic and questions according to what is found during the literature review.  I have already found this to be true, as my topic is developing to be more specific from the preliminary research I am conducting for my review of literature project.

I began my review of literature this week by searching through several databases in a similar fashion to our project from last week.  Because my topic is related to music and literacy, I chose to search through ERIC first for general fluency articles.  I found it very effective to look through an article’s own references section and review of literature to find further research applicable to my project.  The ERIC results were very overwhelming, no matter how I specified the search results.  I chose about 20 articles just about fluency to review.  Then I decided to try out the IIMP database, where I found another 20 articles or so related to music and literacy studies.  Finally, I searched through the ProQuest Dissertations and Theses database, where I found a project that is extremely similar to the one that I was planning to implement.  It was this dissertation that I chose for my article review.  I am planning to spend the next few days reading article after article quickly to decipher which will work best for honing my topic and study.

Another focus this week was to describe the characteristics of various research designs.  The readings related to quantitative and qualitative research designs first.  Quantitative designs are more specific and can contain hypotheses, according to Mertler (2012), while qualitative designs are more open-ended.  Quantitative research designs include descriptive, correlational, and group comparisons designs.  Quantitative research designs include case studies, including observational case studies, observational studies, or the constant comparative method. The research design is a very important part of an overall study, as it will set the tone for all further research and methods.

Ethnical considerations when conducting research are very important.  A researcher should be particularly careful to never endanger any subjects in any way, whether emotionally or physically.  It is also important to keep the anonymity of the subjects so that they do not feel threatened or uncomfortable by the publications of the results.  Many research projects are tested for ethics and require proof of ethical behavior before being allowed by universities.

Additionally, this week we learned about a music education researcher named Dr. Robert Woody.  His video was fascinating.  He provides a course for his senior music education majors related to pop music.   I found myself rather jealous as I watched his students enjoy themselves performing on instruments such as acoustic and electric guitars, piano, bass, and drumset.  His students were taking this course to learn more about popular music so that when they became teachers, they could incorporate the knowledge into their classrooms and relate better to their students.  I would have greatly enjoyed a course like this, and I found have found it profoundly helpful in teaching and connecting popular music to the more formal classic training that I received.

In conclusion, this week was full of important information and research toward both general knowledge of music education research and the specific knowledge required to begin to complete a research project.

References:

Phillips, K.H. (2008). Exploring research in music education and music therapy. New York: Oxford

                University Press.

Mertler, C.A. (2012).  Action research:  Improving schools and empowering educators.  Los Angeles: 

                Sage Publications.

Module 3 - The Literature in Music Education

This week in Research in Music Education, our objectives were listed as "describe what is involved in choosing a research topic," "discuss what is menat by 'the literature' in music education," and "utilize online library resources to search for and locate the literature in music education."

In the Mertler and Phillips textbooks, both chapters discussed action research and narrowing a topic.  The comments made by the authors were very similar.  Both authors stated that identifying a topic for research was a vitally important step in the research process because it is very easy to choose a topic that is too broad or too narrow for legitimate research.  Mertler listed several helpful ways to identify a topic by area, such as "trying a new teaching method," "identifying a problem," and "examining an area of interest."  From there, the researcher should look at specific categories which he also listed.

Mertler discussed preliminary considerations that the researchers should take when choosing a topic, including limiting the topic.  I found these interesting and applicable to my own studies.  In undergraduate music history, an assignment was given for us to write a paper on absolutely anything we wanted within music history from 1825-present day.  It was extremely overwhelming and difficult for me to choose a topic.  If I had known to think about his steps, my paper may have been much simpler to research and write because I would have begun with a simple enough topic.  Instead of talking to teachers or other students, reading through and thinking about my closest interests within music history, and reflecting on my own experience and knowledge, I chose "Wagner" and read everything I could find, which was approximately ten full-length biographies.  It took far too much time to research because my topic was not specific enough and I did not have enough background information when I began.  Knowing these things now, if I am to begin an action research project with my students, I will follow Mertler's suggestions.

A large portion of this week's reading was devoted to narrowing a research topic by reviewing the related literature, and therefore discovering what needed additional research.  Mertler discussed primary and secondary sources and excellent databases for researchers to try, and gave a simple method for writing a good literature review.

