Doctoral Colloquium (Music) | Margaret de Castro
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Doctoral Colloquium: Margaret de Castro
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The present study tested the role periodic dynamic enhancement or differentiation could play in helping students focus in taking rhythmic dictation. An experimental group of five participants was given rhythm dictation exercises over a period of five weeks. Practice exercises involved listening to and notating unpitched rhythmic dictation examples in which different measures were dynamically highlighted in each rendition of the example. This dynamic highlighting was diminished gradually over the period of the study. Participants were tested periodically to ascertain whether the intervention was effective. A control group of five participants functioned in the same fashion without the intervention of dynamic highlighting. A null hypothesis was assumed, that there would be no significant difference between the effects of the intervention’s scaffolded delivery and non-scaffolded delivery. Because sample sizes were small, Shapiro-Wilk tests were conducted to check for normal distributions. T tests and analyses of effect sizes (Cohen’s d) were calculated where data sets indicated normal distributions. Mann-Whitney tests were conducted where normal distributions were not evident. An initial questionnaire and final exit interview gathered qualitative data to enhance the quantitative data obtained from dictation test scores. Research questions were answered accordingly. From a quantitative perspective, results did not, overall, cause the null hypothesis to be rejected. From a qualitative perspective, participant responses were largely positive, thus leading to the conclusion that future replicated studies with larger sample sizes might well be more indicative of the effect of this type of intervention.
Margaret de Castro is a PhD candidate in Music Education at the Schulich School of Music, McGill University. She holds a Master of Music degree in organ performance and a Master of Education degree in educational psychology. As a course lecturer in Musicianship, she is a past recipient of the outstanding teaching award (part-time category). Margaret was co-author of the poster presentation ‘Narrative Approaches to Developing Music Teacher Identity’ at the International Society for Music Education’s MISTEC seminar in Prague, CR, in 2018. She is also a member of the North American Working Group of ISME’s Commission for Special Music Education and Music Therapy.