Dan Shevock

2017
Pre-publication proof of "Prelude" ...
Link: https://isbnsearch.org/isbn/0415792576
On Routledge: https://www.routledge.com/Eco-Literate-Music-Pedagogy/Shevock/p/book/9780415792578
On Amazon.com: https://www.amazon.com/Eco-Literate-Music-Pedagogy-Philosophy-Autoethnography/dp/0415792576/
On Amazon.co.uk: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Eco-Literate-Music-Pedagogy-Routledge-Education/dp/0415792576/

Published by Routledge

2015
Link to the Dissertation: https://etda.libraries.psu.edu/catalog/24888
Scholars in many fields of study have examined confidence. Within music education, confidence is often studied through the lens of Bandura’s social cognitive theory, and for music improvisation, much confidence work has been accomplished through survey design and examined confidence to teach improvisation or gender differences. Though Bandura’s self-efficacy model provides a useful framework to study confidence as part of music (especially in understanding why people’s behavior may differ markedly in improvising), confidence may be important to improvising distinct from self- efficacy theory, and deserves inductive and explorative treatment; I completed three qualitative research studies on confident music improvising (CMI). These three studies are shared in this dissertation, a phenomenological study of CMI from the perspective of improvising performers (Chapter 2), a case study of teachers at the jazz portion of a summer music camp (Chapter 3), and most recently (Chapter 4), I explored CMI within the parameters of improvisation teachers helping students build a personal, subjective sense of confidence, which is needed to improvise musically. In the first study, interviews and observations were conducted with three self-described confident music improvisers: a bluegrass fiddler, a jazz bassist, and a baroque violinist. Participants described their learning experiences with CMI. The following essential themes emerged from that analysis – listening, criticism- free environment, sequential experiences, passion for a style, and openness to learning. The first three of these themes were considered pedagogical and the final two themes dispositional. In the second study, case study design was employed to test the essential pedagogical themes—listening, criticism-free environment, and sequential experiences—against situational reality of the jazz portion of a one-week summer music camp. The focus of this second study was on teaching CMI. Interviews, observations, and documents were used to triangulate data. Teaching through questions emerged as a theme of teaching CMI. In the third study, an emergent, responsive interviewing research design was used to explore the experiences of expert improvisation teachers’ teaching praxes for improving student confidence to improvise music. The purpose of this qualitative study was to understand praxes of teaching CMI, that is, how expert improvisation teachers conceive the techniques they use to increase student confidence to improvise music. There were two research questions. What teaching praxes do participants use to help unconfident students become confident music improvisers? How does student gender affect teaching praxes?

2019
First 2 pages of my chapter in Musicianship: Improvising in Band and Orchestra, edited by David A. Stringham, Christian Bernhard, II (GIA Publication). Link: https://www.giamusic.com/store/resource/musicianship-improvising-in-band-and-orchestra-book-g9694

The 21st century has been defined by ecological crises, and these crises have been absent from most critical conversations in music teaching and learning. Satis Coleman's music education writings, influential in the 1920s and 30s, focused on music and nature. The intellectual history presented in this essay, a historiography of ideas and thinkers, frames selected writings by Coleman as an environmental philosophy. This essay is built qualitatively around the themes of nature, consumption and conservation, epistemol-ogy/ethics/policy, and evolution. Coleman's environmental philosophy provides an opening for music educators to begin teaching and learning for eco-literacy through music .

Popular music education can ease or worsen the waste problem. Waste refers to things with "no value," and the Global North produces a lot of waste. Not limited to material, waste can be seen as a dominant metaphor in rock music. The guiding question for this essay is, what opportunity does rock music present for cultivating eco-literacy through music? Before we can find solutions though, we need to recognize rock's distinctive ecological challenges. Popular music is both implicated in the challenge of waste, and can help music educators explore opportunities for resistance. In music education, qualitative research suggests instrument-making increases knowledge, interest, creativity, and builds attachment to an instrument, in addition to reducing material waste. In our field's move to incorporate popular musics, instrument-making can be a part of eco-literate music pedagogy.

