Estelle Jorgensen Research Collection

Permanent link for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/2022/25842

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Towards a Social Theory of Musical Identities
(Universitetsbiblioteket, 2006) Jorgensen, Estelle
In this article I address three questions: What is meant by the notion of 'musical identity'?, How are musical identities formed?, and What are the responsibilities of music educators in terms of shaping musical identities? Throughout, my purpose is to show the social nature and complexity of musical identity and the crucial role that music teachers can play in intervening in the process of identity formation. This argument is prefaced on assumptions that musical identities are multiple rather than singular and no particular identity is the most desirable. In a world of ''multiplicities and pluralities'' in which people from many different ethnic, religious, linguistic, and other cultural backgrounds dwell together, sharing common beliefs and practices and diverging from different others, some way needs to be found to enable a civil society in which humankind can dwell in peace and happiness. It presupposes societies that, in our time at least, are often diverse, and cultures in which there is a need to cope with barriers, suspicions, and hostilities between individuals and groups that can readily arise without the means to negotiate them peacefully. In Seyla Benhabid's view, following Vaclav Havel, rather than an ''epidermis'' that overlays often deeply held differences, cultures need to be negotiated in ways that support civil discourse and the freedom to disagree with others. As one important site of this struggle, education is at the center of cultural transformation as it also needs to prefigure the society that is desirable. To this end, music teachers, especially those in publicly supported schools, cannot avoid, indeed need to embrace, their political and cultural as well as musical roles of transmitting, shaping and re-shaping beliefs and practices from the past. My theoretical observations are necessarily philosophical in that they ask questions about how things ought to be.
On Values and Life’s Journey through Music: Reflections on the Eriksons’ Life Stages and Music Education
(Peter Lang, 2021) Jorgensen, Estelle
The premise of this chapter is that the values that guide music education and the objectives and methods consistent with them should be tailored to people at each phase of life. Thinking of a theme, “Life’s journey through music,” I sketch different values that should guide music education throughout the adult phases of life proposed in Erik and Joan Erikson’s psychosocial state theory, namely, young adulthood, adulthood, old age, and gerotranscendence, respectively. Practical implications of the differing objectives and approaches commensurate with these values are suggested and a critique of the analysis is offered.
Singing Through Grief: An Autobiographic Fragment with Brief Commentary
(Peter Lang, 2021) Jorgensen, Estelle; Ward-Steinman, Patrice Madura
Conclusion: On Making Music Education Humane and Good: Gathering Threads.
(Indiana University Press, 2020) Jorgensen, Estelle
On the Role of Religion in Music Education
(Indiana University Press, 2019) Jorgensen, Estelle
Music and International Relations
(Praeger, 1990) Jorgensen, Estelle
My purpose in this chapter is twofold. First, I shall outline several social processes illustrative of the important role music plays in international relations and cite examples of each drawn from the literature in the history and sociology of music. Second, I shall sketch a theoretical framework in which the interface of music and international relations can be analyzed and suggest considerations for melding aspects of music and international relations in the future. The list of social processes developed by the sociologist Henry Zentner provides a useful perspective from which to view music and international relations. In particular, seven processes are of interest, namely, image preservation, loyalty maintenance, personification, socialization, information exchange, cooperation and competition. While there is no claim for exhaustiveness in this list, it does illustrate the variety of ways in which music contributes to, and is affected by, international relations.
The Preparation of School Music Supervisors in Canada
(Canadian Music Educator, 1980) Jorgensen, Estelle
The following findings respecting the preparation of music supervisors in Canada are based on a survey conducted in January, 1977 (Jorgensen, 1979). Several aspects of the academic and professional preparation of music supervisors will be described, namely: academic qualifications, preparation in administrative theory, teaching experience, mobility (or movement from one jurisdiction to another) and membership in professional associations.
The Scope and Nature of the School Music Supervisor Role in Canada
(Canadian Music Educator, 1980) Jorgensen, Estelle
In a survey of school music supervisors in Canada (Jorgensen, 1979), three aspects of the scope and nature of the school music supervisor role were examined, namely: music supervisor tasks; attitudes to aspects of the music supervisor role, communication with teachers, teacher visitation and planning of future activities; and problems faced by music supervisors. The findings will now be described.
