Music

This is a creative project, a parody of Alfred Jarry's 1905 "The Passion Considered as an Uphill Bike Race" and J.G. Ballard's "The Assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy Considered as a Downhill Motor Race." It is, however, based on research material on Gustav Mahler's cycling activities to be presented shortly.  http://www.brentacol.com/blog/2014/11/mahlers-fifth-symphony-considered-as-an-uphill-bicycle-race/

I composed Saturn and Jupiter as part of my Master’s degree thesis at Wesleyan University in 2003. It is an electro-acoustic and soundscape composition that responds to Glenn Gould’s 1967 radio documentary, The Idea of North. I made the source recordings while on a week-long trip to Churchill, Manitoba, where I took the same train that Gould had taken some thirty years earlier. Saturn and Jupiter responds both to the ideas in Gould’s documentary in the form of interviews, and compositionally by imposing considerably more atmospheric space into the work. Where Gould’s documentary is noisy with talking – Gould famously pioneered a technique he called ‘contrapuntal radio’ where he layers multiple speaking voices simultaneously – the spoken components of my documentary are quite sparse. This new presentation commemorates the re-opening of the Winnipeg – Churchill train line after suffering massive flooding damage in 2017. In this version, listeners are invited to hear and view to the 32...

Previous research suggests that students participating in school-based musical ensembles are more engaged in school and more likely to connect to their peers in school; however, researchers have not specifically investigated peer connectedness among adolescents in school-based music ensembles. The purpose of this study was to explore middle school band students’ perceptions of peer connectedness. Participants ( N = 317) indicated moderately high levels of peer connectedness both within the concert band and school. Levels of peer connectedness differed between schools; however, no statistical difference was found by grade/band level or SES. Suggestions for future research and implications for youth development and music education professions are discussed.

This study assessed the short-term impact of the play "Informed Consent" by Deborah Zoe Laufer (a fictionalized look at the controversy over specimens collected from the Havasupai Tribe for diabetes research in 1989) on perceptions of trust, willingness to donate biospecimens, attitudes toward harm and privacy among the medical and undergraduate students, faculty and the public in the intermountain west. Surveys were administered before and after a staged reading of the play by professional actors. Survey items included the short form Trust in Medical Researchers, and single item questions about group identity, ethics of genetic testing in children, and willingness to donate biospecimens. In addition, respondents were given the option to answer open-ended questions through email. Out of the 481 who attended the play, 421 completed both the pre and post surveys, and 166 participants completed open-ended questions online approximately one week after the play. Across all part...

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of middle school music ensemble participation on the relationship between school connectedness, bullying perpetration, and peer victimization. Participants (N = 470) selected for this study attended 2 middle schools located in central Illinois and voluntarily responded to the questionnaire by self-reporting demographic information, including their enrollment in a music course, and their behaviors as perpetrators and victims. Data were secured from a large-scale, 2-year randomized clinical trial funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (no. CE3240). Results indicated that nonensemble students in this sample perpetrate aggressive behaviors, on average, more frequently than do music ensemble students. While participant self-reports of bullying behaviors were relatively low, their perceptions of school connectedness were relatively high. Multiple-group structural equation modeling analyses demonstrated that a stronger n...

Homophobic name-calling is commonplace in middle schools and is emerging as an antecedent to more serious, deleterious concerns, including depressive or anxious symptoms among youth. While music education researchers suggest that youth enrolled in music ensembles are targets for homophobic epitaphs, little is known about how experiencing homophobic teasing during early adolescence relates to their self-reported mental health. Using data from a large-scale investigation of middle school youth, we examined the prevalence of homophobic name-calling and its relationship on indicators of mental health, including depression and anxiety. Results indicate that being a target of homophobic victimization has significant mental health consequences for youth in the current sample, although differentially for youth participating in a music ensemble and those who do not. Music ensembles are complex social environments, and our results raise questions about how prevalent or localized homophobic ep...

Teacher efficacy, or the degree to which teachers feel as though they can affect positive outcomes in their classrooms, has received considerable attention over the last three decades (Bandura 1977, 1997; Tschannen-Moran & Johnson, 2011). Research has shown that, among foreign language teachers, self-efficacy is associated with their language proficiency (Chacón, 2005; Yilmaz 2011) and students’ achievement (Swanson, 2014). The purpose of this qualitative inquiry was to better understand how the study abroad experience affected four, inservice Spanish teachers’ feelings of self-efficacy as it relates to language proficiency and instructional practice. Using a multiple case design (Stake 2006), we conducted interviews, recorded field note observations and collected participant reflection journals. Findings revealed that, as a result of the study abroad experience, participants described awareness of their foreign language proficiency, discussed re-assessing their classroom practice a...

The purpose of this qualitative inquiry was to understand how four in-service Spanish teachers interpreted their participation in a summer study abroad program and how the experience contributed to their ongoing professional development and language proficiency. Using a multiple case design (Simons, 2009; Stake, 2005; Yin, 2009), the researchers conducted interviews, recorded field observations and collected participant journals. By analyzing these teachers’ voices, it was found that the experience revealed a newfound realization of their language proficiency and its impact on their professional practice. A salient finding of the study abroad experience was that these teachers expressed a commitment to further develop their language skills outside of the classroom. Implications for foreign language educators include the need for sustained professional development that focuses on both content and proficiency. Over the past 30 years, the notion of best practices within the field of fo...

25-50 words): Academic chairpersons experience conflicts with a variety of stakeholders in higher education. The purpose of this session is to present current research about micropolitics in education and discuss strategies for understanding the micropolitical landscape of academia and for attaining micropolitical literacy to navigating conflicts.

There is controversy on whether former smokers have increased risk for breast cancer recurrence or all-cause mortality, regardless of how much they smoked. Data were from three US cohorts in the After Breast Cancer Pooling Project, with detailed information on smoking among 9975 breast cancer survivors. Smoking was assessed an average of 2 years after diagnosis. Delayed entry Cox proportional hazards models were used to examine the relationships of smoking status, cigarettes per day, years of smoking, and pack years with breast cancer prognosis. Endpoints included breast cancer recurrence (n = 1727), breast cancer mortality (n = 1059), and overall mortality (n = 1803). Compared with never smokers, former smokers with less than 20 pack-years of exposure had no increased risk of any outcome. However, former smokers with 20 to less than 34.9 pack-years of exposure had a 22% increased risk of breast cancer recurrence (hazard ratio [HR] = 1.22; 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.01 to 1.48...