Undergraduate Conductors’ and Conducting Teachers’ Perceptions of Basic Conducting Efficacy

basic conducting, nonverbal conducting behaviors, conducting effectivenessThe purpose of this study was to examine undergraduate conductors’ and conducting teachers’ perceptions about basic conducting efficacy. At the beginning and end of the semester, undergraduate students (N = 19) enrolled in a basic conducting course (a) were surveyed about the importance of certain skills necessary for being an effective conductor and (b) viewed and rated their first videotaped conducting episode. Results indicated very few significant differences in participants’ ratings of important conducting skills or their own self-evaluation of nonverbal conducting skills. In addition, university conducting teachers (N = 9) evaluated videos of 10 conductors (five who had participated in the basic conducting course and five nonconductors who had not) who led a university concert band in an identical 1-minute excerpt of band music. No significant differences were found between the basic conductors and the nonconductors’ nonverbal conducting behaviors. Implications for conducting teachers, undergraduate conducting students, and preservice teachers are discussed.YesReviewed and accepted for publication in "Update: Applications of Research in Music Education" http://upd.sagepub.com/content/early/2014/10/23/8755123314554809.abstrac

Punishing childhoods: contradictions in children’s rights and global governance

The article considers efforts to eradicate corporal punishment as an aspect of the global governance of childhood and raises problems relevant to global governance more broadly. The article analyses contradictions in children’s rights advocacy between its universal human rights norms and implicit relativist development model. Children’s rights research is influenced by social constructivist theories, which highlight the history of childhood and childhood norms. Earlier social constructivist studies identified the concept of childhood underpinning the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) as a Western construction based on Western historical experiences, which excluded the experiences of childhood in developing countries. More recent social constructivist approaches emphasise how childhood norms are constructed and therefore can be reconstructed. The article outlines problems with attempts to globalise childhood norms without globalising material development. The article discusses the softening of discipline norms in Western societies historically. It indicates problems with children’s rights advocacy seeking to eradicate the corporal punishment of children globally without globalising the material conditions, which underpin the post-industrial ideal of childhood embodied in the CRC