Browsing by Subject "musiikki"

In this research I analyzed how music is described in Tove Jansson's moomin books. I also analyzed descriptions of music as an element of characterization. Many researches concerning moomin books have been done earlier. Earlier research points out that music has a significant role in the world of moomins and in the life of moomin characters. Analyzing music as an element in characterization was however recent opening to the field of research. I chose four moomin books to be my main material because there were clearly most of descriptions of music in these books. My material were Comet in Moominland, Moominland Midwinter, Tales from Moominvalley and Moominvalley in November. Most of descriptions of music played role in characterizations of Snufkin, Fillyjonk and Too-ticky, so I focused on these characters. I used content analysis based thematic approach as my method when finding answer to the question how music is described in moomin books. With the help of close reading, I tried to find out how characters are constructed with music. In this research it found out that music is described in Tove Jansson's moomin books with songs and lyrics, with descriptions of instruments and with descriptions of tunes and notes. Songs and lyrics constructed character of Too-ticky by telling Too-ticky's accepting attitude towards the uncertainty that exists in the world. Songs and lyrics didn't significantly construct character of Snufkin. There were lots of different instruments in moomin books but the only instrument which constructed characters in a significant way was the mouth-organ. The mouth-organ constructed character of Snufkin by showing his features and emotions. The mouth-organ constructed character of Fillyjonk by acting as the symbol of creativity and balance. In this research also the nature was considered as an instrument. Snufkin heard his longing of freedom and loneliness in the sound of the nature. Tunes and notes told about Snufkin's inner conflict between loneliness and communality. Tunes and notes also described Snufkin's process of composing. That process of composing personificated as a little creature called Teety-woo in The Spring Tune- short story. Tunes and notes constructed character of Fillyjonk in the way that they took her to the new levels of her identity.

Objectives. The subject of this study is special education students in musical instrument teaching. The task is to find out instrument teachers' thoughts of different types of learners and their teaching, teachers' views on their abilities to teach special education students and what kind of support teachers possibly need in teaching students with special needs. The main questions of this study are: 1. What kind of views musical instrument teachers have of different types of learners. 2. Do instrument teachers have qualification to teach students with special needs? 3. What kind of support musical instrument teachers possibly need to teach special education students. Methods. This is a quantitative study, and the data is gathered by using a survey. The study was supplemented with qualitative material by giving the answerers an opportunity to tell about their thoughts of the subject also in their own words. 60 instrument teachers in different parts of Finland answered the survey. The survey was made in the fall 2014. The analysis was made by using Microsoft Excel 2008 and IBM SPSS 22.0 Statistics programs. Results and conclusions. Based on this study, musical instrument teachers views about different kinds of learners are mainly positive or neutral. There were no such factors in the teachers' attitudes and views of disablement and difference that would hinder them in teaching all kinds of students. The majority of answerers has taught special education student at some point and viewed it positively. Yet the teachers do not have a strong confidence in their own or their colleagues' ability to teach students with special needs. Main reason to this seems to be a lack of education. Yet the majority of the teachers are ready to teach 1-2 special education students also in the future if required. In this they wish the most to get consultation from a special education or music therapy specialist. Secondly they wish to get professional guidance and short training. The third wish in their answers was support from colleagues and the principal. They also wished co-operation with the parents. As a conclusion, musical instrument teachers would need education, instructions and support from specialists, principals and colleagues and co-operation with parents, in teaching special education students.

