ORCID Profile
0000-0001-8731-0973
Current Organisation
UNSW Sydney
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Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 25-12-2017
Abstract: Using an expectancy-value framework, the present investigation is the first to explore the generality of this theorizing and research in the emerging regional context of the Caribbean. Given high underachievement in the Caribbean region, we addressed the need to better understand the role of engagement in students’ academic motivation and achievement. A total of 585 year 6 to 9 students from five Jamaican schools responded to a survey assessing their motivation milieu (academic expectations and values held by their parents, teachers, and peers), their self-motivation (expectancies and values), behavioral engagement (class participation, homework completion, school absenteeism), and their academic achievement (in mathematics, language arts, and science). Structural equation modeling showed that (a) students’ own motivation was influenced by their motivation milieu, and (b) students’ behavioral engagement significantly mediated the relationship between their motivation and their academic achievement. Findings confirm the generality of behavioral engagement effects among students in the developing Caribbean region and represent a novel contribution to the study of developing and emerging educational contexts more broadly.
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 30-09-2019
Abstract: This study aimed to explain motivational factors that influence students’ intentions to continue studying music in high school and their achievement in high school music. The participants were 180 male Year 7 and 8 students in a high school in Australia. Principles of self-determination theory were used to hypothesize a structural equation model (SEM), in which the satisfaction of basic psychological needs predicted students’ valuing of music as a school subject, as well as their intentions to continue and their achievement. A two-wave longitudinal design was used to account for prior variance in the dependent variables and to expand on prior, cross-sectional research. The SEM explained 73.1% of the variance in music elective intentions, 60.7% of the variance in students’ valuing of music, and 53.7% of estimated grade. The findings build on existing research regarding the importance of psychological needs satisfaction in the domain of music and the longitudinal findings lend further support for causal links between the fulfillment of basic psychological needs and the internalization of values in the domain of music education. The results and implications for future research and practicing teachers are discussed.
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 15-01-2015
Abstract: This article reports on a 10-year longitudinal study of children’s musical identity, their instrumental practice, and subsequent achievement and motivation for playing music. Before commencing learning on their instrument, participants ( N = 157) responded to questions relating to how long they thought they would continue playing their instrument. Once learning commenced, practice was measured using the parents’ estimates each year for the first 3 years of learning, and performance was measured using a standardized test. Ten years later, the participants were asked how long they had sustained music learning along with other questions related to their musical development. Those who expressed both a personal long-term view of playing an instrument before they began instruction, and who sustained high amounts of practice in the first 3 years, demonstrated higher achievement and a longer length of time spent in music learning compared to those with a short-term view and low levels of practice. Results suggest that while practice and self-regulation strategies are important, learners who possess a sense of where their future learning might take them and whose personal identity includes a long-term perspective of themselves as a musicians are better positioned to succeed and sustain with their instrumental learning.
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 09-05-2013
Abstract: This article addresses in iduals’ decisions to continue or cease playing a musical instrument from a basic psychological needs perspective. Participants began learning music 10 years prior to the study and were the subject of previous longitudinal research. They completed a survey investigating the three psychological needs of competence, relatedness, and autonomy in the contexts of when they were most engaged in playing their instrument during high school, and in the time leading up to when they ceased playing. Decisions to cease music instruction or playing an instrument were associated with diminished feelings of competence, relatedness, and autonomy, compared to when they were most engaged. Open-ended responses to a question about why they ceased playing supported this finding and showed that participants refer to reasons directly related to feelings of psychological needs being thwarted. This article therefore proposes that motivations to cease or continue playing a musical instrument demonstrate a natural propensity to more vital, healthy forms of behaviour. The study offers preliminary evidence for a framework that may help to unify previous research in music and supports motivational research in other areas.
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 13-05-2021
Abstract: The purpose of this study was to explore the effects of using a self-directed practice diary on conservatory pianists’ self-regulated learning tendencies. We sought to determine whether the implementation of a self-directed practice diary based on the three-phase model of self-regulated learning would lead students to gradually demonstrate more self-regulated learning tendencies across a semester of practicing, and if the type and quality of their self-regulated learning tendencies varied as a function of performance ability. A marked and consistent improvement in metacognitive monitoring skills was observed across the semester for all seven participants. Variations between lower and higher ability students were most pronounced in the Forethought stage, with higher ability pianists reporting fewer goals and strategies and higher self-motivational beliefs than their lower ability counterparts. In the Performance phase, higher ability students invested more effort in help seeking and structuring their practice environment, and lower ability students reported more self-instruction. In the Self-Reflection phase, higher ability pianists reported being more focused in the practice session. Suggestions for further refinement of the technique to improve musicians’ ability to master their learning and achieve their personal best are provided.
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 2017
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 09-07-2016
Abstract: This study adopted self-determination theory as means to understanding the motivation of university music students. The self-determination theory framework contends that three psychological needs of competence, relatedness, and autonomy must be fulfilled in order to maintain psychological wellbeing. In turn, needs fulfilment results in autonomous motivation, in which activities are perceived to be aligned with the self and are consequently experienced as personally important, interesting, and enjoyable. We surveyed students ( N = 392) from schools of music in nine universities in Australia and New Zealand to examine whether needs fulfilment and autonomous motivation within the university music learning context would explain context-specific affect and behaviour. Hypothesised relationships were tested using structural equation modelling. Psychological needs fulfilment and autonomous motivation explained more frequent practice, more frequent quality practice, and a higher preference for challenging tasks. This study is among the first self-determination theory studies in the domain of music learning at the university level, and thus the results are described in terms of the potential of this theory to more fully explain interesting and under-researched aspects of this environment, including student wellbeing, anxiety, preparations for a long-term career in music, and pedagogical implications.
