Why multimodal literacy matters: (re)conceptualizing literacy and wellbeing through singing-infused multimodal, intergenerational curricula 9789463007061, 9789463007078, 9789463007085, 9463007067, 9463007075, 9463007083

Table of contents :
Foreword --
Acknowledgements --
Introduction --
The Point of Departure for Why Multimodal Literacy Matters --
Wellbeing, Literacy, and Singing: Literature Connections --
Intergenerational Multimodal Singing-Infused Curriculum --
Intergenerational Contact and Intergenerational Programs --
Foundations for the Curriculum --
The Study --
The Scene of the Program --
The Curriculum --
The Lessons --
Towards a (Re)conceptualization of Wellbeing through Singing-Infused Multimodal, Intergenerational Curriculum --
Affordances and Constraints of the Curriculum --
Revisiting Wellbeing --
References --
Index.

Citation preview

Why Multimodal Literacy Matters

Why Multimodal Literacy Matters (Re)conceptualizing Literacy and Wellbeing through Singing-Infused Multimodal, Intergenerational Curricula

Rachel Heydon Western University, Ontario, Canada and Susan O’Neill Simon Fraser University, British Columbia, Canada

A C.I.P. record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN: 978-94-6300-706-1 (paperback) ISBN: 978-94-6300-707-8 (hardback) ISBN: 978-94-6300-708-5 (e-book)

Published by: Sense Publishers, P.O. Box 21858, 3001 AW Rotterdam, The Netherlands https://www.sensepublishers.com/

All chapters in this book have undergone peer review.

Printed on acid-free paper

All Rights Reserved © 2016 Sense Publishers No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work.

For my brother, James M. Heydon and our papa, Dr. Eugene T. Daly. Singing with the angels (R.H.) For my mother, Nancy Carney, who inspired many with her strength and wisdom (S.O.)

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Forewordix Acknowledgementsxi Chapter 1: Introduction

1

The Point of Departure for Why Multimodal Literacy Matters Wellbeing, Literacy, and Singing: Literature Connections Chapter 2: Intergenerational Multimodal Singing-Infused Curriculum Intergenerational Contact and Intergenerational Programs Foundations for the Curriculum The Study The Scene of the Program Chapter 3: The Curriculum

2 5 23 23 30 46 49 53

The Lessons

54

Chapter 4: Towards a (Re)conceptualization of Wellbeing through Singing-Infused Multimodal, Intergenerational Curriculum Affordances and Constraints of the Curriculum Revisiting Wellbeing

119 120 134

References139 Index151

vii

FOREWORD

This book makes a very special contribution to an under-researched area of multimodal literacy studies, dealing as it does with the intersection of intergenerational learning, well-being, and multimodal literacy education—specifically singing. The authors position the book firmly in generous and forward looking conceptions of literacy, and they anchor their research study tellingly in autobiographical material of their own experiences at different ages. These recollections, interspersed with the data reported in the book, give a sense of the long histories of learning that we all accumulate beyond the classroom. They begin to uncover the extent and variety of roles that music and singing play in the everyday life of people of all ages and cultures. This is an ambitious book in several respects, aiming to heal divides that have scarred literacy education in the past. First, it invites us to broaden our view of what counts as literacy to include meaning-making through song and the human voice—a fusion of music and poetry. It is becoming common to consider the visual modes of literacy education, but the soundscapes of literacy are still largely ignored despite their prominence in online and everyday communication. We are still mired in the outdated “great divide” of oral versus written modes of thought, the separation of the affective from the cognitive, and the individual from the collective. This book takes us a further step out of this mire. Second, the authors boldly cross the intergenerational divide, working with groups at the extremes of this—elders and children in their early-years—who have always been important to one another through the caregiving practices of grand parenting and of family and community exchange. The years of compulsory schooling are bypassed altogether in this research data, but it nevertheless holds implications for education at all ages. Third, it takes equally seriously the need to ground this work on an intergenerational singing curriculum in both theoretical rigour and practical precision. The data are carefully presented and discussed in relation to literacy and curriculum. Extended vignettes and lesson plans link practice with research and speak to a wide readership among researchers, teachers, and curriculum developers. The engaging format and the photographs serve to bring all the participants vividly to life. As the authors assert in the first chapter, the use of the human voice for meaningmaking, for carrying emotions, historical narratives, poetry, and other forms of wisdom has to be among our earliest forms of communication as a species. The exuberance of song arguably more directly embodies these meanings than any other mode of communication. Rhyme, rhythm, tone, and pitch are underpinning features of spoken language itself. Perhaps for this reason singing has a special role in connecting with and expressing well-being. As the authors conclude: “Our

ix

FOREWORD

research on singing-infused multimodal intergenerational curricula offers evidence that singing can be a powerful vehicle for bringing people together in ways that matter to them because their experiences are meaningful.” This is a joyous and inspiring approach to curriculum that speaks confidently back to an era of depersonalised standards and skills. It deserves to be widely read and richly repays the effort, modelling a pioneering approach that will surely be taken up by many and offering us a glimpse of curriculum landscapes for the future. Mary Hamilton, August 2016

x

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Rachel and Susan wish to thank all of the research participants, graduate research assistants, and colleagues who have helped to bring this work to fruition. Special thanks in particular to Wendy Crocker, Terry Loerts, Lindsay Todd, Joelle Nagle, Elisabeth Davies, Beatrix Bocazar, Emma Cooper, Carol Beynon, and Mary Hamilton. We also wish to acknowledge the International Journal of Education and the Arts which has previously published some of the data included in chapter four and financial support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Major Collaborative Research Initiative Grant, Advancing Interdisciplinary Research in Singing (Annabel Cohen, Principal Investigator) and Insight Grant, Learning Together.

xi

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

It is a deep Canadian winter morning and the start of the third session since singing was introduced into the intergenerational art program at Picasso Retirement Home.1 The participants, Picasso elders and preschoolers from an adjacent child care centre, exuberantly share a welcome song. The children taught this song to the adults on day one of the new singing-infused curriculum and through it, the participants practice each other’s names, extend greetings, and signal that they have gathered as a collective. In a little while, after the class has been led in a singing warm-up, participants will be invited to collaborate as intergenerational pairs to create a painting of their hands together holding flowers. These visual texts will tie in to songs about being and working together which the participants will learn, sing, and add to a songbook that they build on each session. At the end of the program, the books will be shadow-texts of each other, personal riffs on shared lyrics, musical notations, art work, and photographs, that document the participants’ time together and provide a mnemonic for future meaning making. Right now in session number three, the participants still have some warming up to do, and so the facilitator takes suggestions for the next song to sing. Already there is an established favourite in the class, the song: How Much is that Doggie in the Window (1952) and the children beg to sing it. The facilitator obliges, and each person who is able, raises his/her voice. Drums, tambourines, and rhythm sticks are at the ready to help where needed. The instruments are made available to all, but they are the vehicle to participation in the cases of the child who rarely speaks and the adult whose voice has been stolen by Parkinson’s disease. What it is like to witness this singing of   How Much is that Doggie in the Window is difficult to describe. The pitch is not perfect, the rhythm slightly off beat, but what the group creates, a novel rendition of a classic song loved across generations, decorated by laughter, and punctuated by the addition of emphatic “Arfs!”, is a marvel, perhaps best related in synesthetic terms. The singing fills the space in the body and the room with something that is weighted and certain; it is an embrace in the here and now—a warm glowing that resonates the word, together. Human communication, by its very nature, has always involved the range of human senses and accompanying semiotic tools of which sound has been of particular import through our evolution. Researchers interested in communication, like Ruth Finnegan (2014), have argued that sound goes “far back … in the long evolution of animals,” with hearing being “one of the first senses to which we become alive” (p. 59); consider, for instance, our perception in utero of the beating of our mother’s heart, the soothing of our infant self through the singing of a 1

CHAPTER 1

caregiver’s song. From our earliest moments, sound is a “fundamental resource” that people “exploit in manifold ways to create and maintain contact with each other” (p. 59). We breathe then instinctively cry out as newborns-with crying being a first, essential form of expression. Sound is also integral to diverse and myriad orally/ aurally-dependent semiotic modes of communication like speaking and music. These modes can involve media as basic and organic as a body or as newfangled and technological as a (digital) tablet, and rarely do auditory modes go unaccompanied by other modes—sometimes blending into and requiring each other. Consider, for example, Finnegan’s (2015) description of storytelling in Limba culture where oral language, gesturing, and singing (amongst other practices) coalesce to convey a story as a performance. In sum, modes that require audition come together with others and form a foundation for the creation and sharing of meaning. Meaning making, or what we call literacy, must hence be conceptualized as multimodal, and it follows that everything to do with literacy from education to research, must then equally attend to sonic modes, including, as we will argue, the important practice of singing therein. THE POINT OF DEPARTURE FOR WHY MULTIMODAL LITERACY MATTERS

Increasingly, since at least the New London Group’s (NLG) (1996) pedagogy of multiliteracies, literacy researchers have been attending to “the social and cultural reshaping of the communicational landscape” (Jewitt, 2008a, p. 358) which includes a fundamental reimagining of what constitutes literacy. The term literacy no longer solely signifies linear reading and writing (i.e., print literacy); instead literacy has become pluralized, with definitions opening up to recognize the diverse and interconnected ways through which humans can and do make meaning (Jewitt & Kress, 2003). It is within this context that the concept of multimodal literacy has arisen, and it is the lynchpin of this book. If the wave of scholarly publications that include the term multimodal literacy is to be believed (e.g., Guzzetti & Bean, 2013; Serafini, 2014), the contemporary age is embracing the idea that literacy is not only a “linguistic accomplishment” (Jewitt, 2008b, p. 241). It seems that many are at least ready to answer the call for the demise of “the habitual conjunction of language, print literacy, and learning” (p. 241). De rigueur is multimodality, with modes each being “a regularized organised set of resources for meaning-making, including, image, gaze, gesture, movement, music, speech and sound effects” (Kress & Jewitt, 2003, p. 1). Modes are relational; they are almost always read and used in conjunction with each other as the “processing of modes, such as image, words, sound, gesture and movement” either receptively or expressively, “can occur simultaneously” (Walsh, 2011, p. 12). Nonetheless, “specific modes may dominate or converge” (p. 12). Multimodal literacy, then, can be understood as “the use of several semiotic modes in the design of a semiotic product or event, together with the particular way in which these modes are combined” (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2001, p. 20). The visual (e.g., think photographs in Snapchat or the paintings of the 2

Introduction

hands in the opening vignette) and sonic (e.g., think sound effects in the video game Mario Cart or the singing of the intergenerational class) are increasingly important to meaning making (Kress, 1997) in present-day literacy events. Thanks to multimodal literacy, even the definition of literacy events has changed. Originally coined by Heath (1982) to refer to “any occasion in which a piece of writing is integral to the nature of participants’ interactions and their interpretative processes” (p. 92), the term can now (also) refer to any occasion in which there is semiosis or, the production of meaning through the use or creation of signs (e.g., Heydon, Moffatt, & Iannacci, 2015). Evoking semiosis is what allowed Albers (2007) to name art as literacy, and is what we can use to argue the same for singing. Fulsome opportunities for communicating through myriad modes, including those associated with art and song, and choosing the most apt mode for the occasion of the communication (or the literacy event) (e.g., Jewitt & Kress, 2001) form one’s literacy options (Heydon, 2013a). A key imperative of this book is to advocate for the expansion of these options. Our experiences in intergenerational multimodal programs such as the ones at Picasso in the opening vignette, remind us of the need to keep open people’s literacy options and suggest the power of multimodal pedagogies, teaching and learning strategies and dispositions that have been designed to promote learning opportunities that might make it more possible for people to use a variety of modes, in tangent, to make meaning. This can include opportunities related to understanding the affordances and constraints of modes (i.e., what is more or less difficult for a mode to accomplish) (Stein, 2008) and the ways in which specific media can be enlisted to help one carry out a mode, acquiring or increasing facility with modes and media (e.g., Pahl, 2003), and/or identifying the most apt modes given the domain and what one is trying to communicate (Bedard & Fuhrken, 2011) including by ascertaining the resources available in said domain (Miller, 2010). Despite all of the attention to multimodal literacy, however, multimodality on its own is not necessarily valuable or desirable. A recent book on multimodal literacy (Hamilton, Heydon, Hibbert, & Stooke, 2015), for example, reflected on how all literacies, no matter the type (e.g., print literacy or multimodal literacy) are technologies that can be employed in an attempt to serve particular goals or ends and that produce diverse effects in the world. The value of any type of literacy is contingent on the kinds of “actions and reflections” that it can support “over others” (Arthur, 2012, p. xiii cited in Hamilton, Heydon, Hibbert, & Stooke, 2015, p. 2) in a given situation. This question of values or what matters is framed within the stance that people’s literacies are social practices, described by Barton and Hamilton in terms that have been oft repeated since their initial publication in 1998: Literacy is primarily something people do; it is an activity, located in the space between thought and text. Literacy does not just reside in people’s heads as a set of skills to be learned, and it does not just reside on paper, captured as texts to be analyzed. Like all human activity, literacy is essentially social, and is located in the interaction between people. (p. 3) 3

CHAPTER 1

In this book, we take text in multimodal terms, meaning “any instance of communication in any mode or in any combination of modes” (Kress, 2003, p. 48), and we define identity as “a way of describing a sense of self that is in practice” (Pahl & Rowsell, 2005, p. 155). In this case, the practices under investigation, including singing, are (multimodal) literacy practices. Thus in our work we wonder about the possibilities for the value of multimodal literacy practices and how responses to this question might be transferrable from situation to situation. More specifically, in Why Multimodal Literacy Matters we explore questions such as Why might multimodal literacy matter to people and what might it do or produce in the world? Might multimodal literacy be implicated in promoting wellbeing? If so, how defined? What too might be the place of the sonic in multimodal literacy and what could be its implications or effects, most specifically as it relates to the wellbeing/ multimodal literacy link? And, if singing infused multimodal literacy is desirable, what conditions (i.e., programs, curricula, pedagogy) might promote it in ways to make use of its connection to wellbeing? We invite readers to explore these questions with us in the circumstance of a program of research designing, implementing, and attempting to understand the effects and implications of multimodal curricula and pedagogies, most specifically the ways in which multimodal engagements that foreground singing can be forms of literacy that promote wellbeing. We base this discussion in the case of an intergenerational singing-infused, multimodal curriculum, which brings to the fore the questions just raised. The case introduced singing into a pre-existing multimodal intergenerational curriculum, that is, a curriculum offered to people of skipped generations—young children and people who had achieved the status of elders in their community. The goal of the curriculum was to leverage the affordances of singing to provide opportunities for participant wellbeing through intergenerational relationships and enhanced literacy and identity options (i.e., the opportunities children and elders have to construct their sense of self in affirming ways). The research, whose central goal was the development of knowledge concerning multimodality and wellbeing across the lifespan, was part of the Intergenerational Understanding sub-theme within a large-scale international and interdisciplinary research project entitled AIRS: Advancing Interdisciplinary Research in Singing funded by a Major Collaboration Research Initiative grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. About 75 researchers have been involved in various facets of this project (see www.airsplace.ca). Rachel is the leader for intergenerational singing and our team a microcosm of the larger project, as it too was comprised of researchers with complementary expertise. Rachel was a former teacher and now a curriculum and literacy researcher. She was recruited into the project because of her work on intergenerational multimodal curricula for shared intergenerational sites (e.g., where children and elders share facilities and programming), in particular, curricula that include the arts. Susan is also a coinvestigator, and she served as theme leader for the AIRS theme on Singing and Wellbeing. She is a musician and psychologist specializing in arts education and 4

Introduction

research on young people’s musical and artistic engagement. Her research focuses on affordances that contribute to expansive and equitable learning opportunities in and through the arts, positive values, self-identities, wellbeing, intergenerational learning relationships, and intercultural understandings. To come together as an interdisciplinary team in this book seemed fitting. By its nature, multimodal literacy crosses fields and domains; thus, researchers interested in its investigation must draw on knowledge that crosses these boundaries (Morrison, 2010a) and be willing to learn about modes that might not be part of their primary discipline. This lends a tentativeness to studies such as this one, but also opens up new opportunities for the contemplation of literacies and provides a perfect occasion for transdisciplinary collaboration such as we created in this project. The literatures on wellbeing and multimodal literacy, which we detail in the next section, highlight the reasons why we are so invested in this project. As our literature review suggests, the wellbeing literature is vast and definitions of wellbeing diverse. Unearthing how literacy is included (or not) in the wellbeing literature, what type(s) of literacy are discussed, and investigating how (else) multimodal literacy may relate, could be vital for understanding what literacy might produce in people’s lives and some of why it could matter in the world. We hope too to open up the sonic through the case of singing—an area of multimodal literacy that has received a dearth of attention. This book brings together practical tools, theoretical understandings, and empirical research findings that attempt to conceptualize wellbeing and multimodal literacy and illustrate the potential opportunities for wellbeing that are created when people who rarely come together do through singing-infused multimodal curricula. In so doing, we hope to make needed and unique contributions to the multimodal literacy and wellbeing literatures. Why Multimodal Literacy Matters is divided into four chapters. The remainder of chapter one provides a review of the literature germane to wellbeing, literacy in general, and begins to hint at how multimodal literacy might be included. Chapter two reports specifically on singing, literacy, and intergenerational curriculum, which form the theoretical backbone of the program development component of the project. The third chapter is the largest of the book, and leads readers step-by-step through the lessons of the multimodal, singinginfused, intergenerational curriculum. Each lesson is written so that its components are evident as are the links between and across the lessons. To illustrate what actually happened in the lessons, we share narratives created from a triangulation of study data and include them in key junctures of the lessons. Last, in chapter four, we forward what we learned through the case relative to multimodal literacy (in particular as it includes singing) and wellbeing. WELLBEING, LITERACY, AND SINGING: LITERATURE CONNECTIONS

In this section we detail literature related to wellbeing, identify how literacy is therein implicated, and highlight the place of singing. This is the first step towards 5

CHAPTER 1

devising our own understanding of wellbeing and multimodal literacy which we offer in relation to the study data in the last chapter. Wellbeing In the AIRS project we sought to understand the potential connection between wellbeing and multimodal curricula through the case of our intergenerational singing-infused curriculum. Such a responsibility was complicated, however, by the fact that wellbeing is a concept that is both defined and theorized in a broad variety of ways. Our tools for understanding how to deal with this diversity and were derived from Watson, Emery, and Bayliss’ (2012) critical poststructural treatment of children’s social and emotional wellbeing in schools. Lather (1991) found that the aim of poststructural theories is to deconstruct, and the trio argued that wellbeing is a concept that demands to be deconstructed if it is to be understood and mobilized in ways that can aid in the improvement of people’s lives. We also find that deconstruction is necessary if our treatment of wellbeing vis-à-vis curriculum is to go beyond naïve pragmatism. In our study, we recognized and endeavoured to avoid the limitations of “an approach to inquiry that analyzes the nature and effects of “an enterprise like education, “schooling,” or a curriculum “without questioning the assumptions, theories, and metatheories in which” such enterprises are “grounded” (Skrtic, 1995, p. 69). Going beyond naïve pragmatism through deconstruction can at once be destabilizing but also necessary for pragmatic endeavors to be ethical. Cornell (1992) signaled to this when she called deconstruction the philosophy of the limit. Cornell argued that deconstruction is an ethical project that renders visible the limits of one’s knowledge. The identification of one’s limits can assist educators in developing a nonviolative relationship with the other, as it permits them to acknowledge how they know and what they do not know so as to act in ways that preserve the alterity of the other. Deconstruction can accomplish this end by recognizing and reckoning with contradiction, aporia, blindspots, and epistemic elisions between concepts across and within various fields. Insofar as possible, such a deconstruction is selfreflexive and can, as in the case of Watson, Emery, and Bayliss (2012), aim to “develop consistent intersections in the theory and practice of [wellbeing] that have applications to and improve the experiences of children” (p. 7). Within our case we build on the work of this trio to forward an understanding of wellbeing and multimodal literacy. We are interested in not just children, but also adults, and we concern ourselves with wellbeing and literacy across the lifespan or the ends of life (Heydon, 2013a). Watson, Emery, and Bayliss’ (2012) deconstruction of wellbeing aimed at achieving, in Foucault’s (1980) terms, “a historical knowledge of struggles” that comprise the concept of wellbeing, which can be used “tactically today” (cited in Watson, Emery, & Bayliss, 2012, p. 5). The trio taught that “a concept is defined by its intersections with other concepts, both in its field and in surrounding fields” 6

Introduction

(p. 5), and a tactical approach may be required as in a poststructural vein, concepts can never lay claim to some “(external) transcendental truth” (p. 7). Truth instead “lies in the operation of concepts” (p. 7); it is contingent, rendering impossible the instrumental goals of prediction and control (Lather, 1991). Concepts have a “force, which creates effects” (Watson, Emery, & Bayliss, 2012, p. 5), and without being deconstructed concepts of wellbeing run the risk of becoming overly-simplified sets of “indicators” that can have “unintended consequences” not the least of which Watson, Emery, and Bayliss have seen in UK educational policy as a focus on “pathology and therapy” (p. 7). On our own continent of North America, we have seen the effects of school curricula and assessment that focus on basic literacy skills predicated on an autonomous model of literacy (i.e., the idea that literacy is comprised of discrete skills that are independent of context) (Street, 1995). Children who do not fit the indicators that are enshrined as curricular outcomes can in turn be pathologized and seen in deficit terms (e.g., Heydon & Iannacci, 2008). We have also witnessed the pathologizing of aging and aging being constructed as something in need of a cure (e.g., Morganroth Gullette, 2011). In both of these cases the particular conceptions of wellbeing ironically may be violative towards the young and old. Watson, Emery, and Bayliss (2012) explained that tracing the genealogy of a concept could be a key tool for deconstruction. Drawing on Foucault (1980), they illustrated how genealogy includes newly thinking, prioritizing, analyzing, and freshly seeing the “components and the roots of [a] concept” (Watson, Emery, & Bayliss, 2012, p. 5); in the case of wellbeing, a genealogical approach involves identifying the concept within and across the fields where it is being defined and has been taken up and played out, tracing its movements within and across these fields, and teasing the concept apart and articulating what might heretofore have been taken for granted (which itself is a critical reading of a concept (Lewison, Flint, & Van Sluys, 2002)). One too has to think of the effects of a concept, and we attempted to do all of this in our own genealogy of wellbeing. Furthermore, like Watson, Emery, and Bayliss (2012), our goal was not to complete a genealogy only to submit a new (re)constructed conceptualization of wellbeing but rather to “raise new questions…for new ways of thinking to emerge” (p. 17) and to connect wellbeing to multimodal literacy and the case in our intergenerational curriculum project. Our project is a way of experimenting with the potential for reconsidering wellbeing, specifically as it relates to multimodal literacies that include singing. As we explain in the last chapter, this has implications, not just for intergenerational multimodal curriculum, but literacy education more generally and the consideration of the value of multimodal literacy in people’s everyday lives. The multidimensional nature of wellbeing.  When we dug into the literature addressing wellbeing we found the concept to be multi-dimensional; that is, rather than particular conceptions of wellbeing becoming dominant at various times and usurping other conceptions, multiple conceptions and operational definitions existed simultaneously in several fields. There are even myriad spellings of wellbeing, each 7

CHAPTER 1

with its own semantic effects. For instance, Watson, Emery, and Bayliss (2012) synthesized Ereaut and Whiting’s (2008) inquiry into the discursive elements of wellbeing saying that it is presented in the following “formats”: • As an adjective, with a presumption that we have a shared understanding, such as the policy use of ‘the well-being agenda’. This is hugely presumptive and prevents the concept being problematised, and is arguably the way in which it has entered policy and practice discourses. • Without inverted commas, which suggests that it is taken for granted and unremarkable. • With the removal of the hyphen from ‘well-being’ to form ‘wellbeing’, which has the effect of normalizing. • By dropping the first capitalization of ‘Wellbeing’, which has the effect of preventing it standing out as something too overt and open to challenge. • Finally, by placing it alongside other words as if it has equivalence with established terms and concepts such as health, or even by creating a link between terms to objectify its use, for example, ‘health and wellbeing’—which is a term regularly seen in policy literature (Watson, Emery, & Bayliss, 2012, p. 27). Like Watson, Emery, and Bayliss, in this book we use wellbeing with implied inverted commas to signal its contingent and contested nature, delete the hyphen (except where we are quoting others’ use of the concept) to indicate its normalization and as a concept where its two parts (i.e., well and being) are inseparable, and we too do not use it as an adjective. We next present a condensed genealogy of the literature from Aristotle to contemporary notions of wellbeing as flourishing. A genealogical reading of wellbeing.2  In digging into the literature on wellbeing we learned that since its early discussion in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics in the 4th century BCE, the concept has flowed across disciplinary boundaries from philosophy into politics and political science, psychology, sociology, medicine, religion, and popular culture. Of obvious importance to us, it has also been discussed in relation to literacy. The levels of analysis of wellbeing range from the individual or personal to the social or societal. Despite what appears to be a wide range of levels of analysis, the research methods employed to investigate wellbeing are most commonly quantitative involving the statistical analysis of survey data. From the inception of the discussion of what wellbeing is, the terms happiness and wellbeing have been used as both synonyms and heterographs. Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, Book X, described wellbeing as an ethical choice reflecting the virtues of the Greek gods, especially living the contemplative life. For Aristotle, eudaimonic wellbeing meant, “striving toward excellence based on one’s unique potential” (Ryff & Singer, 2008, p. 14). Hedonic wellbeing, on the other hand, was linked to one’s own personal pleasure and was “expected to be felt whenever pleasant affect accompanies the satisfaction of needs, whether physically, intellectually, or socially based” (Waterman, 1993, p. 679). Bradburn (1969) signaled that the 8

Introduction

decision of a particular Ethics translator rendered eudaimonia as happiness, while subsequent translations have rendered eudaimonia as well-being. Discussion continued into the 21st century as to whether or not wellbeing and happiness (and life satisfaction, flourishing, mental health, wellness, and the like) were the same or, if not, how different the terms were (Kashdan, Biswas-Diener, & King, 2008; Raibley, 2012; Ryff & Keyes, 1995). Into the present, researchers in psychology have tended to align themselves with a hedonic or eudaimonic perspective. We report this to underscore psychology’s ample attention to wellbeing, particularly in the 1960’s and the 1990’s. In Ryan and Deci’s (2001) review of the literature on hedonic and eudaimonic wellbeing, they reported the following in reference to these spikes in psychology’s interest in wellbeing: It may be no accident that these two periods represent times of relative affluence, when the economically advantaged have found that material security and luxury do not, in themselves, secure happiness. In this sense, the bursts of interest in well-being may have been prompted by a culture of surplus. (p. 142) From this culture of surplus came novel discourses related to wellbeing. New on the wellbeing horizon was a political and academic discourse wherein “human wellbeing was considered analogous with income and consumption levels” (McGillivray & Clarke, 2006, p. 4). In recognition that the culture of surplus was not universal, political philosophers and economists began to focus on what international development studies could tell them about wellbeing. If wellbeing (or happiness or quality of life) was not always related to wealth, then what other factors were influential? Sen (e.g., 1993) constructed a framework that focuses on individuals’ functionings and capabilities, rather than on external economic or political conditions. Functionings, for an individual, said Sen (1993), are “the various things that he or she manages to do or be in leading a life” (p. 31). In Sen’s approach, quality of life is “to be assessed in terms of the capability to achieve valuable functionings” (p. 31). Sen did not specify what the functionings or capabilities were, acknowledging that both would differ based on individuals and their social setting. Philosopher Martha Nussbaum (1993) defined the human capabilities from an Aristotelian perspective with a view toward establishing foundations for social justice. Nussbaum’s ten human capabilities, which she argued form the basis for constitutional democracy, are: Life; Bodily health; Bodily integrity; Senses, imagination, and thought; Emotions; Practical reason; Affiliation; Other species; Play; and Control over one’s environment (Nussbaum, 2000). Sen’s and Nussbaum’s work on human capability as a measure of wellbeing was adopted by the United Nations in 1990 and used as the basis for the annual Human Development Report (Bruni, 2006; United Nations. Human Development Reports, n.d.). Economic and psychological studies of quality of life issues thereafter identified that demographic variables, such as age, sex, and education, accounted for only a small portion of quality of life (Bruni, 2006; Diener, 2001), including the conclusion 9

CHAPTER 1

that “bettering the objective conditions of life (income or wealth) produces no lasting effects on personal well-being” (Bruni, 2006, p. 4). Submitted from psychology was the notion that to capture an inclusive understanding of quality of life, personal or subjective wellbeing had to become the focus of research. In terms of subjective wellbeing, Ryan and Deci (2001) have forwarded that it has three components: life satisfaction, positive mood, and the absence of negative mood. Returning to the classical division between hedonic and eudaimonic views of happiness or wellbeing (Waterman, 1993), because of its emphasis on the presence of positive feelings and absence of negative feelings, subjective wellbeing has been considered in the psychological literature as a hedonic approach to wellbeing (Ryan & Deci, 2001). Subjective wellbeing measures both negative and positive feelings (Diener, 2001) with, following Bradburn (1969), these being two separate scales and not just the two extremes of a single scale. Psychologist Carol Ryff chose the eudaimonic approach to assessing wellbeing, asserting that rather than subjective wellbeing, one should study psychological wellbeing. Psychological wellbeing determines more than just whether or not an individual experiences positive and negative affect and in what proportion (Ryff & Keyes, 1995). Ryff critiqued subjective wellbeing for what she perceived as its lack of theoretical underpinnings. As operationalized by Ryff and Keyes (1995), psychological wellbeing has six theory-based dimensions: self-acceptance, positive relations with others, autonomy, environmental mastery, purpose in life, and personal growth. In defense of subjective wellbeing, Diener, Sapyta, and Suh (1998) claimed that subjective wellbeing researchers use a constructionist approach in which respondents define what gives them a sense of wellbeing as opposed to the researcher-defined view of wellbeing that characterizes Ryff’s psychological wellbeing. Ryan and Deci (2000, 2001) employed self-determination theory to highlight the human needs for competence, autonomy, and relatedness in order to experience eudaimonic wellbeing. They also stated that while the three needs are universal, they can change through the lifecourse and be expressed in different ways depending on culture. Cross-cultural studies of wellbeing have shown that people in individualistic cultures versus those in collectivist cultures tend to value aspects of life related to self-esteem rather than social esteem (Kim, Schimmack, & Oishi, 2012), while people in collectivist cultures may never assess themselves in light of their satisfaction with their life, only by how well they believe that they have met societal expectations (Christopher, 1999; Diener & Diener, 1995). As one might assume, subjective wellbeing research has relied upon individuals’ self-reports of their emotional states and satisfaction with life. The research methods have been quantitative: surveys with closed-ended questions, often with Likert-type scales. Since respondents have usually only taken the survey questionnaires once, there are some questions about the reliability of the method to measure subjective wellbeing in a mutable human being. That causality is problematic in subjective 10