Language skills are an important asset in the global world, so it is important to promote language learning. Music and language learning have been shown to be interconnected. However, most of the studies have been conducted with adult language learners and in laboratories. This study is an experimental study carried out in natural learning context with intervention paradigm. The aim of the study is to explore whether using a song as a tool in learning second language vocabulary in a bilingual preschool differs from using a nursery rhyme or prose. The null hypothesis is that children in bilingual preschool learn second language vocabulary as well with song as with nursery rhyme or prose. The alternative hypothesis is that children in bilingual preschool learn second language vocabulary better with song than with nursery rhyme or prose. Seven foreign language children from the preschool took part in the study. In study paradigm children were presented in learning phase a Finnish version of a well-known nursery rhyme Simple Simon as continuous stimuli in the form of a nursery rhyme, a song and prose. In EEG test phase they were presented same stimuli with some changes in vowels and syllables and their EEG was recorded. Event-related potentials to those changes were then compared between a nursery rhyme, a song and prose situation. In behavioral testing, children were presented words from the learning material and pseudowords formed from those words. We compared how well the children recognized words in the nursery rhyme (poem), the song and the prose situation. The data were analyzed in both research methods using Wilcoxon signed rank test. The null hypothesis could not be rejected. So, it cannot be stated that second language vocabulary is learned better with song than with nursery rhyme or prose. We detected a difference between the prose and the nursery rhyme stimuli in favor of the prose option measured with EEG. However, the sample size was too small to generalize the results. In discussion the results and used research methods are primarily examined on theoretical level considering previous studies. In conclusion, based on the previous studies, it is feasible to recommend using music in education especially in language learning but also in every phase of life due to music’s positive effects on motivation and togetherness to name but a few.

This work studied the creative process of musicians. The subject was chosen partly due to the attention given to creativity in social discussion. The approach was material-based, because during the work it became clear that the theoretical models describing the creative process in general did not provide adequate tools for the examination of musical creation. In this study, the creative process was defined as a process, which generated a work found by the musician novel to him or her. There were two principal research questions: 1) How does the creative process of musicians progress? 2) What makes a process creative? The main emphasis was on the first question, because the study aimed at modeling the creative process of musicians. The material for this study was collected by interviewing five professional musicians, each qualified by an expert of music to be creative. The interviews were thematically linked with each musician's recently implemented creative process. The work generated in the process was used as a stimulant in the interview. The main themes of the interview dealt with the musician's concrete action, cognitive functioning and affective experience during the process. Secondary themes included his or her goals as well as the factors that enhanced or inhibited the process. A material-based analysis was made of the interviews. The conceptualization and modelling of the creative process was founded on a phenomenological-hermeneutic interpretation. In addition to the primary interviews, also supplementary interviews were made in order to ensure that the description of the musician was understood correctly. Further supplementary interviews were made when the material was analyzed and results were deduced. This aimed at increasing the reliability of interpretations and conclusions. The study resulted in a four-level model representing the progress of a creative process. The levels were defined by means of the conception of state. The levels used in defining the process were 1) the state determining the potential of the process, 2) the state delimiting the process, 3) the state orienting the process, and 4) the state determined by the process. The progress of the process was described as changes taking place in the state. It was discovered that the factors having an effect on the creativity of the process were the dynamism of the process, the musician's work in relation to his or her inner standard and the impulses that caused variation in the musician's thinking. The interview method used in this study proved to be a very suitable tool in an examination of a creative process. Thus it may well be applicable in other research contexts associated with creative processes. The outcome of this study, the model of the progress of a creative process, should also provide a feasible basis for the examination of different kinds of creative processes. It enables a comprehensive examination of a creative process, simultaneously justifying the dynamic nature of the process.