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 13-08-2019
Abstract: High school students do not value music education highly, nor do they see it as a useful part of their academic pathways. When music becomes an elective subject, low enrolment in elective classes is seen as a challenge for music educators. This study aimed to further investigate this issue by examining the motivational climate of the music classroom, including the perceptions of the music teacher, in the development of student motivation for music. It also examined how these motivational factors influenced students’ intentions to take music as an elective subject. A hypothesized model based on self-determination theory was tested using structural equation modeling (SEM), based on survey data from N = 395 students from 11 schools. The hypothesized model fit the data well. Students’ basic psychological needs fulfillment was predicted by the perceived needs-supportive practices of their teachers. These in turn were predictive of students’ elective intentions. Using multi-group SEM analyses, findings were invariant across gender, school type, year at school, and socio-economic status, and the role of prior music learning was examined. The results indicate that an effective target for increasing students’ motivation and value for music at school may be the motivational climate of the music classroom.
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 20-01-2015
Abstract: This article provides a conceptual overview of a self-determination theory approach to motivation in music education. Research on motivation in music learning is active and has influenced the field considerably, but it remains theoretically patchy, with a vast array of theoretical perspectives that are relatively disconnected. Reflecting motivation research more generally, music education still lacks a parsimonious, unified theoretical approach to motivation. Self-determination theory offers a way to address this issue, because it is a broad theory of motivation that examines the nature and sources of motivational quality. This article describes two key components of self-determination theory. First, the tendency towards personal growth and a more unified sense of self is supported through the fulfilment of the basic psychological needs of competence, relatedness, and autonomy. Second, behaviour is more enjoyable and contributes more to personal wellbeing when motivation is internalized and more closely aligned with the self. These two features of self-determination theory are related, such that motivation is internalized to the extent that basic psychological needs are fulfilled. These processes are supported by recent self-determination theory research in music education. Previous research on motivation from other theoretical perspectives also lends support to the self-determination theory approach. The approach therefore provides a means of theoretically unifying previous research. An integrated model is presented as the basis for future research on motivation for music learning in the context of psychological wellbeing more broadly.
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 02-07-2018
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 17-09-2021
Publisher: Routledge
Date: 22-12-2015
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 30-11-2019
Abstract: Motivation has formed a core strand of research in music education, reflecting its importance in educational psychology and other skill-based performance domains. Understanding motivation is crucial for explaining students’ achievement, performance, well-being, and intentions to continue participation in (or drop out of) music learning throughout school and into adulthood. In the present study, we addressed the need to better understand motivation in music education by examining the impact of psychological needs satisfaction and frustration in a high school orchestra program. Psychological needs—a core component of self-determination theory—have considerable explanatory power in other life domains and educational settings and are the focus of recent attention in music education. Participants ( N = 704) were surveyed in orchestra programs in three schools in the midwestern United States. Structural equation modeling was used to examine the effects of psychological needs satisfaction and frustration. The model explained substantial variance on three key outcomes: practice time (22%), intentions to continue participating in the orchestra program (45%), and global-self esteem (34%). The results point to psychological needs satisfaction and frustration as key elements of music education in which teachers might intervene to improve these outcomes as well as students’ learning, engagement, and psychological well-being more broadly.
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 29-03-2021
Abstract: The purpose of this study was twofold: (1) to describe university music students’ perceptions of competitiveness, perfectionism, and teacher control in conservatory-style learning environments, and (2) to test a theoretical model of a network of relationships among perceptions of competitiveness, perfectionism, teacher control, quality of motivation, and intentions to pursue a career in music. Participants were undergraduate and graduate music majors from schools of music in the Midwestern United States and Australia. Results revealed that commitment to a career in music was strong, autonomous motivation orientations were more strongly endorsed than controlled motivation orientations, reports of teacher control and socially prescribed perfectionism were weak, whereas reports of competitiveness were strong. Path analyses indicated that those with stronger career intentions also have stronger autonomous motivation orientations and perceive their teachers as more controlling. Autonomous motivation orientations were stronger for those who perceive their environment to be more competitive and weaker for those who experience more perfectionism and teacher control. Participants reporting greater perceptions of teacher control and more perfectionism tended to report weaker career intentions by virtue of the indirect relationships of the variables through autonomous motivation. In contrast, those who experienced greater degrees of perfectionism tended to report stronger controlled motivation orientations.
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 03-2008
DOI: 10.1177/102986490801200105
Abstract: This study examines empirically the possible relationships between the emotional quality one can attribute to musical stimuli (expressed emotion, or external locus of emotion) and the subjective emotional response one can have as a result of listening to music (felt emotion, or internal locus). The relationship between the two loci of emotion is often assumed to be positive, that is, when listening to music, one feels the emotion that the music expresses. Gabrielsson has suggested, however, that this assumption is simplistic, and has proposed a model that describes other possible relationships. The present study quantitatively investigates Gabrielsson's proposal. Forty-five participants responded to questions about both expressed emotion and felt emotion for two familiar experimenter-selected pieces (Pachelbel's Canon and Advance Australia Fair, the Australian national anthem) and one or two pieces of their own selection. Participants were asked to “imagine” their self-selected pieces in the absence of recordings or a live performance. An experimenter-selected piece was both sounded and imagined, and no significant difference was observed in responses between the two conditions. Quantitative criteria were generated in order to compare the loci (internal and external) of each piece in geometric space. Results showed that the positive relationship, where the internal and external locus emotions are the same, occurred in 61% of cases. In general, these pieces were preferred more than those exhibiting non-positive relationships. Implications for practices that tacitly assume a 100% positive relationship, or are not specific about the locus of emotion, are discussed.
No related grants have been discovered for Paul Evans.