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This chapter is based on two studies which aim to provide knowledge about the position of singing in Norwegian kindergartens and schools: (a) a national quantitative cross-sectional survey with kindergarten teachers and primary school/lower secondary school teachers, and (b) case studies in selected kindergartens and schools, where the data collection consisted of participatory observation and interviews with leaders and teachers. The chapter presents an attempt to incorporate both studies into a triangulation design where different types of data material and different analysis methods (quantitative and qualitative) are combined to investigate the question “why sing?” – that is, how singing is justified in kindergarten and school. Furthermore, we ask if different views on the functions of singing correlate with teachers’ personal characteristics (e.g., educational background, musical expertise, age, gender) and with the extent to which teachers sing with their children/students. Theoretical perspectives are grounded in music education philosophy with emphasis on Øivind Varkøy’s (2015) justification categories. The results show that employees in Norwegian kindergartens and schools justify singing with several arguments that are placed within and across Varkøy’s categories. We find a clear consensus among the participants in our sample that singing is particularly relevant for extra-musical functions (e.g., learning a language, building a community). The least emphasized, however, are arguments connected with curricula and the development of the singing voice.

Among children and young people, girls in particular sing in choirs. Some girls’ choirs can refer to a particularly high artistic level that falls into the sub-category semi-professional choirs or «elite choirs». One might say that Sandefjord girls’ choir (1956–1997) belonged to this category. This chapter is based on material from a survey among Sandefjord girls’ choir former members, qualitative interviews and supplementary sources based on the following research question: How is a girls’ choir practice constituted over time, and which values in the social practice emerge as lifelong learning for the choristers? In Bourdieu’s cultural sociology, values are understood as accumulated resources or capital. The purpose of the study is to contribute to the development of knowledge about the values which generates in the semi-professional girls’ choir culture as a specific practice in the field of music. Implicitly, this involves a contextualization of the girls’ choir practice in historical time and in geographical place. The study shows that «vocal-musical», co-singing and educational values are most prominent in girls’ choir practice, also as a foundation for lifelong learning. Through this, habitus emerge as a specific kind of «girl’s-choir-singers’ habitus». Despite significant structural changes since the 1950s and into the present, both in the field of music and in society in general, it is clear that new generations of choristers have been regulated and shaped through a reproduction of the values that exist in the social practice.

In this paper, we introduce the MARKO competency test and competency model, a new measurement instrument for music-related argumentative competence (MARKO: Musikbezogene ARgumentationsKOmpetenz; German for music-related argumentative competence). This competence, which plays an essential role in school curricula, refers to the ability to justify, and defend judgments about music. The two main goals of this study were 1) to design an assessment test for music-related argumentation that fulfills psychometric criteria and 2) to derive competency levels based on empirical data to describe the cognitive dispositions that are necessary when engaging in argumentation about music. Based on a theoretical framework, we developed a competency test to assess music-related argumentative competence. After two pretests (n= 391), we collected data from 440 students from grade nine to the university level. The final test consisted exclusively of open-ended items, which were rated with coding schemes that had been designed for each item. After ensuring inter-rater reliability, we composed an item pool that met psychometric criteria (e.g., local stochastic independence and item homogeneity) and represented content-related aspects in a meaningful way. Based on this item pool, we estimated a one-dimensional partial credit model. Following a standard-setting approach, four competency levels were derived from the empirical data. While individuals on the lowest competency level expressed their own opinions about the music by referring to salient musical attributes, participants on the highest level discussed different opinions on the music, and considered the social and cultural context of the music. The proficiency scores significantly varied between grades. Our findings empirically support some theoretical assumptions about music-related argumentation and challenge others.

The (elective) school subject sal og scene (stage and scene) was introduced as a multi-aesthetic arts education subject at Norwegian secondary schools in 2012. The main objective of the subject is to create and perform various audiovisual or scenic expressions and productions. The purpose of this article is to provide a picture of what characterizes the subject sal og scene in the Norwegian school in 2019. The data for the article is generated through a nationwide questionnaire survey among subject teachers. The study is designed as a quantitative study in an exploratory design, and the analysis is conducted as descriptive statistical analysis. Results show that 70,3 % of schools in Norway offer the subject as an elective subject, 73,8 % of the pupils participating in the subject are girls, and 61,4 % of the teachers are women. Further results show that the most common forms of scene production in the subject are theatre and musical theatre productions, 77,29 % of the teachers have some form of arts education, and music is the most commonly represented artform in the teachers’ areas of competence. Results also show that the subject has a position of high status in the school’s management, and that 46% of the teachers teach the subject alone, without collaborating with other teachers.

Welcome to the anthology Higher Education as Context for Music Pedagogy Research. This anthology is the second publication in the scholarly series MusPed:Research and concerns the field of higher education. The anthology consists of 14 chapters, arranged under the following themes: (i) instrumental music education, (ii) group-oriented and interdisciplinary music education, and (iii) critical examination of music teacher education programs. Before describing the specific chapters, we will first comment on the title of the anthology. These comments, divided into two parts, are contextually and linguistically oriented towards the growth and development of music educational disciplines in Scandinavian, German, and Anglo-American contexts. The first part is titled “Higher Education as Context” and concerns both higher music education and music teacher education. The second part has the title “Music Pedagogy Research”, and builds on the perspectives of Bildung and Didaktik in German/Scandinavian fields within Musikpädagogische Forschung/ musikkpedagogisk forskning.