Introduction

wellbeing has been pointed out by Diener (2001) and Helliwell and Putnam (2004); there is currently no way to determine which variables cause wellbeing and which are caused by it. A resounding finding in our literature review was that there is a dearth of quantitative studies of wellbeing. Exceptions to quantitative research in the area are rare but include a mixed-methods approach incorporating data from openended survey questions which allowed Delle Fave, Brdar, Freire, Vella-Brodrick, and Wissing (2011) to explore the ways in which both lay people and researchers conceptualized wellbeing. Another exception was a study of the wellbeing of students at school, where students were asked to keep an “emotion diary” and the results were analyzed by “qualitative content analysis” rather than by counting the occurrences of certain emotions (Hascher, 2008, pp. 89–90). Also, Healey-Ogden and Austin (2011) engaged research participants in “conversational interviews” (p. 87) and later in a hermeneutic phenomenological process of writing. A key discovery was that wellbeing could not be identified in the science of how the body functions or in medical approaches to illness and recovery. Instead, by exploring this experience and by engaging in writing a description of it, [the researchers] found well-being to be inherent in life and therefore lived. (p. 93) Literature in this vein, then, has suggested wellbeing as a verb rather than a noun or adjective. Psychologists have typically focused heartily on the individual aspects of wellbeing, while sociologists and anthropologists have paid special attention to the social aspects, including demographics, the social influence on physical health, and social capital. Describing social capital as analogous to physical and human capital, for example, Helliwell and Putnam (2004) stated, “social networks (and the associated norms of reciprocity and trust) can also have powerful effects on the level and efficiency of production and well-being, broadly defined” (p. 1436). The duo acknowledged that social capital sometimes has negative aspects, though the results of their meta-analysis of three large survey datasets indicated that [m]arriage and family, ties to friends and neighbours, workplace ties, civic engagement (both individually and collectively), trustworthiness and trust: all appear independently and robustly related to happiness and life satisfaction, both directly and through their impact on health. (p. 1444) Medical anthropologist Lenore Manderson (2010) disagreed with measuring social capital to determine wellbeing because recent research has shown that social capital “is far more complicated than first imagined, that it is gendered and that men and women create, disperse and use social capital in very different ways” (p. 243). Keyes (2002) chose a different tack from social capital theory to address the role of the individual in society when he added five social aspects—social coherence, 11

CHAPTER 1

social actualization, social integration, social acceptance, and social contribution— to Ryff and Keyes’s (1995) original six dimensions of psychological wellbeing: Individuals are functioning well when they see society as meaningful and understandable, when they see society as possessing potential for growth, when they feel they belong to and are accepted by their communities, when they accept most parts of society, and when they see themselves contributing to society. (Keyes, 2002, p. 209) Keyes (2002) and Keyes and Haidt (2003) began to frame a broader socialpsychological view of wellbeing as flourishing. Flourishing re-entered the philosophical discourse of wellbeing in the 1950s, and philosophers have expressed understandings of the concept in three similar but distinct ways (Hurka, 1999). The first understanding has referred to developing certain central human properties so as to live a good life. The second has found that humans will flourish if they live by certain virtues, and third, self-interest will lead people to act in a manner that cause themselves to flourish (Hurka, 1999). Both hedonic and eudaimonic elements exist in the idea of human flourishing. In a 2013 study investigating flourishing in Europe, Huppert and So (2013) attributed the resurgence of interest in the idea of flourishing to psychologists known for studying eudaimonic wellbeing, such as Ryff and Keyes, hedonic wellbeing, such as Diener, as well as acknowledging the impact of the positive psychology movement spearheaded by Csikszentmihalyi (1990) and Seligman (2011). The challenge in studying flourishing and, indeed, wellbeing (however conceptualized) is that the focus in the discipline of psychology has traditionally been on mental illness rather than on mental health (Huppert & So, 2013). In more recent studies of flourishing, psychologists have brought sociological and physiological research findings and questions into their conceptual and methodological toolkits. For example, Seligman’s acronym PERMA (positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning, accomplishment) is ‘‘the best approximation of what humans pursue for their own sake’’ (as cited in Huppert & So, 2013, p. 839). Social aspects of wellbeing have appeared in Diener’s recent work (e.g., Diener et al., 2010) in which he and his colleagues have developed a scale to measure flourishing. Ryff’s work on psychological wellbeing has, in recent years, expanded to include along with her original six dimensions of psychological wellbeing, the element of physical health as well as the quality of social connections, recognizing that what makes life good for humans is a blending of mental, physical, and social well-being (Ryff & Singer, 1998, 2000, 2008). One consistent trend in the research literature on wellbeing is the ever-growing set of predictors of wellbeing. From a multidisciplinary research topic to an interdisciplinary topic, the concept of wellbeing continues to challenge researchers to uncover what it is that people have or do that creates satisfaction, fulfillment, and a life lived well. 12

Introduction

Multimodal Literacy and Wellbeing Throughout our readings of wellbeing we were struck by the scarcity of attention to literacy and lack of explicit connections between literacy and potential elements of wellbeing such as happiness and flourishing. Little has been written about literacy and wellbeing, and what has been written has focused on reductionist and instrumental approaches to both concepts; for instance, extant research linking literacy and wellbeing has tended to focus on prevention strategies for closing gaps in childhood literacy achievement to promote wellbeing in the form of readiness to learn (Phillips, 2014) and adult literacy to promote wellbeing in the form of capital (e.g., cultural, human, or social) (Cornali, 2011). In a comprehensive review of indicators associated with wellbeing among Canadians (Hayward, Pannozzo, & Colman, 2007), literacy was explored in relation to seven different domains of wellbeing from the Canadian Index of Wellbeing (educated populace, living standards, time use, healthy population, community vitality, governance, ecological footprint). Within each domain the authors questioned what people “need to know” (p. 19) to be considered minimally literate in ways that could foster wellbeing. This common approach to examining literacy and wellbeing emphasizes literacies as autonomous skills rather than socio-cultural practices and privileges anachronistic print literacy. A notable exception is a study by Furness (2013) of four family literacy programs in New Zealand and their relationship to socio-emotional, psychological, and cognitive wellbeing. The study focused on family literacy practices and highlighted the need for literacy programs to be holistic in nature to foster the wellbeing of all involved (adults and children) and communities. Family literacy was viewed as a social practice “in which skills played a part but in which relationships were paramount, and they had concern for both the interests of adults as well as children […] and the collective good” (p. 53). Although the family literacy programs in the Furness study differed in structure, content, aims, foci, and the ways in which they were family focused, they each maintained an “overarching concern for people’s whole selves and a strengths and rights-based view of people” (p. 53) whereby “both literacy and social aspirations were addressed” (p. 53). In addition to viewing literacy as a social practice that is capable of fostering wellbeing, we also recognize the need for literacy programs to embrace the notion of literacy as a multiple construct that can be comprised of a diversity of modes and media. Few previous studies have focused specifically on multimodal literacy and wellbeing, and our research aims to address this gap in the literature. We found only one study of literacy and wellbeing that resonated with our understanding of the need for more expansive, multimodal literacy options, most particularly within intergenerational curricula. In a study of children and elders at a middle school in Nunavut in Northern Canada, Tulloch, Kusugak, Ulusqi, et al. (2013) examined a traditional skills program called Miqqut 2 that embedded literacy within

13

CHAPTER 1

what the study expressed to be a holistic and cooperative learning environment. The program included “activities (pre-planned or spontaneous) directly linked to participants’ interests” (p. 28), and involved elders teaching in their indigenous language of Inuktitut “alongside literacy instructors who led [English] languageregulated activities directly linked to the cultural focus” (p. 28). Multiple modes were incorporated within the program and “on a typical day, participants would read silently, look through photographs for ideas, create and adjust patterns, sew by hand or machine, document their progress in their learners’ portfolios, and participate in literacy activities as a group” (p. 28). The researchers defined literacy broadly as “a skill that enables people to interpret and effectively respond to the world around them. Based upon language development from birth, it includes the ability to learn, communicate, read and write, pass on knowledge and participate actively in society” (p. 29). The researchers’ notion of wellbeing was holistic, and this resonates with the understanding of wellbeing as a form of human flourishing. The study concluded that participants in the Miqqut program were able “to see how literacy is relevant to their lives and thus engage with new and expanding ways of expressing themselves and receiving information” (p. 29). Within the Miqqut program, healing, identity, culture, and literacy were viewed as “intertwined areas of the learners’ lives” (p. 31), and “creative activity, cultural connection and relationships” all contributed to improvements in literacy and wellbeing as they “invite learners to work on skills and practices that they see as highly relevant and to produce tangible products of which they (and their families) are proud” (p. 31). Clearly, the literature on literacy and wellbeing indicates the need for further conceptualizing and research in the area and most especially related to socio-cultural approaches to literacy that take into account the multimodal nature of meaning making. This is where the study on multimodal singing-infused curriculum in an intergenerational setting featured in this book enters. Conceptualizing Singing Singing was a central component of the multimodal intergenerational curriculum we developed in the AIRS project and included in the multimodal literacy and wellbeing nexus that we sought to understand, was the place of singing. We looked to the literature to see how singing has been defined. Potter and Sorrell (2012) choose the simplest route, arguing that singing is “a meaningful activity” (p. 1) noting that people produce a song in the larynx through a “fundamental frequency of phonation” that is “varied systematically” (Fletcher, 2001, p. 10 cited in Potter & Sorrell, 2012, p. 1). Marek (2007) argued that song “predicated speech” and “evolved by imitating natural sounds, such as the song of birds” (p. 3). Dating back several thousands of years, this form of singing is thought to be one of the oldest forms of communication. As Marek traced the development of singing throughout history from the ancient world through to the present day, he commented on the many ways in which people throughout the centuries have used singing to share knowledge and pass on 14

Introduction

understandings of the world from one generation to another. Focusing specifically on singing as communication, Welch (2005) stated that singing not only expresses “a basic emotional state” it also “conveys information about group membership” (p. 251 original emphasis) and could be “used as an agent in the communication of cultural change” as well as expressing “a sense of pattern, order, and systematic contrast to the working day and week” (p. 254). Although connections between the origins of singing, language, and communication are still being debated (e.g., Mithen, 2006), singing is seen in some of the literature as sharing similar functions to language that “define identities, respect thoughts, symbolize feelings, mobilize knowledge, and unite communities through social practice (Wingers & Griffin, 2014, p. 79). And yet, despite the wide variety of ways in which singing is used in human communication and interaction, and the potential it holds for promoting relationship-building opportunities for children (Siegel, 1995) and elders (e.g., Kosky & Schlisselberg, 2013), there is a lack of research focusing on singing as a literacy practice or as a feature in multimodal curricula. We forward in this book the notion that singing can be viewed as a literacy practice. In an upcoming section, we explain how multimodal theorizing makes it easy to see how this might be, still, the ways in which sound and singing have been positioned in the literacy literature, make such a supposition an uncommon one. Sound, singing, and literacy.  Even with the advent of multimodal literacy, until relatively recently within literacy research, sound has received little attention, especially when compared to the consideration received by print literacy, and this disparity has translated into curriculum as well (e.g., Rowsell, 2013). The recognition of the important meaning making potential of sound has grown in the digital age as more people are encountering sound through new technologies and their own exploration and consumption of Web 2.0 opportunities. Within technology-enabled and media infused lives, musical sound in particular has become a prominent feature in modes of representation, communication, and self-expression (O’Neill, 2014a). Increasingly, the literature is documenting young people experiencing music multimodally—often describing their musical encounters and creative collaborations as a form of seeing or sensing music through visual images, digital media, mobile devices, and movement (Gauntlett, 2007). There is still, however, a long way to go in terms of literacy research and education giving sound and singing their due. In their studies of literacy and power, Collins and Blot (2003) have indicated some reasons why this might be. Collins and Blot (2003) have detailed the sharp divide instigated by colonialism and autonomous models of literacy between literacy (as print literacy) and orality. They have argued that the West has historically identified itself as civil and modern through its use of writing, finding oral cultures to be base. Writing became a way of evaluating “literate and nonliterate” (p. 4) and identified those cultures and people who were considered to have evolved, ferreting out those who were still ostensibly primitive. Print literacy was a colonizing tool, “a way to transform, to remake the 15

CHAPTER 1

moral and minds of” (p. 4) minoritized peoples. We are here reminded of the great push, for instance, in colonial contexts to develop and attribute a script to indigenous (oral) languages as a way, in particular, of sharing the bible; witness, for example, the development of Cree syllabics which were used for mission work with the Cree in northern Canada (e.g., Lewis & Dorais, 2003)—only one of many examples of how writing has been used as an inscription of colonial power. Literacy scholarship and education continues to feel the effects of this “great divide” (Collins & Blot, 2003, p. 4) today: Adherents of the autonomous model of literacy have made arguments about the difference and superiority of Western culture and intellect (p. 5) vis-à-vis nonliterate or differently literate societies. These claims are untenable and have been systematically criticized; nonetheless, echoes of these claims continue to inform policy and scholarship about literacy. (pp. 4–5) Finnegan’s (2014) findings from her studies of sound in human communication reinforce these claims. She found that from Plato on, sound has been associated with “emotion rather than the ‘higher’ cognitive faculties” (p. 59) of which sight is presumably concerned. As a result, sound (with minor exceptions) “has seldom been extensively considered as a significant dimension of human communicating” (p. 60). Even the earlier mentioned multimodal storytelling performances that Finnegan documented, were rendered into flat, print text in her dissertation. It was only years later that she was able to fully return to the multimodal and sonic elements of those performances (Finnegan, 2015). We would like to argue with the undervaluation of emotion or affect, noting that it deserves more due, in particular given its centrality in literacy acquisition (e.g., Hicks, 2002), yet nonetheless, taking just the cognitive as our point of departure, Finnegan’s work demonstrates that making meaning from sound is surely anything but simplistic and surely does demand the cognitive. This is the case even if we take sound on its own without multimodal elements that usually accompany it (e.g., the lyrics in a song); for instance, Finnegan (2014) has taught that interpreting sound requires the capacity to hear and discriminate. Of this, she has said, sound is complex indeed, and the ear has to detect a wide range of properties, from variations of volume, pitch, rhythm, intensity, speed, tone, cadence or timbre to direction, distance or alternations of sound and silence. (p. 65) This list of intricate elements of sound that must be made sense of do not even count those added by “the human uses of audition” that “have been elaborated in spectacularly versatile and systematic ways” (p. 66) of which language is a notable one. Special for our purposes is that despite the attention to the research of language and also to language education (which have no doubt been extensive), Finnegan has noted the “traditional focus” on the linguistic elements of speech such as “grammar, syntax and vocabulary” (p. 69) and the relative absence of attention to its “sonic qualities” (p. 67) which include the elements of the above list plus “tempo… 16

Introduction

phrasing, melodic and other musical elements, pacing, breathiness, roughness, low and high registers, vibrato or plain delivery, abrupt or sustained phrasing” (p. 67) and more. These elements can make all the difference in the semantics and pragmatics of communication and thus warrant more than passing notice in research. The above is relevant for understanding singing, because it indicates some of why singing may be under researched and theorized within multimodal studies. It also troubles the relative undervaluing of the oral and the lack of consideration of the sonic in studies of literacy. Finnegan (2014) as well as Collins and Blot (2003), like contemporary multimodal literacy theorists (e.g., Walsh, 2011), problematize the stark divide between modes and the nature of modes, leading to the need to reevaluate the place of sound in multimodal literacy. This is the case even for what might be considered as traditional and low-tech literacy practices like speaking and writing. For instance, Finnegan’s notion of musical communication brings into view multimodality and the primacy of sound. Musical communication is the outcome of findings that “the commonly made distinctions between musical and spoken communication (‘music’ and ‘language’) are hard to maintain in any absolute terms” (p. 73). Finnegan has explained that the erosion of the divide is not only the result of the recognition of the sonic and musical elements (detailed in the previous list) that affect meaning in human speech, but also due to “the great diversity of taxonomies in different cultural traditions” because of the “deliberate deployment and recognition” (p. 73) of these elements. Collins and Blot (2003) have also challenged the supposed nature of modes, expressing that the alleged affordances of print, which have maligned the oral, are perhaps wrong. They have detailed how the much hallowed version of literacy as print that has stemmed from the notion that writing is superior to the oral because it can fix an idea, is based on a faulty autonomous model of literacy. When reading and writing print text are viewed as socio-cultural practices, rather than mere technologies of encoding and decoding (as per the autonomous model), print text is literally open(ed) to interpretation. With the openness of print recognized, the oral might then be perceived as equally important to the archiving and passing on of information and ideas as any other group of modes; which returns us to the argument that sound, and specifically singing, are worthy of study. Singing has, of course, been investigated, but little considered in its multimodal complexity or as a literacy practice. Finnegan (2015) has posited that in the case of song, which she defined as the conjoining of “music” and “poetry,” research has centered on analyzing its verbal elements or, through the tools of musicology, has conceptualized songs as “musical works encapsulated in notated scores” (p. 87); thus the study of song becomes the study of a fixed musical text. Finnegan has stated a preference instead for analysing song as performance where researchers are embedded in the enactment of song and thus able to consider its positioning in time and space as well as the multimodal and socio-cultural elements that might accompany such a performance. The emphasis on performance takes the stress off song and places it on what is being practiced, by whom, why, and with what effect. We see here an example of moving the research focus from a noun to a verb, 17

CHAPTER 1

which is in line with our concern for singing rather than song on its own. Singing is sometimes included in the literacy literature, but when it is mentioned, singing is usually addressing for how it can support the acquisition of print literacy, especially amongst young children (e.g., Barclay, 2010; Connors, 2014; Hansen & Milligan, 2012). Singing is rarely conceptualized in the literature as a literacy practice in its own right. Singing, however, can be a literacy practice when viewed through a definition of literacy taken from multimodal literacy, that is, as “an act of meaning-making using semiotic resources (e.g., language, images, gesture, music and sound)” (Jewitt, 2011a, p. 304). In this act the signifier and signified come together to produce a meaningful sign (Albers, 2007). Meaning making within multimodal literacy occurs through the affiliations between modes (Jewitt, 2011b), for example in the relationship between gesture and sound when someone is singing. Meaning making includes the physical aspects of those modes (i.e., their materiality), such as in the tempo or tone of a voice (Kress, 2011). Meaning making is also situated. Again in the singing example, we might note how ethnographic studies of singing (e.g., Mithen, 2005; Mithen et al., 2006; Skinner, Holland, & Adhikari, 1994) have found that what people sing, how they sing, when they sing, and with what response from those around them (e.g., the meaning that is externally ascribed to the singing), is connected to the social, cultural, and historical practices that influence the use of the mode(s) (Kress, 2011). Our understanding of meaning making, then, is based on the three theoretical premises for multimodality as forwarded by Sefton-Green, Marsh, Erstad, and Flewitt (2016): • representation, communication and interaction draw on multiple modes, all of which contribute to meaning; • sets of semiotic resources (modes) are socially shaped over time to articulate individual, affective and social meanings; • people intentionally choose and configure modes to orchestrate meaning through multimodal design. (p. 20) As each mode comes with its own affordances and constraints, histories, materiality, and the like, singing fits within the constellation of multimodality, including the above premises, in unique ways. Importantly, as evidenced in studies such as the inquiry into women’s songs in the Tij festival in Nepal (Skinner, Holland, & Adhikari, 1994), meaning making, even within ritualistic (and therefore highly conventionalized) singing, is not static. Modes, their interrelationships, the contexts in which they are used in meaning making, and the intentionality of the people using them (for a start) can all continue to evolve and change. There is an emerging literature that forwards singing as part of meaning making practices that include other modes of expression (e.g., Kim, 2014), such as language (e.g., Heydon & Rowsell, 2015) and gesture (Livingstone, Thompson, & Russo, 2009). Literature in this vein primarily forwards the notion that singing can support meaning making within multimodal ensembles, as people select, combine, and 18

Introduction

move between modes in their meaning making, thereby potentially gaining facility with a diversity of modes including print (McKee & Heydon, 2014). We have also explored previously how visual texts and art making can support children and elders to engage with singing, even when it is not something that is familiar or easy for them (Heydon & O’Neill, 2015). The significance of this literature in terms of singing is that it views the practice of singing as embedded within a repertoire of complementary modes. Next, we share literature related to singing that suggests its unique qualities as we consider how it can operate as a multimodal literacy practice, and we look ahead to thinking about its placement vis-à-vis wellbeing. The qualities of the practice of singing.  The singing literature shares what is involved in the practice of singing for people across the lifespan. Specifically, we have read that singing concerns people’s senses, perception, creativity, and imagination—qualities of fundamental significance to being human—as well as the abilities to think, to feel, to speak, and to act. Through singing, the music can be “felt” as well as understood (Rao, 1987). As a form of human communication, singing achieves meaning or function in its social uses. Mothers in every culture sing to their infants during routine care, typically in the form of lullabies (Trehub & Schellenberg, 1995; Trehub & Trainor, 1998). Research on infant-mother singing demonstrates the importance of this form of social interaction in optimizing the development of attachment, memory, emotional understanding, as well as individual, social, and cultural identities (Trevarthen, 2002). Intergenerational singing also plays an important role in the enculturation of infants and children into the rituals of their culture (Trehub, 2006). Growing evidence indicates the positive benefits that older adults experience from singing engagement. For example, Vanderark, Newman, and Bell (1983) found that residents in a nursing home, aged 60–95 years, who participated in five weekly music activity sessions showed greater life satisfaction, attitude toward music, and music self-concept, compared with age-matched residents at another nursing home who had no music programme. Other studies have revealed a greater impact on increases in quality of life among elders who participated actively in music making rather than merely listening to music (Burack et al., 2002). Research has also shown the benefits of singing on general health and psychological wellbeing among older adults (Clift, Hancox, Staricoff, & Whitmore, 2008). There is evidence to suggest that singing may influence positive affect, focused attention, deep breathing, social support, cognitive stimulation, and regular commitment (Clift & Hancox, 2001; Clift, 2010; Michalos, 2005). Singing is a multimodal practice that involves physical, cognitive, and affective factors as well as situational factors. Multimodal activity during intergenerational singing affords opportunities or “enabling conditions” for creative expression through musical play (Burnard, 2006). According to Stein (2003), “[m]ultimodal pedagogies unleash creativity in unexpected, unpredictable ways. They produce creativity” (p. 134). Movement, for example, is one of the earliest self-initiative 19

CHAPTER 1

responses to music that is made by preschool children (Chen-Hafteck, 2004). Young children’s movements to music show responsiveness to the tempo, intensity, and other characteristics of the music. Their movements and other forms of musical play are also contingent on how the adults around them respond (Berger & Cooper, 2003). There is an emotional/pictorial/literary narrative capacity to music that is rooted in particular social-cultural constructions (Small, 1998). For example, both the bodily and vocal gestures that accompany singing articulate meanings and emotional states that when combined constitute a particular narrative. As such, singing from the vantage of social semiotics, is a practice where people engage in shared meaning making as producers and interpreters of signs (Kress, 1997). These signs are not arbitrary; they are connected to the conditions in which they are created (Kress & Jewitt, 2003). Thus, the meaning making is inextricably linked to the signs, the social world, and the linguistic practices (or communication of signs) that are used to make sense of that world. According to Kress and Jewitt (2003), “[the] first is concerned with the sign maker, and with what he or she wants; the second is concerned with the sign-maker’s perception of the audience and what he or she imagines they want” (p. 12). Similarly, in musical terms, Goble (2010) has signaled that what singing communicates is not a universal language that is pre-existing, static, and stable. Rather it is a socially constituted phenomenon that registers in human consciousness through a triadic relationship involving a sign (what is to be signified), an object (the apt signifier), and an interpretant (an effect in the mind of the perceiver that determines how a given perception at a moment in time will be formed as a conception according to the perceiver’s “habit of mind”). These correspond to Kress and Jewitt’s (2003) three significant semiotic decisions. As a song is performed and unfolds over time, there are possibilities for one or more of these semiotic decisions as well as integrated decisions involving one or multiple narratives. Mining the literature we can find hints of the richness of singing as multimodal meaning making: “Melody and lyrics work together, like words and metric rhyme in poetry” (2013, p. 37). Through song, a singer is able to communicate ideas through the affordances of sound, melody, and text, and a number of secondary modes are also evoked, such as colours, gesture, gaze, emotions, and histories, with affordances and meanings “that can be carried by accents, tones, volume, pace, and quality” (p. 32). Thus, the vocalized melodies of a song afford a more direct representation of ideas than the mode of musical sound alone. Further, within cultures throughout the world, singing has served important personal, social, and cultural functions. Vocal sound is “a mode that centres and situates us, forming and shaping our cultures and our identities in the process” (p. 32). Within many pre-industrial societies, singing has been an “integral part of work and play, being inseparable from activities such as dance and religious ritual” (Trehub & Trainor, 1998, p. 46). For many people, singing helps to alleviate the hardships of daily life and endure the monotony of physical labour. Singing is also thought to “dissolve the boundaries between the self and others” (p. 46), which helps to “enhance the 20

Introduction

solidarity of a community” and reinforce “cherished values and ideals” as well as “marking significant rites of passage” (p. 47). The practice of singing has long been associated with feelings of happiness, and “may have secondary rewards for the singer regardless of the primary purpose” (p. 48). We are interested in the primary and secondary rewards of singing within multimodal intergenerational curriculum. We are also interested in the implications for understandings of literacy in general. The question of singing as a multimodal literacy practice that promotes wellbeing is one that the literature seems to beg to have answered. In the next chapter we turn to a specific discussion of the multimodal curriculum we developed in the project and its foundations—the next step towards responding to this query. NOTES 1 2

All names have been changed. This section was co-authored with Elisabeth Davies, Western University.

21

CHAPTER 2

INTERGENERATIONAL MULTIMODAL SINGING-INFUSED CURRICULUM

This chapter focuses on the curriculum-making of the singing-infused intergenerational multimodal program. Why Multimodal Literacy Matters is designed to make a contribution to knowledge and understanding in relation to multimodal literacy, wellbeing, and singing. Given the socio-cultural approach to literacy in the book, the situation in which we explored these notions is of concern. We designed the study to be within an intergenerational context as we reckoned that such a context could foreground key notions of literacy: namely, the social and multimodal natures of literacy as well as what literacies and literacy pedagogy can look like at times in people’s lives where language might not be central (i.e., early childhood and late adulthood). Further, looking at literacy practices in the young and old provides a fascinating view of the continuum of literacy practices across the lifespan. We begin the chapter, therefore, with a look at intergenerational learning in our own lives, formal intergenerational programs in general, provide a rationale for how we developed the curriculum with special consideration for singing with children and elders and the scene of where the program was first field tested, and then we describe what we planned to do in terms of the curriculum’s scope and sequence. Last, the chapter comments on the approach we took to researching the curriculum. INTERGENERATIONAL CONTACT AND INTERGENERATIONAL PROGRAMS

The importance of fostering communication and relationships across skipped generations cannot be overstated. The literacy literature alone suggests what this can mean for young and old. In informal, familial intergenerational settings, for instance, children have been found to develop literacy practices as they interact with grandparents (e.g., Gregory, Long, & Volk, 2004) and in passing down their knowledge, elders can experience generativity, perpetuating a form of optimism or forward looking (e.g., McAdams, 1993). Our own lives have been characterized by intergenerational relationships, forged within family, and what we have learned from our elders plays out on a daily basis in our interactions with others, most directly our own children. Our modes of expression and the content of those expressions, for example, are intergenerationallyderived; Rachel has a preference for sharing knowledge through story with specific figures of speech born of the syncretic language of Italian immigrants in northern 23

CHAPTER 2

Ontario, Canada, and she and Suzie both draw on the tones and lilts of songs that punctuated childhood days. These are the practices that are now ours to pass on. But what gets passed on is never exactly that which was originally offered. Memories are generative and the making of meaning, creative. A syncretic form of literacy emerges from young and old making meaning together through multimodal means including language and song; it is an interweaving of knowledge and practices with unique aims that defies linear time. There is at once a drawing on the past through, for example, the elders’ memories, an engagement with the present as people interact now, in this time and place, and a consideration for the future as literacies get passed forward. We are thus heavily invested in intergenerational literacies as unique and worthy of attention in this conversation about multimodal literacy and wellbeing. To further this conversation, we move now, each in turn, to share a story. Rachel’s Ghost Song When I was coming to the end of writing up a lengthy project on intergenerational learning programs (Heydon, 2013a), I found myself reflecting on the summers I had spent at the cottage with my elders. The soundscapes from those days were prominent in my recollections—the wind in the poplars, river water licking the shore, and the see-saw song that my great-grandmother used to sing to the masses of children who ran about her legs. This was a song I had hummed over and over to my son, though the lyrics kept defeating me; I could remember only bits and pieces. When it came to the last page of the write-up I included what I could salvage of the lyrics from the song. The intact tune but partiality of the lyrics mirrored what I now held of my intergenerational relationships: the experience of holding on to some firm(er) knowledge (the tune) accompanied by loss (the loss of the lyrics through the movement of time). I attempted to express this experience by making the last lines of the book what remained of the ghost song: See-saw, see-saw, see we go up and go down…like an automobile that goes riding and gliding in…town. Now it’s see-saw, see-saw, see we’re not young anymore. We’d give all our…just to be girls and boys on that old see-saw… (Heydon, 2013a, p. 179) That I used a song in my expression of the experience was not incidental. The songs of my childhood taught to me by my elders, form part of my adult self, providing rhythm to my life, beating like a “second heart” (Banville, 2005, p. 10), bringing the past into the present, and maintaining the energy, knowledge, and practices of those family members who have since passed. For years I searched for the title, score, and full lyrics of the ghost song, scouring the internet, asking musician friends, and appealing to kin, yet all to no avail. Not being able to re-experience the complete song provoked in me a sense of unease and an increased longing for my 24

Intergenerational Multimodal Singing-Infused Curriculum

late great-grandmother. Then one morning, while explaining how she had indexed my now published write-up, librarian Elisabeth Davies turned to me and asked, “And oh yah, would you ever be interested in finding that see-saw song?” In response to my enthusiastic “Would I?” Elisabeth grinned and pulled up the information. The real title of my ghost song is On the Old See Saw. It was composed in 1907 by Edwards Gus (1879–1945) with lyrics by Ed Gardenier. Here are the gaps in the lyrics filled in: I tell you what, kids, it’s dandy. To float through the air as you sing. See saw, see saw, see us go up and go down. Say kids, don’t it feel like an automobile. That’s riding and gliding to old New York town. While we see saw, see saw. See we’re not young anymore. We’ll give all our joys, just to be girls and boys. On the old see saw. On the Old See Saw is arguably not a great work of art, but the experience of singing it, reinforced by particular features of the song itself, encapsulate for me the joy of relationship forged through shared sense making. By learning songs and singing them with my elders I participated in intergenerational sense making, by this I mean the enterprise of collectively and collaboratively making meaning of and from the world and doing so within a sensory experience. My great-grandmother sung the song to and then with me. The sharing and singing of songs solidified our bonds; it provided me, the younger generation, with new knowledge of expression and my great-grandmother, the older generation, with the satisfaction of passing along what she knew, could do, and valued. The moments of singing allowed us a unique form of intimacy: we moved our bodies relationally, mimicking the movement of a see-saw, joined our voices in a melody that approximated the gliding of the see-saw, and together sent out vibrations on the air. Of note is that the see-saw is a tool for play that cannot be used solo; it relies on a duo. The see-saw, the leitmotif of the song, united my great-grandmother me— communicatively, physically, and emotionally. Further, the nostalgic lyrics of the song bound us. They say that the song is to be sung from the perspective of a “we,” former “girls and boys” who are singing to children or “kids” to tell them of the pleasure of singing on the see saw. The singers are no longer young and are willing to give away what they have so that they can play again as children. On the Old See Saw oversimplifies childhood as carefree and problematically constructs youth as more desirable than adulthood, yet its uncomplicated lyrical and musical structures and inherent call for intergenerational singing are supportive of intergenerational relationship-building. Now that the song has been returned to me whole, when I call it up my memories of singing with my family are incredibly vivid. I can hear my great-grandmother’s voice, see the expression on her face, feel the deep bass from when she kept time with the heels of her shoes and the high 25