The Academic and Professional Preparation of School Music Supervisors in Canada
(Canadian Music Educator, 1979) Jorgensen, Estelle
This article is the first of a series of three which will appear in the three numbers of Volume 21. We believe that there is value in having an extended look at a given topic in this fashion, and in the present instance the issue of music supervision is particularly timely. The cut-backs and budgetary prunings to which supervisory personnel are increasingly subjected make it imperative that we carefully examine our evaluative criteria.
Some Observations on the Methodology of Research in Music Education
(Canadian Music Educator, 1979) Jorgensen, Estelle
What Philosophy Can Bring to Music Education: Musicianship as a Case in Point
(British Journal of Music Education, 2003) Jorgensen, Estelle
My response to the question "What can philosophy bring to music education?" is to offer a case in point. Three important tasks that philosophers can fulfil - clarifying ideas, interrogating commonplaces, and suggesting applications to practice - are illustrated through an analysis of musicianship. Doing philosophy is inseparable from the content of philosophy, and how the idea of musicianship is clarified, interrogated, and applied is of central interest to music education, as is the task of music education philosophy itself. The article highlights the crucial importance of teachers as participants in this work.
Another Perspective: The Joyous Composer
(Music Educators Journal, 2016) Jorgensen, Estelle
The value of joy in music education through composing (interrelated with performing, improvising, and listening) is proposed. Two types of joy experienced by the composer are discussed: cognitive emotion, or emotion in response to thought; and emotional cognition, or thought centered on emotion. While the Western classical tradition can effectively bridge to other musical traditions when approached joyously and ecumenically in whatever musical traditions teachers and students are immersed, composing constitutes a powerful means of knowing joy and a metaphor for music education.
Reflections on a Scholar's Life in Music Education
(Journal of Research in Music Education, 2021) Jorgensen, Estelle
"How is a person to live a balanced, productive, and joyous life as a scholar of music education?" I address four values that are at the heart of scholarship in music education: scholarly publication, scholarly teaching, scholarly service, and scholarly change. Although these values represent what Donald Kennedy (1997) thinks of more broadly as academic duties, I consider them specifically as pertaining to scholarship and within the frame of one's life as a researcher in music education. Here, I sketch aspects of this quartet of scholarly values that emerge out of my reflection on decades devoted to scholarship.
To Love or Not to Love (Western Classical Music): That is the Question (For Music Educators)
(Philosophy of Music Education Review, 2020) Jorgensen, Estelle
In this article, I transpose the word "love" for "be" in Hamlet's existential question in his soliloquy concerning life and death penned by William Shakespeare, "To be or not to be: That is the question." Thinking through the ethical imperatives of love and its ancillary values of friendship, desire, and devotion in Western classical music and music education, I sketch critically the role of love in this musical tradition and its transmission and transformation. I then trace some of the implications of this analysis for musical education.
Questions for Music Education Research
(Music Education Research, 2008) Jorgensen, Estelle
In addressing the question-set 'What questions do music education researchers need to address?', an illustrative list of juxtaposed descriptive and normative questions is sketched as follows: What are and should be the dimensions of music education? What are and should be the institutional agencies of music education? What are and should be the specifically educational dimensions of music education? What are and should be the musical interests of music education? What are and should be the purposive and/or incidental, formal and/or informal attributes of music education? At what developmental stages are and should music education be cast? What disciplines and levels of generality do and should inform music education? What is the present status of music education and what should it be? How relevant is and should music education research be to practice?
"This-with-That": A Dialectical Approach to Teaching for Musical Imagination
(The Journal of Aesthetic Education, 2006) Jorgensen, Estelle
Among the various approaches to music education, my dialectical and epistemological view offers a way of thinking about music and education and deciding how to go forward in teaching and learning music. In this article I show how this particular philosophical perspective can play out in teaching for the development of musical imagination in a particular musical piece, in particular, Johannes Brahms's Intermezzo, op. 118, no. 2. Three questions lie at the center of this analysis: What is meant by my dialectical approach? How is musical imagination implicated, for example, in a performer's reading of this Intermezzo? How ought one to teach for the development of musical imagination?
