Doctoral Public Lecture | Ran Jiang

Student Name: Ran Jiang
Program: Music - Education
Thesis Title: Agency, Affordances, and Accessibility in Chinese Secondary School Musical Instrument-Making Workshops: An Action Research Study

Abstract:

This study examines access in technology-mediated musical instrument making by secondary school students in China. Eighteen students at a secondary school in Henan, China, participated in a 12-day workshop series in which they used digital technology, including Max MSP software and Makey Makey hardware, to design and build accessible musical instruments. Using action research methodology (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016), data from video observations, screen recordings, interviews, focus groups, surveys, and student-generated artifacts were analyzed through thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2022) and interaction analysis (Jordan & Henderson, 1995).

This dissertation follows an integrated-article format. Each article analyzes the same dataset through a different theoretical perspective. Article 1 uses affordance theory (Davis, 2020; Gibson, 1977; Norman, 1990) to examine how students perceived, discovered, and engaged with the affordances of digital technologies for making accessible instruments. Article 2 applies structuration theory (Giddens, 1984; Stones, 2005) to examine how students navigated their agency within the workshops' educational structures. Article 3 draws on the social model of disability (Oliver, 1990) and relational understandings of access (Titchkosky, 2011) to examine how students developed accessibility awareness through disability knowledge and collaborative instrument making.

The findings reveal that digital technology served simultaneously as affordance, structural resource, and medium for accessibility awareness. Accessibility functioned as designable outcome, internal structural knowledge, and developmental process. Social interaction among students and teachers served as a necessary condition for access. This dissertation contributes to music education research by connecting perspectives from music technology, sociology, and disability studies in music education within a single empirical context in contemporary China.

Location: via Zoom or in person at Moscovich Recital Hall, Music Building, Western University

For further information or to request a Zoom invitation please contact Audrey Yardley-Jones, Graduate Program Assistant, Don Wright Faculty of Music at ayardley@uwo.ca