The Phillips reading was entirely focused on action research and its three types/genres.  He called the genres technical, practical, and emancipatory.  He seemed to imply that emancipatory was the best method because it allowed the teacher and researcher to work closely together without a hierarchy of position, resulting in more success from both parties.

Slightly different from the focus of the rest of this week's activities was an interesting video about the music education researcher of the week:  Pamela Burnard from the University of Cambridge.  In the video, she was discussing the general ideas behind her new book about musical creativities.  The video provided some insightful and interesting points about assumptions that music educators and others make about the definition of musical creativity and how many kinds there are.  Ms. Burnard mentioned that there is not one kind of musical creativity, and she encouraged her listeners/watchers/readers to self-reflect about their ideas of musical creativity, including to think about something in music in which the person excels, and consider the how's, where's, or who's.  The self-reflection can open a new world for the music educator to be creative in musical creativity activities with his/her students.

From the the week's introduction video, it was defined that "literature" in music education involves the journals and scholarly publications that report research findings.  The main project of the week was to find literature using the library's online resources, which provided to be a helpful (albeit frustrating at times) experience for future research exploration.

During the scavenger hunt project, I found myself frustrated often by the learning curve.  I would often choose too specific or too general search terms.  It took several searches before I realized that I could actually look within a specific database for articles or books relevant to a specific topic, even though I watched all of the introduction videos several times.  This was especially important to understand as many of the questions involved music education-specific topics to research, and the databases provided just specific enough research.  However frustrated I became with my inability to find what I needed right away, with each question, I moved a little faster, proving that the scavenger hunt was fulfilling its purpose to help me practice using the UF library online resources to locate the literature in music education.

I look forward to using the information gathered this week in my future research endeavors, as it is certain that they will provide useful.

References

Phillips, K.H. (2008).  Exploring research in music education and music therapy.  New York 

                Oxford University Press.

Mertler, C.A. (2012).  Action research:  Improving schools and empowering educators.  Los 

                Angeles:  Sage Publications.

Module 2 - Components of a Research Article and More

In this week’s module, we were given three primary objectives:  discuss the components of a typical research article, describe four stages of action research:  planning, acting, developing, and reflecting, and analyze a research article.

According to Phillips, a typical research article contains several components.  The first is the title and author.  The title should summarize the main idea, preferably with style.  It should be a concise statement of the main topic, identify the primary variables or theoretical issues that were investigated, and identify the study participants.  All of this should be stated within only 10-12 words.  The next component is the abstract, which should be a brief summary of the entire article, and should contain very brief statements of all of the major components.  Third, the article should contain an introduction which presents the problems of the study, the subject of the study, the underlying theoretical basis, the relationship of the study to any previous work or literature (which can be quite extensive and provide for a large portion of the article), a clear statement of the need for the research, and research questions.  The fourth component of the article is the method, which describes how the study was conducted.  It is often split into subsections, but sometimes the subsections will be untitled to save space.  Subsections usually include subjects or participants, which clarifies who participated in the study, how they were chosen, the number of participants, how they were assigned to experimental or control groups, use of research ethics, and who remained in the study for the entire time.  Another subsection is the materials used or the data collection instrument.  Next would include a subsection about the procedures, design, or method of the study.  Here, the quality of data is of utmost important.  Data analysis is sometimes a subsection within the method, and it is often the most difficult to understand part of the study because it contains unfamiliar terminology and many numbers to deduce.  It is therefore helpful for the writer to include graphs or tables to assist the reader in comprehension.  Many times, data will be analyzed by a computer program to increase reliability and eliminate human error.  The next subsection is results, which represents the findings of the data analyses.  It is usually summarized as an average, not as a raw score, and will be presented as an answer to the initial question.  It normally does not include conclusions, which are normally part of the final subsection, discussion.  Discussion tries to make sense of what happened in the experiment.  It normally ends with implications of the results and suggestions for future research.  Of course, research articles must also include a references section, which is normally noted in APA format.  It is clear that these components are standard as evidenced in the actual articles provided in chapter 3 of the Phillips text, chapter 3 of the Mertler text, and in the article “Career Influences of Music Education Audition Candidates.”

