Hilde Blix: Emergent music literacy

Field of study: Music Education

Summary

The research question addressed in this dissertation is: How do beginners on a music instrument acquire music literacy in a music studio setting? The study is designed to identify and describe the learning strategies of 8-9-year-old music school students by observing and interviewing them during their first year of instrumental lessons.

The study of music literacy acquisition in this dissertation is based on a socio-cognitive view of literacy as a learning process, where knowledge acquisition is regarded as constructed, and learning is seen as an active meaning-making process. In this perspective, music literacy acquisition entails the ways the learner comprehends and learns both the culture, the ways of expressing meaning, how to use cultural tools, and the ways that the symbols are written and decoded.

Four cases were chosen as an empirical base for the investigation: two trombone students and two flute students. The study shows that the four students differed to a large degree in their use of strategies, both when it came to what strategies they used, and how many strategies they used.

The dissertation

Full title (translated from Norwegian): Emergent music literacy - young instrumentalists' music literacy acquisition in view of socio-cognitive theory of learning.

The dissertation is a monograph, and it is available from NMH's digital archive.

The dissertation is written in Norwegian.