Shifting Paradigms in Music Education Research
(Journal of Research in Music Education, 2015) Jorgensen, Estelle; Madura Ward-Steinman, Patrice
The purpose of this study was to examine evidence of a hypothesized shift in the operative research paradigms in music education during the first quarter century of the publication of the Journal of Research in Music Education, during the period 1953 to 1978. This shift was from humanities-oriented historical and philosophical studies to scientifically oriented psychological studies, from studies couched at higher levels of generality to more specific levels of analysis of the data, and from studies geared toward broader contextual and institutional issues to those concerning the specific behaviors of students in music education. Data for our analysis are drawn from the first 26 years of the Journal of Research in Music Education during its formative period from 1953 to 1978. In order to test quantitatively these broad philosophical claims for shifting paradigms in music education research during this period, our specific research questions focused on indicators that, taken together, might document these changes. Based on heuristic models, 499 articles were classified according to types of research method, facets of music education, and integrative levels of analysis. Descriptive statistics and statistically significant correlations provided strong evidence of this shift. Implications for further research were sketched.
On Mediated Qualitative Scholarship and Marginalized Voices in Music Education
(Springer, 2020) Jorgensen, Estelle
This chapter addresses two interrelated questions concerning some of the characteristic features that should exemplify mediated qualitative scholarship in music education and ways in which mediated qualitative scholarship can enable marginalized voices in music education to be heard. Mediated scholarship is broadly defined as scholarship undertaken and/or disseminated through the arts and contemporary media. The term "marginalized voices" refers to those subjects, perspectives, media, approaches, objectives, and modes of dissemination that are not valued, studied, or accounted for in music education research. Drawing on two examples of work utilizing film and video and published as chapters in this book, I examine the possibilities and challenges for mediated qualitative scholarship in music education that highlights the voices of those not otherwise heard.
Metaphors for a Change: A Conversation about Images of Music Education and Social Change
(Journal of Aesthetic Education, 2019) Jorgensen, Estelle; Iris M. Yob
Two common themes emerge in our writings over the past several decades. Estelle Jorgensen has focused partially and significantly on models and metaphors that undergird music education. Iris Yob has examined the role of higher education generally and music education specifically in creating positive social change. At times, and against the backdrop of recent writing on music education, social change, and social justice, we each have explored topics in the other's area of interest. Neither of us, however, has systematically brought together the two themes: building practices on grounding metaphors for developing music education as a means for promoting the common good. In this paper, our conversation explores some metaphors that might assist music educators' understanding and practice as agents of social change.
The Seashore-Mursell Debate on the Psychology of Music Revisited
(Routledge, 2011) Jorgensen, Estelle
The published writings of Carl Seashore (1919, [1938] 1967, and his 29 articles in the Music Educators Journal during the period 1936-1941) and James Mursell (1934, 1936, 1937, 1938a, 1938b, 1943, 1948) on the psychology of music and music education constituted a significant contribution to music education thought and practice in the mid-twentieth century. Mursell followed, reacted against, and responded to Seashore's work and, the similarities between them notwithstanding, their ideas diverged in important ways. Their differing views of the nature of musical experience provided bases for contrasting ideologies of music education. My purpose in this chapter is to unpack aspects of each view of the psychology of music, examine their similarities and differences, and assess the degree to which they may be reconciled and the implications that follow for music education. In tackling this problem set, I focus on theoretical aspects of these psychologies of music, leaving aside important empirical questions relating to the nature of the data from which they drew, particularly those regarding the reliability and validity of these data (for the Seashore Measures, see Shuter-Dyson & Gabriel 1981) and the issues relating to music education practice. My intent is to concentrate on some general, conceptually interesting, and central issues rather than to conduct a comprehensive theoretical analysis of their ideas (see Fiske 1993, 159-159, 1996, 8). In particular, I suggest that regarding Mursell as a foil to Seashore shows that the theoretical types they represent contribute to our understanding and yet are flawed in one respect or another. Falling somewhere along a continuum between two opposite types, Mursell and Seashore differ in terms of the emphases in their writings. A careful reading of their work suggests some complexity, ambivalence, contradictions, and inconsistencies in their views, all of which are indicative of ideas still incompletely worked out or conceptually fuzzy. This fuzziness is evident, for example, in their discussions of the nature of musical meaning and the role of emotion in musical experience. In order to avoid stereotyping and oversimplifying their ideas, I refer only to some of the broad tendencies I see in their writings. The advantage of this approach is in seeing the general lay of the land by sketching some principal heuristic landmarks and leaving aside a more detailed conceptual mapping to a later day.

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