Children's Spirituality and Music Learning:
Exploring Deeper Resonances with Arts Based Research
Marie McCarthy
University of Michigan, USA
Citation: McCarthy, M. (2013). Children's spirituality and music learning:
Exploring deeper resonances with arts based research.
International Journal of Education & the Arts, 14(4). Retrieved [date] from
http://www.ijea.org/v14n4/.
Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to examine children's spirituality from the
perspective of music learning, using arts based research as a mode of
inquiry. Six interrelated themes are chosen to explore the landscape of
music and children's spirituality and to evaluate the potential of arts
based research to inform the intersections between them: a landscape of
relational consciousness, soft boundaries and transitional spaces,
pilgrims on a journey, telling stories along the way, stories form a
collage, and transforming the self in/and the landscape. Resonances
between music learning, children's spirituality and arts based research
are strong, both in premise and possibility. Among them, the
epistemological scope of arts based research is broad and
accommodates non-verbal and non-dualistic ways of knowing that are
fundamental to spiritual and musical experience. Children's spirituality
is presented as centered in relational consciousness, musical meanings
are embodied in a set of relationships, and arts based research, with its
focus on reflection, multiple forms of representation and process, is well
suited to probing those relationships. The sensory and embodied
nature of musical experience juxtaposed with the contemplative and
sacred nature of spiritual experience can be captured within the realm
of arts based research.
Visual Abstract
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