As music educators, we always teach much more than the musical concepts and skills outlined in music curriculum standards. In this article, we discuss how music teachers can address what we believe is the most pressing issue of our time: environmental degradation. We first outline some specifics of ecological literacy in music education. This will include discussion of some songs that could form the center of a music curriculum for increasing ecological literacy. Next, we discuss cultivating ecological literacy using local musical practices and sounds of nature. Finally, we share an example of soundscape pedagogy aimed at increasing awareness of and propensities to care for the natural environment and ecological diversity. These components, singing, songwriting, and soundscape composition, are recommended as part of an overall creative pedagogical approach.

2018
Improvisation plays a substantial role within the world’s musical cultures. The purpose of this research was to explore the essence of the experience of confident music improvising. In this phenomenological study, confidence was considered a psychological experience and the confidence of improvisers the phenomenon under examination. The researcher compiled experiences through stories describing the phenomenon by interviewing three confident improvisers: a bluegrass fiddler, a jazz bassist and a baroque violinist. Vignettes portrayed the lifeworlds of these instrumentalists. The stories told were reduced through imaginative variation to identify which themes were essential, that is, shared among the participants’ unique experiences. The essential themes revealed were: listening, criticism-free environment, sequential experiences, passion for a style, and openness to learning. Music educators could potentially use these themes to enrich their own improvisation pedagogy.

2017
This essay extends an open philosophy with a philosophy of music education on soil. An open philosophy emerges from analysis of Kafka's parable " Before the Law. " I explore what " the law " might be, what it could mean for how people relate to " the law, " and how critiquing " the law " allows music teachers and learners to challenge the institutionalization of musical values. Extended with a metaphor of soil, music educators recognize " the law " is unsustainable and deserving skepticism. Institutions require continual skepticism. Through skepticism, ways of being and musicking together emerge.

Link to Article: http://act.maydaygroup.org/articles/Shevock15_4.pdf
This article provides a glimpse into one person’s subjective experiences of rurality, Whiteness, musicing, and teaching. Experiences are shared narratively around the central metaphor: roots. This autoethnography was guided by the question: how has the intersection of rurality, Whiteness, and poverty affected my attitudes, actions, and roles relative to music teaching and learning? Music education, a modern certainty that is usually portrayed as a universal good, is challenged as uprooting. This institution is inextricably linked to scarcity, transforming people into homo educandus musicae—s/he who believes that music education is a prerequisite to meaningful musicing. Homo educandus musicae, with more music education, emerges further and further uprooted from soil. A rerooting music praxis—in which students’ local places are understood as valuable resources for school music and not places to be left behind in the search for better, more cultured musics—is recommended.

2015, inaugural article for TOPICS.
Link to the Article: http://topics.maydaygroup.org/articles/2015/Shevock2015.pdf
Facing the prospect of global ecological crises, how can music education matter? With the advent of ecomusicology, the connection between music and environment raises many new challenges. Ecological literacy has become an important topic in educational philosophy, but it is largely missing from music education literature. The question guiding this inquiry is: What might music education for ecological literacy be like? To answer this question, I consider some possible ecological theories—including ecological literacy, ecomusicology, indigenous knowledge, and spirituality—that can provide a stable starting point and framework of music education for ecological literacy.

2015
Satis Coleman (1878–1961) was a pioneering but underacknowledged teacher in the history of American music education. Hers was a voice of teaching creativity in the twentieth century, which occurred at the progressive Lincoln Lab School and Teachers College, Columbia University, in New York City. This article considers Coleman’s music education philosophy, which contained a distinctly spiritual characteristic. Parker Palmer’s definition of spirituality, “the eternal human yearning to be connected with something larger than our own egos,” offers a lens for examining Coleman’s spirituality, which included a distinctive view of God, living simply, wholesome humility, emotions, and silence in nature. Our profession can benefit from deeper understanding of the work of creative teachers, such as Coleman.