CHAPTER 2

treble as she clicked her fingers and slapped the palms of her hands, smell my greatgrandmother’s own special smells (a pleasing mixture of an ointment called Ozonol, talc, and just a hint of anise), and even begin to taste in anticipation the food that was always nearby. Our singing was a delight of the senses, a communion of our senses, and the memories are a return to my senses and my great-grandmother. Susan’s Grandfather’s Songs When I was preparing recently for a presentation on engaging children in music making (O’Neill, 2012a), I remembered a photograph that was taken of me when I was 13-months old. My parents had taken me to visit my grandparents who lived in a small Canadian town. During this particular visit, someone had decided to let me play my grandfather’s electronic organ; it was the size of an upright piano and made of wood and plastic keys. In the photograph, I am seated on the bench with both hands and all fingers pressing down on the keys and a huge smile of wonder and delight on my face. I am no longer certain if I actually remember this experience or if I have come to remember it through the many stories my mother has told me about my early musical encounters. My sense when looking at the photograph is that on this particular occasion I am amazed by the different sensations I am experiencing— touch, sound, laughter, singing all merging into a unified experience. People who love me surround me as I play the instrument and create spontaneous songs. You can just catch a glimpse of my grandfather at the edge of the photograph. As a child, my grandfather communicated with me almost entirely through songs. He was proud of his Irish heritage, and would sing songs of Ireland with such heartfelt longing you would swear he was missing his homeland. And yet, as a secondgeneration immigrant, my grandfather never visited Ireland. He had learned these songs from his parents (my grandfather had 12 siblings who also learned these songs). The songs provided a way for my grandfather to pass on to me a sense of our Irish heritage while at the same time forging an enduring bond between us. My grandfather would sing songs that signified all aspects of our time together. He would sing Oh Suzanna to greet me each time we saw each other; It’s a Long Way to Tipperary as we travelled to any destination together, whether walking across the room, to the park or on a car journey; and we would sing the chorus of Irish Lullaby together—“Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral”—when I was sitting next to him while he was busy writing music compositions and I was busy colouring pictures. My grandfather was committed to passing on his music to the next generation. For over 25 years, he volunteered his time outside of his full-time job at a truck manufacturing company to teach people of all ages how to play musical instruments. The lessons were free and anyone could join his community band program. It was not unusual to find seniors sharing stands with teenagers as there were often two or even three generations in the band, and at one time this included my grandfather, my father, and me. My grandfather’s memorial service filled the largest church in the town and a few years later the town council named a park after him and commissioned a commemorative 26

Intergenerational Multimodal Singing-Infused Curriculum

plaque in his honour. One of the many special tributes that were written about him said: “Many past and present day musicians owe their very participation in the world of music to the tutorage, the patience, the direction, the encouragement, and the self-giving of [my grandfather]…The [community band] is a living, musical extension of his very soul, and a visible and audible expression of his vision and his love.” Although you can’t see other members of my family in the photograph of me playing the organ at my grandfather’s house, I know the people around me are engaged and interested in what I am doing. I am not encountering the music in isolation—the sense making is shared, intersubjective, and relational. My music making was not generated independently of others around me; rather, my family members were orchestrating and responding to my music in relation to my own orchestrations and responses to the sounds of the instrument and the singing and rhythmical responses from my family. And yet, even at this young age I am at the centre of the activity—generating the sounds that inspire the responses from those around me. Although my songs were spontaneous and experimental, they were not considered chaotic or confusing to those around me. If I started repeating notes or a rhythm, someone would imitate me, clap, or sway to the rhythm I played. The music making was acting as a catalyst, a medium, and a mediator for human expression and communication. The music making was being experienced in relationship to others—there was meaning making happening that was embedded in a particular social context and it was expressing and communicating something meaningful to me and to others. And I was getting a good response! The people around me were smiling and sharing in my sense of joy and wonder. This early music making experience was full of affordances for intergenerational meaning making through relationships that were enabling, encouraging, and enduring. Intergenerational Learning Programs In North America formal intergenerational programs can be traced back to 1963 (Larkin & Newman, 1997) where the U.S.-based Foster Grandparent Program employed older adults to work with children and youth who had been deemed at risk. Since then, intergenerational programs have grown considerably (Kuehne, 2003) taking forms that could be grouped according to four models: elders providing a service to children, younger people serving elders, intergenerational groups performing community service, and shared site programs where skipped generations (e.g., young children and elders of their grandparents’ age or older) share physical space and programming (Marriage & Family Encyclopedia, n.d.). These models, however, are more guidelines than rigid categories, and the types of practices and activities within them are neither exhaustive nor universal. The introduction to a special issue on shared site programs in the Journal of Intergenerational Relationships (Jarrott, Kaplan, & Steinig, 2011), for example, explains how contributions to the issue opened up the definition of shared sites from a focus on “common models, such as child care centers co-located with nursing homes or adult 27

CHAPTER 2

day services facilities” which did not apply “across all countries and cultures” to the idea of shared intergenerational spaces “in outdoor settings, work environments, and individuals’ homes” (pp. 343–344). What one might recognize as an intergenerational model is situational; it is tied to time, place, and culture. One might ask why formal intergenerational learning programs? The place to begin a response to this query can be found in a further question: In what ways (if any) are skipped generations coming together outside of formal programs? Intergenerational Contact There is a bifurcation in the literature concerning the degree to which skipped generations in the minority world are in close contact with each other. Studies of skipped generations has increased over about the last ten years (Bangerter & Waldron, 2014), though it is still an emerging area of inquiry where more work is needed. From the available research, it would seem, however, that there are some situations in which there is increased intergenerational contact and others where there is less. Specifically, there are some households in which grandparents are providing caregiving to grandchildren and others where grandparents and grandchildren are separated due to increased geographic dispersal (Bangerter & Waldron, 2014). These differences would appear to be affected by particular cultural and ethnic customs (Fuller-Thompson et al., 2014). Grandparent caregiving of children, either as part of a three-generational household (i.e., where children live with at least one of their grandparents and parents) or as a child’s sole caregiver (i.e., skipped generation households) seem to be increasing in North America. Studies have found an increase in grandparent caregiving “in both the United States (Livingston & Parker, 2010) and Canada (Fuller-Thomson, 2005). In the United States, a 2011 US Census found there to be a “64% increase in children living with at least one grandparent since 1991” (p. 4), and corroborating the trend, Krueger, Jutte, Franzini, Elo, and Hayward (2015) identified that during the period of 1970 to 2013, children living with grandparents had doubled to 6.2%. In Canada, the most recent statistics we could find on changes to skipped generation households quoted a 20% increase in the percentage of children living in such households between 1991 and 2001 (Statistics Canada, 2003). Rationales for the increase in grandparent caregiving have been reported as due to increased rates of “divorce, non-marital childbearing, cohabitation, and remarriage” (Kalil, Ryan, & Chor, 2014, p. 150). Kinship care over foster care has also been cited in the literature as a prevailing trend (Bell & Romano, 2015). This last point especially has been seen as relevant to increases in grandparent caregiving households in both England (Glaser, Di Gess, & Tinker, 2014) and Australia (Brennan et al., 2014). In terms of multigenerational households where grandparents live with their children and grandchildren, our home country of Canada has been found to have some communities where this is more or less prevalent. Indigenous people in Canada, in particular Inuit and First Nations people living on reserve, are 28

Intergenerational Multimodal Singing-Infused Curriculum

more likely than anyone else in the country to live in a multigenerational household (Milan, Laflamme, & Wong, 2015). A shortage of housing in Nunavut and on reserve is one reason cited as a possible rationale for this phenomenon (Milan, Laflamme, & Wong, 2015). Another group that has been found to be more likely to live in a multigenerational household are immigrants to Canada with this living situation being pegged as an important “financial coping strategy” for people who are needing to get established in a new country (Milan, Laflamme, & Wong, 2015, p. 5). At the same time that the literature has remarked the trends just described, researchers Bangerter and Waldron (2014) have been tracking how in other households there is a decrease in intergenerational contact. They cite research that claims that the greater the proximity of a grandparent to the grandchild, the easier it is to “foster emotional closeness”; yet in the United States, it has been found that such proximity is not happening in the majority of middle class families (p. 89). This lack of contact also seems to persist or become exacerbated beyond childhood. Bangerter and Waldron state that, “about one-third” of grandparent-participants noticed that as their grandchildren entered adolescence, the grandchildren did not visit them as often. To illustrate, the authors point to research such as by Holladay and Seipke (2007) which found that when grandparents lived at a distance in a retirement community, they experienced face-to-face contact with their grandchildren at best a few times each year. Certainly more research is needed to understand contact between grandparents and grandchildren, especially in places such as the Netherlands where a dearth of literature on grandparenthood has been identified (Oppelaar & Dykstra, 2004) and as far as we could find, persists. While it might be obvious how intergenerational programs can be helpful in the case where elders and people of their grandchildren’s generation are not getting together, the intergenerational literature suggests that formal intergenerational programs may be beneficial even in situations like the ones illustrated in our stories where children have intergenerational contact with family members and in the case of skipped intergenerational households. Some research has, for instance, found that positive intergenerational relationships in families do not always transfer into generalized positive feelings about a generation, and “frequent contact with unrelated older adults” who are not family members is associated “with more positive attitudes about aging in general” (Jarrott, 2007, p. 1). The Affordances of Intergenerational Learning Programs The benefits of intergenerational programs have been well-documented for some time (Kuehne & Kaplan, 2001), and each model of intergenerational programming comes with its own affordances. Systematically planned intergenerational programs have been found to create better understanding of the other generation which can minimize fears and dispel stereotypes that elders or children might have of each other (Mackenzie, Carson, & Kuehne, 2011), nurturing intergenerational respect and caring (Mackenzie, Carson, & Kuehne, 2011), a fostering of participants’ acceptance 29

CHAPTER 2

that “aging is a normal and natural part of the life cycle” (Penn State College of Agricultural Science, 2003), and increased appreciation for diversity (Jarrott & Bruno, 2007). Such programs can also raise a sense of continuity in children’s lives when they might not have access to familial intergenerational relationships or interaction. They also promote the notion that learning is indeed lifelong (Brummel, 1989) and provide authentic contexts for children to care for others which in turn delivers opportunities “to develop personal and social responsibility” (Mackenzie, Carson, & Kuehne, 2011, p. 208). Other opportunities identified by the Canadianbased i2i Intergenerational Society (2014) which champions intergenerational solidarity include: • “improving mental, physical, and social health of all parties” including participants, their families, and the people working in the projects (n.p.), • constructing patience and understanding on the part of elders for “modern culture” thanks to time spent with school-aged students (n.p.), and • “sharing elder wisdom with children and youth” (n.p.). In this book we consider specifically the place of intergenerational learning programs that are multimodal in nature and infused with singing in the defining and production of wellbeing. FOUNDATIONS FOR THE CURRICULUM

In the Advancing Interdisciplinary Research in Singing (AIRS) project we designed a rationalized, pilot multimodal curriculum that featured art and singing which we modified and implemented again in new settings (e.g., Heydon & Rowsell, 2015). The project created a programmatic (Doyle, 1992) curriculum, meaning we developed specific materials that could be used in intergenerational programs; yet we understood curriculum as a dialogue (Routman, 2000) between the curricular commonplaces of educators, learners, subject matter, and milieu (Schwab, 1973) as well as materials (e.g., paintbrushes and songbooks) (e.g., Heydon & O’Neill, 2014). As such we never hoped to predict and control the outcomes of the programmatic curriculum absolutely but rather designed it to be part of the dialogue that could help to be responsive to local needs and produce a dynamic, enacted classroom curriculum (Doyle, 1992) (i.e., what actually played out in the teaching and learning circumstance). Within our creation of the programmatic curriculum, we heeded the literature’s advice on intergenerational learning programs. This literature includes a caution that the benefits of bringing skipped generations together are perhaps best achieved through intergenerational programming rather than just intergenerational activities. Programming is sustained and in-depth; it “provide[s] a way for experiences and interactions to take on meaning relevant to one’s life,” whereas activities are one-shot deals and superficial, hence they “do not allow the level of meaning to exist because they lack depth and long term significance” (Friedman, 1997, p. 105). Activities, like 30

Intergenerational Multimodal Singing-Infused Curriculum

a visit to a retirement home, can serve specific purposes, but programming that is continued and fulfills the criteria we describe next, is likely to be more meaningful to participants and tends to “reduce ambiguities about …relationship[s], lessen social distance, and support [intergenerational] solidarity” (Jarrott, 2007, p. 6). Some “essential criteria” for intergenerational programming includes that it should promote equal group status (Jarrott, 2007) defined as ensuring that “each participant” regardless of the generation to which s/he belongs “has something to contribute and something to gain from the contact setting” (p. 5). Next is that programs should provide opportunities for participants to work toward “common goals” (p. 5), be “on-going, lasting for a significant length of time to establish relationships,” “serve the community,” and include a curricular…component” (Friedman, 1997, p. 105). Regarding curriculum, previous studies (e.g., Heydon, 2012, 2013b) have found that art curricula focusing on the making and viewing of visual texts are a productive means of expanding literacy options in an intergenerational setting and helping to foster intergenerational relationships. In the AIRS project, we experimented with bringing in a new mode, singing, to understand its affordances and constraints. Beyond producing knowledge that might well be used for the building of multimodal curricula, we designed the project to provide important illustrations of multimodal literacy as it is being practiced including “what and how” people “communicate with and through” particular “tools and signs” (Morrison, 2010, p. 11) within particular situations. We also drew on the curriculum studies literature in the creation of the curriculum. The type of curricular orientation at play will affect the degree to which learners are provided opportunities to be “curricular informants” (Harste, 2003) or be allowed to inform what is taught. These orientations run from prescriptive forms that allow little room for dialogue and movement within the intended curriculum to emergent forms which allow for greater dialogue and flexibility (Heydon & Wang, 2006). We based the program in an emergent curricular orientation that invented new solutions to fit the situation (Schwab, 1971) and that were premised on participants’ interests and funds of knowledge. Funds of knowledge is a concept that gained popularity when adopted and adapted by Moll, Amanti, Neff, and González (1992) to refute the deficit-oriented approaches taken up by school systems towards culturally and linguistically diverse children and their families. Moll and colleagues demonstrated how households have their own reserves of cultural and communicative resources, even though those resources might not be counted as knowledge by the élite. Since then, various educational researchers have recognized that (at the very least) learning is enhanced when curriculum is based in funds of knowledge; this has sometimes been translated into leveraging the funds of knowledge of households in the case of early childhood education or of learners themselves in the cases of youth or adults (Oughton, 2009). Reconceptualist approaches to early childhood education, however, currently seem to relish the opportunity to point to children’s own funds of knowledge (e.g., Hedges, Cullen, & Jordan, 2011). We too identify that children’s funds of knowledge, while surely connected to their households, might also be 31

CHAPTER 2

even moderately different from these household given that children have their own experiences and are people in their own right. What constitute funds of knowledge for teaching and learning situations and how to work from them have evolved in a short time. Important for the purposes of our curriculum development was a disposition towards the intergenerational participants as at-promise (Swadener & Lubeck, 1995), that is as having funds of knowledge to contribute to the program, to the educators, to us, and most importantly, to each other. Like the folks in Swadener and Lubeck’s (1995) work, we realized that the young and old who would be the participants in the program, were vulnerable to having their knowledge minoritized (Shields, Bishop, & Mazawi, 2005). Heydon (2012) has written about the pitfalls of pathologizing childhood and advanced age, thus our curriculum attempted to be aware of and welcome a raft of participants’ resources. Researchers such as adult numeracy expert Baker (2005) have identified categories of such resources. We have listed Baker’s categories here, but have replaced numeracy with literacy to fit the scope of the study; specifically, people bring to their learning: • knowledge, experiences, histories, identities and images of themselves; • attitudes, dispositions, desires, values, beliefs, and social and cultural relations; and • [literacy] practices beyond the classroom (p. 16). Scholars such as Finnegan (2002), who study the ways in which humans across the globe and times make and share meaning, provide insights into what these practices may look like in informal, everyday lives, and their importance to individuals and communities. Of significance for our project is the multimodal nature of this communication and the central role of oral/aural practices, including singing (e.g., Finnegan, 1989), in literally creating interconnections between humans and the world. These interconnections are, as signaled in chapter one and reinforced by Finnegan (2002), sensory-based and tied to the material; and they allow communication across generations as well as “space and time” (p. xv). Making visible these funds of knowledge so that they can be valued and built upon, we would argue, is a necessary enterprise in contemporary curriculum work. A seldom heard message concerning funds of knowledge, but a vital one, especially for curriculum designers, is the need for criticality when working with the concept (Oughton, 2009). Oughton has forwarded that funds of knowledge can be a valuable theoretical and practical tool, particularly in relation to the resources of people who have been minoritized, but some configurations of the concept can be problematic. Relevant for our topic is the claim that there can be an overromanticizing of participants’ funds of knowledge such that educators may miss the provision of learning opportunities that could be relevant to people’s cultural capital, or their ability to participate in mainstream knowledge traditions and practices. To remedy the problem, Oughton reviewed the concept of third space (Bhabha, 1994), a “virtual (and sometimes physical) place where opposing discourses meet to 32

Intergenerational Multimodal Singing-Infused Curriculum

generate new, creative and constructive discourses” (p. 75). She suggested that in the domain of formal education, like Moje et al. (2004), this space need not necessarily create new knowledge but could be designed to scaffold learners’ acquisition of “legitimized, formal knowledge…associated with cultural capital” (Oughton, 2009, p. 75). Translated to intergenerational multimodal curricula, these ideas call for the offering of genuine learning opportunities that can expand people’s literacy repertoires beyond their current (possibly comfortable) knowledge and practices. A second of Oughton’s (2009) cautions that is of concern to our project pertains to the metaphor of funds in the concept funds of knowledge. The metaphor, she argued, can sometimes be suggestive of a version of knowledge that we see as akin to the autonomous models of literacy introduced in chapter one. The implication is the need to ensure that knowledge production, or in our case, meaning making, is not viewed as a simple transmission and reception phenomenon (e.g., Ellis & Beattie, 1986 as cited in Finnegan, 2002) where meaning is understand as something static that one can hand over to another as an intact, immutable product—a sort of direct transfer of significations where details like the situation of the communication, what the signifiers (or modes) are, and who the sign-producers are, are of no or limited consequence. The notion of literacies as social practices can keep us awake to this potential reduction. A social practices stance to literacies allows for an understanding of communication practices to be conceptualized and perceived as (at least) dynamic, embodied, and socio-historically-culturally and materially situated. We take Barton’s (2005) following discussion of written language as a social practice to crystalize this approach to epistemology and its semiotic instantiation. He said, in the simplest sense literacy practices are what people do with literacy. However practices also involve values, attitudes, feelings and social relationships. This includes people’s awareness of literacy, constructions of literacy and discourses of literacy, how people talk about and make sense of literacy. These are processes internal to the individual; at the same time, practices are the social processes which connect people with one another, and they include shared cognitions represented in ideologies and social identities. (Barton cited in Barton et al., 2007, p. 15) We see that the above applies as much to the multimodal literacies proposed in this book as to the written language under study by Barton in his quote. We also perceive a kinship in the sensibilities of Barton’s social practices with Baker’s (2005) categories of funds of knowledge, again signaling to the complexity of what literacy practices like singing mean to people, places, cultures, and the like. This becomes even more the case when we consider how literacy practices and funds of knowledge are related to the “circumstances and events” of people’s lives, their “imagined futures,” and their “histories” (Barton et al., 2007, p. 19). Consider the intricacies of the heterogeneity of funds of knowledge and practices in an intergenerational setting, and one can see how interesting a learning situation an intergenerational multimodal curriculum might become. In practical terms, we 33

CHAPTER 2

figured that a program that resourced participants’ interests and funds of knowledge might help solve the problem of how to make learning meaningful and engaging to participants of skipped generations. There is a reciprocal relationship between interests and funds of knowledge with interests stemming, in part, from people’s knowledge and experiences (Albers, 2007). Interests are foundational to literacy practices given that they help to inform the decisions of what to communicate and how (Jewitt & Kress, 2003). Investigations into children’s funds of knowledge and their relationship to literacies and curricula are central in contemporary literacy research (e.g., Berghoff & Borgmann, 2007; Labbo & Place, 2010; Moje et al., 2004). Newer, are questions that consider these issues in relation to multimodal curricula that emphasize singing, particularly in intergenerational settings that include elders. The emergent design of the curriculum also sought to honour the importance of wellbeing being conceptualized and produced in and amongst the elders, children, and educators working together. Emergent curricula defy predication and control and look to the relations between people, their knowledge, and interests to produce opportunities for meaningful communication practices and learning. Singing and Elders and Young Children The curriculum was also premised in the literature on singing as we interpreted it, in particular, through an intergenerational lens. In the previous chapter we discussed the notion of singing as a literacy practice. In this section we expand on the nature and affordances of singing with an eye to the practice’s potential importance to intergenerational multimodal curricula. Singing is a defining feature of humanity with immense socio-cultural significance and multifaceted communicative functions (Welch, 2005). During shared singing experiences, meaning making is produced through concurrent intrapersonal and interpersonal interactions that are expressive, referential (through the text), and empathic (through shared emotions, representations, meaning making, and identities). The literature is clear that singing can facilitate social connections and a sense of belonging, particularly in a group context that features a positive group identity and an increased sense of community (MacDonald & Miell, 2002). Malloch (1999) described the “communicative musicality” (p. 29) that occurs in and through singing as a dynamic, sympathetic state that allows coordinated companionship to arise. With origins in studies of mother and infant communication, Malloch and Trevarthen (2008) have suggested that communicative musicality is an innate ability belonging to all people that is fundamental to their sense of connectedness. Communicative musicality was described by Malloch (1999) as the rhythmic sense of time that is felt communally through shared energy and common purpose with a focus on the capacities of pulse, quality (timbre), and narrative; all components that are featured in the opening stories we shared early in this chapter, and these components provide a frame through which we might come to understand the importance of the shared activity of singing within intergenerational curricula. 34

Intergenerational Multimodal Singing-Infused Curriculum

Also of significance for intergenerational singing curricula is the notion of informal  learning, which forms part of the musical lives of the vast majority of people. This connects with our earlier discussion of the often-overlooked significance of oral practices which tend to be equated with informal (everyday) forms of literacy in contrast to formal (written and schooled) literacy. A similar argument can be found in relation to music practices where informal music learning is often considered in contrast to what takes place in formal educational contexts (Frierson-Campbell, 2008; Jaffurs, 2004). And yet, Mans (2009) has argued for a greater significance to be accorded to informal music learning as a valued and valuable form of enculturation, and Green (2001, 2008) expanded on this through a consideration of four main criteria: • encountering knowledge and practices outside of a formal educational setting; • enculturation in musical practices, through lived experience in a musical environment from both conscious and unconscious listening; • interaction with peers, family, and others who are not acting as teachers in formal capacities; • self-teaching by developing independent learning techniques, acquiring skills and knowledge. People gain experience with at least the first two criteria before they enter formal schooling as children. Informal music learning approaches within educational programs are therefore focused especially on engaging learners in musical activities involving interactions with others (such as peers and family members) in ways that are responsive to learners’ interests (O’Neill, 2014b) and knowledge. Singing activities within informal music learning include purposive listening and copying and memorizing songs that are sung by others, learning to sing them by ear without formal musical notation through self-teaching and peer-to-peer and child-adult interactions. Also of importance for intergenerational curricula based in singing, is what Green (2005) has described as “music-learning authenticity” (p. 250), which emphasizes the notion of authenticity in the learning practice of singing rather than in the musical product. This resonates with the informal music learning practices that many people around the world experience as children through “immersion in an adult community of practice, through listening, watching and imitating others” (p. 250) and is in stark contrast to the product-oriented focus of formal music education curricula. Indeed, Green has wondered if the emphasis placed on formal music education principles and procedures might have “gone too far in removing these [informal music learning] practices” given the importance they play in people’s lives. Although much of the research on the importance of singing has tended to focus on childhood, there is growing evidence of the value of singing across the lifespan, particularly shared singing in community contexts such as amateur community choirs, choral societies, and church choirs. For example, singing in an amateur choir has been found to have a positive influence on adults’ emotion regulation and immune function (Kreutz, Bongard, Rohrmann, Hodapp, & Grebe, 2004). 35

CHAPTER 2

And, in a survey of adult choral singers in England, Australia, and Germany, Clift and Hancox (2010) reported wellbeing and health benefits of singing in community choirs. Many participants in their study had been involved in choral singing for many years, and many also had formal music education as a child thus blurring the distinction between formal and informal music learning experiences. They also found that very few of their participants reported negative experiences with singing as children, such as being told by an adult that they could not sing. They concluded from this “that the ability of people in their later years to benefit from group singing derives in considerable part from the skill and confidence that comes from a lifetime involvement with music and singing” (p. 93). They were also quick to point out, however, that this is not to say “adults with little or no previous experience of singing might not find it enjoyable or beneficial” if they had the opportunity to engage in community singing. Indeed, there were a number of participants in the choirs they studied who derived considerable benefits from singing and yet reported having little or no previous experience of singing before joining their choir. What may be more important than having previous singing experience, as Clift and Hancox pointed out, is a belief in the value of this form of singing engagement “on a musical, personal and social level” (p. 94) and that singing in an adult community choir has benefits for wellbeing and health. Our research offers a timely reframing of singing as a multimodal literacy practice that can be spread across the lifespan. It seeks to contribute to understandings of how to best leverage the affordances of singing through the development of relationships, enhanced literacy practices and identity options, to provide opportunities for elder and child wellbeing, and to document and analyze the literacy practices created through intergenerational multimodal curricula. Multimodal pedagogies have responded to the growing recognition of the importance of sound by emphasizing the need for each mode within multimodal curricula to be given “equal value in terms of time and investment” (Rowsell, 2013, p. 148). Although explorations of sound within multiple modes has been largely absent in research on intergenerational and literacies curricula, sound is a prominent feature within many disciplines and epistemologies. It has been described as a “vast mode” that is “a somatic, subjective experience, able to evoke precise cultural references, attitudes, and meaning” while also being “objective in a way, used to create more general if not universal feelings” (p. 32). Rowsell refers to the work of Van Leeuwen (1999) and his six major domains of sound: sound perspective, sound time and rhythm, the interaction of voices, melody, voice quality and timbre, and modality. Based on Halliday’s (1978) work in systemic functional linguistics, van Leeuwen developed a “systems network approach to sound premised on choices afforded by each semiotic resource” (Rowsell, 2013, p. 33). We recognize the significance of sound in the form of music and singing in particular as a rich and powerful cultural discourse for human communication with immense and yet relatively unexplored potential within an intergenerational multimodal literacies curriculum. 36

Intergenerational Multimodal Singing-Infused Curriculum

An intergenerational multimodal singing-infused curriculum is rich in its potential for fostering what Barrett (2012) referred to as an authentic music curriculum. We reframe such a curriculum which originated for children to be inclusive of participants of skipped generations. The curriculum can thereby focus attention on all participants as active agents in their own music making, the inclusion of the participants’ worlds (e.g., family, friends, communities), a holistic approach to their literacies and wellbeing, and a recognition of the importance of relationships in musical learning. Barrett claimed that “children have ‘in their ears’ the musical vocabulary of their sociocultural settings, a vocabulary that is diverse and complex” (p. 69). Through exposure to music making they bring an understanding that is rooted in their experiments with sound-making, which provides them with “a knowledge of how to manipulate materials to produce sound” (p. 70). Further, they have “a sense of what it is to move, to sway, to swing to music and to use a repertoire of ‘moves’ that ‘go’ with music experience” (p. 70). According to Barrett, “children bring a feeling for music, a sense of their own engagement with music and the role it plays in their lives and those of others. This is truly a rich starting point” (p. 70). The children in the program will have brought these capacities to class, perhaps reminding the elders of what they once knew or have always known, and the elders in turn brought to class their own capacities unique to their positioning in time. Recent research by Creech, Hallam, Varvarigou, and McQueen (2014), for example, has demonstrated the potential for singing to “function as a powerful vehicle that supports active aging” in ways that contribute to “social and emotional wellbeing” of older adults. Singing for elders can be a significant aid in activating memories, senses, emotions, and associations in meaning making. Heydon and Rowsell (2015) found that elders in their intergenerational program identified that although the practice of singing had changed over time, the “positive emotions associated with their memories of it brought pleasure to their interactions with the children” (p. 465). A poignant example by an elder participant illuminated the relationship between memories, modes, and participants: Sure…when [the teacher] was using the head and saying, you know, put down the [songs] that you keep in your head that are important to you…I believe it just creates thought processes, and for us [elders], we have memories that become more and more important as we get older, and we pass those on. The children are beginning to form their memories already, and the same with the heart idea. What’s important, that you keep in your heart…so those are good for family relationships as well. (p. 466) These relationships and forms of meaning making associated with singing in particular contributed to the basis of our multimodal literacy/wellbeing/intergenerational nexus within our curriculum-making endeavour as we sought to create opportunities for contributing new knowledge and understanding within a sensory-rich learning environment. 37

CHAPTER 2

Singing and Childhood Vocal sound in particular has fundamental significance in human communication. In this section, we describe singing practices and their relevance in childhood. Of import is that the practices do not involve children alone. While children may sing solo or with peers, singing as we discuss, is a dialogic practice that often involves an adult other. In intergenerational terms, the information we share is of equal import for the child and elder participants—it allows us to understand the origins of singing, the roles that diverse generations play in early singing, and the funds of knowledge and proficiencies once held or currently held by the elders in the program (from when they were children and potentially as parents and grandparents). Two main subsets of vocal sound are oral language or speech and vocal music or singing. These two subsets are often treated as separate and yet they overlap in important ways and are formed and shaped by cultural experiences. Both speech and singing have a common ontogeny and develop “from the same anatomical and physiological structures” (Welch, 2005, p. 239). Since babies have a tendency to explore and imitate vocally, their vocal sounds might be interpreted as musical (glissandi, melodic) or as precursors of prosody in speech. It is often difficult to distinguish the boundaries between musical and linguistic features—boundaries that have been blurred by researchers such as Finnegan (2015). People’s perception of whether vocal sounds are either musical or speech-like is a “product of the layers of enculturation that inform our socially constructed interpretations” (Welch, 2005, p. 239). And yet, because infants are sensitive to many extra-linguistic features within an auditory context, they are able to discriminate important musical features such as melodic contour (Trehub, Bull, & Thorpe, 1984; Trehub, Thorpe, & Morrongiello, 1985, 1987), harmonic intervals (Schellenberg & Trehub, 1996), rhythm (Trehub & Thorpe, 1989), tone patterns (Schellenberg & Trehub, 1994), and minority world versus majority world pitch and rhythm structures (Ilari, 2002). It is therefore expressed in the literature that musical elements are “essential perceptual building blocks” (Welch, 2005, p. 240) with an important role to play in the development of linguistic capacities. A baby’s euphonic cooing can be observed during interactions with adults within the first few weeks of life (Papoušek, 1996). In addition, infant-directed speech (Papoušek, 1996) (motherese or parentese) and infant-directed singing (Trehub, 2001) are a significant part of early communication between child and parent/ caregiver. According to Trehub (2003), a mother’s repertoire of songs for infants may be limited to a few lullabies and play songs “that are performed in an expressive and highly ritualized manner” (p. 671). The co-operative and co-dependent communicative interactions between mother and infant involving music, or their communicative musicality (Malloch, 1999), provides “an innate sense of motivated time,” and an innate source of impulsive expression in which there is a demonstrated “attitude, facial display, locomotion, voice, and gesture” which is multimodal in nature (p. 7). Malloch and Trevarthen (2008) further described the narrative of the 38