Additionally, this week included a reading and discussion of the four stages of action research, which were defined as planning, acting, developing, and reflecting.  The planning phase of action research is used to identify and limit the topic, gather information, review related literature, and develop a research plan, very similar to the beginning components of a standard research article.  The planning stage exists because the teacher-researcher has a desire to make things better, so he or she plans carefully so that the conclusions will be useful.  The teacher talks to other teachers, consults teacher manuals or curricular guide, and reflects on his/her beliefs during the gathering information portion of the planning stage.  During the review of related literature portion, the teacher will search for books, research journals, websites, resource manuals, and discussions with colleagues to get as much information that has already been established on the topic as possible.  During the portion where the teacher develops a research plan, he or she creates his or her research question, which can include a hypothesis of what he or she thinks may be the result of his or her study.  This portion will also include the teacher’s layout of procedures and research ethics.  This completes the planning stage.  The second stage of action research is the acting stage, which includes collecting data and analyzing data.  During this stage, the teacher will decide what data to collect and how it will be collected (instruments), make observations during the actual study and record them, conduct interviews through a questionnaire or survey, examine and analyze existing data or records, and collect multiple measures of data if possible.  Regarding the analyzing portion, the teacher will analyze data as the experiment actually occurs and will also analyze the whole at the end of the experiment.  This will provide for the most useful and reflective research.  The third stage of action research is the developing stage, which includes creating an action plan.  This is the ultimate goal of the study.  It is necessary here that there is the existence of a specific and tangible approach to trying out some new ideas that will solve original problems, and it must be carefully documented.  The fourth and final stage of action research is the reflecting stage, which contains two major parts:  sharing results and self-reflection.  Sharing results for action research can be done through a simple presentation to colleagues or through the complex process of formal writing and submission to a journal.  The reflection, although counted as the final stage, is truly part of the entire process.  Reflecting is what makes action research truly cyclical in nature; there is always a way to further the research or improve the current method.

Although the provided texts were very interesting, the most truly engaging portion of this week’s module was undoubtedly the opportunity to analyze a research article.  The article that we analyzed was titled “Career Influences of Music Education Audition Candidates.”  As the title states, the article was related to students who were auditioning for college music education programs and the influences they had in high school and earlier that led them to choose music education as a career field.  As a former (and current) music education student, I can clearly remember the audition process, and I found myself easily relating to the topic as it has directly applied to my life.  Some major findings of the article were that students are primarily influenced by their high school directors, and students will primarily choose to focus in the area in which they focused in high school.  As a band and choir student, I had trouble choosing whether to focus on band or choir as my music education major, but I settled on choir because I related more viscerally to the use of my voice as my primary instrument.  I was definitely influenced primarily by my high school directors, although since both of my parents are music educators, they also had a very strong influence on me.  Interestingly, I followed the exact normalcy of students, and I wanted to teach high school choir or college choir when I entered college.  I have only been able to find jobs teaching elementary school, and I will be teaching band this school year.  The article addressed that the relationship between a music education students desires and the actual jobs that he or she takes may be an area of future research.  This may be an area I would be interested in pursuing since it seems to apply so directly to me.

The research article was also engaging because it provided me with an opportunity to put into practice all of the components of research articles that I read this week.  From discovering which components of the research article were strongest, which were weakest, and which demonstrated the creative individuality of the authors, I now feel that through the analysis of the research article, I am far more apt to compose one of my own.

References

Phillips, Kenneth H. (2008).  Exploring research in music education and music therapy.  New York 

                Oxford University Press.

Mertler, Craig A. (2012).  Action research:  Improving schools and empowering educators.  Los 

                Angeles:  Sage Publications.

Rickels, David A., Brewer, Wesley D., Councill, Kimberly H., Frederickson, William E., Hairston, 

                Michelle, Perry, David L., Porter, Ann M., and Schmidt, Margaret (2013). Career influences 

                of music education audition candidates.  Journal of Research in Music Education, 61.  doi: 

                10.1177/0022429412474896