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Students' experiences of collaborative creation through songcrafting in primary school: Supporting creative agency in ‘school music’ programmes1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 July 2016

Sari Muhonen
Sari Muhonen*
Affiliation:
Viikki Teacher Training School, University of Helsinki, P.O. Box 30, FI-00014 University of Helsinki, Finland. sari.muhonen@helsinki.fi
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Abstract

The study reported in this article investigates students’ experiences (n=41) of their primary school songcrafting, examining the potential to support creative agency within school music education programmes. Songcrafting refers to a collaborative composing practice in which everyone is considered to be a capable creator of melodies and lyrics, and where negotiation, collaboration, and openness to the situation are essential. Through semi-structured individual interviews with students who had experienced songcrafting in the past, analysed with qualitative methods, it was found that the students' narration of songcrafting included meanings related to general agency, creative agency, musical participation within the classroom community, and documented and shared collaborative musical products, or ‘oeuvres’.

The results of this study illustrate the various often unforeseeable meanings produced through participation in collaborative musical activities. Furthermore, they highlight the potential to enrich meaningful teaching practices and pedagogy through the examination of students' experiences, and exploring the potentials in narrating one's musical stories. These findings suggest that music education practices could benefit from the inclusion of a broader range of opportunities for the students to create their own music, and the sensitive facilitation of collaborative music creation processes.

Type
Research Article
Information
British Journal of Music Education , Volume 33 , Issue 3 , November 2016 , pp. 263 - 281
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

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Footnotes

1

This article is a subproject of Creativity, agency, and democratic research, CADRE (2009-2013), and part of an article based doctoral study concerning songcrafting. This work was supported by the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters.

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