Soundtracking: Creating Acoustic Environments to Organize Learning

• In Event: 61.071 - Sheraton Roundtable Session 10 - Grand Centre
  In Roundtable Session: 61.071-13 - Multimodal Artifacts, Narratives, and Affective Experiences

Abstract

Music is an enduring aspect of social life, and new media are changing the ways people use music to learn. This sociotechnical shift presents questions about how music contributes to learning, particularly in domestic contexts, where children typically have access to multiple means of music listening. This paper examines how families arrange to play music and how this contributes to everyday routines. Drawing on video data in an ethnographic study of families’ media engagement, findings suggest how music contributes to learning at home by constituting shared acoustic experiences, an aspect of learning that is typically invisible- because it is audible. Through sound-tracking, children create affective conditions for learning that organize action, with various consequences.

Author

• Deborah Silvis, SUNY - College at Cortland