2015
Link to the Article: http://act.maydaygroup.org/articles/Shevock14_2.pdf
Abstract
Paulo Freire was an important figure in adult education whose pedagogy has been used in music education. In this act of praxis (reflection and action upon the world in order to transform it), I share an autoethnography of my teaching of a university-level small ensemble jazz class. The purpose of this autoethnography was to examine my teaching praxis as I integrated Freirean pedagogy. There were two research questions. To what extent were the teachings of Paulo Freire applicable or useful for a university-level, improvisational, small ensemble class? How do students’ confidence and ability at improvisation improve during the class? Data sources included teacher reflections, video-recordings of each class, and conversations on a Facebook page. In the Jazz Combo Lab, students who were unable to successfully navigate the competitive audition process were empowered to develop as jazz musicians and become critically reflective. A narrative of my own evolving praxis is shared around the themes “Freirean Pedagogy as Increased Conversation,” “Empowering Students to Critique Their Worlds,” “Pedagogical Missteps,” and “A More Critical Praxis.”
Keywords: music education, Freire, jazz, pedagogy

Eudemonic Living Through Ecoliteracy
Daniel J. Shevock
Penn State Altoona
Paper presented at the Symposium on Eudaimonia and Music Learning, Montclair State University, Montclair, NJ, May 22, 2020. [Symposium moved online]
Session 5: 12:15-12:55 PM
https://www.garethdylansmith.com/symposium-on-eudaimonia-and-music-learning

Shevock, Daniel J. 2016. "Satis Coleman's Philosophy Through Progressive Educational Thought." Paper presented at the MayDay Colloquium 28: Music Education and Cultural Context. Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ.
Link to conference: http://mdg28.maydaygroup.org/presenters-papers/daniel-j-shevock/

This is my part of a panel.

Dominant and Marginalized Narratives in Music Education: Intersections of Religion, Spirituality, and Sexual/Gender Diversity in the Music Classroom, LGBTQ Studies & Music Education III, Urbana, IL. Facilitator: Karin Hendricks. Respondents: June Boyce-Tillman, Cantor Evan Kent, Kerri Mesner, Daniel J. Shevock, and Heidi Weatherford. May 19, 2016.

In order to confront patriarchal values in music education, music educators must know the philosophies of historic women music educators. Music educators' general underestimation of the value of historic women is a critical concern. In this paper, new light is shed on the life of historically underrepresented, but important, female music educator Satis Coleman (1878-1961); exploring her philosophy of music education from the perspective of progressive educational thought. There were two guiding questions: How does Satis Coleman's music education philosophy relate to and diverge from the educational philosophies of John Dewey and Jane Addams? And what does each educator believe about students living the good life and how does education foster this? Nine themes emerged from analysis: social, agency, interest, continuity, interdisciplinarity, nature, inner person, critiques, and the other.

November 14, 2016
7:30 PM
Misciagna Family Center
Wolf Kuhn Theatre
Penn State Altoona

Historian and priest, Ivan Illich talked about friendship in terms of a “cultivation of conspiracy,”  of con-spiring, that is, of “breathing-together.” With this understanding of friendship in mind, Dan Shevock and Friends is a musical breathing-together. Highly improvisational, jazz involves trust, the core of this conspiring. Even when no singer is present, jazz is based on a shared collection of songs. In the first part of tonight’s concert, we’ll play vocal music from the Great American Songbook and other standards. French composer, Claude Debussy said, “There is nothing more musical than a sunset. He who feels what he sees will find no more beautiful example of development in all that book which, alas, musicians read but too little – the book of Nature.”  The next part of the concert aims to read from the “book of Nature.” We pull ideas from jazz innovators such as by Ornette Coleman, Pharoah Sanders, and Paul Winter to cultivate “ecological jazz,” fusing diverse musics of non-human life with human improvisations. We hope you enjoy this evening’s conspiracy.