Intergenerational Multimodal Singing-Infused Curriculum

mother-infant interaction as being made up of the shared innate motives that the mother and infant initiate through joint partnership. The musical narrative generated through the companionship of two musical authors provides intentional expression and “a sense of sympathy and situated meaning” (p. 4). Evidence from anthropological and ethnomusicological sources have suggested that the practice of singing to infants and the use of songs in caregiving are “rooted in ancient traditions that have survived industrialization and urbanization” (Trehub & Trainor, 1998, p. 43). Songs are generally recognized as a universal form of musical self-expression. Historically, songs have been rooted in oral traditions and passed on from one generation to the next, and this practice continues throughout much of the world today. Within many cultures it is common to have relatively few distinct melodies, and the same melody is often heard with different words or lyrics. However, texts tend to differ from everyday spoken language “not only in being more formed and patterned, but by using special elaborating devices to increase beauty, memorableness, and effectiveness” (Dissanayake, 1992, p. 113). These songs tend to be repetitive and playful and often have “some autonomy from the bounds of ordinary semantics” (Trehub & Trainor, 1998, p. 44), often including “the use of foreign or archaic words freely altered pronunciation, and the addition of nonsense syllables for mellifluous effects (ee-ay-ee-ay-o) [which] can result in texts that are at least partly incomprehensible to singer and listener” (p. 44). Although play songs have received relatively little research attention to date, “most children sooner or later sing play songs together with their parents, and eventually sing play songs on their own” (p. 54). As such, play songs have an important role as “vehicles of enculturation” as they “provide joyous transitions from the protected world of intimate solo songs to the wider world of interpersonal games, animals, inanimate objects, numbers, letters, as well as particular rituals of the culture in question” (p. 55). The voice is a child’s first musical instrument. Barrett (2012) proposed two key elements that should be taken into consideration in developing a child’s singing capacity—musical play (including movement which is seen as an integral part of children’s early musical play) and the development of musical songs or a repertoire of music to sing. She described the “demanding set of tasks” (p. 74) involved in learning a new song as children need to listen carefully to the song, match their singing to that of others (in time and tune), control their breathing and their voice, remember the melody and words, understand and pronounce the text, sing with attention to the expressive qualities of the song (compare singing a lullaby with a marching song), perform actions and accompaniments, and work cooperatively with other singers in the performance of the song. Barrett has suggested that by choosing songs that name objects and mark events (including events in people’s lives) it is possible to “build children’s musical, kinaesthetic and vocal development in conjunction with their understandings of their worlds” (p. 74). She has also reminded us that despite the complexity involved in children’s singing, “children are competent in a range of cultural practices,” including singing, “before they arrive in 39

CHAPTER 2

an educational setting” (p. 78), and that young children are often eager to engage in singing and find it a “liberating experience” and a means of “communicating with the self and others” as a form of literacy that can “transcend words” (p. 78). Singing, Active Ageing, and Generativity in Adulthood The literature is also suggestive that singing is a vital communicative resource for the ageing adult, which may promote a version of wellbeing. In their book, Active Ageing with Music, Creech, Hallam, Varvarigou, and McQueen (2014) have described how community music-making amongst older adults may “preserve and sustain their cognitive, social, and emotional wellbeing throughout the latter stages of their lives” (p. x). Drawing on Laslett’s (1989) concept of later life, they also distinguished two phases of older age as the Third Age when older adults enjoy “a considerable degree of independence, autonomy, cognitive functioning, and wellbeing” (p. 4) and the Fourth Age when older adults experience “gradual disengagement and dependency” as their physical and mental abilities decline along with potential decreases in subjective wellbeing (Baltes & Smith, 2003). Laslett (1989) acknowledged the difficulty in attaching chronological ages to these later life transitions, as they represent a quality of life more than an age category. The World Health Organization (2002) had referred to the quality of life during the Third and Fourth Ages as active ageing, which has origins in activity theory and is defined as “the process of optimizing opportunities for health, participation and security to enhance the quality of life of ageing people” (p. 12). Creech et al. (2014) pointed out that active ageing (also referred to as optimal ageing) is a multidimensional concept “encompassing physical and mental function and social engagement” (p. 5); this stands in contrast to deficit theories of ageing and emphasizes instead the notion of developmental plasticity. Developmental plasticity has its roots in developmental systems theories (e.g., Cairns & Cairns, 2006; Gottlieb, Wahlsten, & Lickliter, 2006; Lerner, 2002, 2006; Overton, 2006) that are “predicated on a postmodern philosophical perspective that transcends Cartesian dualism” (Silbereisen & Lerner, 2007, p. 4). The approach rejects all separations between different components of the ecology of human development, for example between nature and nurture variables, continuity and discontinuity, and stability and instability. Instead, the focus is on systemic syntheses or integrations and relational thinking across all levels from the biological and physiological through to the cultural and historical. Developmental plasticity is viewed in the literature as a fundamental strength in human development, because it recognizes the potential for change in individual-context relations across the lifespan. Although the magnitude of change may vary in older adulthood, “the potential for and instantiations of plasticity legitimate an optimistic and proactive search for characteristics of individuals and of the ecologies that, together, can be arrayed to promote positive human development across life” (p. 5). Thus, planned attempts to enhance active ageing or the potential for positive change in older adulthood have taken on a renewed energy particularly 40

Intergenerational Multimodal Singing-Infused Curriculum

in relation to programs associated with leisure activities and social networking (McKenna et al., 1999). There is growing evidence of the positive benefits that older adults experience from singing, particularly in groups. In a review of 48 studies documenting the positive potential of singing among older adults Clift, Nicol, Raisbeck, Whitmore and Morrison (2010) found that group singing can enhance older adults’ social and personal wellbeing (Houston, McKee, Carroll, & Marsh, 1998; Lally, 2009; Sandgren, 2009; Wise, Hartmann, & Fisher, 1992; Zanini & Leao, 2006) as well as their ability to “continue to develop musically” (Taylor, 2011, p. 346). For example, Vanderark, Newman and Bell (1983) found that residents in a nursing home, aged 60–95 years, who participated in five weekly music activity sessions showed greater life satisfaction, attitude toward music, and music self-concept, compared with age-matched residents at another nursing home who had no music program. Other studies have revealed a greater impact on increases in quality of life among elders who participate actively in music making rather than merely listening to music (Burack, Jefferson, & Libow, 2002). Research has also shown the benefits of singing on general health and psychological wellbeing among older adults (Clift, Hancox, Staricoff, & Whitmore, 2008; Creech, Hallam, McQueen, & Varvarigou, 2013). There is evidence to suggest that singing may influence positive affect, focused attention, deep breathing, social support, cognitive stimulation, and regular commitment (Clift & Hancox, 2001; Clift, 2010; Michalos, 2005). According to Creech et al. (2013), to reap the full benefits of music, one cannot be passive or alone: “it is active engagement with music within social settings that has the greatest potential to contribute greatly to fulfilment of basic psychological needs” (p. 98). Such active, social, musical engagement provides older adults with a sense of purpose, autonomy, and control in their lives (Mitchell & MacDonald, 2011). Musical activities, such as singing, “offer a source of social affirmation whereby group collaboration and sense of community relies on individual contributions that are valued and celebrated” (Creech et al., 2013, p. 98). Through singing, older people “can re-connect with their youth, experience vitality, and feel empowered” by engaging in a “joyful and creative activity that all humans, regardless of age, have an entitlement to” (p. 98). Intergenerational practice in musical contexts has also been viewed as a powerful support for active ageing and wellbeing among older adults, particularly when related to the concept of generativity (Creech et al., 2014; O’Neill & Heydon, 2013). Generativity has been defined and theorized in two broad ways within the social sciences (Zandee, 2013). Both are concerned with the human need to make a valued contribution to the world and to help others to flourish, either through active intergenerational care and concern or through creative agency aimed at making the world a “better and brighter place” by opening up new possibilities and opportunities for hope, inspiration, and joy (Cooperrider, Zandee, Godwin, Avital, & Boland, 2013, p. xi). Gergen (1978) referred to generativity capacity as “the capacity to challenge the guiding assumptions of the culture, to raise fundamental questions 41

CHAPTER 2

regarding contemporary social life, to foster reconsideration of that which is ‘taken for granted’ and thereby furnish new alternatives for social actions” (p. 1346). This idea was taken up in education by Schön (1979) who viewed generativity as “nothing less than how we come to see things in new ways” (p. 255). Others, such as Cooperrider and his colleagues (2013), described generativity creation as a way of helping people discover, create and/or be presented with an image that enables them to experience themselves differently, rather than merely offering up explanations of the past. The image need not be new to everyone involved in the encounter, but it should be capable of being experienced as new and therefore able to evoke feelings that might help people “to see the world anew, identify new options, formulate new strategies, even reform their identity” (Bushe, 2013, p. 92). This is about possibilities. For Bushe (2013), a generative image is capable of cultivating one of more of the following four key qualities: they are surprising, they touch people’s heart and spirit, they inspire talking about and listening to stories that build relationships, and they enable people to look at reality differently. According to Post and Neimark (2007), in essence, generativity is the act of preparing another’s garden for spring. It’s power in the service of love. It’s an act of giving that enables another person to manifest his or her own strengths and gifts through love […] Generativity protects our mental and physical health across an entire lifespan. When we nurture others, we nurture ourselves. (p. 47) Generativity in this sense sounds similar to the flourishing discussed in Chapter One. The most prominent use of the concept of generativity in the literature has focused on adult development and how adults are concerned with establishing and guiding the next generation (McAdams & de St. Aubin, 1998). The origins of this conceptualization of generativity has interested philosophers since at least the time of Plato in terms of the need within adults to leave behind a positive legacy after death—something that will be remembered and passed on to future generations (Wakefield, 1998). This is in contrast to the stagnation that is associated with the sole focus on one’s own personal needs. Whereas generativity has been shown to benefit health and wellbeing in older adulthood, stagnation has been found to turn any potential growth inward and eventually stop it altogether. It was not so much that Plato referred to generativity as a concept specifically; rather, he embedded it within his discussion of love and the desire to leave something of worth behind after death. Love is capable of bringing out in people “what is good within” (Wakefield, 1998, p. 140), and a generative individual is motivated by love to create and nurture who and what is loved. Erikson (1963) also used the concept of generativity to refer to the “drive” (p. 287) and primary concern with establishing and guiding subsequent generations combined with experiences of caring, nurturing, and maintaining (Erikson, Erikson, & Kivnick, 1986). According to Wakefield (1998), generativity begins at the point in which an adult no longer wants to be a passive learner of information and skills but begins to desire a way to express his or her own ideas and values in ways that might leave a nurturing and enduring impression on someone 42

Intergenerational Multimodal Singing-Infused Curriculum

that is loved and connected to one’s self “toward future generations that thus expresses one’s values after one is gone” (p. 173). Becoming a parent is no guarantee of achieving generativity, as it is the practice of generative acts that determines its benefits to older adults whether the practices are with their own offspring or with other younger relatives or members of the community. Some have also claimed that generative practice additionally helps aging adults from becoming alienated and eventually cut off from young people. A leading figure in this research is the social psychologist Dan McAdams. McAdams and his colleagues have expressed that generativity is both a concept and a developmental phenomenon (McAdams & de St Aubin, 1998; McAdams et al., 1998), and this work is heavily influenced by the work of Giddens (1991) on self-identity. McAdams’s and Giddens’s research on generativity has shown implications for mental health and wellbeing, and its relationship to a range of psychologically and socially consequential outcomes (McAdams, 2001). Generativity matters “because it affects self-evaluation and how adults feel about their lives” (Keyes & Ryff, 1988, p. 232), and it connects past, present, and future as traditions and rituals are maintained and recreated in attempts to benefit future generations (St. Aubin, McAdams, & Kim, 2004, p. 11). The link between generativity and intergenerational music learning was explored before our multimodal curriculum. The literature shows that it was previously examined with older adults engaged in an 8-week intergenerational music program where they were joined by children from a local primary school in the UK to engage in creative sessions that included singing, songwriting, and experimentation with untuned percussion instruments (Varvarigou, Hallam, Creech, & McQueen, 2013). The researchers reported that the program “helped to break down stereotypes associated with ageing,” and that generativity “may help to explain the motivation amongst the older people, who shared songs of their generation with the children […] as well as contributing their own life experiences in creating new songs” (p. 104). The children in their study also reported feeling supported by the seniors in the group singing, which “encouraged a sense of musical security” (p. 105). Creech et al. (2014) argued that generativity is most likely to be supported when musical activity provides opportunities for older people to model for children the “vitality” that is possible in later life and that facilitators should “embrace frailty, not ignore it” when considering older and younger physical or other limitations so that interactions enable vibrancy and enthusiasm while giving children the opportunity “to encounter the life experience and emotional care and support” (p. 111). Earlier in this chapter we each shared a story about intergenerational encounters that we experienced with our grandparents. These memories highlighted ways in which multimodal meaning making was intergenerationally-derived—forged through relationships and creative forms of literacy, particularly those rooted in singing and the generative practice of our elders. Our intergenerational encounters created opportunities for engaging in multimodal practices that supported expansive literacy and identity options. We attempted to mobilize and sustain these kinds of affordances for the participants in the study through a systematic intergenerational 43

CHAPTER 2

multimodal, singing-infused curriculum that emphasized relationship-building and identity options that were intended to foster wellbeing. Intergenerational and Shared Singing Curricula In building the program, we began with a definition of intergenerational singing programs as “the purposeful bringing together of different generations” for the teaching, learning, and sharing of singing in a “mutually beneficial” fashion (Ayala, Hewson, Bray, Jones, & Hartley, 2007, p. 5). Our aim was to introduce singing into a preexisting intergenerational art curriculum to leverage its established strengths (e.g., established infrastructure and relationships) and provide new opportunities for intergenerational relationships and enhanced literacy and identity options. Despite its potential, the prevalence of intergenerational singing programs may be minimal according to a study carried out in a Canadian city by members of our AIRS team (Beynon, Heydon, O’Neill, Zhang, & Crocker, 2013). The findings indicated that the challenges and barriers to the initiation and sustaining of intergenerational singing programs have included systemic and physical impediments, such as lack of funding and accessibility and concerns about the spread of germs and outbreaks of infection. These concerns point to wider beliefs about the ageing process that determine outcomes such as physical spaces and inclusive activities. For example, that idea that social disengagement is a natural part of the ageing process has been the subject of much debate for decades (e.g., Cumming & Henry, 1961) and a key factor in determining the physical spaces that people inhabit and the activities that they engage in relates to their mobility or level of physical functioning. As physical functioning declines, such as balance and hearing, older adults are more likely to occupy spaces that separate them from children. They may withdraw from certain activities and this creates further barriers to interaction between generations. Although cognitive function varies greatly with age and can also be a contributing factor in reducing interactions between generations, it is more likely that differences in conversational style and speed of dialogue are contributing factors as older adults may become less confident and therefore more likely to avoid contact with young people (Lloyd, 2008). Consideration of these factors is a crucial component in helping to foster relationships through intergenerational curricula. Singing in particular has been found to be effective at providing opportunities for people with various levels of communicative abilities to engage in meaningful ways (Creech et al., 2014). When combined with the literature on intergenerational curricula, a host of overlapping connections and continuities with shared singing activities can be seen. Figure 2.1 highlights these. The left side of the figure itemizes imperatives for intergenerational curricula identified in the literature and the right side the imperatives for shared singing. The arrows going between designate direct overlaps in the imperatives that we sought to infuse in the curriculum we developed. The mass of arrows suggests the substantial continuities between these imperatives and their content denotes an emphasis on singing and intergenerational curricula as situated 44

Intergenerational Multimodal Singing-Infused Curriculum

social practices that we interpret as ideally promoting literacy and identity options within and through relationships, hence promoting wellbeing. The intergenerational curricula we implemented in the study was at a shared site where participants inhabited structures (physical and programmatic) that created opportunities for myriad intergenerational interaction and relationship-building as described by Heydon (2013a). These included the purposeful establishment of curricula that fulfilled the requirements described earlier including equal group status (Jarrott, 2011), “building on respective strengths” (Kaplan et al., 2003, p. 7), and creating opportunities for expanding participants’ literacy and identity options (Heydon, 2007). The notion of identity options draws on Cummins’s (2000) conceptualization of the multidimensional nature of identity and identity formation as closely related to interpersonal space/power relations in teacher-learner “micro-interactions” (p. 15) whereby coercive relations of power can narrow learners’ identity options whereas collaborative relations can open up identity options. Within collaborative relationships where power is created with others and “shared within a collaborative interpersonal space” it is possible for forms of communication and identities to meet (Heydon, 2007, pp. 13–14).

Figure 2.1. Relationship between imperatives identified for intergenerational and shared singing

There are numerous overlaps between the imperatives of intergenerational curricula and shared singing programs. Many shared singing programs are considered beneficial and on-going, as well as having particular personal and social significance or meaningfulness for participants. Shared singing programs offer a “rich expressive space” (Wood, 2010) that can empower participants to not only change how they think about their everyday reality, “but also to change that reality” (p. 167). Further, as Green (2005) indicated, “music is not merely a symptom of our musical practices and meanings, but it acts back on us, through its capacity to influence our beliefs, values, feelings or behaviour […] it affords 45

CHAPTER 2

different responses” (p. 235 original emphasis). Referential multimodal meaning making and the ability to make meaning from music develops from an early age with preschool children demonstrating their ability to relate musical forms to extramusical concepts, such as matching an excerpt from Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf to a picture of a wolf, bird, cat, or duck (Trainor & Trehub, 1992). Music can also evoke powerful emotional responses in both old and young, and the psychological functions associated with music and other multidimensional constructs such as coping, emotional regulation, and empathy-related responses have been documented (Clark & Giacomantonio, 2015). Finally, as a multimodal literacy practice, there is a strong social dimension to music that plays a significant role in creating social cohesion, community, and a sense of belongingness. For example, Allison (2008) found that music helped elders in a residential care facility to construct a sense of community despite having wide variation in physical and cognitive capacities. Miell, MacDonald and Hargreaves (2005) described music as “something we do with and for other people,” and therefore it both contributes to a sense of community and provides “a fundamental channel of communication” and “a vital lifeline of human interaction for those whose special needs make other means of communication difficult” (p. 1). Music is also deeply connected with people’s sense of personhood and identities that are complex, multilayered, and in a continual process of growth and transformation (O’Neill, 2012b). As DeNora (2000) has stated, “music’s ‘effects’ come from the ways in which individuals orient to it, how they interpret it and how they place it within their personal musical maps, within the semiotic web of music and extra-musical associations” (p. 61). Finally, as discussed previously in relation to communicative musicality (Malloch & Trevarthen, 2008) and music learning authenticity (Green, 2008), shared singing is also a material social practice (Horner, 1998) that replaces the dominant understanding of music as an object or “work of art” with “an understanding of music as a socially-located activity defined in terms of historical, social, material specificity” (p. 161). Materially, singing is a unique practice. Singing originates in the body and shared singing is visceral—a literal physical connection between the self and (an)other. From this perspective, the musical meaning associated with shared singing and intergenerational curricula is grounded in the socio-material embodiments and interconnectivity of sound, experience, and participants and in relation to other modes that may be part of a given situation. THE STUDY

The project we present in Why Multimodal Literacy Matters contained a study component designed to “identify and gain analytic insight into the dimensions, dynamics” (Dyson & Genishi, 2005, p. 81) and consequences of the multimodal singing-infused intergenerational curriculum. The program focused on singing and art and created opportunities for participants to move a concept across modes. 46

Intergenerational Multimodal Singing-Infused Curriculum

Transformation (Pahl, 1999) is the movement of ideas across modes, and the connected, cumulative practices and products of communication create a semiotic chain. These chains are understood to afford opportunities for the development and expression of creativity and concept development (Stein, 2008) and are the basis of the multimodal pedagogies introduced in chapter one which “work consciously and systematically across semiotic modes in order to unleash creativity, reshape knowledge and develop different forms of learning beyond the linguistic” (p. 123). The program was built to capitalize on semiotic chains and the participants’ familiarity with art to help support singing. We wondered how working with visual texts might support the practice of aural texts (singing) as a new mode and what singing might afford that the visual alone could not. We used a participatory research and curriculum development protocol that involved working with the educators, recreation staff, and administrators at a shared intergenerational site. Specifically, we adopted a participatory curriculum development model (McDonald, Evans, & Nyce, 1999) whose principles emphasize that stakeholders (i.e., professionals at the sites) be “involved” as “participants and as agents” of the research and that the “product and the process of research…benefit the community” (p. 4). The phases were as follows: • Initiation: After ethical review, we entered the field and attempted to establish “explicit recognition of mutual autonomy” which is an acknowledgement of the “mutual but distinct interests” (p. 5) of the stakeholders. The stakeholders here included the elders and the staff responsible to them, the children and the staff responsible to them, and our research team. We attempted to have these interests guide the entire protocol. • Planning: The logistics of the curricular implementation were arranged to the satisfaction of the stakeholders (e.g., schedule, etc.). • Curriculum Development: Drawing on the literature, our experience and expertise in designing intergenerational multimodal curricula, the programmatic curricula we have designed (e.g., Heydon, 2013a), our knowledge of the modes involved (e.g., singing), and the knowledge of the stakeholders, the scope and sequence of the programmatic curriculum were planned. • Implementation and Assessment: Our research team implemented the first cycle of the curriculum (7 sessions) with informal assessments (i.e., participant observation) directing new sessions. After the first cycle of activity, site staff took over. • Expansion: We repeated these phases in two new sites, each purposefully selected to provide different ages of children (e.g., from preschool to kindergarten, to grade 3) and different program structures (e.g., from a shared site, to a school visiting a retirement home, to a school and community elders meeting in a community room). Why Multimodal Literacy Matters is based on the first iteration of the curriculum we developed and implemented.

47

CHAPTER 2

Methodology and Data Collection The research sought to grasp how to expand participants’ literacy and identity options as well as intergenerational relationships through intergenerational multimodal curricula that leveraged, in particular, the affordances of singing and produced an empirically-based theoretical framework for understanding multimodal curricula and wellbeing for people across the lifespan. The study design sought to attain these objectives through a systematic empirical investigation built on the strengths of an exploratory case study methodology with ethnographic data collection tools. These tools were useful in our attempt to capture all aspects of the programmatic curriculum development, classroom curriculum, and effects. We were interested in divergence and diversity of information within the case and used an emergent research design where qualitative data and analyses contributed to building a theoretical framework. The most apt tools were leveraged for data collection in and out of intergenerational sessions. Prior to Sessions: Like Andrade and Urquhart (2010) members of the research team collected background information about the site, including its previous intergenerational programs and stakeholder preferences during the Initiation and Planning phases. In Sessions: Sessions were captured through videotaped participant observation, audio taped discussions between participants directly before, during, and after sessions, audio taped informal discussions with participants during the course of the sessions (e.g., about what they were making, how, and why in the art component), field notes, photographs of participant interactions and artifacts, and documentation of artifacts made by the participants (e.g., song books, songs). Between Sessions: The creation of the programmatic curriculum and assessments of the classroom curriculum were achieved by archiving communications (e.g., emails, etc.) with stakeholders during relevant activities and documenting planning and debriefing meetings (e.g., between the research team, recreation therapist, and early childhood educator). After Sessions: At the close of the final lesson that we implemented which constituted one cycle of activity, we administered specific interview protocol to suit the children and the elders. The children’s protocol (adapted from O’Neill, 2012a) sought to elicit information about the participants’ perspectives on recent intergenerational experiences and experiences with the modes and media of the curriculum (most specifically singing), the value of these activities, and the initiators, sustainers and perceived benefits of engaging in intergenerational and multimodal activities. The elders’ protocol was similar and designed to elicit the same information plus information about elders’ perspectives on past experiences with the modes and media of the curriculum (again with an emphasis on singing), the impact of the curriculum on their lives and sense of generativity (McAdams & de St. Aubin, 1998) which informs identity options. These data were differently analyzed depending on the specific element of intergenerational multimodal curricula 48

Intergenerational Multimodal Singing-Infused Curriculum

that interested us. Significantly, our interests and investments were surely informed by our own histories and attachments—some of which we shared in our narratives. We are present in the pages of this book—embodied, desiring, and aware of our own places in the continuum of life. THE SCENE OF THE PROGRAM

The first site of the project, and the basis for this book, was Picasso retirement home that had Picasso Child, a child care centre on site. Picasso was located in a midsize southwestern Canadian city. Participants were 7 elders who lived at Picasso, 8 kindergarten-aged children who attended the half-day child care program at the site and a half-day kindergarten program at local school, and 6 employees/volunteers.1 Led by an early childhood educator and recreation therapist, the group of children and elders were scheduled to meet once a week for approximately one hour from September to May for an art program which Rachel had introduced to the site five years prior. Within the existing program along with music researcher and choral conductor, Carol Beynon, we introduced singing as a new mode across seven sessions beginning in the middle of January. Wendy Crocker, an AIRS research assistant who had been involved in the art program, was the lead instructor for the sessions and participants knew her well. Together with the site, we reasoned a January start date would give participants ample opportunity to become familiar with each other and routines. Note that while most of the adults were returning participants to the class, this was a new group of children given that previous year’s group had graduated to grade one and full-time school. Each of the program sessions invited participants to engage in a semiotic chain by moving a focal idea designed to elicit participants’ funds of knowledge and interests across visual and aural modes (e.g., print text, musical score, visual representation, singing, and talking) (see Table 2.1). Individual sessions followed a pattern established through previous intergenerational art curricula (Heydon, 2007; Heydon, 2013a) and adapted to the inclusion of singing: • strategies to (re)acquaint participants with each other and foster community and a sense of safety (e.g., singing of a Gathering Song); • a catalyst for that day’s session that could induce conversation and singing; • explicit instruction, modeling, and support to work through the project and learn new songs introduced in session; • sustained opportunities to work on the project, draw on fellow participants for support, and have informal singing time; • opportunities to focus on singing and the songs generated from class; and • closure to the session (e.g., a Goodbye Song). The total sessions formed a semiotic chain that transitioned from emphasizing the knowledge and interests of participants (e.g., Songs in my Head) to the class and the world (e.g., Songs of Us for the World) across modes (see Table 2.1). The visual texts were used throughout the program in general to support the singing and initially 49

CHAPTER 2

Table 2.1. Curriculum scope and sequence Session # Title and focus of session

Visual text connections

New song contributed to Repertoire and then taught to the class

#1

Songs in our Heads: Self-portrait Collage Ear-worms and songs we know well

Welcome Song (origin: the children’s welcome song from their child care room) The More We Get Together (origin: the children’s welcome song from their child care room) How Much is that Doggie in the Window? (origin: from adult participant Nora generated from the Songs in Our Heads project) Closing Song (origin: the children’s welcome song from their child care room)

#2

Songs in our Hearts: Songs that are special to us

Drawn Heart Maps

Pardners (origin: new song introduced by programmatic curriculum to correspond with day’s focus)

#3

Being Together Makes Me Want to Sing: Songs about being together

Intergenerational Clap Your Hands (origin: new song Hands Painting introduced by programmatic curriculum to correspond with day’s focus) He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands (origin: adult participant Dan)

#4

Teaching You About Multimedia Me: Songs that tell Accordion Books about who we are

Aiken Drum (origin: new song introduced by programmatic curriculum to correspond with day’s focus)

#5

Singing I Spy: Songs about the world outside our windows

Mr. Sun (origin: new song introduced by programmatic curriculum to correspond with day’s focus) I Can Sing a Rainbow (origin: children from their child care classroom) Robin in the Rain (origin: adult participant Dan)

#6

My Neighbourhood Drawn Mural Sings: Songs about the streets where we live

#7

Songs of Us for the Portrait Painting Down by the Bay World: Song book of songs we create about each other

50

Marker on Fabric Quilt

What Are the Buildings in Our Neighbourhood (to the tune of People in Your Neighbourhood) (origin: new song introduced by programmatic curriculum to correspond with day’s focus) Old MacDonald had a Farm (origin: adult participant Nora)

Intergenerational Multimodal Singing-Infused Curriculum

were used to elicit songs from participants that could become the repertoire for the program. New songs were sung and in the following week added to a participant’s song book. Specifically, when a song was elicited by a participant one week, in the next we would teach it and provide copies of the lyrics (and sometimes music) plus an icon for identification which participants could insert into their book. Participants’ visual texts also went into the books. Table 2.1, Curriculum Scope and Sequence, shows the focus for each session, the media for the visual texts and the songs that formed the repertoire, when they were introduced, and their origins. In the next chapter we turn to the detailed descriptions of each of these seven lessons as they were enacted in the classroom curriculum. The chapter is organized as extended lesson plans where the programmatic curriculum is laid out with the samples of classroom multimodal curriculum and pedagogies written as vignettes to illustrate. Therein we emphasize description, aimed at illustrating for readers the machinations of the programmatic and classroom curricula, including possibilities of such curricula (i.e., what can be done and with what effects). Later, in chapter four, we focus on emotions and the communal engagement of elders and children and the ways in which singing within multimodal curricula can facilitate it, hence leading to our offer for theorizing wellbeing. NOTE 1

Participation in the program was not contingent on participation in the study, thus there were other adults who participated in the program but not the study.