The effects of musical training are a subject of growing interest in the field of cognitive brain research. Earlier it has been found that in addition to honing the skills directly related to musical performance, musical training also can elicit transfer effects in neuronal circuits affecting other areas of cognitive performance. One such function is attention, which is a cognitive process known to mature during childhood. This thesis seeks to investigate whether early-onset musical training is linked to correlates in involuntary attention shift on a neuronal level in school-aged children. The EEG data was gathered from 69 subjects, 54 percent of whom had received musical training. The subjects were between 11 and 17 years of age, and they were divided into two age-groups (between 11 and 13 years and between 15 and 17 years of age), in addition to the division of musically trained and non-trained control group. We assessed the subjects' involuntary shift of attention with the amplitude of early and late P3a component, evoked by unattended novel stimuli during a visual task the subjects were instructed to attend to. The results show that the amplitude of early P3a decreased for recurring novel stimuli. The effect was found for the musically trained group, but it was absent in the control group. For the younger subjects, the amplitude for late P3a was larger for the control group in comparison to the musically trained group. No such effect was found with the older subjects. Late P3a amplitude was larger for the young subjects of the control group in comparison to the older subjects, an effect that was absent in musically trained subjects. Both the age-related difference in P3a amplitude for the control group, and the training-related difference for the younger subjects suggest maturation of attentional processes. The amplitude of the P3a has earlier been connected to higher use of resources. In light of this evidence, the results suggest that younger musically trained subjects must allocate fewer resources identifying and processing task-irrelevant novel stimuli compared to the control group. However, any age-related maturation in attentional processes present with the control group in this study is absent in the musically trained group. This leads to an assumption that musically trained subjects simply reach the peak of their attentional skillset earlier than the control group, but display no observed attention-related advantages during the late adolescence.

Achievement goal orientations depict studying motivation and they are related to academic achievement. Yet, the means to support the developing achievement goal orientations in childhood require further examination especially in the case of children with special educational needs (SEN). Musical and physical activity may enhance learning but the associations with achievement goal orientations remain unclear. The purpose of this study was to examine what kinds of goal orientation groups occur among 3rd to 4th graders within one and half years, and how integrated music and physical education are related to the achievement goal orientations. Migrant background and SEN were observed as demographic factors. Finally, between groups comparisons were analyzed in terms of academic achievement in mathematics. The participants (N = 52) were comprised of four classes of which three received integrated music and physical education three times a week for two school years. The fourth class received usual curricular education during the experiment. Twenty students had special educational needs and eleven spoke some other language than Finnish as their first language. Teacher questionnaires were used to collect data from students’ achievement goal orientations and mathematical achievement was evaluated using RMAT and MATTE tests in three time points. Goal orientation groups were formed using K-means cluster analysis and between groups comparisons were analyzed with cross-tabulation and nonparametric tests. Three distinctive goal orientation groups were found in each time point: mastery, performance and avoidance goal oriented. No significant difference was found between the integrated education group and the usual curricular group in their achievement goal orientations. Instead, goal orientations tended to develop more maladaptive among students with SEN – especially if their first language was other than Finnish. Mastery oriented students’ mathematical achievement differed significantly from the avoidance oriented ones’.

This thesis inspects how community music workshops may affect self-perceived work ability in the disabled, immigrant, mentally ill, or otherwise disadvantaged participants. Community music workshops had statistically significant positive effect on self-perceived work ability in all the subgroups, except the immigrant participants.

The goal of this research is to explore the perceptions kindergarten teachers, working with children under the age of three, have on the execution of musical education within early childhood education and its significance on a child’s overall growth, development and learning. The research is limited to concerning only the opinions of kindergarten teachers, as for the teachers work as the groups pedagogical leaders and are responsible for the planning execution of high-quality early childhood education. Musical education is included as a part of other fine arts subjects and musical expression is a typical way of functioning and thinking for a child. Music has been proven to have an influence on the development of a childs’ personality and therefor it is necessary that various ways of musical expression are supported through musical education in early childhood education. The study has been carried out as a qualitative research, in which the material has been formed with an electronic questionnaire. The questionnaire was sent with an accompanying letter to 30 early childhood education centers in the city of Helsinki. The final sample consisted of the answers of 10 kindergarten teachers. The material was analyzed by using recurring themes and finding similarities and resemblances in the answers and studying the differences. According to the results, kindergarten teachers saw musical education as a significant support for the development of linguistics within children under the age of three. Musical education was also seen as creating the feeling of secureness for the child while basic needs were attended to like in toilet and clothing situations. Music was seen as a natural form of interaction with small children. Teachers experienced musical education in their training leading up to their job as a kindergarten teacher differently. The teachers saw for example their lack of skills in accompaniment and the scarce knowledge of musical theory as a challenge for accomplishing adequate musical education.