In this chapter, we examine how music/teacher education is represented on the websites of four Norwegian institutions that offer diverse kinds of music/teacher education at the BA, MA, and PhD levels and that offer qualifications for all types of music teaching professions in Norway. These four cases serve as examples of the main traditions of music/teacher educations in the Nordic area, with distinctive differences in their notions of music, pedagogy, professional orientation, and research. The analysis is theoretically grounded in Foucault’s concepts of power/knowledge and governmentality. The findings suggest, on the one hand, considerable variations among the institutions and, on the other hand, similarities in how the representations operate in a range of steering techniques in the ways that these education programs, orientations, groups, and individuals are portrayed. The concluding discussion questions the power/knowledge constructions that provide authority to the dominating discourses, critically pointing to some effects that diverse representations might have for positions, ambitions, and individuals. Getting the diverse communities of music/teacher educations to communicate seems imperative to evolve more reflexive, conscious, and participative music/teacher education programs in the 21st century.

On tests of verbal short-term memory, performance declines as a function of auditory distraction. The negative impact of to-be-ignored sound on serial recall is known as the irrelevant sound effect. It can occur with speech, sine tones, and music. Moreover, sound that changes acoustically from one token to the next (i.e., changing-state sound) is more disruptive to serial recall than repetitive, steady-state sound. We tested manipulations that resulted in changes in (higher levels of) perceptual organization for more complex tonal stimuli. Within a trial, the first two bars of a well-known melody were repeated (a) in the exact same manner, (b) with variations only in tempo, (c) with variations only in mode (e.g., Dorian or Phrygian), or (d) with variations in both tempo and mode. Participants serially recalled digits in each of the irrelevant sound conditions as well as in a silent control condition. In Experiment 1a, we tested non-music students and, to investigate whether musical expertise affected the findings, additionally tested students majoring in music in Experiment 1b. Across both samples, recall in the irrelevant sound conditions was significantly poorer than in the silent control condition, but only the tempo variation caused an additional harmful effect. The mode variation did not affect recall performance, in either music or non-music students. These findings indicate that, at least with music, changes are a matter of degree and not every additional variation impairs recall performance.

This anthology presents research projects that examine the intersection between music, technology and education from a variety of perspectives. The contributors are from a range of educational programs within traditional pre-, primary and lower secondary school education, as well as music performance and technology educational programs. Data for the studies stems from primary and lower secondary school, as well as informal learning environments, in addition to the contributors’ respective education programs. The research projects examine a wide range of topics such as gamification of ukulele and song teaching, composition with iPads in the classroom, live looping as an approach to ensemble conducting, authentic music technology learning spaces, music-making in the “laptop-era”, sound, the notion of net-based presence, and challenges in higher electronic music education. As this anthology is the first publication in the MusPed:Research series, it also contains an introductory chapter about the series and the research network Musikkpedagogikk i utdanning (MiU). This anthology makes a distinct contribution to the research field of music technology in education and questions educational practices in the school and higher educational levels, the goals and content of music education, and our understanding of music and music creation in itself.

Kurzfassung Die logistische Leistungsfähigkeit ist ein entscheidender Wettbewerbsfaktor. Allerdings ist die Zielerreichung in der betrieblichen Praxis oft unzureichend. Eine mögliche Ursache dafür sind divergierende Mitarbeiter- und Unternehmensinteressen, welche die Auftragsabwicklung beeinflussen. Der Mitarbeiter rückt damit in den Fokus von Forschung und Praxis. Wie können vorhandene Differenzen zwischen Unternehmens- und Mitarbeiterinteressen überwunden und die Logistikleistung gesteigert werden? Das am IFA und IPH in Hannover entwickelte logistikunterstützende Anreizsystem bietet Lösungen für eine nachhaltige Unterstützung der Logistikziele.

Kurzfassung Die Auswahl einer geeigneten Strategie zur Ersatzteil-Bedarfsdeckung nach Ende der Serienfertigung ist für Hersteller von technischen Investitionsgütern eine wichtige, aber auf Grund der zahlreichen Einflussfaktoren komplexe Aufgabe. Zusätzlich ist eine kontinuierliche Überprüfung der gewählten Strategien notwendig, um diese bei Bedarf anpassen und damit Kosten und Risiken der Ersatzteilversorgung senken zu können. In diesem Beitrag wird eine Methode zur systematischen und aufwandsarmen Auswahl und Anpassung von Ersatzteil-Bedarfsdeckungs-Strategien vorgestellt.

This chapter is based on two studies which aim to provide knowledge about the position of singing in Norwegian kindergartens and schools: (a) a national quantitative cross-sectional survey with kindergarten teachers and primary school/lower secondary school teachers, and (b) case studies in selected kindergartens and schools, where the data collection consisted of participatory observation and interviews with leaders and teachers. The chapter presents an attempt to incorporate both studies into a triangulation design where different types of data material and different analysis methods (quantitative and qualitative) are combined to investigate the question “why sing?” – that is, how singing is justified in kindergarten and school. Furthermore, we ask if different views on the functions of singing correlate with teachers’ personal characteristics (e.g., educational background, musical expertise, age, gender) and with the extent to which teachers sing with their children/students. Theoretical perspectives are grounded in music education philosophy with emphasis on Øivind Varkøy’s (2015) justification categories. The results show that employees in Norwegian kindergartens and schools justify singing with several arguments that are placed within and across Varkøy’s categories. We find a clear consensus among the participants in our sample that singing is particularly relevant for extra-musical functions (e.g., learning a language, building a community). The least emphasized, however, are arguments connected with curricula and the development of the singing voice.