- Book author
- Rosane Cardoso de Araújo
Brazilian Research on Creativity Development in Musical Interaction focuses on creativity that involves interactive musical activities, with different groups, such as professional musicians, students, and student teachers. It seeks to present research with a theoretical foundation on musical creativity and interaction, within psychology and music pedagogy. A collection of ten contributed essays present studies that promote understanding of the possibilities of creative development from the interactive process. All are undertaken within the context of teaching and learning, whether one-on-one or group lessons, ranging from elementary school music class, instrument study, choral singing, composition and teaching an autistic student.
Acknowledgments:
I am grateful to all colleagues who collaborated on this work with me, for the dedication and excellent partnership they exemplifed: Anna Rita Addessi, Beatriz Ilari, Camila Fernandes Figueiredo, Danilo Ramos, Dayane Battisti, Flávia de Andrade Campos Silva, Flávio Denis Dias Veloso, Guilherme Gabriel Ballande Romanelli, Jean Pscheidt, Rafael Dias de Oliveira, Regina Antunes Teixeira dos Santos, Valéria Lüders, and Viviane Beineke. I am very grateful to Professor Liane Hentscke for writing the foreword; her contribution is a great honor. I would also like to acknowledge the Federal University of Paraná (Brazil), the Brazilian National Council for Scientifc and Technological Development (CNPq), the International Society for Music Education, Routledge editors and Taylor & Francis Group, for having provided the conditions for this publication to be possible. Finally, I also thank Nathalia Guedes for her collaboration in revising the manuscript texts.
Foreword:
In my mind there was always a drive to uncover the advantages of growing older. One that surprised me was the happiness I experience when witnessing students grow in their profession. Here I pay tribute to three of my previous doctoral students who have contributed signifcantly to this book: Drs. Rosane Cardoso de Araújo, Regina Antunes dos Santos and Viviane Beineke. I must not overlook, however, the many other important contributions from the unnamed colleagues they collaborated with. Thus, it is an honor to be invited to write the foreword of this book. Dr. Rosane Cardoso de Araújo has chosen an important, although complex, subject to compile a book about. Creativity studies carry an intrinsic complexity, ranging from the way they are conceptualized to the methodologies used to investigate their processes and outcomes. Traditionally associated with arts practices, it has never been too popular to recognize the need for developing creativity in order to educate scientists and develop business leaders, engineers, and other professionals. Innovation, a buzzword, implies that the creative process requires people to develop innovative products, as in education, new pedagogies utilizing new teaching and learning technologies – the latter so much in need nowadays. During the last decade or so, creativity has become the center of attention in many areas of knowledge, but it has not been limited to the creation of new products. It is also used as a ‘tool’ to constantly reinvent ourselves as we adapt to a world in constant change. Fomenting creativity in music education will enable us to prepare the students of today for professional careers that will be created in the future. Thus, developing the creative potential of our students becomes paramount. How does a teacher promote creativity through music education and practice? This is an important question this book addresses by showcasing research that may inspire music educators who are committed to a high standard of teaching. It is rich in content, as it explores a variety of themes, methodologies, contexts, and musical practices in which creativity development is researched. What is unique about this book is that it presents an opportunity to learn specifcally about Brazilian research on creative musical practices, as most of the feld work was based in Brazil.
Introduction:
In the musical education context creativity has been explored from different perspectives, such as the development of collaborative activities between teachers and students through improvisation and shared musicality (Burnard & Murphy, 2013; Cross et al. 2012; Seddon, 2012; Tafuri, 2006). This is a refection of a research perspective that explores methods that go beyond technical development during music lessons, promoting teaching based on creative music making (Elliott & Silverman, 2015; Schafer, 2011). According to Schiavio et al. (2019). This type of view has practical consequences that lead to a more open learning approach, bringing more possibilities for exploration, improvisation and musical creation. For creativity to occur, Burnard (2011, p. 11) emphasizes the need to promote an environment where “the students can take risks, engage in imaginative activity, and do things differently”. As Beghetto and Kaufman (2011) explain, teachers need to balance, during their classes, the development of content while fostering creativity, and not fearing “curricular chaos”. Sawyer (2011) offers a perspective of “disciplined improvisation” that, in a general way, presents the concept that it is needed to elaborate a defned structured teaching by establishing the necessary content while providing space for ideas to fow. Given the many intrinsic challenges of teaching that focus on developing musical creativity, the goal of this chapter is to present some perspectives for the development of musical creativity of drums students in an interactive-refexive context. The refexive interaction can be comprehended as a mechanism of musical interaction that occurs through musical improvisation based on imitation with variations (Addessi, 2014; Addessi et al., 2017). This type of interaction is explored in this research in two distinct contexts: human/machine refexive interaction, and human/human refexive interaction. The human/machine refexive interaction has been studied using the MIROR project, an European project coordinated by professor Anna Rita Addessi, from the University of Bologna, Italy, which focuses Refexive Interaction and Musical Creativity 5 on the elaboration of the MIROR Platform, that is, a technological platform that explores possibilities of involving children in composition, improvisation and body movement activities to manipulate a software known as interactive-refexive systems (Addessi, 2014; Addessi & Pachet, 2006; Addessi et al., 2017). From among the interactive-refexive systems that make up the MIROR platform, this research used the MIRORImpro. This software works by connecting an electronic drums, allowing the student to freely play the instrument and, when the student stops playing, receive an immediate response from the software that imitates the phrase previously played by the student, with variations. In the context of human/human interaction, some research has been developed investigating the vocal interaction between parents and babies, as well as the musical experience of the newborn child, reinforcing the importance of the mother acting as a sound mirror for the child, strengthening his/her musical ‘self’ (Addessi, 2012; Stern, 2004; Imberty, 2005). In this chapter human/human refexive interaction is investigated in instrument teaching, with the teacher performing a refexive function (Addessi et al., 2017). The teacher acts similarly to the interactiverefexive MIROR-Impro system, that is, answering the phrases executed by the student and, at the same time, inserting small variations. In that way, the modeling, conducting and mirroring strategies, suggested by Addessi (2015), were used so that the teacher could reinforce the student’s musical style. The refexive interaction has been investigated as a tool capable of stimulating a creative musical dialogue (Addessi, 2015). Therefore, this type of interaction emerges as a possible way of thinking about pedagogical practices that stimulate musical creativity in the context of instrument teaching. For that, we discuss how the theoretical support of creativity and the interactive-refexive paradigm can contribute to explaining the creative experience in the interactive-refexive context. In this chapter we present a study developed in an interactive-refexive context with drum students, which explored, through human/human and human/m