51

CHAPTER 3

THE CURRICULUM

In this third chapter we offer descriptions of the specific lessons1 in the program in the hopes of providing concrete curricular materials for people interested in designing similar curricula as well as for providing the basis for understanding what actually happened in the program such that we can later forward an understanding of why multimodal literacy might matter to people’s wellbeing. We have organized the lessons so as to delineate their components and attempt to bring aspects of them to life through illustrations and narratives of the classroom curriculum (i.e., what happened when the programmatic curriculum met up with the realities of the particular teaching and learning situation). We designed the narratives from a triangulation of research data and artefacts (e.g., visual and aural texts) generated by the participants during the course of the program. To set the classroom curriculum sections apart from the programmatic curriculum, we italicized these sections and wrote them in the present tense to actively invite readers into the program. We generally organized the presentations of the lessons in ten segments: • First is the learning opportunities that we planned for in the lesson. • Second is a list of materials. • Third are technical tips we learned in implementing the programmatic curriculum in this program as well as in similar programs (e.g., Heydon & Daly, 2008). These tips are usually directed towards accommodating children and elders’ facility with the various media in the classes. • Fourth is an overview of the parts of the lesson so that readers can catch a snapshot of the whole session. • Given the pertinence of building relationship, fifth is a description of how we helped set the stage for community building at the outset of the classes. • Sixth is the catalyst to provide support to participants to think about what they wanted to signify throughout the semiotic chain that would be created that day (e.g., the topic or thought for the day). This big idea for the session was always selected with intergenerational relationships in mind (i.e., what topic would be meaningful to both generations and spark collaboration and conversation?). • Seven involves the details on how participants were supported through explicit instruction and modelling to learn to manipulate the modes and media in the session. • Eight highlights narratives about the time working on the visual and aural texts. • Nine is the closure to the visual texts. • And ten is closure of the aural texts. 53

CHAPTER 3

We introduced the seven-lesson sequence into the intergenerational art program where Rachel’s research began about five years earlier. The children and elders knew each other, but singing was new in the program. We created an introductory lesson to provide an entrée into singing for the participants through the medium of collage to uncover the songs that were foremost in the participants’ minds (see Figure 3.1). As the participants added images that referred to the songs that were in their heads, they were encouraged to hum or sing a few bars of the song. At the conclusion of the lesson participants were invited to share their products with the whole group and link across modes by showing their visual texts, talking about them, and linking to their chosen songs. This first lesson also introduced a welcome song and a goodbye song that later served to establish the routine of singing gathering and closing songs to bookend the sessions. THE LESSONS

Lesson One: Songs in Our Heads

Figure 3.1. Sample songs in our heads

Learning Opportunities The Songs in Our Heads lesson was designed to offer learning opportunities pertinent to developing facility across modes and establishing and solidifying relationships between participants, both of which are necessary for expanding literacy and identity options. The learning opportunities in this lesson include: 54

THE CURRICULUM

• Acquiring and refining fine motor practices and using tools necessary for visual communication (e.g., cutting and pasting); • Practicing known and familiar songs; • Learning new songs; • Recognizing differences and similarities of songs across skipped generations; • Observing the relationship between visual and aural modes (e.g., seeing what a song might look like; relating an image to a song). Materials • • • •

a silhouette of a head on 8.5×11 drawing paper for each participant (see Figure 3.2) scissors glue a wide selection of magazines, newspapers, brochures, and other sources of image from which to make their collage • plain paper • coloured pencils • an assortment of shakers

Figure 3.2. Sample silhouette

Tips • Select scissors that are easy to grip for both generations and sharp enough to cut the paper without tearing. Different sizes of scissors were needed to accommodate small and large hands. 55

CHAPTER 3

• Whenever we provided images for collage, we considered the purpose and strategically included in the selection of images those that might have been most useful to participants (i.e., that fit in with a theme or the content of the project). • To create more opportunities for intergenerational interaction, when appropriate, we encouraged the sharing of materials and invited participants to pass materials out to each other. • Providing shakers created opportunity for all participants to be included in songmaking. Overview of Parts of the Lesson The lesson structure was designed to follow the general format from strategies to (re)acquaint participants with each other to closing, yet because this lesson opened the sessions it was meant to also help establish routines. Setting up the Stage for Community Building We set up seating so that participants were safe and comfortable (e.g., arms on chairs were particularly important for elders), could easily access materials and see the educator, and interact across generations. We opened the session by asking the children, “What song do you sing to each other when you first come together each day?” and encouraged the children to sing their “Hello” song with the adults joining in if/when they were comfortable (e.g., “Let’s sing that song again so that everyone gets to know the song as a way of saying Hello to each other”). We sang the song again inviting everyone to join in. Examples from the classroom curriculum at Picasso.  At Picasso, the children’s welcome song from the child care centre is brought into the session by Wendy, the research assistant who is instructing the sessions. Before class Wendy met with Penny, the early childhood educator from the child care centre, to find out what welcome songs the children are used to singing so that the children could share one of these songs with the adults on the first day. On that first day all of the participants are sitting along a horseshoe, child, child, adult, child, child, adult, forming pairs waiting for class to begin. Wendy enters the room with a box full of materials and the participants—young and old—glue their eyes to the box. Wendy picks up on the group’s interest and focuses on the new mode in relation to the more familiar modes by saying, “I have a full bag of goodies that we are going to use today. But the first thing we are going to use today isn’t scissors, or glue. The first thing we are going to use today is our voices.” Wendy then calls on the children’s funds of knowledge to be a feature of class. She says, “And I know that our little friends were just practicing something that we would like to share with everyone this morning.” This is when Wendy and Penny start to sing and the children cheerfully join in clapping the rhythm with their hands: 56

THE CURRICULUM

Good morning, good morning, Good morning to you, Good morning, good morning, And how do you do? The exuberance of the children is evidently catching as the adults join in, albeit some tentatively at first. Wendy, Penny, and the children continue to lead the next part of the song which is sung to the tune of  The More We Get Together (1976): Oh here we are together, together, together, Oh here we are together, together, together, All sitting on the floor. This last line of the song procures a few puzzled looks from some of the participants and even a smile or two. At this time, however, no one makes any modification to the song which fits the context in the child care centre but not in the intergenerational setting where everyone is sitting on chairs. The song next calls for the introduction of everyone’s first names. Penny points to volunteer John and says, “We’ll start here!” She leads, “There’s: John, and Charles, and Caden, and Iris, and Hester, and Dan, and Charlotte, and Nora, and Charlotte B. and Betty, and Brayden…Oh here we are together, together, together, all sitting on our chairs! Penny emphasizes chairs and the group seems to enjoy this remix. The successful singing of this song allows Wendy to make a suggestion to the adults, “So when we get together why don’t we borrow that song from our little friends so that we all know who’s here and what everybody’s name is.” There seems to be consent given around the table. The class moves on to establishing the ground for connection-making. Knowing that participants, especially the adults, might miss hearing others’ names during the song, and recognizing the importance of the naming ritual to relationship-building, Wendy points to John and asks, “Did we hear who this is?” “John!” exclaims the children while the adults smile on. This name game continues until all the participants, educators, and volunteers are known by name. The Catalyst After establishing connections, we provided a catalyst for the day’s project. The purpose was to induce conversation amongst participants and focus on the content of the project and the modes and media that we would be using. Specifically with this lesson, we invited the group to consider if they had ever had a song stuck in their heads then supported them to talk about and sing some of these songs. From the classroom curriculum at Picasso.  Following introductions Wendy provides a catalyst for the session’s focal project beginning with the visual mode 57

CHAPTER 3

and the medium of collage which she knows is familiar to many participants. Wendy creates intrigue by saying, “We are going to do something today called collage…we are going to use magazines, we are going to use paper, we are going to use colored paper…everything on the collage today has to be cut out and glued on. The collage we are going to do today is about…?” Wendy whispers in Brayden’s ear and then Brayden enthusiastically shares with the group, “Songs!” Explicit Instruction, Modelling, and Support Once participants were excited about the foci of the session, we provided explicit instruction, modelling, and support so that they might know how to use the requisite modes and media. Using the chart stand and a silhouette of a head, we modelled the day’s project and explained, “The art technique that we are using today is called collage. Artists use collage from a variety of different materials like cloth, paint, wire, and different textures, but today we are using print images and paper. In collage, you try to represent your idea by using different images to make something. You can take these images from magazines or other places or by colouring and using paper to create a shape. Because we are thinking about the songs that get stuck in our heads today, that is what we are going to use as our collage idea.” We modelled aloud what images represented the songs that were in their heads and narrated as they cut and drew in front of the participants. We hummed or sang the songs as we went along so that the participants could see the collage and hear the songs, thus making the connection between the modes. We choose 3 or 4 songs to represent and included an echo song, a favourite song that we thought would be well known, and one song that was likely new. This selection of songs provided a starting point for shared singing. We encouraged the participants to think of the songs that were in their heads by humming the song or thinking of how to represent the song. We asked for volunteers to sing a song in their heads and have others join in who knew the song. After several children and adults shared their songs, participants assisted each other with the passing out of materials. Paper and coloured pencils were available for participants to draw an image if they were unable to find one to cut out. From the classroom curriculum at Picasso.  Wendy shifts into providing explicit support for the participants regarding how to create the collage. She scaffolds the technical information and the content that would be needed to create the collage. Wendy begins with a story. She narrates how that morning she heard a song on the radio, and this song became stuck in her head: “Every time I’m thinking I hear that song!” Wendy gestures toward one of the researchers, “My friend says that this is an ear-worm. Today we are going to think about the songs that are in your heads, and you are going to do a collage [about that].” Wendy refers now to the materials that she set up at her easel. She demonstrates creating the collage while she thinks aloud, “I have to have something that looks like…myself… This is what my head looks like 58

THE CURRICULUM

today.” Wendy posts the silhouette on the easel. “Notice that it is not full of much,” Wendy jokes, “I went through some magazines first thing this morning and I thought: hmm…I wonder if some of these things are able to show you some of the songs in my head. So this is the song that goes round and round and round in my head.” This is Wendy’s segue into getting people singing. Wendy looks at her silhouette and then turns to Rachel. She asks if she has ever had an echo song get stuck in her head. An echo song is a sure way to support people to sing. Rachel replies, “There is a song that always gets stuck in my head. It’s an echo song and it goes like this, Sing what I sing. Sing after me. Be my echo If you can be. Rachel pauses and Wendy turns to the children to ensure they understand what is being implicitly asked of them, “Do you know what an echo is? You are hearing a lot of big words this morning…” Charlotte B. tentatively offers, “When you say something it says something back.” Wendy continues the conversation by offering an example, “So if I was to say something and you say it back you say exactly the same thing. If I say hello, you say…” “Hello!” everyone chimes. Wendy tests the group further, “If I say, how are you? You say…” “How are you?” the whole group responds. Wendy playfully acknowledges, “Oh I did not trick you. I was sure you’d say fine. But an echo would not say that. It would say the exactly the same thing that I say… Here we go…” and Wendy leads the group into singing the rest of the echo song that Rachel began. Following a lively singing of the song, which gets everyone involved, Wendy returns to her collage, explaining the content of what she wants to be there and the image that she will use to communicate it, “So I’m going to put that song in my head looking like notes in my head.” Next she offers advice on the materials, “You are going to use glue. Here is what I sang…” Wendy glues one musical note onto the silhouette adding, “and here is what you sang that was the ‘echo’.” She adds a new note. Wendy reviews what the images are communicating and relates mode to mode. She points to the images in the silhouette, “Here is what I sang again like: tra la la, and here is what you sang, tra la la.” With the second tra la la the whole group sings with Wendy. Wendy now sums up with, “And there is the echo song in my head.” She asks, “Does it look like an echo? Kind of…But if I look at that I’ll remember that we sang the song in my head that was called Sing After Me (1979).” Wendy also models a different way to manipulate the media. In the event that participants could not find a desired image in the stock of images, Wendy 59

CHAPTER 3

demonstrates how to create one. She offers, “Now I have another song in my head, and I was thinking it was kind of like this,” Wendy picks up a piece of paper, and shares, “…I’m going to hum it while I make the thing in my head… So it goes like this…” and Wendy hums Suzy Snowflake (1951) while she cuts. Wendy selects this song, because when she visited the early childhood centre earlier, she discovered it was a song the children were learning. Again, Wendy builds on funds of knowledge. Right on cue Penny signals to the children, “You guys know that song!’ Immediately the children join Wendy and then Penny in singing the song. Following the singing Wendy turns back to the visual text, “What is that [song] called?” she asks. Brayden exclaims, “Suzy Snowflake!” “So what do you think this is in my hand?” ponders Wendy while completing her cutting for the silhouette. “A snowflake!” respond both Marian, an adult participant, and Brayden. After this intergenerational connection, Wendy finishes the lesson by reinforcing the link between the visual and aural texts offering, “This was a paper in the recycling bin. But now it is a beautiful snowflake for the song in my head…so when I look at this, I’m going to know that it is also the song about Suzy the snowflake.” With the last song the children have a chance to shine and now it is time for the curriculum to build on the adults’ funds of knowledge, so Wendy offers a third song that is well-known from the adults’ era. She shares, “Oh! I know another song. My husband loves to ride his bicycle so I was thinking of this song…” and she sings Daisy Bell (Bicycle Built for Two) (1892). The adults in the room immediately join in. Last for the songs in this modelling stage of the class, the curriculum brings the children and adults together to send them off to work on their own projects singing The More We Get Together (1976). Wendy hums and both generations recognize the song and sing it. When the group gets to the last line, “The more we get together the happier we’ll be,” Wendy turns to an image she is holding and inquires, “So, what shape is this?” “A heart,” responds Charlotte B. “Why would I be cutting something out in that shape? What do you think Hester?” Wendy asks one of the children. Adult participant Iris whispers to Hester. Wendy notices and says with a smile, “Iris is so smart; she is telling you all the right answers, isn’t she? Why would it be this shape? Because it is about…” “Love…” announces the class. “And people that you care about. So when I know I’m coming to Picasso, I absolutely have to have a heart. So, there are the songs that are in my head,” and Wendy points toward the images in the silhouette. It is now time to work on the project. Wendy provides a bridge to this, “So now we have to have a quiet time, because I can’t see inside your head. You are the only one that knows what is going on in there…you have to have some quiet time and think about the songs that are in 60

THE CURRICULUM

your head…they probably won’t be the same ones as mine, but I bet they are special songs to you…” Working on the Project The bulk of the session time involved working on the project. We facilitated interaction by inviting participants to share ideas and songs and assist each other with technical issues (e.g., finding images, cutting, etc.) across generations. For instance, if participants requested support from an educator, the educator might address their needs while trying to redirect them to each other (e.g., “Oh Sarah, I think your friend Mabel here might have some ideas.”). From the classroom curriculum at Picasso.  The period working on this project is far from an individual, quiet time; it is full of talk, song, laughter, and collaboration.

Figure 3.3. Working on songs in our heads

61

CHAPTER 3

As they create their visual texts, the participants, aided by Wendy, Penny, and the volunteers (which include some members of the research team) punctuate the atmosphere with joyful singing. In response to an image in one of the children’s silhouette, Wendy hums Five Little Frogs (1976). In no time participants at that end of the table all sing along and the children delight at the “Yum! Yum!” part of the song. Betty and Brayden discuss what they are doing with their silhouettes while they share materials. Dan, Hester, and Charlotte also share ideas and materials. Hester successfully enlists help to find a horse for the song Old MacDonald had a Farm (2014) and an image of the rain for Rain, Rain, Go Away (2007). Across the room, Rachel and Nora discuss Charlotte’s image of dogs, and Nora recalls the song How Much Is That Doggie in the Window (1952). Rachel brokers some more intergenerational interaction by asking Charlotte if she knows Nora’s song. When the answer is no, Rachel invites Nora to sing it with her. The two are not singing alone for long as another person joins in and then another and another until finally everyone is singing. Brayden takes particular pleasure in belting out emphatic barks at the end of each line. This song becomes a favourite of many with participants asking to sing it during each subsequent session. It becomes so popular that in exit interviews adult participant Keith complains that he is sick of the song. Not every song catches on and so those facilitating the sessions have to be responsive to the interests and funds of knowledge of the group. Adult Iris, for instance, wants to sing a song about a cat. Wendy thus begins to sing, I Know a Little Pussy (1980). This song does not catch on, even with Iris, so Wendy tries, Pussy Cat Pussy Cat (2008) and after the first verse the participants at that side of the table become animated and sing along. Eventually, Iris ends up with this song as well as Frosty the Snowman (1995), I’ve Been Working on the Railroad (1990), and I’ve Got the Yes! We Have No Bananas (1922) on her visual text. To further document these songs a volunteer helps Iris write them down on the reverse of the silhouette. Contemporary popular songs also enter the mix. Hester has a tune in her head that she wants to put to lyrics. She asks Iris, her adult partner, if she can sing any songs by Hannah Montana. Hester sings a bit of the tune, and noticing Iris’ confusion, Rachel picks up on the request and sings Party in the USA (2009). Hester eagerly confirms that the lyrics are correct, and this is just the song she wanted. Hester picks up singing the song. On the opposite side of the table, the song repertoire in Brayden’s silhouette shows a range of song choices. One of these is a song he said is his mother’s “favourite.” He shares that she sings it to him each night before bed. Keith cannot discern the song and names all the lullabies he knows looking for the right song. Rachel tries to help too to no avail. Finally, after Brayden really belts out the song Rachel realizes it is the pop song by Usher, DJ Got Us Fallin’ in Love (2010). Keith gets a chuckle out of this being Brayden’s lullaby. 62

THE CURRICULUM

Closure Part I We created opportunities for the sharing of songs and the images that referred to them. We invited participants to share their favourite image in their silhouette and see if others could guess the song that it referred to. Alternatively or in addition to this, facilitators might invite a participant to show the group his/her silhouette and hum or sing one song that is in the collage. From the classroom curriculum at Picasso.  Wendy announces, “Nice job, everyone! Just have the head in front of you! Look at all these songs…amazing! [Let’s] go around and visit everybody’s heads and see the songs in their heads…” Beginning with a child, Wendy invites, “Hester, can you tell us about some of the songs that are in your head?” Wendy holds up Hester’s visual text [see Figure 3.4]

Figure 3.4. Hester’s songs in our head

63

CHAPTER 3

Wendy points to the image of a smiling woman on the silhouette and inquires, “What’s this one?” “USA” said Hester. Wendy looks confused as she tries to put the song together with the image: “Pardon?” “USA” repeats Hester patiently. Wendy looks as though she now understands: “Oh, is this the Hannah Montana, Party In The USA?” Hester nods. It seems the smiling woman is a stand-in for Hannah Montana. Wendy continues: “Perfect! How about this one?” Wendy points at a cut-out that Hester designed herself which Wendy knows from observing earlier is meant to signal a lily pad. As such, she begins to sing, “Five green and speckled frogs sat on a speckled log, eating some…” “Most delicious bugs” responds Hester engaging in a singing dialogue. Wendy: “Yum, yum! One jumped…” Hester: “Into the pond.” Wendy: “Where it was” Hester: “Nice and cool” Wendy: “then there were…” Hester: “four green speckled frogs” Wendy and Hester: “Yum! Yum!” Wendy continues by pointing to an image of beadwork: “What about this one?” “Rain, Rain, Go Away!” says Hester. “You know what I like about this [image]?” inquires Wendy to the whole group, “It’s really not raindrops, it’s beads. But if you look at it, it really looks like raindrops. How clever you are…let’s give her two big claps!” And with this, everyone claps and cheers for Hester. Wendy continues her journey around the table and asks Iris: “What are the songs in your head my friend?” Wendy points to an image of bananas in the text (see Figure 3.4). Iris answers quietly: “Bananas…” Supporting her to share more and to connect the image to the song, Wendy poses, “Is it [the song] like this one?” and she begins to sing: “Yes we have no bananas, we have no bananas today…” All the adults immediately jump in to sing too. At the end, Wendy helps connect Iris to others in saying, “See everybody else was singing about bananas too!” Wendy moves on now to a new image in the visual text: “I see a snowman Iris. What’s this about?” “Children like to play in the snow” Iris begins to explain. Before she has a chance to finish her thought, Brayden launches into Frosty the Snowman (1995) and within moments the entire group is singing. At the close of the song Wendy lauds Iris: “So you are absolutely right, they love to play in the snow.” Then each in turn, Wendy 64

THE CURRICULUM

Figure 3.5. Iris’ songs in our heads

scaffolds the sharing of the visual texts connecting them to songs, and this process sees people singing individually and together. Many of the songs the group sings today become staples of the song repertoire for the group. Closure Part II We next taught a “Goodbye” song that could become part of the routine of closing a session. From the classroom curriculum at Picasso.  Wendy announces the end of the session: “Now, can you believe already it’s time for us to go?” She then works on establishing routines for the sessions such as the introduction of individual song books where people place their visual texts and add songs each week. Wendy explains, “But we are not going to take the heads with us today because my friend Terry (a member of the research team) has a very special thing that we are going to be using every day.”

65

CHAPTER 3

Charlotte interjects with the sensible note, “Because we need to let them dry!” Affably Wendy agrees, “Because we need to let them dry, and they are going to go in a special book that will be here for you next time. And then you will be able to take it and read it and sing with it. So we are going to leave the heads, but…” And now Wendy signals the closing with a song: The morning has just flown by (Two claps) I bet you can tell me why (Two claps) Because since it’s begun (Two claps) We had so much fun (Two claps) It’s now the time to say goodbye At the close of the song Wendy notices that there are still materials to be tidied. She asks, “All right, big friends, do we have all scissors collected for our little friends?” With this question the adults see their task and respond affirmatively to it. They collect the scissors and the children join in. While the group tidies, Wendy sings again and people join in as they are able. The tidying and singing continue until the children’s educator signals at the door that they need to line up, the children and elders say good-bye to each other, and the children depart. The elders are poised to leave now too, but not before asking about the next session. Lesson Two: Songs in our Hearts

Figure 3.6. Sample songs in our hearts

66

THE CURRICULUM

Learning Opportunities The Songs in Our Hearts lesson was designed to provide similar opportunities to those in the previous lesson. This time, however, rather than collage, participants used drawing to produce songs for the curriculum’s repertoire. The new songs were meant to be the most meaningful to them—those that they carry with them in their hearts. By the time of this lesson, participants were growing their song books, expanding their multimodal facility, and deepening intergenerational connections and relationships. Participants were also introduced to instruments to support and/or augment their participation in singing. Materials • • • • •

8.5 × drawing paper–1 piece per pair Pencil crayons or markers Maracas, bells, and rhythm sticks Copies of lyrics of new song Binder for each participant

Tips • We advise educators to be cognizant of the potential for frustration when participants are drawing the heart shape or when what they draw does not look as they feel it should. Instead of asking, “What is this?” support the art with “What is the song that goes along with this picture?” Also, we advise avoiding the temptation to draw or write on participants’ work. This interferes with the visual field. Instead, educators might consider modelling for participants on a piece of paper next to theirs how to draw. Break the drawing down into its elemental shapes and think aloud what you are doing as you are doing it. • Participants can each create a heartmap or these can be done in intergenerational pairs. Be sure to allow for choice in working independently or paired as participants will have preferences here. Setting the Stage for Community Building We opened the session by using the gathering song from the previous week. Examples from the classroom curriculum at Picasso.  The main room is set for another intergenerational session. The tables are organized into a large horseshoe with the armed chairs set along the outside of the horseshoe. This arrangement allows the participants to easily see each other and interact more readily with the people on either side of the table as well as with their friends across the table. The group is drawn together by singing, 67

CHAPTER 3

Oh here we are together, together, together. Oh here we are together, together, together, all sitting on our chairs. There’s ________and _________… Each pause in the song that calls for a participant’s name to be added offers an opportunity for someone new to be in the spotlight. The song continues with names being added in accordance to the seating plan. When it is time for the next name, Wendy points to the participant and invites everyone to sing that person’s name, thus helping to put a name to a face. Wendy underscores that the class is a group by punctuating the song with “AND” then pointing to the next friend. The song finishes with “Keith, Brayden, Nora, Charlotte, Penny, Iris, Alice, Betty, Charlotte B, Marian, Lionel, Dan, Lois, John, Helen, and Wendy all sitting on our chairs!” After the completion of the gathering song, Wendy sings the next song to establish the routine of singing a familiar song after the welcome song. Encouraging engagement in singing through a favourite song from the last class, Wendy leads the class in singing, How Much is that Doggie in the Window (1952). The children excitedly join in on the barks, with everyone chiming in on the chorus. The Catalyst The catalyst this week was used to continue building the song repertoire; it was a focus on songs that were close to the participants’ hearts. We explained to the participants that today’s class was going to be like last week with both art and singing. We referred to an example of a Songs in Our Heads text, pointed to an image on the text and shared, “Some of the songs that we sang last week everyone knew. Remember this one?” We repeated with another song as necessary to get everyone singing. Using the easel, a piece of manila paper and some markers, we modelled the day’s art/music session and taught the song, Buddies and Pals (n.d.). From the classroom curriculum at Picasso.  As the class finishes singing the song, Buddies and Pals, Wendy announces the project for the day: “Last time we were together, we thought about the ear-worms—the songs that were in our heads. This week, we are thinking about the songs that are locked into another place. You know what? If you looked inside the person here,” and Wendy taps at her chest, “you would find a very special organ. You would see their…” The class loudly chimes together: “HEART!” Explicit Instruction, Modelling, and Support We provided explicit instruction and modelling on drawing by beginning with an introduction to the medium and its affordances.

68

THE CURRICULUM

We reinforced the type of drawing needed to complete the specific text for this session. We modelled and thought aloud in this session starting with the first shape that needed to be drawn: a large freehand heart. We talked about the process of doing and thinking as one draws and then cuts out a heart. As we drew the songs into the heart, we hummed or sang them so that participants could see the drawings and hear the songs that went along with them. We choose approximately 3 songs to model and included one song that was likely to be well known, one song from the previous week, and one song that was likely new to participants. From the classroom curriculum at Picasso.  Wendy stands in front of the group next to an easel. Holding a pencil, she draws a large heart shape then inside the heart, she draws mountains. The children call out what they think she is drawing while the elders alternately watch Wendy and the children’s reactions to the drawing. After drawing the mountains, Wendy hums a song that she thinks might be familiar to the adults in the group, O Jerusalem (1916), and says, “I think that some of you might know this song in my heart. It was my wedding song.” She continues to hum and think aloud that she should add more detail to her illustration. Next, she draws a large star with long rays of light while humming Silent Night (1818). Some of the children spontaneously join in with the humming. Adult participant Dan turns to child participant Lionel to say that the song is Silent Night (1818). Emphasizing that the name of the song comes from knowledge from a group member, Wendy asks the class, “Did you hear Dan?” Nora nods and replies, “Christmas carols.” Connecting the visual and the aural Wendy confirms, “That’s a picture of the Christmas star for Silent Night.” Wendy describes the visual text that participants will be invited to complete for the class. Elders and children are paired for this session. The texts generated through the Songs in my Heart project will thus be intergenerational texts: “You and your partner are going to work together to make a map of what your heart looks like…” begins Wendy, “all those special songs and special things that are inside your heart. And you can choose to make compartments for your heart like this so it kind of looks like a map.” Wendy models for the class how she can divide up her heart. ”Or,” Wendy offers, “you can choose to start just like I did by putting things inside it and THEN do the compartments. Whichever works for you and your partner.” Capitalizing on our observation that the activity of passing out materials and binders is another opportunity for intergenerational interaction, Wendy turns to the child sitting at the end of the table and proposes, “Do you mind helping me out?” Wendy invites Lois to distribute a large piece of manila paper to each pair of participants, and soon everyone is on their way.

69

CHAPTER 3

Working on the Project As with all the lessons, the bulk of the session time involved working on the project. We facilitated interaction during this time by inviting participants to share ideas and songs and assist each other with technical issues (e.g., finding images, cutting, etc.) across generations. When participants finished their drawings, we invited volunteer pairs to hold up their heart and hum a song that corresponded with one of their drawings. The other participants then guessed which image from the heartmap they were singing. After each pair shared a song, we collected the hearts to copy them for the binders. From the classroom curriculum at Picasso.  As the participants work together, the sounds of humming, singing, and conversation fill the room. Brayden turns to Keith and says, “I know you won’t know this [song].” “Pardon?” Keith asks looking at Brayden and leaning in to hear him. Brayden sings: Peanut sitting on the railroad track all aflutter, and all come look here comes the train Choo Choo…Peanut Butter! Keith laughs and inquires, “Where did you learn that one?” “Daycare!” announces Brayden with a grin at which point he put his head down close to the paper intently drawing the beginning of a peanut next to a dog. While the above interactions are happening, elsewhere in the room Lionel and Dan are happily and collectively working on their heart. They are talking up a storm with each other and their conversation turns to birthday parties. Dan shares that he has a birthday coming up. Hearing this news Wendy interjects, “And you have to have chocolate cake!” Dan agrees, “With some strawberries on it.” Then, concerned with his shared text he worries, “Oh, I don’t know any strawberry songs.” Providing the team with a prompt for how to connect the interest in birthdays with the texts, Wendy hums “Happy Birthday” and Dan and Lionel join in. In another corner Penny helps to support elder Nora and her partner Charlotte. Both participants are having a hard time generating songs. Penny provides song prompts that she knows will trigger Charlotte as they are songs from the child care centre. Penny sings “We’re going to Kentucky; we’re going to the fair to see some senioritas with flowers in…” Before she can even finish the phrase, Charlotte excitedly yells, “FLOWERS!” Nora smiles at Charlotte’s inspiration catching fire and watches as she draws red flowers in their heart. It is creeping closer to 11 o’clock and the art portion of the program is drawing to a close. Nora and Charlotte are now singing The Eensy Weensy Spider (2002).

70

THE CURRICULUM

Charlotte sings, “up the water spout, down came the rain and washed the spider out…” Nora turns to Rachel and asks, “That’s The Eensy Weensy Spider! Do you know that one?” Charlotte sings, “eensy weensy spider, out came the sun and dried up all the rain, the eensy weensy spider goes down again.” Perhaps in response to the fact that Charlotte is singing quietly Nora asks her, “Can you sing it?” Charlotte retorts, “I already sang it!” Monica chimes in, “Sing it loudly!” Penny is now on the scene and as they all smile and laugh, she pleads, “Sing it!” Nora agrees, “Sing it!” Noticing that Nora had trouble hearing Charlotte before, Rachel counsels, “Sing it more loudly this time.” With good humour Charlotte sings again, this time with greater volume and vigour, “The eensy weensy spider…” And Nora joins in, “The eensy weensy spider…” Facilitating the intergenerational interaction Penny suggests that Charlotte turn herself toward Nora and sing. Unphased Charlotte turns and sings, “The eensy weensy spider went up the water spout…” Nora joins in on the word “spout” and the duo sing together: “Down came the rain and washed the spider out.” Charlotte adds the next line, “out came the sun and dried up all the rain and the…” The duet resumes, “eensy weensy spider” and Nora finishes, “went down the drain again.” “No! Up the spout again,” corrects Charlotte. Nora laughs, “up again, I forgot that one.” Sustained Singing After sharing new songs from the heartmaps volunteers handed out instruments, and we invited participants to explore the sounds they could make and play the rhythm of the new song for the day—Buddies and Pals. Volunteer participants also handed out the binders at this time. We encouraged the participants to flip through the song lyrics in the binders and select a song to sing then continued singing from the binder as time permitted. From the classroom curriculum at Picasso.  Wendy raises her voice to be heard above the singing and talking: “Oh friends, we have about two more minutes to finish up our hearts.” 71

CHAPTER 3

Charlotte turns to her partner, “Already?” Wendy moves among the tables and sings, “This is the way we put our pencils away, pencils away, pencils away, and this is the way we put our pencils away to show that we are finished.” John, Ryan, and Monica collect the coloured pencils. The children offer handfuls that John collects in the plastic tub. Wendy thanks the children for their help and asks Lois to help to collect the heartmaps. She reminds the participants that the heartmaps will be included in the special binders so they won’t get lost. Once everything is cleared away, Wendy introduces a mysterious metal tin by shaking it. Everyone stops speaking and listens to the shaking. With the suspense thick, Wendy removes the lid from the tin and unveils tambourines, bells, and rhythm sticks. She makes a game of inviting participants to select an instrument. She does so by inviting people by what they are wearing, who they are sitting near, or other characteristics that get people thinking and noticing each other. The room is alive with maracas shaking, tambourines clanging, and bells jingling. Here and there the music of individuals can be made out: Brayden is singing Jingle Bells (1850) and keeping the beat with his maracas. Wendy puts her hand up, then claps and asks for the instruments to stop. Wendy launches into The More We Get together (1976). The class gels, enthusiastically singing and keeping time and/or embellishing the tune with their instruments. The more we get together, together, together The more we get together, the happier we’ll be Cause your friends are my friends, and my friends are your friends The more we get together the happier we’ll be. Wendy stops singing and asks the partners to come up with ideas about other things they can do together so that they can remix the song. Participants are given time to talk together before sharing with the whole group. The room fills with conversation. Volunteers walk among the participants, coaching with ideas as needed. Dan is deep in conversation with Lionel while Betty and Monica sing together— remixing different activities into the original song. Charlotte is again reluctant to sing and is sitting at the back of her chair; her feet perched on the edge. Yet she has Monica’s maraca as well as her own and shakes them to the tune. Betty quietly sings along tapping her maraca on the table to keep the beat. Wendy raises her hand then gives a clap, “Okay, instruments ready?” The class begins the song again, becoming reacquainted before needing to add the new verses: The more we get together, together, together The more we get together, the happier we’ll be Cause your friends are my friends, and my friends are your friends The more we get together the happier we’ll be

72

THE CURRICULUM

Wendy signals to Dan and Lionel to share their new verse: “What do you think that we should do when we get together?” Dan and Lionel respond in tandem: “Skate.” There is a murmur of agreement amongst the others. Wendy replies in a louder voice trying to ensure all have heard, “Skate! Awesome!” Instruments ready? Here we go. The more we skate together, together, together The more we skate together, the happier we’ll be Cause your friends are my friends, and my friends are your friends The more we skate together the happier we’ll be Charlotte calls over to Wendy that she hadn’t heard Wendy sing the word, “Skate.” Wendy replies using a stage whisper so that everyone can overhear, “That’s because I am not a very good skater, and I was hoping that we could do something that I was better at.” There are several chuckles from the adults in the room. Charlotte calls out, “Play.” The class adds the new verse. It is now the time to invite Nora and Charlotte to offer their ideas. They are both quiet so Wendy mimes reading a book or writing on a piece of paper to offer a choice of activities. The duo tries out some ideas, giggling and causing the rest of the class to laugh as they shake their instruments. Charlotte and Nora finally settle on “sing” but also want to add the songs, O Canada (1880) and Alice the Camel (2005). The children begin again with their instruments and voices, The more we sing O Canada together, together, together The more we sing O Canada and Alice the camel together, the happier we’ll be Cause your friends are my friends, and my friends are your friends The more we sing O Canada and Alice the Camel together the happier we’ll be In the meantime, in response to someone’s suggestion of sleep as an activity for a verse, Brayden feigns being asleep. The children eagerly point out that “Brayden is asleep.” Keith makes a suggestion for a new verse on behalf of his pair: “Snore.” “The more we snore together” chuckles Keith and everyone laughs. For the final time, the group begins with their voices and instruments, The more we snore together, together, together. The more we snore together, the happier we’ll be Cause your friends are my friends, and my friends are your friends. The more we snore together the happier we’ll be! Wendy encourages the “orchestra” to raise their instruments and vigorously shake them for a big finish, then all is quiet. Next comes out a bag of binders. Each binder has the name of a participant on the spine. As they wait for everyone to receive their binder, the participants flip through 73

