JANICE WALDRON & KARI VEBLEN
Janice Waldron is an Associate Professor of Music Education at the University of Windsor. Her research interests – informal music learning practices, online music communities, social media and music learning, vernacular musics, and participatory cultures – are reflected in her forthcoming Oxford Handbook of Social Media and Music Learning (with Dr. Stephanie Horsely and Dr. Kari Veblen). Published in many journals,, Dr. Waldron also has authored several Oxford Handbook chapters in its Music Education series. She serves on the Editorial Boards of Action, Theory, and Criticism in Music Education, The International Journal of Music Education, The Journal of Music, Education, and Technology, T.O.P.I.C.S, The Journal of Teaching and Learning, and is website editor for the MayDay Group.
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Kari K. Veblen is professor of music education at University of Western Ontario, Canada, where she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses such as foundations of music education, cultural and Canadian perspectives, music for children, and qualitative research methods. She served as Associate Dean of Graduate Studies and Research from 2010 to 2012 and Assistant Dean of Research from 2012 to 2013.Research interests include community music networks, both face-to-face and online; lifespan music learning; Irish/Celtic traditional transmission; and vernacular genres.Author, co-author and co-editor of four books, and over 80 peer-reviewed chapters, articles and conference papers, her latest book project is the Oxford Handbook of Social Media and Music Learning (with Janice Waldron and Stephanie Horsley). Kari Veblen is recipient with Janice Waldron (University of Windsor) of a 2017–2021 Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Insight Grant for their study entitled: “Canadian Scottish Pipe Bands as On and Offline Convergent Communities of Practice.”
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"Oh Canada" meets "Scotland the Brave": Identity, Meaning, Culture, and Music Learning in an Intergenerational Community Ensemble
In this first of our five-part qualitative multi-sited case study, we explored music teaching and learning in one Scots-Canadian Pipe Band located in rural southwest Ontario (dubbed the RSWOPB for this research). whose purpose is twofold: 1) to examine how members of civilian Canadian Scottish Pipe Bands (SPBs) learn and teach music in Canadian contexts, and 2) to investigate the interconnected provincial, national, and international online and offline networks that comprise the community of musical practice of Canadian SPBs, and which includes an exploration of its place in and meaning of “Scottishness” to members. Because issues of cultural transmission, meaning, and identity formation are integral to music learning and teaching in Canadian SPBs, this research is framed both with Wenger’s community of practice social learning theory (Wenger 1998) and the related community of musical practice theory (Barrett 2005, Kenny 2016).
Performance, music teaching and learning, competition, social context, and service are mandates for the RSWOPB; the band welcomes all interested participants of any age, playing level, race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation and/or cultural background, furnishing supplies, music, uniforms, and free group and private lessons. Offline instruction is supplemented with online music learning resources (MP3s, written notation, and YouTubes) curated by the RSWOPB directors through the groups’ members-only social media site “My Band.” Over the course of two years, we collected online data from “My Band” and interviewed members and observed the RSWOPB participating in local, national and international contexts. In the summer of 2018, we conducted a festival ethnography and documented band members as they interacted with other Scottish Pipe Bands from both Scotland and around the world.
Research questions included: How do participants teach, learn, and perform SPB music in a Canadian context? What place does this music hold in their lives? What role does a “sense of community” play? Do social media sites, Highland Games/Scottish Festivals, and piping colleges foster an online and offline convergent community of practice among Canadian SPBs? If so, how? What are the characteristics of music teaching and learning that occur in formal and informal (both online and offline) settings? Is there a “generational divide” of internet use for music learning between new learners and established players? How is the local situated within the global and vice versa? Finally, what practices correspond to formal school music education and what are striking differences to consider?
Performance, music teaching and learning, competition, social context, and service are mandates for the RSWOPB; the band welcomes all interested participants of any age, playing level, race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation and/or cultural background, furnishing supplies, music, uniforms, and free group and private lessons. Offline instruction is supplemented with online music learning resources (MP3s, written notation, and YouTubes) curated by the RSWOPB directors through the groups’ members-only social media site “My Band.” Over the course of two years, we collected online data from “My Band” and interviewed members and observed the RSWOPB participating in local, national and international contexts. In the summer of 2018, we conducted a festival ethnography and documented band members as they interacted with other Scottish Pipe Bands from both Scotland and around the world.
Research questions included: How do participants teach, learn, and perform SPB music in a Canadian context? What place does this music hold in their lives? What role does a “sense of community” play? Do social media sites, Highland Games/Scottish Festivals, and piping colleges foster an online and offline convergent community of practice among Canadian SPBs? If so, how? What are the characteristics of music teaching and learning that occur in formal and informal (both online and offline) settings? Is there a “generational divide” of internet use for music learning between new learners and established players? How is the local situated within the global and vice versa? Finally, what practices correspond to formal school music education and what are striking differences to consider?