1. Musical Dialogues Dr Susan Young University of Exeter School of Education and Lifelong Learning

2. Three parts  Scene-setting: Learning in music with young children  Small experimental study  Some thoughts to connect with symposium themes

3. The challenge of music!  It doesn’t stay still and it is invisible –  [Unlike ‘objects’ in many areas of learning - e.g. science, maths or visual arts]  EITHER pedagogical strategies to help fix it – visually and statically  OR strategies to learn while it’s on the move and in the aural/kinaesthetic (non-visual modes)

4. Learning in the flow of doing Music – not just ‘doing’ or learning ‘about’ but learning ‘about doing’ A time-based, dynamic process How do children learn ‘in the flow of doing’ about how music works? How do children learn ‘in the flow of doing’ about how music works?

5. An interest in mediation  Mediation is a key-word in much research and theorising inspired by Vygotsky  However, mediation is both human and symbolic  Studies focussing on Human mediator – often interested in what kinds of interactions can make the most difference to child’s performance  Studies focussing on symbolic mediator – what differences in the child’s performance by the introduction of certain symbolic-tools/mediators

6. Study 3 and 4-year-olds, self-initiated play on a xylophone Adult partners as mediators Condition 1  Xylophone and adult play partner  Xylophone and no adult Condition 2  Xylophone and familiar, ‘non-musician’ adult play partner  Xylophone and less familiar, ‘musician’ adult play partner

7. Method Fixed video camera ran for a continuous period (until tape ran out) Length of time children played was measured, the means found and compared Small sample – 15 children

8. Adult protocol  Not to initiate play, but to be ‘available to play’  To join in by imitating the child’s playing ideas if it seemed welcome  To imitate with versions that matched as much as possible

9. Results Condition 1 Children played longer when an adult joined in with playing, than when there was no adult Condition 2 Children played longer with the familiar adult than with the unfamiliar adult

10. Average Time durations  Unattended – 01.40  Attended: unfamiliar adult – 06.49  Attended: familiar adult – 03.12

11. Some interpretations  Interest in the activity is sustained by the interpersonal dimension more than ‘musical content’ [in conventional terms]  The intention to communicate, to make something collaboratively fuels the temporal contours, the dynamics – [sounded out as music]  The interpersonal dimension as a generative source of musical [temporal arts] ideas and elaborations

12. Music as made between people  Communicating and coordinating musical actions – in dialogue  The construction of musical thinking in social action  ‘a process of active sense-making occurring in real-time’ (Bamberger, 2006 p.70)

13. Not surprising!  Colwyn Trevarthen – communicative musicality in adult/infant interaction  John Matthews – young children’s art- making as interpersonal, emerging in time Interest arising from intercultural studies of music (latterly in music psychology) in music as communication, as social process

14. Modes of interaction  Sociocultural theory (which is very influential on EC practice) tends to emphasise converting experience in to talk ‘to make it conscious’ and talk, therefore, as the primary mode of interaction  Music (dance, drama) as non-verbal modes of interaction – importance of gesture (visual/aural/bodily) with communicable [but highly negotiable meanings – not needing to ‘fix’ meaning in artistic activity]

15. The dimension of time  Music (temporal arts) unfold over time - ‘scripts’, or narratives - have kinds of internal logic, relationships between what has just gone and inferred to what might come next, pivoting on the present moment (Stern)  Strategies to learn while it’s moving – memory is a key skill – holding on to non-verbal, non-visual imagery in the mind, recalling and working with it

16. the ‘timing’ of experience  Stern - Putting ‘time’ back into our considerations and understandings of experience – psychology of time

17. Musical thinking  Young children relate present moment to what has just gone and gives impulse only to what might come immediately next – why young children’s music is often said to be ‘formless’  Sawyer and Keil, improvised music, children’s role play - linear structures, flow of a river, ‘in the moment’ rather than hierarchical, architectural, large scale forms with many interrelationships

18. Mediation in musical thinking  Adult protocol DOES introduce a structuring strategy (like phrasing)  Adult inevitably ‘reworks’ the replies to some extent  A kind of structured participation, but NOT guided or scaffolded – it’s not leading to a predetermined end-point - co-creation

19. A ‘meta’ level?  Children can stand outside their own music-making (moving, drama etc.) – and listen, observe.  Being inside the action and also outside, aware of the action – is required in performance arts  Meta-awareness – a kind of double- tracking (empathetic behaviour)

20. Transcending  Can awareness/understanding of temporal process be transferred in to other activity?  Working cross-modally in dynamic, kinetic processes  Spatio-temporal thinking  Kinds of proto-, non-verbal, (narrative) structure?  Ability to empathise, communicate non- verbally?