CHAPTER 3

the pages of the songs that are already there from the previous week. They also find their heads from the art project Songs in My Head and hold their binder up so that friends can see their work. The pages for the song, Buddies and Pals, are given out to the participants to put in the binders. Some of the children enjoy “snapping” the binders open while others shy away from the sound. The elders and volunteers help the children to put the new song sheet at the back of the binder and snap the book closed. Wendy asks if the participants can locate the song The More We Get Together (1976). The flipping of pages is punctuated by voices beginning to sing the song, while others lean across to help friends find the correct page. Closure We explained to the participants how the day’s art project would be entered into the binder and could be referenced each week. (Our work to maintain the binders included for each session: collecting the visual texts and adding them to the correct binders, adding copies of lyrics from songs that were new, and finding/creating lyric pages for those that were sung by group as favourites.) Last in the session we sung the goodbye song that was introduced the previous week. From the classroom curriculum at Picasso.  The class quickly draws to a close. “Thank you everyone for your hard work today, but I think it is already time for our little friends to go downstairs, and for the big friends to go to lunch,” Wendy announces before she invites the children to return instruments by the sound that they make. Brayden expresses loudly his disappointment that it is already time to go. “I thought we were going to do more.” he complains. Wendy replies in a voice loud enough for all to hear, “Then you’ll have to make sure you come back next week, because we are going to do more stuff next week.” Penny speaks to the children, “Preschoolers, I want you to say goodbye to your partners.” The hall fills with the goodbyes of the elders and the children. Brayden is stopped by Penny, “You can’t take your binder though, Brayden.” Disappointed, he returns the binder to Wendy who tries to placate him, “No, we have to put it in the bag and it will be here for next time. You know, when we are all done our singing and drawing together, you can take it home. How’s that?” Brayden reluctantly nods his agreement and waves goodbye. As the children’s chatter dies away down the hallway, the elders rise from their places at the table. Ryan and John move to help those who need a steadying hand, or assistance with a walker. Until next week. Lesson Three.  Being Together Makes Me Sing. Learning Opportunities This third lesson used the techniques of tracing, observational drawing, and watercolour painting to promote learning and relationship-building opportunities 74

THE CURRICULUM

Figure 3.7. Intergenerational hands

similar to those in the previous lessons. As they worked together, participants continued to build on the songs from previous sessions and added to the repertoire songs that referred to working or being together. Drums, tambourines, and rhythm sticks were again used to support the singing or to be used as alternatives to singing. Novel in this lesson were the following opportunities: • Acquiring and refining fine motor practices and using tools necessary for watercolour painting (e.g., paint brushes); • Noticing visual details related to the hands of elders and children; • Practicing known and familiar songs; • Learning new songs related to working with others and being together; and • An introduction to musical notation. Materials • 8.5 × 11 watercolour paper–1 per pair of senior/children • Plastic flowers, pencils, and watercolour paints • Homemade instruments including rhythm sticks, drums, tone blocks 75

CHAPTER 3

Tips • Small group instruction on the use of watercolours may be required for those not familiar with the medium. Basic knowledge and skill related to the medium might be required and can be taught, for example, by explicitly demonstrating how to clean the paintbrush before dipping it into paint, cleaning the brush before changing colours, and colour mixing. Allowing opportunities for experimentation and practice as well as providing feedback will also support participants with the medium. Setting the Scene for Community Building We followed the same seating arrangement and singing of the welcome song as in previous lessons. We oriented participants by reminding them of the previous week’s class where they made heartmaps then sang songs that were special to them. Educators might also introduce the sessions by relaying a message about the affordances of working together. Examples from the classroom curriculum at Picasso.  It is February 9th and the elders and children meet again. It’s early in the session. Elder Frances is a new participant, and her gentle smile expresses her pleasure in being here. Wendy warms up the discussion by initiating a conversation that both generations can relate to: animal companions. This naturally leads to what is firmly established as the favourite song of many in the class: How Much is that Doggie in the Window (1952). The class sings, and the children are delighted again to imitate the doggie in the window. They are emphatic with their “Arfs” at the end of each refrain. The Catalyst We announced, “Today we are using different tools in our art—drawing flowers with pencils, drawing the shape of our hands, and painting to add shape and detail. Together, you and your friend will use each of the tools by taking turns, and taking your time to learn about each other as you work.” From the classroom curriculum at Picasso.  The atmosphere is relaxed as the elders are amused by Brayden’s barking from the group’s warm-up singing. Wendy pronounces the transition to the art by drawing attention to the bowls of water and the other tools that will be used for the watercolour: “Well…We are not having a bath…We are doing a project today that involves three different tools.” As she dramatizes searching for materials in a huge container, the children start a guessing game and yell out: “Painting and… colour!” “Oh, you are so close! Tool number one.” says Wendy holding up a fine tipped marker. 76

THE CURRICULUM

The guessing continues: “Colouring!” exclaims a child. “And tool number two,” itemizes Wendy showing a tablet of watercolours. “Painting!” bellows Charlotte. “And tool number three,” bemuses Wendy holding up her hand. “We are doing a very special partner project today.” “Finger painting!” shouts one then more children enthusiastically. The class buzzes, thinking that it has solved the mystery until Wendy says, “Fooled you!” Then she takes out a watercolour of two hands holding flowers: “This is such a beautiful picture…this is the kind of picture that we are going to be making with our big and little friends today. And you can see that it has hands and it has flowers.” Wendy draws attention to the medium, “And did you notice that they didn’t use markers to colour in? And did not use crayons to color in?” “They used fingers,” problem-solves Brayden, probably still thinking about the finger-painting. “…Did they colour with this?” asks Wendy showing a marker inviting the participants to consider various tools and their effects. “Nooo!” answers Charlotte. “So what was the other tool we had today?” “Painting!” responds an excited Brayden. “Painting. So…this is going to be a tricky project that you’re going to have to work carefully on with your partner. So…you are going to get one piece of paper between you and your friend. Just like when we did the heartmaps. The first job you and your friend have to do is [draw] each other’s hand.” Pointing out the expertise in the room, Wendy gestures towards elders Nora and Keith who are relatively long-time intergenerational program participants: “Nora and Keith are experts at this. They’ve done this before. So you two…” says Wendy pointing to Charlotte and Alice, Nora and Keith’s child partners, “have got the artists helping you today.” Explicit Instruction, Modelling, and Support To provide explicit instruction, modelling, and support so that participants might know how to use the requisite modes and media, we did the following: Modelled a Think Aloud: We thought aloud while drawing the flowers leaving lots of room for the watercolour. Then, with a volunteer participant, we modelled drawing each other’s hand as both were holding the flowers. We sung Peter Pointer (Tommy Thumb is Up, n.d.) as we worked. Last, with the volunteer, we decided what colours to use in the flowers and in the hands and inserted as many details as possible into the image. We invited volunteers to help pass out one piece of watercolour paper, a bunch of silk flowers, and a pencil between each set of partners. We encouraged the accuracy of drawing, leaving space for colour, and paying careful attention to including details. When it appeared that interest in drawing was 77

CHAPTER 3

waning, we offered small group instruction to fill in the flowers and hands with watercolour. From the classroom curriculum at Picasso.  Wendy moves toward Charlotte B. and Iris to support this duo to model again for the class how to create the image, “So put your hand down.” Wendy gently takes Charlotte’s hand and places it on the paper and says, “and Iris is going to help [draw] your one hand.” Wendy takes Iris’ hand and puts it on the paper while explaining, “And then Iris is going to put her hand down and you are going to [draw] one of Iris’ hands. So when you look here, how many hands do you see?” “Two!” they exclaim. “…We have a big person’s hand and a…little person’s hand. So job number one is to [draw] one big person’s hand and one little person’s hand…We are leaving lots of room for paint” directs Wendy while distributing the fine markers for drawing. The partners receive the materials, get to work, and the room is filled with purposeful chatter. Working on the Project As usual, we used the time working on the images to promote a safe environment for singing. From the classroom curriculum at Picasso.  Participants are drawing hands and singing when Wendy introduces new props to enhance the texts: Taking flowers out of a bag Wendy says, “I must have stopped at the garden on my way to work today.” Referring to the cold weather, John jokes, “Your garden must be better than ours.” “Oh, I know. It’s all the sunshine we get [where I live],” laughs Wendy. “Now… in our picture the hands were working together but they were holding something.” “A flower,” answers Brayden. “So now your job is going to be to draw together the flowers that your hands are holding. And again we’re leaving lots of spaces for filling it in.” The flowers are distributed, and the partners delve into including them in their texts. It’s painting time. “May I hand out the brushes?” asks Brayden. Affirming his desire to help and facilitating the social nature of the class, Wendy answers, “You are such a helper, Brayden. That was exactly what I wanted to ask you. So every person will need a paintbrush.” Once Brayden announces that all of the brushes have been distributed, Wendy signals the transition with a song: 78

THE CURRICULUM

Figure 3.8. Hands working together

Figure 3.9. Close-up of hands

79

CHAPTER 3

Figure 3.10. Drawing flowers

If you’re ready for your paints clap your hands If you’re ready for your paints clap your hands If you’re ready for your paints and you really wanna show it, if you’re ready for your paints clap your hands This leads into the class singing the original song, If You’re Happy and You Know It (1971) with the last line remixed as, “If you’re happy and you know it get ready to paint…” “Could I help with paints?” asks Charlotte. Charlotte distributes the paints, and Wendy provides a reminder on the medium, “Before we start with the paint and water…If you want the colour to be darker, how do you use the paint?” “Use black!” says Lionel. “You could choose a darker colour. But if you want to use yellow and you want the paint to be [more highly pigmented], only use a tiny hint of water. And if you want to go from a yellow to a purple what do you need to visit before you change colours?” Wendy holds up a cup of water. “The water!” answers Lionel. Wendy adds, “So a little bit of water makes a darker colour and before you change colours you need to visit the bath water.” 80

THE CURRICULUM

Now Wendy sings to the tune of If You’re Happy and You Know It: If you are ready to paint your flowers away you go, If you are ready to paint your flowers away you go, If you are ready to paint your flowers you just need some water too, if you are ready to paint your flowers here you go The participants paint and after a bit, to emphasize the cooperative nature of the work, Wendy sings The More We Get Together (1976), which the participants add to. Follow the song, she asks, “What are we doing together right now friends?” “Painting!” “Can we put that in our song?” and the class sings, “The more we paint together, together, together…”

Figure 3.11. Intergenerational hands

Sustained Singing We explained that as per the routine, the day’s images would be added to each partner’s binder. We also: • Passed out the binders and the instruments. • Encouraged experimentation with the instruments—invited participants to play them loudly, softly, and to listen to the sound that individual instruments made then compared. Introduced a signal for stop/go/soft/loud. • Invited participants to select known songs from the binders. We reminded them too of the new songs that were introduced during the session and asked if they 81

CHAPTER 3

know any other songs about being together or working together. For example, “Today’s song made me think about all of us and how we started out not knowing each other, but now we are friends. I am going to sing a line, and then you are going to be my echo just like we did last week.” Revisit the Be My Echo (1977) song, which requires working together. • Taught a song like Clap your Hands (1953), a new song that related to the notion of working together. While singing, “Clap, clap, clap your hands, clap your hands together,” participants were invited to clap hands with partners. We sang the song then invited, “Now turn in your chair and sing again, clapping your hands together with your friend on the other side.” • Finally, we used this as the time to introduce musical notation and (re)familiarize participants with the idea that songs contain both music and lyrics, and both can be written down. From the classroom curriculum at Picasso.  The visual text-making has provided many opportunities for intergenerational interaction, and participants are feeling comfortable with each other. It’s now time for the binders to come out and participants to review past favourite songs and sing new songs. Wendy creates a buzz by announcing, “Special delivery!” while she hands out the binders. Even delivery time is singing time. While the binders are finding their owners, the group sings, Willoughby Wallaby Woo (1976), and the name in the verse is the name of the person who is receiving his/her binder. Next appear the instruments and the class asks to sing the favourite How Much Is That Doggie in the Window (1952). To push the class’s abilities, Wendy invites them to sing the song in a new way. She first helps the participants to become acquainted with all their instruments can do. Wendy models with her tambourine, “All right let’s see what music we can make with our instruments already! Really loud! Really quiet!” The participants engage in active listening, attending to each instrument’s sound: “If you have a maraca, let’s hear your instruments today! If you have…What is this?” “A tambourine!” says Brayden “Oh! …Let’s hear your tambourine today! Tambourine players: you’re going to play the first part of the doggie song and the maraca players you’re going to play the second part of the doggie song. Here we go!” The class sings: “How much is that doggie in the window? (Arf! Arf!)… I do hope that doggie’s for sale.” Wendy draws attention to a transition in the song, “Now the next part of this song is kind of like a story, and it says—maraca people, are you ready? I must take a trip to California…”

82

THE CURRICULUM

At the end of the song Wendy directs the class, “And make it really loud like a big…they call it the crescendo. When the music gets louder, louder and louder! That’s what they call a crescendo! Start quiet! And off you go! Louder, and louder, and louder, and louder!” Everyone follows the instructions, making their instruments grow louder and the engagement in the song seems to grow with it. Next, silence, and then smiles all around. Children, elders, and instruments have all worked together towards the accomplishment of the song. Challenging the group further through the introduction of a new sign system, Wendy is puzzled as she holds a song sheet that includes lyrics and musical notation, “Now I have something that I discovered, but I’m a little puzzled by that…You and your partner see if you can figure this out because look at the papers we have in our books so far. We have a picture and we have some words. But I found this and I was so confused. You see if you and your partner can figure out what this is!” Before turning to her partner, one of the children states, “Music stuff… Music tune!” Facilitating intergenerational conversation, Wendy turns the child to her adult partner, “Well, you talk to Iris and see what she thinks it is.” Managing the pacing of the class, Wendy informs the participants “[When] you think you know [the answer to the puzzle] I want to hear those instruments. …When everybody’s instrument’s going, we know we’re ready.” Brayden (talking about the song): “I put mine in my book!” Partners converse, and then the instruments start. Wendy helps the class debrief: “What is this? Says Wendy pointing toward the staff…” Brayden: “Music!” Wendy: “It’s music? So you mean the stuff that we sing when we write it down, this is what looks like? So it’s not just words?” Wendy catches the eye of one of the children who nods affirmatively and declares, “No!” “So this tells me what to sing? So this is a song?” “Yes!” beams the child. Now that the participants seem to have the overall understanding that the notations on the page signify the music in the song. Wendy helps them all to launch into the singing of the song on the page which is the familiar song from last day, He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands (1996). This song, like the others, then finds its home in the participants’ binders. Closure Sing a known farewell song.

83

CHAPTER 3

Lesson Four: Teaching You About Me

Figure 3.12. Sample accordion book front

Figure 3.13. Sample accordion book centre

Learning Opportunities The technique of paper collage (as a familiar medium) and digital photography (as a new medium) provided opportunities for participants to share some special things about themselves with a partner, including song sharing. 84

THE CURRICULUM

Participants were invited to create an accordion book with his/her digital photo on the cover and five internal panels on which different favourites could be described. The making of the visual texts was again an opportunity to sing together in a nonthreatening way. Participants were supported to sing familiar songs that emphasized being together (e.g., Buddies and Pals (n.d.), The More We Get Together [1976]) and to learn new songs related to the same theme. Learning opportunities were similar to past lessons but also included opportunities to: • Acquire practice and facility with digital photography; • Connect intergenerationally through the sharing of likes, dislikes; and • Strengthen intergenerational relationships through additional song sharing and collaborative singing. Materials • Mat board (any colour precut to 4 ¼ ” × 5 ”; two pieces per participant; this will act as the covers of the book) • Legal-sized white paper (16 × 5 ½ ”; this will act as the body of the book) • Black felt-tip pens • Coloured pencils or fine-point coloured markers • Glue sticks • Prompts: on small slips of paper, type or print short statements that the participants can illustrate. Choose 6–8 statements and make as many copies as there are participants in the class. Some examples: This is where I live; Yikes! I’m scared; My favourite pet; This makes me smile; Yum!; This is what I do best; My friend • Digital camera, printer and paper • Black felt-tip pens • Coloured pencils or fine-point coloured markers • Glue sticks • Homemade instruments including rhythm sticks, drums, tone blocks Tips • Educators may need to be ready to provide support to compensate for any motor and/or visual needs of participants when they are taking photos. Smaller sized cameras can help accommodate participants’ small or arthritic hands. • Printing photos in situ is necessary to be able to proceed with the project during the time allotted. • Organize two of each prompt into envelopes and provide images for collage between pairs so that the need for elders to move around to collect materials is minimized. 85

CHAPTER 3

• Inviting participants to take photos in pairs after the entire class has begun working on the accordion books will free up the educator to help with the photography. Setting the Stage for Community Building As per previous lessons. The Catalyst We explained the emphasis on favourites in the session and provided a song that could enable participants to share something for which they would have a favourite. For instance, we shared, “Today we are working cooperatively with a friend and exploring some of our favourite things that will help us learn a little bit about each other. I wonder if you know this song…” We used the song Aiken Drum (2003) where participants could take turns adding their favourite foods to the lyrics (e.g., “His eyes were made of French fries”). From the classroom curriculum at Picasso.  The class just sang Aiken Drum (2003) and is ready to remix the lyrics with favourites. Charlotte calls out “Playdough!” to be the hair. Playfully, Wendy asks, “Playdough? Are you going to eat play dough?” She then figures out how to affirm Charlotte’s choice, but also connects to the activity as it was described, “A favourite food that looks like pasghetti! Pasghetti? Perfect!” Elder, Frances, gets a kick out of this and is alternatively tapping the beat with her fingers and clapping, as she smiles. It is now time in the song to name a food to be the eyes. Like Charlotte, another child is not connecting with the food: Wendy leads the singing, “…and his eyes—what’s a favourite thing?” “Buttons!” chimes a child. Working to move everyone back on track, Wendy muses, “Would you eat buttons?” “No,” smiles the child. Getting the idea, Brayden says, “Carrots!” and another child reverts to the original lyrics, “Meatballs!” Eventually, laughing, the group cobbles together their lyrics and sings the whole remixed song through. This singing becomes the catalyst to connect to the day’s session, “Someone here likes meatballs, someone here likes carrots, and you and your friend are going to have a chance to talk to each other today about all kinds of different things,” says Wendy, “things that you might like, things that you might not like, things that might scare you, things that make you sad. And you’re going to create something that looks like a book, but there are not words but pictures.” and she showed a book with her pictures for the children to guess. 86

THE CURRICULUM

Explicit Instruction, Modelling, and Support We conducted a think-pair-share by asking the class, “What’s one important thing about you?” After giving participants time, we invited them to share with the person next to them. We offered opportunities for people who wanted to share with the whole class their own responses and what they heard from others. To model the activity, we introduced a sample accordion book. For the sample, we did not tell the participants who it was about. We said the book would tell the reader something about the person who made it using pictures and words, and class members were to guess who it was about. Before the guessing we conducted a picture walk through the book, then read the print text, discussing the relationship between the words and images. Participants were next invited to make their own books. To provide explicit instruction, we explained that people could choose phrases typed on strips of paper, and use pictures to go with them. We read each prompt aloud, pausing between to ask for suggestions on possible accompanying images. We re-read the prompts through again, this time inviting participants to raise their hands for the ones they wanted. We suggested choosing four, one for each page of the book. Paper was distributed, and we demonstrated the accordion fold. We understood that some participants would need support to make this fold. We demonstrated how to use a glue stick, making sure to apply the glue to the backside of the prompt. Participants glued one prompt to each page and drew accompanying images using the pens. Next, coloured markers and pencils were distributed to complete the drawings, then we invited the participants to attach the pages to mat board to make the jacket of the book. Participants finally were invited to draw and write on the cover and share the books with other participants in pairs, small groups, or with the whole group. From the classroom curriculum at Picasso.  To support participants with their books, Wendy models her own, all the while making connections to the role of singing and songs in her overall likes and dislikes. She shows the first page of the book onto which is pasted the prompt “My Favourite Season.” Based on the image, she asks the participants to guess the season. Then, on the next page is the pasted prompt, “Yuck!” which is accompanied by an image of a vacuum cleaner, “I hate vacuuming, oh my gosh, if the world never saw another vacuum cleaner that would be fine by me.” Next is the page “Things I love.” One of these things is “wieners and beans.” “I love wieners and beans,” agrees Charlotte. Wendy affirms, “I love wieners and beans, and I love getting mail, I love riding my horse, and when I sing, I feel-” “Happy,” says adult Frances with a smile. Now is time for a bridge into singing. Wendy illustrates with the book that “dogs and horses” are her favourite animals, and “of course that reminds me of the song, it goes arf, arf. What’s that song?” 87

CHAPTER 3

It could, of course, be none other than How Much is that Doggie in the Window (1952), and so this is what the whole class sings, complete with extra “Woofs” and “Arfs.” Working on the Project We facilitated interaction during this time much as during the previous sessions while paying attention to the tips section of this lesson plan. From the classroom curriculum at Picasso.  The class is active with the bookmaking. Wendy is circulating helping the participants to take photos of each other, while the others are eagerly drawing, cutting, and pasting. The participants access envelopes full of prompts (e.g., my best friend, my special place), and some write their own words to go with the images. Conversations revolve around the form and content of the books. Charlotte is going to put something in her book about, “I’m sad.” She explains that something that made her sad was that one of her former friends, “never gets to go to my school anymore and she does not get to go to THIS school ever again because she moved to a different school.” There isn’t a readily available prompt for Charlotte’s “I’m sad,” so educator Penny asks Iris if she would help Charlotte with this. Aided by Penny, Charlotte, and Iris work together to communicate Charlotte’s sadness over the loss of her friend, and then mixing the sad with the banal Charlotte adds, “I do not like tomatoes either.” Helping Charlotte to differentiate between sadness and dislike, Penny offers, “And if you don’t like tomatoes—if you want to put something in about yuck, I don’t like this, you can just put “Yuck!” “How do you spell it?” Charlotte wants to know. Iris pitches in to help Charlotte learn the mechanics of written language. Meanwhile, Wendy sings Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star (1806) as she responds to a star in someone’s book. Brayden comments, “I don’t like that! That song makes me mad!” “Well what song makes you happy?” Wendy inquires. “Old MacDonald,” said Brayden which corresponds with the animals he is drawing in his book. Wendy and Brayden sing the song and Charlotte chimes in. When they finish singing, Brayden cries, “No! [The song’s] not done yet, there’s more animals! Ah, monkey! Ooo, ooo! …And there’s another animal! …a giraffe!” “What does a giraffe say?” Wendy wonders. Brayden blows air through his teeth during the song to make what he signals are giraffe sounds. Drawing this portion of the class to a close, Wendy invites, “If you learned something new about your friend today, give a big clap.” Wendy looks at Frances, “What did you learn about your friend today that you didn’t know about before? Did you know she likes cardinals? Do you know how 88

THE CURRICULUM

I knew that? Look what’s on her sweater. There is something new. Let’s see, Marian. Did you know something new about Brayden?” Indeed, the participants have all learned something new about the people around them.

Figure 3.14. Working together on accordion books

Figure 3.15. More working together on accordion books

89

CHAPTER 3

Figure 3.16. Sample accordion book

Figure 3.17. Sample accordion book

Sustained Singing This section of the session proceeded as in the previous lesson, though we added new songs and instruments. From the classroom curriculum at Picasso.  Keeping known songs fresh with new ways to sing them, the participants are provided with boxes of macaroni to go along with the singing of Aiken Drum (2003). Wendy pulls the macaroni out of a big bag. “Macaroni!” exclaim the participants. “…And his hair was made of macaroni, macaroni, macaroni, and his hair was made of macaroni, and his name was Aiken Drum,” they all sing. 90

THE CURRICULUM

Participants take turns pulling items out of the bag, which they then have to use in the song. A banana emerges from the bag next. “It’s a banana! What would it be [on Aiken Drum]?” Wendy asks. The participants yell out, “mouth!” and then they remix the song to include it. Well into the song, Brayden suggests, “We can eat the food!” Lesson Five: Singing I Spy

Figure 3.18. Sample window square

Learning Opportunities This lesson used the technique of drawing (as a familiar practice) and using fabric (as new media application) for participants to collaboratively create scenes that they could see outside the window. This window view allowed for a shared elder and child experience. Each pair created a quilt square that was combined with the others to make a multi-faceted quilt of window scenes. The visual text provided a link to singing about weather with songs including Mr. Sun (1976), I Can Sing a Rainbow (1955), and Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head (1969). Participants were encouraged to share titles, sing, or hum the songs that they were thinking about and that they recognized from singing over the previous weeks. The learning opportunities in this lesson were similar to those in previous lessons, plus they included: • Acquiring and refining fine motor practices and using tools necessary for working with textiles (e.g., fabric markers); 91

CHAPTER 3

• Noticing visual details related to weather and the outdoors; and • Learning new songs related to weather and the natural world. Materials • • • •

Fabric square Fabric markers and paint with small brushes Homemade instruments including rhythm sticks, drums, tone blocks Song binders

Tips • Give short instructions on painting on fabric and the “pull” that differs from using markers on paper. • Remind that markers will add fine details and that paint can be used for larger areas. • Remove the finished panels/markers and paint from the tables before bringing out binders and instruments. Setting the Stage for Community Building As the children and elders arrived, we welcomed them to the window to look outside. We promoted a game of “I Spy” while waiting for everyone to gather. Once everyone was in the room, we led the group in the Hello Song, encouraging the children to lead with the adults joining in when comfortable. The Catalyst We used prompts such as, “Today we are working cooperatively with a friend but not on paper—today we are using fabric. Today is our day to paint our own weather! We started out together looking out the window with an “I Spy” game. If you were to draw what you saw, what things would be in your picture? Now, if you could change what you see outside the window, what would you put in your picture? From the classroom curriculum at Picasso.  As the children and elders arrive, we welcome them to the window to look outside. Wendy starts a game of “I Spy” and invites the adults to sit while she huddles with the children. The game proceeds with the children spying out the window something secret that they want to share with their elder partners and that the other teams need to guess. The children delight in the game, squealing and hunching down in a “sneak,” as they find their secret outdoor items. When the children return from the spying, Wendy announces to the elders, “Here they come, they went and spied with their little eyes…now you have to whisper to our big friend what you saw.” The adults look eager to confer with their child partners. 92

THE CURRICULUM

The children share with the elders what they have seen through the windows. Eventually it comes out that they have seen footprints from what is likely a rabbit, gazebo, buildings, cars, puddles, trees, squirrels, and the pond. With the scene set, the class sings its welcome song: “Here we are together, together, together, so here (others join in) we are together all sitting on our chairs…” Explicit Instruction, Modelling, and Support We provided explicit instruction in how to create the individual squares for the quilt. Participants were informed that the squares, when finished, would be put together to form one big quilt and thus become one visual text. Further to the I Spy game, we invited participants to work together to generate ideas for their squares (e.g., “You will need to talk with your elbow partner—that is, the person beside you—and decide what kind of weather you want in your picture and how that will affect the scene you want to represent. For example, if it is snowing, you could paint the trees covered in snow, and footprints, and birds at the feeders, OR if it is spring, you may paint a rainbow or the sun, flowers, OR maybe you will paint the fall with the coloured leaves and the squirrels”). Participants were instructed in how to work with fabric (e.g., holding it tight while drawing, using markers for fine detail, and paint to fill in larger areas) including the opportunity to see fabric painting modelled and have a go at it themselves. Working on the Project We sang weather songs and favourite songs as everyone was working. When squares were completed, designated children helped clear markers and paint and put window squares in a safe place to dry. Once dry, we used spray adhesive to glue painted squares onto a large piece of fabric that represented the outline of the window. We added a dowel at the top from which to hang the “window.” Educators may choose to create “leaded glass” by gluing long strips of black fabric between the squares. From the classroom curriculum at Picasso.  The participants are well into creating their squares. They are drawing and painting what they have seen through the window and in their own imaginations. Throughout this process the participants work with each other. Monica and Nora smile and giggle as they draw a fish pond and wonder if they should include a gazebo. Keith suggests to Caden that he could draw a bird on a tree. There are conversations between John and Charlotte B. about squirrels, with Monica commenting on how well Caden could draw a fish. The songs the class sings while working also transfer onto their squares. In chatting with some participants Wendy offers, “But I don’t see any…” and she begins to hum the song Mr. Sun (1976). 93

CHAPTER 3

Brayden takes up the humming, and nearby Penny gets a new intergenerational pair in on the action. She says to Keith about Caden, “He’s holding that yellow [marker],” then she turns to Caden, “you have the yellow, you are all ready for Mr. Sun, Sun, Sun, Mr. Golden Sun. Right?” The art also feeds the song. Noticing that two participants have put a moon in their square, Wendy hums Aiken Drum (2003). Immediately Charlotte joins in the singing, Frances taps her hands on the table, then Iris notices, stops talking and also begins to tap her hands. Everyone in the room is laughing, smiling, and engaging in the singing in some way, be it taping or humming. Throughout the intergenerational discussions, the facilitators in the room listen carefully to make suggestions that might enhance relationship-building and/or help participants acquire greater facility in their communication. Wendy, for example, notices a discussion about a cardinal and asked Nora to detail for the others what a cardinal looks like and how one might best represent it on the square. Also, knowing that the sharing of materials is a prime opportunity for intergenerational interaction, the educators promote this at every turn, suggesting, for example, the sharing of markers across the table. Eventually it becomes second nature for the participants to call across the table to each other to check on supplies. After the squares are complete, the participants pin them on the panel on the quilt and when all the squares are up, the participants are ready to focus all their attention on singing.

Figure 3.19. Working together

94

THE CURRICULUM

Figure 3.20. Charlotte’s window

Figure 3.21. Sample window

95

CHAPTER 3

Sustained Opportunities for Singing • After passing out binders and encouraging participants to review some of the songs that had been added to the binder, we sang and hummed them to each other, inviting participants to suggest favourite songs to get the class warmed up. • We introduced relevant weather-related songs that came up through participants’ song suggestions in previous sessions and introduced new weather-related songs (e.g., Mr. Sun [1976] and I Can Sing a Rainbow [1955]) using an echo format. • These new songs were also sung as the children lined up to leave in lieu of the typical good-bye song. From the classroom curriculum at Picasso.  The singing begins, but not everyone is immediately obviously engaged. The instruments help with this challenge. Charlotte, for instance, appears to be daydreaming and isn’t singing, but as soon as she is passed a maraca, she shakes it and smiles as does Caden and Keith. For Caden, this is the first aural form of expression we have seen from him all day. While he hasn’t spoken, Caden smiles, shakes the instrument, and gestures, and earlier in the session he drew. The maracas also lend a festive air to the class with Brayden and Dan “clinking” theirs together as if making a toast. The singing starts even before all the song binders have been distributed. By the end of this class it is obvious that the binders are something that the participants have come to look forward to. All of the participants seem to welcome receiving the binders, anxiously awaiting theirs, exclaiming over them when they arrive, leafing through them, and fervently looking over the new song sheets and putting them in. Participants are forever asking if they can take them home. The binders have also become an artifact around which intergenerational interaction occurs. For instance, Dan helps Brayden to put new song sheets in, and Iris and Charlotte comb the pages together looking at all of the songs. Being able to hold a song in one’s hand is also a bridge to socializing outside of class, as Dan has again requested copies of the songs to share with his friends who are not in the class. There are many opportunities for the songs to be bridged with the art. It becomes time to sing Robin in the Rain (1939) and Wendy says to Dan and Brayden, “You were the only ones who had a robin on your ‘I spy window’ today, and I was hoping that I would see so many of them because spring is on its way.” When it is time to depart, Keith gives Caden a goodbye hug, and the children leave the adults behind talking and laughing together.

