During the COVID-19 pandemic, most students in the United States experienced full school closure followed by a hybrid of online and in-person learning before ultimately returning to fully in-person instruction in the Fall of 2021. I investigated the experiences of three high school choir teachers during the 2021-2022 academic year to examine their…

Capitalism and its offspring, neoliberalism, are omnipresent in modern and postmodern societies. Illich, Giroux, and McLaren, among others, point to the futility and inequity of current models of education that focus on standardization, vocationalism, and conformity. Running counter to these powerful hegemonic systems, critical pedagogues and…

This study sought to understand the skills and qualities a student needs to be successful in a music education career from a high school choral teacher's perspective. Pre-service music teachers must be prepared to teach and organize a music classroom in any K-12 setting when graduating college with a music education degree (Franzblau, 2013).…

This study examined belongingness as it related to academic achievement. The need for research in this area derives from a sense of urgency and commitment to advocate for academically struggling African-American males with the hope that they will graduate high school in a timely manner. This study utilized the perspectives of 12 African-American…

In this study, we examined demographic patterns of participation and persistence in high school elective music ensembles. We extend prior research that has only compared music and non-music students by explicitly modeling persistence across multiple years of ensemble enrollment. The research draws on data from the High School Longitudinal Study of…

Music educators typically use a variety of strategies to teach their subject matter, one core practice of which is modeling. Vocal modeling is a type of aural demonstration, with uses ranging from pitch matching and song instruction to vocal tone building and musicianship development. In early studies, researchers primarily studied the effects of…

As public high school teachers, we have independently come to the realization that we are both searching for ways that our music rooms can be spaces where everyone has a chance to sound (speak, sing, play an instrument), and students and teachers have the opportunity to hear others in the room. At the center of this realization stands the…

In this article, I examine the potential of social media to meaningfully connect students and educators with First Nations popular musicians. Utilising yarning-as-method under the theoretical frame of storying, I present accounts of attempts to embed the practice in high school classes before exploring how the process was refined for an initial…

The purpose of this instrumental case study was to chronicle high school students' creative experiences in a songwriting course. Ten students in Grades 10-12 composed original songs, learned to accompany themselves on keyboard and 'ukulele, and performed their songs in class and at a coffee shop. Data sources consisted of classroom observations,…

When the Coronavirus Pandemic made its way into the United States in 2020, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommended that all schools pivot to an online learning format as the country entered a lockdown in March 2020. The Coronavirus Pandemic made it harder for music educators to retain and recruit students into their upper…

The COVID-19 pandemic required choral music educators to abruptly shift their curriculums, expectations, and perspectives to effectively deliver content and meet their student's educational and emotional needs during this unprecedented time in education. This qualitative study highlights the voices of high school choral music educators to gain…

The present study investigates the effects of assertiveness training programs through folk dances on high school students' assertiveness levels. Pre-test post-test with control group design has been used to examine. Furthermore, a questionnaire including one open-ended question asked students to learn their opinion on training and its effects on…

The purpose of this study was to understand how human connection (Jordan, 2018; Miller & Stiver, 1997; Schwartz, 2019; Walker, 2020) is experienced in the high school choral music classroom. The central research question for this study was: How is human connection experienced in the classrooms of three high school choral music educators? A…

The purpose of this phenomenological study was to investigate the religious development, life experiences, and perspectives of six atheist high school choral music teachers on their current attitudes about performing sacred choral music within the public school education system. Six atheist choir directors participated in eighteen semi-structured…

The purpose of this collaborative action research project was to examine eighth- and ninth-grade female (assigned at birth) students' perspectives of their singing voice when implementing a practitioner/researcher designed curriculum titled "Supporting Adolescent Female Vocal Development: Teaching Anatomy and Physiology in the Middle School…