96

THE CURRICULUM

Lesson Six: My Neighbourhood Sings

Figure 3.22. Neighbourhood mural detail

Learning Opportunities The technique of drawing/colouring (as a familiar media) and using mural paper were used for participants to contribute individually to a collaborative project based on what they observed in their neighbourhood. The art making became an opportunity to sing songs about neighbourhoods and the weather including Mr. Sun (1976) and Robin in the Rain (1939) (from the previous week) and join in with the singing of new song such as These are the Buildings in my Neighbourhood and Old Macdonald had a Farm (2014). • The learning opportunities for this lesson included all those from previous lessons plus: Learning about and being able to participate in the creation of a mural; • Refining and expanding notions of place and self in place.

97

CHAPTER 3

Materials • • • • •

Mural paper Fat crayons to provide colour and wide lines on paper Homemade instruments including rhythm sticks, drums, tone blocks Binders Photos of the neighbourhood

Tips • Ensure the mural paper is not too wide so that reaching the top of the paper is not an issue. • Encourage participants to sing/hum while they are working. Educators can amplify songs to invite everyone to join in. • Allow opportunities for participants to experiment with the instruments before using them to support singing. • Remove the finished panels/markers/paint from the tables before bringing out binders and instruments. Setting the Stage for Community Building Helping participants to think about neighbourhoods and communities could begin in various ways depending on the accessibility of the neighbourhood itself and the participants. In some programs we started the project through an intergenerational walk as a shared experience. In lieu of this we have also given participants cameras ahead of time to document favourite places as they walked around the neighbourhood or if a walk was impossible, we took photos ahead of time to bring into class and/ or find old photographs of how the neighbourhood used to look to juxtapose against how it looked presently. A final idea is for a photograph of a spot in the neighbourhood to be taken with an old photo in the frame for comparison. For the day of the session, we organized the tables in one long line with the mural paper placed over top. Photos were placed on tables for browsing as participants come in and conversation was generated around neighbourhoods—ones we have lived in, live in now, would like to live in, etc. Examples from the classroom curriculum at Picasso.  This is the second to last intergenerational session of the season and the curricular cycle which began with the self is now firmly imbedded in the notion of community. Everyone is sitting at one long table facing the window. Wendy invites participants to sit on the same side in a big/little/big/little pattern (i.e., elder, child). There seems to be excitement in the air with lots of chatter, happy faces, and Brayden, in particular, moving around as though unable to contain his glee; then the welcome song begins, focusing the group, and they are ready to work together. 98

THE CURRICULUM

The Catalyst We prompted participants to visualize and talk about their neighborhood, drawing on photographs for support. We directed participants to describe what the neighbourhood looked like—the size and shape of buildings, natural elements, the colours, and the people and animals inhabiting it. Participants were encouraged too to think about murals—viewing examples of them and considering their affordances (e.g., large expanse to have high impact). From the classroom curriculum at Picasso.  Wendy opens the conversation by helping the participants to recall a project from an earlier iteration of the program when the class drew their impressions of the Santa Claus parade on a long piece of paper. Charlotte remembers the name of the type of artwork: mural. Wendy announces that the class will create another mural, but this time it will concern the things they find in their neighbourhood. Cognizant that for some of the adults and even the children who are driven straight from Picasso to home without walking, the neighbourhood might need support to decide on what could be in the mural, Wendy reminds participants of what is outside their windows—linking the previous session where they made quilts to this one: “So when we peeked out the window last week, we saw…” Brayden responds right away: “Trees!” “Buildings!” shouts Charlotte. “What kinds of buildings?” inquires Wendy. Charlotte makes an effort to recall: “Uhhhh…An apartment building!” “You’re right!” encourages Wendy, “Good for you…that’s an apartment building. What other kinds of buildings did we do last week? There was one that was out there that didn’t have any walls, but a roof.” Alice makes a guess: “A house… a birdhouse!” “There was a birdhouse, good for you” Wendy says before prompting a new guess, “A /g/ …a /g/… Nora gets it: “A gazebo!” “A gazebo—Nora remembered! That’s right, you did the I Spy that spotted that and Nora remembered that. Hmmm…” Wendy muses now and leads the class in a related song: Oh what are the buildings in our neighbourhood? Oh what are the buildings in our neighbourhood? In our neighbourhood, in our neighbourhood, Oh what are the buildings in our neighbourhood, The buildings that we see each day! The question in the song is a real one Wendy poses to the class: “Hmmm …think about it. Talk to your partner. What are some of the buildings that we see in our neighbourhood? Talk to your partner.” 99

CHAPTER 3

Alice, who is evidently proud of her previous response offers, “Apartments!” And as the partners talk, Wendy begins to unroll the mural paper across the long table while quietly singing, An apartment building is a building in our neighbourhood, In our neighbourhood, in our neighbourhood, An apartment building is a building in our neighbourhood. It’s a building that we see each day! Rachel is at the table engaging the participants in conversation, trying to draw out ideas and bring people together in this problem-solving: “Lionel and Alice do you go to school?” “Yeah!” they reply in unison. “Is your school in the neighbourhood?” Rachel asks. “Mine’s in the neighbourhood,” says Alice, referring to the elementary school that is behind Picasso’s property. “What do you think, Dan?” Rachel prompts and receives a nod. “It’s right beside here,” explains Alice, “We can walk there!” “Treehouse school?” Rachel wonders about the name of the school. “Yeah!” affirms Alice. “I heard somebody say, Treehouse school,” smiles Wendy who uses this as an opportunity to personalize the song, thus singing, “A school is a building in our neighbourhood…” The class joins in the singing while Dan taps the rhythm on the table. Then it’s time for a new addition to the song: “Hmmm… what else do you see?” poses Wendy. “Houses!” says Lionel. “Houses?” Yes, that’s the beginning for the next part of the song which everyone sings: Houses are buildings in our neighbourhood, In our neighbourhood, in our neighbourhood, Houses are buildings in our neighbourhood, They are buildings that we see each day! The conversation turns away from buildings and to other features of the neighbourhood as child participant Lois offers, “Trees!” as what she sees as part of the neighbourhood. Charlotte B. picks up on this and, as anyone who has been in this very established, homey neighbourhood can attest, offers, “Cats and trees! “Cats!” Penny affirms. Now everyone’s firing away responses: Dan: “Dogs!” Nora: “Squirrels!” 100

THE CURRICULUM

“Doggies, doggies!” Brayden cries out looking like he’s about to explode with excitement. “Squirrels and trees and buildings and schools…” sums up Wendy, but the children are having only: “Dogs, dogs!” they all yell out, and Nora and Dan laugh as the word dog has surely become the signal to sing what is Brayden’s, if not all the children’s, favourite song. Wendy, who never disappoints, sings: “How much is that doggie in the window?” “The one with the waggely tail…” follows Charlotte. “How much is that doggie in the window?” the whole class sings. “Woof! Woof!” embellishes Brayden. “I do hope that doggie’s for sale!” the group finishes with chuckles. Explicit Instruction, Modelling, and Support Once ideas were generated, participants were guided to consider the scale of the paper and to size their drawings accordingly so that the whole visual field would be taken up. They were also supported to consider the line of the horizon. Ample time was allocated for drawing. From the classroom curriculum at Picasso.  After the singing the attention is back on the mural as participants are supported to establish the base of the mural (i.e., where the ground should be) so that the image hangs together: “So when you and your [elbow] partners have got some ideas, we need to fill this mural. Now, one important thing…in a mural, we all have to have the same place where the ground is… So point to where the ground is going to be on our mural!” invites Wendy. “Right here!” points Brayden. While talking, Wendy walks along the length of the mural drawing in the ground line: “Right there…and do you remember how when we did the parade we had a line so that everybody was walking along the same parade? Well, we’re going to do a line so that everyone is walking along…there we go, there’s the ground…and we’re going to make a few hills and bumps. There’s the ground…Oh…it might be a garden around here, what do you think?” This is no rhetorical question for Brayden. He intones, “I need some green!” The crayons are in the process of being distributed so Wendy promises, “We’re just going to wait for a minute Mr. Brayden and we will get you some green.” Meanwhile, Iris remembers that she has four photographs of the neighborhood in her room. She does not recall where she got them. Rachel reminds her that they are from previous intergenerational art programs at Picasso. Iris now recalls this and in working through memories, the conversation flows towards Iris’ childhood as a farm girl who did not have time to draw any pictures. 101

CHAPTER 3

Figure 3.23. Working together on the neighbourhood Mural

Iris then asks Rachel if Brayden could draw a picture for her as her contribution to the mural. Brayden is fervently engaged in his own drawing and refuses. Rachel asks Lois to offer some support to Iris: “Iris says that she would really like somebody to show her what to draw. Could you help Iris?” Lois turns to Iris and makes some suggestions, all of which are part of the actual neighbourhood in which Picasso sits, “You could draw a building, a house, and the [hockey] arena.” Iris turns to Rachel and pleads, “I don’t hear very well…” To facilitate this intergenerational interaction, Rachel tries, “You know what Lois? Iris needs you to talk really loudly…and face her so that she can hear…” Lois raises her voice a little bit and tries again: “Um…a tree, the arena, a flower, a building…” Rachel repeats Lois’ words to make sure that Iris gets the message: “She says you can draw a tree, or a flower, or the arena, because there’s an arena in our neighbourhood.” “Oh yes, there is!” Iris seems delighted and can now hear. Lois has just finished a drawing and states proudly to Rachel and Iris: “That’s Treehouse school!” 102

THE CURRICULUM

Rachel tries to facilitate more interaction between Lois and Iris “Yeah, that’s right! …That’s Treehouse School and that means that the arena needs to go next door, Iris.”

Figure 3.24. Working on the mural

Brayden overhears the conversation about the arena and is now ready to look up from his own drawing: “An arena!” “We’re really lucky in our neighborhood to have an arena…” says Wendy. Brayden calls to Wendy, “Wend-yyyyy! I am drawing you, Wendy! “Am I in your neighborhood? What a nice idea…” Wendy looks at the figure Brayden is drawing, “Here I am! Are you putting me with my purple shirt on today? I think there’s purple somewhere…and there I am with my blond hair, good job!” Wendy sings: An arena is something in our neighbourhood, In our neighborhood, in our neighbourhood, An arena is something in our neighbourhood It’s a building that we see each day. Dan has his own plans for the mural; he asks for the purple crayon: “I need purple!” 103

CHAPTER 3

“Here’s purple!” Brayden hands Dan a crayon. Dan engages Brayden in what he’s doing: “See what I made? An ice cream cone.” Dan laughs and perhaps referencing the day they made Accordion Books says, “I think I’ll put ‘Yum Yum’, will I?” But Brayden doesn’t answer, because he’s wrapped up in his drawing of Wendy: “Wend-yyyy! Wend-yyyy!” he calls. Looking at the progress on the drawing, Wendy affirms Brayden and then attempts to connect him with Dan: “That’s my sweater? Lovely! Thank you, Brayden. Oh, look! What did Dan draw?” “Ice cream!” responds Brayden. Wendy also now makes a connection to another part of the neighbourhood—the section that is populated by independent shops: “Have you ever seen a big ice cream cone like that in the neighborhood? Oh, I have! Over in the Village!” “Yeah!” confirms Dan. Conversations flow from person to person and Charlotte B. interrupts the discussion of ice cream to ask for a “real purple” crayon. Wendy recognizes that the purple in these crayons is a bit on the pink side. She encourages an experiment: “Actually, that is the closest to a purple that we have right now. It’s kind of a pinkypurple. Hmmmm…Maybe if you put that colour with some blue it will be a purple colour. Because I know that red plus blue makes a purple colour. So maybe if you do that colour and then blue overtop…” Dan becomes involved and thinks aloud as he experiments with the colours: “Let’s see here…” Meanwhile, Brayden draws swings on which he has himself and Wendy, and he says to her, “You’re going to go on the swings, I‘m going to go on the slide. Then we can both go on the swings and then the slide. And I’m making a sun.” Moving Brayden’s ideas out into the larger group, Wendy states, “Oh, great! I was hoping that someone would make a sun!” and this leads to the singing of Mr. Sun (1976). At the same time as all of this, Rachel continues to encourage Iris with her drawing. Iris wants to draw a tree but is nervous. “I know the trees, I don’t know how to do it,” Iris worries. “…What kind of tree were you thinking of?” Iris: “Maple tree!” Rachel gets Lois in on this: “You know all about trees, don’t you Lois?” Iris asks Lois, “Will you draw it for me?” Lois has already drawn a tree on the mural so Rachel asks, “What kind of tree is this?” Lois: “Just a normal tree…I don’t know the kind… but we don’t have trees in my backyard.”

104

THE CURRICULUM

Figure 3.25. Experimenting with purple

Lois then reconsiders and corrects, “I have one tree…I have a Tulip Tree.” Rachel attempts to build Lois’ confidence to help Iris: “Right! And did you know [Iris] that Lois’ mom…makes sure that there are trees in our city? So Lois knows all about trees, right? Yeah. And she knows all about acorns and how to plant them and everything. So, Iris wants to make the Maple Tree.” Lois leans forward to choose a red crayon. “… you want red?” Rachel asks. “For the leaves,” explains Lois. “Red leaves,” confirms Rachel. “Is it the fall? There are beautiful red leaves on the maple tree in the fall, aren’t there” Rachel says aloud what Lois is doing to help Iris see how the tree is made, “Okay, Lois… now we need a tree trunk though, don’t we? There’s a little bit of a tree trunk right here, hey?” “Yep!” agrees Lois as she draws.

105

CHAPTER 3

Rachel turns to Iris, “And then you do the branches…Iris and Lois will put on the leaves.” Iris holds her own crayon and draws. “That’s it, Iris, that’s it! That’s it, Lois! See, Lois put a leaf on your branch!” The drawing is one big story, and each new image changes the meaning that can be discerned from the whole. Going along with the images and the singing are oral stories as well. Brayden announces, “This is a tornado sucking up everything.” “Oh gosh!” laments Wendy, “I don’t want everything to go, because look at… there are squirrels.” Wendy points to someone else’s image on the mural, “I don’t want them to go…” Penny opens up a new narrative vein, “They’re fighting over a nut!” Wendy laughs and imagines the dialogue between the squirrels: “No it’s mine. No it’s not!” Rachel notices what’s going on: “Oh a tornado—eeeeh!” Brayden deepens his tale, “I see the clouds and where the clouds… I see it… and then I seen it turn black! …It’s sucking up the skating rink…” Iris wants Brayden to join her, “Maybe he’d like to put one [leaf] on here…” “Oh, Brayden,” Rachel tries to broker the interaction, “Iris is asking if you would like to put a leaf on her maple tree that she is making right here.” Not every attempt at interaction is successful, “No!” answers Brayden. Rachel explains, “He’s making his tornado, Iris.” Brayden is finally satisfied, “I’m…done!” “Oh, he’s done,” Rachel says, “and thankfully the tornado spared your tree.” Iris smiles and returns to drawing trees. She’s become quite proficient. Monica looks at the trees and says, “Just a little bit more here.” She draws in some branches. “Every tree is different, there aren’t two the same.” Rachel sees an opportunity to expand the participants’ facility with the mode and offers a suggestion to better balance the composition. “We need another…now sometimes, yeah, in the middle of the tree the branches might split off.” The participants are all talking and drawing at the same time. “That’s right too!” agrees Iris. “Hey, that’s good!” Monica likes the suggestion. “It looks like my hand!” Iris compares her veined hands to the pattern of the branches. Lois looks for supplies to add to the tree: “Could I have the green, please?” “This one?” asks Dan as he holds up a crayon. “Yeah!” Lois takes the crayon from him.

106

THE CURRICULUM

Rachel notices Brayden and Iris trading colours back and forth as the leaves get added to the branches. Meanwhile, Dan and Brayden are drawing and storytelling with each mode leading the other. Dan draws a slew of squirrels beside Iris and Lois’ tree. Brayden extends this image by saying that underneath them lay, “Dinosaur bones!” Dan laughs and exclaims, “These are the nuts!” Sustained Opportunities for Singing During the drawing we sang favourite songs. When their area on the mural was completed, designated children helped clear crayons and prepared the area for the song binders. From the classroom curriculum at Picasso.  The group seems to be feeling comfortable with itself and the sharing during the first part of class laid the foundation for sustained opportunities for singing. “Special delivery!” says Wendy taking out the binders with songs. “Special delivery to Hester! Special delivery to Brayden! Brayden’s not here today!” “Yeah!” Brayden makes his presence known. “Thank goodness!” feigns Wendy as she sings Willoughby Wallaby Woo (1976) and distributes the binders. She pauses at the end of each refrain for the participants to fill in the names as the binders get delivered: “Willoughby wallaby where, an elephant sat on …” “Charlotte!” They all shout. Wendy also distributes tambourines and maracas. All the participants try them out and rehearse the familiar favourite, How Much Is That Doggie in the Window (1952). After the song, Wendy continues to create opportunities for the participants to guide the song selection. She asks, “What song would you like to sing, Alice?” When Alice isn’t sure how to select, Wendy supports her by pointing to the icon on the top of the page Alice is looking at: “What’s this one, do you know?” Alice knows the song and sings in response, “The more we get together, together…” “That one!” Wendy enthuses. The participants join in using both their voices and instruments. After the first refrain, it’s time to remix the song to fit the occasion. The class sings, “The more we…” and Wendy poses, “So what are we doing right now?” “Sing!” The class shouts and they launch into, “The more we sing together, together, together/The more we sing together, the happier we’ll be…”

107

CHAPTER 3

The class continues to remix the song and act out the lyrics (e.g., pretend to sleep when they sing “snore together”). Lesson Seven: Songs of Us for the World

Figure 3.26. Charlotte

Learning Opportunities The technique of watercolour painting was familiar from the Intergenerational Hands project; however the creation of a portrait was a new application for this medium. Participants were invited to paint a portrait of their partners which would be used to illustrate a big book written to the tune of the song, Down by the Bay (1976). In this way, each participant could be included in a collective book and the art and song could come together to create a final product that might be enjoyed and revisited. The session included the introduction of a microphone to help prompt participant requests for favourite songs. The learning opportunities in this lesson included those pertinent to previous lessons plus the following: • Solidifying knowledge about portraits (visual and aural) and how they are particular forms of representation. 108

THE CURRICULUM

Figure 3.27. Dan

• Consolidating knowledge of partners and strengthening relationships through a concrete, collective form. Materials • • • • • •

Watercolour paper Variety of paintbrush sizes Watercolour paint sets and water bowls Homemade instruments including maracas, tambourines Hand-held microphone Binders

Tips • Prepare the pages for the book (11×17) with the name rhyme verse at the bottom of the page in advance, so that when the portrait is shared with the group it can be held in place on the page so that the participants see how the finished product will look in the book. 109

CHAPTER 3

Setting the Stage for Community Building • See previous lessons. From the classroom curriculum at Picasso.  It is the last session of the season for the intergenerational program. Now accustomed to their big and little seating pattern, as the children enter they automatically start looking for the pattern. Lionel scans the table and checks, “Big, little.” He directs where Brayden and Charlotte can sit. Hester adds, “No, big, and then the little ones right there.” The participants continue to try to figure it out, and the children’s early childhood educator remarks that for the children, this problem solving is “like their own private hello.” During the period where the participants are organizing themselves into a pattern they like, Keith notices Caden’s hand sitting on the table. He puts his hand on top of Caden’s; Caden pulls his hand out and puts it on top of Keith’s. The game has begun and the two continue alternating whose hand is on top, smiling at each other. Class is officially called to order with the singing of Willoughby Wallaby Woo (1976) and the song’s lyrics include each participant’s name. The Catalyst We highlighted the collective nature of the activity by informing the participants, “Today we are going to be creating a special book together where each page is about one of us. To make these pages, we will be painting pictures of each other.” We referenced some historical and contemporary examples of portraits while providing information about the genre of portraiture itself. For instance, we shared information about the purposes of the genre (e.g., was a way of capturing what a person looked like using minimal background with a person highlighted in the center of the portrait; portraits were usually painted before the invention of photography), and the affordances of the genre (e.g., what it can do such as how portraits can convey particular qualities of a person like highlight a certain physical feature or mood). We explained, “Today we are painting a picture of our partner. It is a painted portrait.” We went around the table and confirmed the intergenerational pairings and who was painting each other’s portrait. From the classroom curriculum at Picasso.  Wendy announces that this is the last session of the program before break, “So we’re going to sing LOTS of songs today.” She also shares, that part of this singing will involve the creation and sharing of a class book that contains all the participants’ names and portraits. Wendy illustrates the genre of portraiture with a story about the value of portraits: “A long, long time ago, people used to think it was really special for

110

THE CURRICULUM

somebody to paint a picture of the people that they cared about. And then, people invented cameras and a long time ago, people used to take pictures of people that were very special.” To exemplify the genre of portraiture and punctuate the notion of “special,” Wendy shows a photograph of her great grandmother. Wendy shares, too, an experience that probably all participants have had with portraits, “And even at school, I’ll bet you had pictures taken that look like this.” Wendy produces a school portrait. Dan inquires of the person in the photo, “Who’s that?” Brayden responds, “Wendy.” Drawing on the example, Wendy explains, “So this is my portrait from school and when you look at these pictures, is there anything else in the picture except the person?” Shaking their heads the participants all say no. Nora offers, “I like your dress.” “Yeah isn’t that fun? It’s my kid dress.” Wendy giggles then recommences the lesson of the portrait, “There’s just the person. There’s their face and maybe some of their clothes, but there is nothing in the background. They’re not busy doing anything. The person takes up the WHOLE page.” Dan is still connecting with the photo of Wendy’s great grandmother. He seeks confirmation, “Is that your grandmother? That would be with an old camera.” Honouring Dan’s interest, the group shares a conversation about what kind of camera would have taken such a photo, and then Wendy moves on to the task of the day, “You’re going to do the portrait of the person that is sitting next to you…Caden, you’re painting a picture of Keith, and Keith you’re painting a picture of Caden. And Dan, you’re going to paint a picture of … Charlotte, you’re going to paint a picture of Dan…” Explicit Instruction, Modelling, and Support We reminded participants about the process for watercolour painting such as using a pencil first to create large areas for paint and not colouring with pencil, creating more saturated colours by using little water, using the bathtub to rinse the brush between colours. In the background, participants worked to recordings of the songs from their songbooks, which included recordings of themselves singing these songs. From the classroom curriculum at Picasso.  Wendy reminds the group of their previous sessions using water colours and asks for the three important tools they need to paint: “Paintbrushes,” answers Hester. “Water,” says, Lionel. And “Paint,” completes Brayden. 111

CHAPTER 3

As per the routine the children distribute the materials and again we note the importance of this time for intergenerational contact and interaction. When everything has been passed out, Wendy begins some formal instruction, connecting today’s activity with previous experiences the participants have had with painting in the class. “Today we’re going to start with pencils. We’re going to leave lots of big spaces where we’re drawing so the paint…Go back in your memory banks…” Once everybody has started, Wendy plays a recording of familiar songs from class as well as the song that underscore the book they are making, Down by the Bay (1976). Working on the Project This section was as in previous projects. From the classroom curriculum at Picasso.  Participants work on their portraits while they sing and hum along to the recordings. Rachel checks on Iris, “How’s it going, Iris?” “I said I wasn’t very good at drawing.” “Well, are you enjoying yourself doing it?” “Oh heavens, yes! I think there are three sheets of pictures from the children from Christmas stuck on my wall.” “So it is just about enjoying it.” “Yeah! You know years and years have gone by, and when you think back it shows how much you missed. That’s the truth.” “What do you think you missed? Iris tells a story that suggests that when she was a child her drawing was interrupted by a need to work and follow particular kinds of practices: “Well …I lived…on a farm and had to go to the church and we had pictures to draw [but we had to] put [them] down…we had to behave yourself.” “Yes.” Rachel says and wonders if Iris is now getting to have what she had missed, the time to draw uninterrupted and without the need to behave. “Well look… Lionel is doing a painting of you.” “Yes he is.” “See your name up there?” Rachel indicates Iris’ name on Lionel’s page. “Isn’t that nice?” says Iris. “And he’s got your blue shirt right there…” “And he has the curly hair too,” notes John. “He has the lovely new hair style. You just got that done, eh?” Rachel recognizes. “Yes, I just got it done.” “Yes, it’s fantastic and look at… he’s captured it.” “It’s perfect,” says John of both Iris’ new hair and Lionel’s expression of it. 112

THE CURRICULUM

“And your glasses,” Rachel says, acknowledging how carefully Lionel is observing Iris, and how special it must feel to have someone really notice you. “Mmmummm,” affirms Iris, clearly enjoying the attention. Turning to Lionel, Rachel commends his careful artistry, “Lionel, you have all of Iris’ details in that painting. You can really tell it’s Iris for sure. The blue shirt, the glasses, the hair…” “For heaven’s sake!” interjects Iris with glee. “and the smile… the smile!” Rachel is pushing the fun, and Iris laughs at being the centre of attention. “You don’t smile do you?” John teases Iris then he helps her to draw Lionel in turn. Meanwhile, in another part of the room, Dan and Charlotte are painting each other’s portraits. They are discussing the parts of the eye and colours and using each other as reference: “Looking good girl! Oh neat–o” Dan gushes about Charlotte’s painting, “need it a little darker than that?” Charlotte exhibits some confusion about how to add a pupil and Dan provides support, “Oh, Okay. Now what colour are the pupils in your eye? It’s the very middle spot.” Charlotte queries, “What?” and gestures back towards the painting. “No, that’s out here, what’s in the middle that is a very round spot that looks dark.” “Black?” “There, that’s got it.” And indeed she had.

Figure 3.28. Brayden and Frances

113

CHAPTER 3

Figure 3.29. Caden

Figure 3.30. Lois’

114

THE CURRICULUM

Figure 3.31. Marian

Figure 3.32. Sharing art work

115

CHAPTER 3

Figure 3.33. Showing art work

Sustained Opportunities for Singing When the portraits were complete, designated children collected them to put out to dry. Other children tidied supplies and prepared the area for the song binders. Helpers distributed the binders, and we encouraged participants to review the songs therein and practice singing and/or humming them to each other as the class transitioned to sustained opportunities for singing. We used the opportunity to again solidify participants’ knowledge of each other’s names and make the sharing of materials a time of intergenerational contact. Once the class was ready, we used the microphone and asked if anyone in the group had a favourite song or request to get the singing started. While participants were singing, we opened a tub of instruments and shared them with the group. We encouraged participants to flip through the binders and identify songs from previous weeks that they would like to sing. Icons were useful for participants who had limited print literacy to identify songs they would like to sing. From the classroom curriculum at Picasso.  The moment he sees the binders come out, Brayden sings How Much is that Doggie in the Window (1952). Charlotte and others join him. They continue singing until all the binders are distributed and Wendy announces, “…it’s request hour here at Art and Song at Picasso and we are looking 116

THE CURRICULUM

for songs that people would like to sing. So have a look through your [binder]. What songs, what songs, what songs?” Excited, Brayden announces, “The birdie, birdie, birdie!” Charlotte backs him up, “The bird one!” The rest of the class is unsure which song Brayden and Charlotte are asking for, then Charlotte becomes more specific, “The robin in the rain one…” Wendy asks for the picture on the song page and Dan helps, “Robin.” Lionel finds the song, and lets the others know where it is, “Back of the book!” That’s the prompt the class needs to know exactly which song they’re going to sing, and thanks to everyone’s cooperation, Wendy is able to pronounce, “Here we go…” And there they indeed go, singing together. Closure Once the paintings were dry, we used a song like Willoughby Wallaby Woo (1976) (a nonsense song that plays with participants’ names) to invite children to retrieve their portrait and that of their partner from the drying area and put it on the table in front of them. We sang Down by the Bay (1976), and encouraged those who knew it to sing along. Once the tune was established we shared with the group that each person had a special verse in the Down by the Bay (1976) book. In our programs we included pre-written verses for the book where each page had a different verse that corresponded with a participant’s name (e.g., “Have you ever seen Dawn eating lunch on the lawn?”). The verse could be printed out and affixed to the bottom of the page. Alternatively, time permitting, participants can make up their own verses in pairs and print them out to affix to the bottom of the page. Paintings could then be glued above their corresponding verse. We sang the song with each participant’s name page and showed the portrait that was painted of that person. As the singing drew to a close, we asked for a song that can be sung by everyone as the children lined up to leave. NOTE 1

The lessons as taught in the program were adapted from lessons copyrighted to Heydon, R. & Daly, B. and with the singing added were copyrighted to Heydon, R., O’Neill, S., Beynon, C., and Crocker, W.

117

CHAPTER 4

TOWARDS A (RE)CONCEPTUALIZATION OF WELLBEING THROUGH SINGING-INFUSED MULTIMODAL, INTERGENERATIONAL CURRICULUM

In the opening of this book, we motion towards the visceral, social, and special (read unique) nature of intergenerational singing in the multimodal curriculum: The singing fills the space in the body and the room with something that is weighted and certain; it is an embrace in the here and now—a warm glowing that resonates the word, together. To conceptualize the elders’ and children’s experiences with literacy and literacy practices in the program, it is necessary to reimagine what constitutes literacy and adjust conceptualizations accordingly through a process of harmonization that “transcends the collective contribution” of images, movement, gesture, words, and music to create “a different kind of meaning” (Hull & Nelson, 2005, p. 225). The understanding of literacy and wellbeing that we have come to develop through our study is based on a deep sense of interrelatedness that is evident as singing-infused multimodal curricula unfolds over time. As people’s meaning making is produced through the use or creation of particular components of their knowledge and experience, there is an interrelationship between emotions and associations that evoke semiosis. In the curriculum, the literacy practices developed dynamically between participants engaged in intergenerational singing, relationshipbuilding, and multimodal meaning making more generally. The value of multimodal literacy—why it might matter—is contingent on how modes and media as tools or technologies are employed in the world to produce particular actions and reflections and how these might be of import or have meaning to the people involved. When the creation of opportunities for participation in multimodal literacy practices is both significant to people and shared, new possibilities are born. Making meaning multimodally, as we saw in the study, enables “the expression of a much fuller range of human emotion and experience” (Stein, 2004, p. 95) than what might be available monomodally. As we stated in chapter one, modes are relational, pluralistic, and almost always read and used in conjunction with each other, and yet “specific modes may dominate or converge” (Walsh, 2011, p. 12). Although similar meanings can be conveyed in different modalities (Kress, 2003), qualitatively different kinds of meanings can be imparted “more easily and naturally” (Hull & Nelson, 2005, p. 229) through some modes when compared to others. A focus on singing-infused multimodal literacy recognizes that the sonic structure of music involves actions and interactions that seem to be “as much a 119

CHAPTER 4

part of the music as the sonic structure of the sound itself” (Cross, 2005, p. 30). In other words, the “intelligibility” of music may “depend on its contextualization in collective movement” (p. 30) through communal practices. Further, the idea that music is inherently ambiguous in terms of its meaning and signification is seen as “valuable in social and political contexts” (p. 30). The “malleable and flexible” nature of music “has a sort of ‘floating intentionality’” that can be thought of as “gathering meaning from the contexts within which it happens and in turn contributing meaning to those contexts” (p. 30). Our focus throughout this book has been on the implications and effects of singing-infused multimodal literacy beyond the particular meanings that can be created and carried by sonic “accents, tones, volume, pace, and quality” (Rowsell, 2013, p. 32). We have identified the interconnectedness of singing as a social practice in intergenerational multimodal curricula as it can be a way to “enhance the solidarity of a community” and reinforce its “cherished values and ideas” (p. 47). In turn this can enhance opportunities for wellbeing. These ideas are similar to what Gablik (1992) refers to as “connective aesthetics” (p. 2). This view of arts practice can be reframed as multimodal literacy practice whereby “inviting in the other makes art [or meaning] more socially responsive” and provides “an empathic means of seeing through another’s eyes, of stretching our boundaries beyond the ego-self to create a wider view of the world” (p. 6). Add to this the notion of communal agency as a “reactive, creative agency” by virtue of its “social constitution” and “multiple perspectivity” (Martin & McLellan, 2013, p. 189), and we begin to capture the affordances of singing-infused multimodal practice for human connection between generations on a deep and fundamental level that is capable of promoting wellbeing. In this last chapter, we aim to explore further this relational and mutually constitutive notion of singing-infused multimodal literacy practice, coupled with elders’ and children’s subjective and intersubjective understandings of them. Drawing on the study data of the Picasso program, including interview accounts from participants, we focus a lens on emotions and the communal meaning making of elders and children within the curriculum and the role such curricula might play in cultivating opportunities for participant wellbeing. We structure the initial part of the discussion through the components of the intergenerational class, drawing attention to how different elements of the class from participants to materials played a role in producing the classroom curriculum and its effects. In so doing we point to the affordances and constraints of the curriculum and move towards new theoretical opportunities for conceptualizing multimodal literacy and wellbeing with which we use to close the book. AFFORDANCES AND CONSTRAINTS OF THE CURRICULUM

We found that the affordances and constraints of the curriculum in the study were produced through the relationship between elements of the curriculum that 120

Towards a (Re)Conceptualization of Wellbeing

coalesced with Schwab’s (1973) curricular commonplaces: educator (e.g., the pedagogical aspects of the programmatic curriculum and the team of researchers, the early childhood educators, and recreation therapists who participated in the program), subject matter (e.g., the modes used in the program, the song repertoire), learners (e.g., participants’ previous experiences and real and perceived facility with singing, interests, and identities), milieu (e.g., institutional expectations and intergenerational context), and the physical materials of the class and the related modes indexed in and by the class (e.g., song books, art supplies, musical instruments). We next provide illustrations of how these commonplaces related to each other to produce affordances and constraints relative to participants’ literacy and identity options in addition to opportunities to forge relationships and create collective aural and visual texts—all potentially vital components of our conceptualization of wellbeing. Gathering for Class Literacies are dialogic, always directed towards an explicit or implicit other (Bakhtin, 1981), and multimodal literacy practices are no different. As such, the curriculum attempted to foster relationship building and capitalize on positive identities vis-à-vis the other participants to produce multimodal literacy learning opportunities. As evidenced in the narratives in chapter three as well as in the following, the social nature of the program was apparent. People’s interactions were an effect of the coming together of the commonplaces which clearly featured the educators, who worked to connect generations, and environmental elements such as space, time, and even clothing. It is just before the fourth session and because the room where class is held is in use right before the intergenerational program, there is set-up time needed even though participants are starting to arrive. This is just a feature of working in a busy intergenerational setting. Andrea, Francesca, and Isla (adult participants) have already arrived. The latter two are regular attendees who have been participating in intergenerational art class for years. “Here they come,” announces someone about the children who are walking down the hall towards class. Andrea in particular is visibly excited. She is in a wheelchair and gestures and yells for someone to move her closer to the children so she can see them better. The children enter and the adults, admiring the children’s attire, comment on it: “Look at her bunny slippers!” “Look at that dress!” Educator Penny approaches Keith and asks him who he would like to be partnered with today. She poses this question because Caden, his usual partner, is absent. Keith immediately asks for Caden and when he learns he is not here, says, “Well it doesn’t make any difference who I work with then. So where’s Caden today?” As the recreation therapists organize the seating, adult participant Bryan, who missed the previous week because of illness, begins a conversation that is certainly 121

CHAPTER 4

on point for a class that includes singing. “My voice didn’t go away while I was sick” he says. Wendy, capitalizing on the learning opportunity counters, “Well you’re lucky, and you know what? Sometimes your voice changes when you get older. Sometimes your voice changes when you get sick. So your words and ideas are all still in there, you just can’t say them as well.” Child participant Constance gets in on the dialogue, “Guess what? In the night my dad lost his voice, but he wasn’t sick. His voice came right back.” Bryan looks around at the materials being set out and asks, “Are we doing a collage?” “Tell you what” answers Wendy, “Why don’t we sing our Here We Are Together song and then we’ll find out! Alright!” And by the time this announcement comes, everyone is sitting and away they go to sing. The seemingly informal curriculum of entrance provided opportunities for partnering, discursive interchange, and connection making—who will sit with whom?; generating and capitalizing on interest—what will we be doing today?; conversations to catch up on what had been missed since the last class by members across generations—Guess what? and amongst generations—Look at that!; and learning about each other, especially in relation to the modal demands being placed on participants—Let me tell you about my voice and I can learn about yours. Singing to Gather Each session began with a gathering song which immersed participants in singing from the start, provided a purposeful occasion for its practice, drew various participants’ funds of knowledge, and clearly demarcated the time of the class coming together. This session starter connects to the literature which says that intergenerational communication and relationship building can be strengthened by beginning classes with some kind of opportunity for participants to become (re)acquainted with each other (Heydon, 2007). This may be important as elders in particular can forget names, their attendance can be irregular due to illness, and a week since seeing their adult friends can seem like a long time to children. Leveraging funds of knowledge, the sessions began with a gathering song that was familiar to most. From the first and subsequent sessions, all participants sang or kept beat with the gathering song, though adult Keith did complain in his exit interview that he felt there was “too much repetition” with everyone’s name and this could put the children “to sleep.” There was one class as mentioned in Chapter 3, when the children played a game of pretending to sleep during the singing of a song—prankster Brayden dramatically slumped over in his seat and loudly snored and breathed in time to the music, yet the data suggest that the energy and momentum of the class continued, and there were no data to point to the children being bored. The concern over repetition came specifically and only from Keith and though it was framed as a concern for 122

Towards a (Re)Conceptualization of Wellbeing

the children, it perhaps better speaks to the constraints of making the song repertoire relevant and interesting to all participants. Singing a Known Song Interest was part of the curriculum that produced affordances and constraints, and interest in the song repertoire was complex. Within each class, to scaffold participants’ singing and song knowledge, the program provided opportunities for the singing of (at least) one well-known song, one song that had been introduced the previous day, and one new song. At the beginning of class, right after name introductions, participants were invited to sing a song from the previous day. The narratives in Chapter 3, when augmented by the interview data, suggest how this practice created affordances for the participants to collectively sing songs that were relatively familiar if not well known and how the song repertoire built on their interests and funds of knowledge; for instance, we indicated that the song, How Much is that Doggie in the Window, was a favourite among many in the class. We also illustrated how this song fit in the rhythm of the class. What the interviews showed was that Brayden, the most vocal advocate of the song, did not just select it because of its melody or the opportunity to bark. He selected it for at least the reason that it connected his home life with his life in class and Picasso Child. Specifically, Brayden explained that he felt “sad” to leave his puppy at home alone when he went to child care, thus he liked to sing How Much is that Doggie in the Window. During the interview he also said, “I’m gonna bring that puppy [to Picasso] and I will bring it up to our class and we can sing, How Much is that Doggie in the Window.” In the case of singing all of the songs, every participant sang, used shakers, and/ or kept the beat with his/her body (e.g., foot tapping, clapping, and nodding of head). Yet some of the data suggest that singing was not automatically accepted or easily practiced by all. For instance, in his exit interview, after the children had asked to sing How Much is that Doggie in the Window in every session (a song that only one child did not identify as her “favourite” in the children’s exit interviews), Keith had the following exchange with one of the researchers Keith: (With a smirk) If I hear that doggie in the window one more time I’m gonna scream! Interviewer: (laughing) I think Brayden had something to do with that! That was his favourite song. Keith: Oh yah, yah, well…. I don’t know how many times we sang that darn song…[then] that night [after class] we had entertainment [for the adults in the Picasso entertainment program and], this lady [came], and it was the first song she sang! (laughing) Adult participant, Nora, also expressed some difficulties with singing due to the repertoire. Through the course of the program, Nora sang every song every time and emphasized in an interview that in the intergenerational sessions, “Oh I sing!” 123

CHAPTER 4

She, however, suggested that she did not feel completely comfortable with all of the songs. In the exit interview, Nora mentioned, “a lot of the music is different for me …when [the children] start singing they have songs that I don’t even know… the songs that I like are old …I know all the words …but I don’t know a lot of the words when they start singing.” The children, she explained, “have their own songs.” We were curious about Nora’s experience given the emergent orientation to the repertoire (i.e., the participants forwarded their own songs to be sung) and that, with the rare exception such as Brayden’s inclusion of Usher’s DJ Got Us Falling in Love, children did not forward popular contemporary songs; all the songs they contributed and that we adopted for the repertoire were fairly traditional and likely to be known by both generations. Also, the program implemented songbooks to support participants who did not know each other’s songs and to aid as a mnemonic. When asked about the books and questioning if they could have been a support to her, Nora commented only on How Much is that Doggie in the Window being included in the book, “but I know THAT one!” The adults all used the songbooks, but the extent to which they promoted or sustained interest in singing is unknown. Nora’s interview suggests that even with the emergent curricular orientation and the songbooks, there may have been gaps in knowledge between generations, which the program did not sufficiently mediate. All adults, however, did appear to persevere with the singing, even when it was not easy. Adult participant Iris, for example, expressed that she wanted to connect with the children through singing even though she felt she did not have great facility with singing nor did she know all the songs. Iris was willing to push through constraints to sing with the children. As the next narrative illustrates, in February, Iris was in class trying hard to produce her voice even though a recent illness had made this difficult. It’s the end of class and Brayden has been uncharacteristically quiet during the singing of the last song of class which was B-I-N-G-O. In fact, earlier in the session he had put his hands over his ears during the singing of that song. Heydon inquires, “Hey Brayden, can I ask you a question?” There is affirmation in his nod. “How come you put your hands over your ears?” “Because I didn’t want to sing.” “You didn’t want to sing?” Rachel probes. “I didn’t want to hear it,” Brayden elaborates, and with this, he exits with his class. Adult Maeve, has been watching the interaction. Rachel offers, “He didn’t like the singing that much, hey Maeve?” Maeve replies that perhaps he didn’t know the song. Adult Iris adds, “I don’t know them all, but I know some.” Educator Penny who has noticed that Iris tries to sing every song, says, “I think you know enough!” “I love to hear them, that’s all,” responds Iris. 124

Towards a (Re)Conceptualization of Wellbeing

Rachel wonders if by “them” Iris means the songs or the children. “You love to hear the songs?” “I’ve got a sore throat,” Iris answers. “Oh you’re having trouble singing today?” wonders Rachel. “I just said the words quietly” Iris explains, then after a bit points to her throat and says, “I have a hard time with my throat, but I just sing the words quietly, and I like to hear the songs, and that was great and I had a good time.” Despite her physical limitations, Iris chose to participate in the program, getting what she called “a good time” out of it. So too did Keith, Nora, and all the children, as reported by them in their interviews, even those for whom singing was not always an automatically easy or interesting thing to do. Why and how singing mattered to the participants, or what they derived from it, may have differed across generations and even from class to class. Research into singing suggests that initially, when a song is first heard and the lyrics are unknown, the music and meaning are readily accessible to ordinary experience as the expression of an idea in the form of a symbol, albeit not necessarily a conventional symbol. However, on this first singing of a song what is lacking is connection (Monelle, 1992). In other words, the song is “felt as a quality” rather than “recognized as a function” (Langer, 1953, cited in Monelle, 1992, p. 8). It is this felt quality that is difficult to describe or isolate, which affords music a meaningful configuration for making sense of the vagaries of experience. Musical experiences are “rarely limited to interpreting only one musical sign”; rather, the interpretation of complex signs of “differing character” is generally acquired through a process of enculturation (Boilès, 1982, p. 37). Within a particular culture, knowledge of songs and their signification is mostly gained through years of participation and sharing from generation to generation, and, although elders and children may be aware of “specific sets of signs within the tune,” the process of semiosis may be different as the song can be interpreted “individually as well as together” (p. 43). Catalyst and Support The next section of class time involved the creating and viewing of visual texts and the data suggest that there was a reciprocal relationship between the modes with art and oral language (e.g., talking and listening) supporting the singing and vice versa. The existing art program provided a comfortable and perhaps needed familiarity for participants as singing was a new mode for the intergenerational program. In Songs in Our Heads, for instance, participants were invited to create collages of songs that got stuck in their heads, and these songs informed the repertoire. After singing the welcome song and one song from the previous day, Wendy, the program teacher modelled how to create the visual text that would support the singing. In the first few sessions, the art making helped participants generate the songs for the repertoire. For example, in the first session when participants were invited to 125

CHAPTER 4

consider the songs in their heads, they were provided with magazines from Picasso and other images that we supplied which they could use to create their song collages. Most participants selected images first and then came up with songs that fit them; for instance, one of the magazines contained Christmas images and the adults and children who had access to the magazine included Christmas songs in their “heads.” In the next session when participants were invited to draw a map of their heart to show the songs that they loved or that referred to something they loved, they did not have the visual prompts from the magazines, and it was more challenging for them to come up with songs. Facilitator-aided discussions between participants as they worked through the visual texts did, however, provide some prompting for what to sing as described in the narrative that features Betty in the upcoming section. Visual texts supported singing even after the initial sessions when the art component was no longer needed to elicit songs for the repertoire, because there were already enough songs. Once there were sufficient songs in the repertoire that participants had a choice of songs to sing during the open songbook portion of class, the text-making related to the focal idea of the day and the new song introduced (e.g., see sessions 4 through 7 in Table 2.1 in Chapter 2). The visual texts supported singing by giving participants something concrete to do with their hands and eyes while singing so that they were less self-conscious; for instance, during the period when participants worked on their visual texts, the program teacher hummed or quietly sang focus-related songs. Participants gradually caught the tune and also started to sing as they worked. There was a natural rhythm to cutting, pasting, and drawing while singing. Building the aural on the visual provided opportunities for expanded literacy options where participants were able to draw on elements of visual texts first or combine elements from visual and aural texts to help them consider and rehearse songs without having to initially share them with the whole group. Materially, singing was also supported through musical instruments (e.g., shakers, tambourines). This was of particular import for participants who had difficulty or reluctance singing either due to physical constraints or other reasons. For example, child participant Caden rarely spoke in class and Penny, the early childhood educator, said this was not unusual for him. Keith took Caden under his wing by always choosing to sit with him and trying to provide him with support to participate. Caden never did sing in class, but by the second session, he was using a maraca, and he continued to use instruments in subsequent classes. Finally, in his exit interview Caden quietly sung some of the words to Aiken Drum. The following post-session discussion demonstrates some of the effects of the maracas on Caden. It also demonstrates the importance of relationship in classroom curriculum and the way Keith’s identity was formed in relation to Caden (i.e., as a mentor to Caden). Keith and Rachel are discussing the children, and Keith focuses on two boys: Caden and the gregarious Brayden. Referring to the boys Keith says, “Oh yeah, the two opposites!” He then remarks, “This is the first time that Caden has been …more expressive shall I say? …This is the first time that I’ve got him to draw anything himself.” 126

Towards a (Re)Conceptualization of Wellbeing

Keith, Wendy, some of the other adults, and Rachel continue to comment until Keith says, “I asked him if he had any brothers or sisters, and he said yes, two …It’s the first time I think I’ve gotten through to him a little bit, you know?” Adult participant Dan compliments Keith saying, “Good show!” and adult participant Maeve reinforces the compliment with, “He was looking up to you today.” Rachel turns to Keith and says about Caden, “He was using his maraca today too.” “Oh yeah!” replies Keith; “Oh yes, he was shaking!” “He was loving it!” remarks Wendy. “More into things today,” explains Keith. “He had more expression. He was doing things…. That’s the first time I’ve seen him do that.” Rachel says, “…he doesn’t use a lot of words.” “No,” says Keith, “he doesn’t talk.” “But he was expressing himself by drawing,” Rachel offers. “Yup,” confirms Keith. “And he was expressing himself by using his maraca,” says Rachel. “Yup,” nods Keith. Wendy adds, “[He was] Smiling!” “He was a happy little kid today,” confirms Keith smiling himself. “He’ll go home and talk about it,” asserts Dan. Several adults also expressed having physical difficulty with singing, because they were short of breath (including Keith), and the instruments and the multimodal nature of the classes supported them to be able to participate and communicate with each other nonetheless. Also, of fundamental significance for the intergenerational relationships in the class was that participants were attending to each other through episodes of what Noddings (2002) referred to as “interpersonal reasoning” where a participant “may pause to remind the other of her strengths, to reminisce, to explore, to express concern, to have a good laugh, or otherwise connect with the other as cared-for” (p. 17). As such, this form of relationship building, which depends on shared practices, always implies a seeking to understand the other and to “reach across the ideological gap to connect with each other” (p. 17). Sustained Opportunities to Work on Visual Texts The curriculum focused on providing participants with time to work together to create their visual texts and engage in informal singing. The data suggest that all participants needed this time to connect with others to acquire identity options that could help them participate in class and make meaning together. For the adults, this meant having identity options that could promote identities formed in relation to supporting the children, a finding supported by McAdams and Logan’s (2004) concept of generativity. Generativity, as we have previously talked about is described in the literature as an important quality of older adults who want to assure the wellbeing of future generations by nurturing them through activities that 127

CHAPTER 4

may be expressed in teaching or mentoring situations. Also as previously discussed, in informal, familial intergenerational settings, for instance, children have been found to develop important literacy practices as they interact with grandparents (e.g., Gregory, Long, & Volk, 2004) and in passing down their knowledge, elders can experience generativity, perpetuating a form of optimism or forward looking (e.g., McAdams, 1993). In the study, we saw the curriculum as providing a formal means of creating opportunities for generativity for the benefit of both children and elders. Prior to the introduction of the singing into the art curriculum, participants worked primarily on their own texts with support from the people around them. Adults and children aided each other with communicational decisions; for example, children were documented as helping adults with idea formation and adults were seen to help children with technical issues such as spelling when they wanted to include writing in their texts (Heydon, 2007). Assuming the reciprocal role of mutual supporter seemed to gain even more importance to participants following the first introduction of the singing into the program. The case of Keith, who had been an avid participant in the art classes for several years, is especially telling of this. Relationships were the key affordance of the program that promoted Keith’s engagement in the sessions. After the first session, when singing had been introduced, Keith complained that he had not liked the session, and he named the singing as the problem. Rachel, who had known Keith since he began the intergenerational programs years earlier, discussed his displeasure with him. She learned that Keith was missing his young friend from the previous intergenerational art program. The child had now gone off to full time school and was no longer in the child care program. In their discussion Keith repeated, “Everything’s changed. Everything’s changed.” When Rachel asked, “What else is different than just the singing?” Keith responded, “The kids aren’t the same. Roger’s not even here.” Roger had been Keith’s friend for two years and had become, in Keith’s words, his “honorary grandson.” The data suggest that Keith’s predominant concern with the program was that he was mourning the loss of the relationship with his young friend and that singing was a new mode in the program, and one with which Keith had little experience, exacerbated the feeling of change or loss. People bring with them to learning experiences their histories and yearnings, their knowledge and their identities. Carrying their long lives with them, the elders in the program also brought to class their past and present experiences with the modes involved in the curriculum (e.g., singing) and related understandings of and interests in said modes. These were all part of what produced the adult participants’ engagement in the classroom curriculum. The rationale for participating, the meaning in the intergenerational program, and the main reason why the multimodal curriculum mattered for Keith, for instance, came from his desire to support the children to become better meaning makers. Through our interviews with Keith, we learned that he did not have experience singing and did not have, as he said, “a tremendous amount” of music in his adult life. He explained, 128

Towards a (Re)Conceptualization of Wellbeing

I was born in 1929, and my dad ran out of work, and we lived with an uncle on the farm…We didn’t have a radio until 1939 or so. So there was nobody either on my mother’s or father’s side that were into music and nobody had a piano. The situation was not so cut and dried that one could say Keith simply did not enjoy music or singing. He commented favourably on “watching” a musical performance in high school, recalled fondly travelling to a neighbouring city as a young man to attend the symphony, and when pressed about his experience with singing in more recent years he cited “enjoying” ballads with “a story to [them]” and some of the singers at Picasso who provided “entertainment.” Keith was very particular about the music and singing that he did and did not like, however, and made a point of describing certain types of singing that were off-putting to him. With a jovial disposition, laughing all the while, for instance, Keith described how much he disliked “music that gets into that nasal sound like Willie Nelson – ooh, that really drives me up the wall! (laughter).” He complained too about some of the adults-only singing programming at Picasso: We have [a] lady who comes who is a professional, she was in Broadway, and for some reason or other she insists on using a [microphone], and she’s just screaming at you. She doesn’t need a mic… the last couple of times I take my hearing aids out and she’s still screaming at me! (laughing) Keith also lamented that there are many (singers that) come [to Picasso to perform] that are very good. But when you’ve heard them six, ten times and they don’t change their repertoire too much …I don’t get down [to the common room to attend the performance] quite as much as I used to. Keith claimed he had “no ability to sing” joking with us, “the last time I sang the dog left home…I don’t have the ability with art or music, that wasn’t my thing.” In all, Keith indicated that not just any singing or child companion would do. He expressed definitive preferences in all aspects of singing and these, along with the specific relationships he had made in the intergenerational programs over the years, mattered. Keith had limited positive memories, experiences, and facility with singing and his rationale for participating in the program was almost exclusively about meaning making with the children. Singing did not play a big part in his life story, but children did. Keith did not see himself as a singer, but he did see himself as having facility with interacting and forming relationships with particular children and helping them to become better communicators. Keith, for instance, strongly expressed wanting to help them to sing. When asked about why he participated in the program, he emphatically responded, “I enjoy the kids!… this is…at least the third year I have done it…my daughter and I were talking about this not too long ago, and she said, ‘well dad, you’ve always had kids around the house.’” High engagement in the 129

CHAPTER 4

curriculum was afforded by his past experiences with children and his desire to pass knowledge on to them. Keith cited his former role as a funeral director when discussing why he wanted to be part of the program saying, “It’s a matter of helping people. And I think this is part of it. I—while I enjoy the kids and I become friends with them. But this is part of supporting them…they need all the support they can get.” We read in this situation that singing provided a way for Keith to interact with and support the children in the program, making visible the link between multimodal practice and opportunities for relationship-building and expanded identity options. Through this the children, such as Caden, were equally provided new literacy options (e.g., through learning opportunities relative to including the sonic in their modal repertoires). Being with and supporting the children was also key for even those adult participants who said they enjoyed singing, had a history with singing, and engaged in singing outside of the intergenerational program. Nora, for instance, reported, “I like to sing” and pointed to singing in her life before coming to Picasso; “my daughter played [the piano]…and she was in the choir in the church…I led the little kids.” She participated in singing-related activities at the time of data collection (e.g., “Fellows come in and play the piano…They want you to sing too, so I sing too!”). Yet, Nora responded to the question “What was it that you enjoyed the most [about the program]” with “I just like the children, eh?” These examples again connect to the notion of generativity (McAdams & Logan, 2004), and the data here again suggest that the multimodal curriculum with its singing and art were part of what afforded the effect of child-adult relationship-building. The relationships perhaps could not have been created without the multimodal engagement. The intergenerational literature has long emphasized the importance of equal group status in programming (Jarrott, 2007), and the data relate that the curriculum afforded opportunities for the children to also be supporters of the adults. The following narrative speaks to the curriculum promoting this balance in the relationships. Adult participant Betty who had been participating in intergenerational programming for two years arrives eager to participate in session two of the singing-infused curriculum, “I don’t feel well today.” She takes her seat and is quite breathless. Despite her raspy breath, which she produces with much effort, she tries to engage with the children and the curriculum. When it is time for the participants to make their own heartmaps, Rachel walks around the table checking in on participants. She comes to Betty and child participant Cleo and inquires, “Hello! What songs are coming out here?” Cleo shrugs and said, “um…Wendy” and Betty answers laughing, “We’re not so bright. We’re short on songs.” Noticing child participant, Lauren’s, inclusion of the song B-I-N-G-O in her heartmap, Wendy hums the song. The participants around the room quickly pick up on this and begin singing and/or clapping, Betty and Cleo included. Wendy pauses the song in a way that provides an opportunity to support participants in the making 130

Towards a (Re)Conceptualization of Wellbeing

of their own heartmaps. She says, “Listen to this. I think that was the song that was in Lauren’s heart.” The participants pick up singing the song again and while singing, Rachel sees Cleo write “B-I-N-G-O” in her heart. Now Betty quietly sings O Canada and gestures toward Rachel. Rachel sees Cleo has a maple leaf in her heart and it is in response to this that Betty is singing. Soon thereafter Rachel notices that Betty has put a maple leaf in her heart too and she, Cleo, and child participant Lauren (who has added a maple leaf to her heart) hum O Canada. Struggling for breath, Betty manages to hum a flourish in the song and then put her hands on her mouth as though she’s blowing a trumpet to add a string of toots. The whole table is now humming, and while they do, Betty sings the finish, “O Canada we stand on guard for thee!” In the above narrative and others in Chapter 3, participants reciprocally supported each other in visual and aural text-making, and the visual texts could be understood as affording the necessary memory aid for recalling songs, piquing interest in singing, and helping participants to share ideas. Opportunities to Focus on Singing Once the visual texts were completed, participants’ songbooks were distributed, and participants were invited to select the songs they wanted to sing. Multimodal theory underscores that literacies are creative; people produce not just use signs (Jewitt & Kress, 2003). This part of the curriculum in particular afforded participants time to sing, and as the following narrative illustrates, in this collective, intergenerational singing practice participants showed facility with remixing songs by adding, deleting, and/or changing lyrics, notes, and other elements to fit the situation and their interests. Wendy has invited a child to hand out song sheets and another to distribute the song books they will go in to. When everyone seems ready, Wendy announces, “I am looking for someone to flip through their binder and find a song for us to sing.” Brayden immediately offers, “I want to do the Doggie in the Window!” Participants flip through the books to locate the right page. “Everybody all set?” inquires, Wendy, “So, we can use maracas to keep the beat, or we can use our voices…I am going to need some help with the ‘arfs.’” “I can do the ‘woofs,’” says Brayden. The singing begins and at every pause Brayden and the other participants offer creative dog sounds. Adult participant Dan even offers a howl at one point which makes everyone laugh. At song’s end, Wendy redirects and provides an opportunity for normally shy Caden to contribute, “Caden, is there a song that you would like to sing? You’d have to tell us which one it is…what’s the picture?” Caden does not use words to respond instead signaling his preference by turning the song book to the page showing He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands (1986). Participants remix the song to write themselves into it. After “He’s got the whole 131

CHAPTER 4

world in his hands,” they sing, “He’s got the big friends at Picasso, in his hands” followed by “He’s got the little friends from Picasso Child in his hands,” then “He’s got all of us at Art [and Song] Class in his hand…” “Again! Again!” Brayden and then the other participants urge. Finally, after more songs from the songbook, it is time to sing farewell. Today participants have decided to close with The More We Get Together. In an earlier session, as described in Chapter 3, Wendy invited participants to change the lyrics to the song, and a participant had sung, “The more we snore together…” which was followed by Brayden then others making snoring noises and pretending to fall asleep (which was accompanied by adults’ laughter). Referring to this remix, Wendy asks Caden, “Well, are we gonna snore?” The participants snore followed by Caden who feigns sleep to which Wendy jokes, “Yup, we’re losing him already!” Then the group collectively launch into “The more we snore together…” By the end of the song Wendy models a whisper voice for the singing, and participants have followed her lead. They all now have their heads on the tables and are pretending to sleep. This has happened without any explicit direction from any particular person in the class. Wendy softly observes, “I think that Caden and Brayden have gone to sleep. That must mean that it is time to close our binders and get ready [to leave class].” Still whispering she says, “Thank you very much, I’ll just collect these binders really quietly.” Wendy tip-toes collecting binders and gently singing to each child as she gestures them to the door, “Charlotte, it’s time to go. Brayden, it’s time to go; Caden, it’s time to go.” Caden yawns and stretches to leave, and Keith hugs him goodbye. The soundscape of this section of the session is one of extremes: intense, loud singing with the first song, and the mild, calm, languid sounds of whispers and sleep with the last. The children leave in quiet, but the moment they do there is a pause then an explosion of adult laughter and talking signalling an excitement amongst the adults who were so excited about what they had been part of. The affordances and constraints of the curriculum were created by an intricate web of elements that included Schwab’s (1973) curricular commonplaces in addition to the materials of communication (e.g., media available for the creation of visual texts, musical instruments) and the modes themselves. Aspects of the curriculum held many affordances relative to supporting participants to sing; the emergent curriculum made some inroads into providing songs that could be of interest and import to participants. Children in particular seemed to benefit from this. One might query how a new iteration of the curriculum could better solicit adults’ funds of knowledge. Songbooks were a material resource that brought people together and served as a support for singing. The creation and viewing of visual texts was particularly helpful for generating repertoire, focusing participants on the ideas in the session, and taking the pressure off performing. The movement of the focal idea 132

Towards a (Re)Conceptualization of Wellbeing

across modes also created opportunities for meaningful communication, learning, and practice in communicational decisions. Song within a semiotic chain drew attention to the affordances of modes, and each mode helped to improve facility with others. Instruments were also vital, for adults and children alike. Further, despite some of the constraints around singing, when the curriculum built to moments, such as the one illustrated in the last narrative, one can see how it produced intergenerational connections, even physically uniting people through the melding of their voices, pleasure, creativity and communication, and provided meaning to people’s lives and practices. In terms of the participants’ facility with the various modes, interests, and identity options, we concluded that the adults had mixed experiences and interests in singing as well as some physical limitations, still, they all persisted so that they could sing with the children, enjoying their company and having opportunities through identity options to see themselves as allies of children. Helping to produce these effects was that all participants were positioned within the curriculum in symmetrical ways. The children, for instance, were equally supporters of the adults, helping to engage them in singing. The desire to sing with the children also helped the adults overcome singing constraints, whether physical or related to interest, experience, knowledge, and/or facility. This is particularly noteworthy as many adults have been documented as reluctant to sing with others, because they do not consider themselves to be good at singing and may be self-conscious about participating in group singing activities (Burack, Jefferson, & Libow, 2003). Nonetheless, there is growing evidence of the positive benefits of singing on general health and psychological wellbeing among older adults (Clift, Hancox, Staricoff, & Whitmore, 2008). There are numerous implications for educators hoping to offer children and elders expanded literacy and identity options. There is an emotion/pictorial/literary narrative capacity to music that is rooted in particular sociocultural constructions (Small, 1998). For example, both the bodily and vocal gestures that accompany singing articulate meanings and emotional states that when combined constitute a particular narrative. These narratives can generate meaning making that is heterogeneous and capable of offering different and expansive identities that are made possible through the dialogic interchanges and multimodal expressions. In terms of identity options, these narratives provide affordances for defining and sharing significant aspects of who they are, who they were in the past, and who they might be in the future. Singing can connect participants to the longstanding, lasting, and significant contribution of the practice which is a mainstay of human communication (Finnegan, 2015) that has “exert[ed] a power over our species that is documented in every culture’s mythology and history as well as present” (Norton, 2016, p. xv). The literature quoted throughout this book relates some of the curricular ingredients that might be necessary to help expand people’s literacy and identity options within relationships. Such curricula are still in a nascent stage, as too is the understanding of what children and elders do within them and with what consequences. 133

CHAPTER 4

REVISITING WELLBEING

In chapter one we offered a review of conceptualizations of wellbeing with an eye to prying the literature open to see if and where literacy—human meaning making—might reside. Our genealogical endeavor was aimed toward understanding some of why multimodal literacy might matter and to whom. What, for example, we wondered, might multimodal literacies produce in and for the world? More specifically we questioned the place of the sonic with an emphasis on singing therein as an undervalued and too often neglected mode. The legacy of the priority of print and its supposed superiority over the oral (Collins & Blot, 2003) seem to remain. Where we left off in the genealogy in the first chapter was with the overall findings that the literature on wellbeing is complex with multiple conceptualizations existing across fields simultaneously. Much of the literature is instrumental in nature, and there is a dearth of socioculturally-derived conceptions of wellbeing as well as conceptions that can reflect complexity, such as those stemming from poststructuralism, for example. A striking exception is Watson, Emery, and Bayliss’ (2012) poststructural analysis of wellbeing which takes a unique and, for us, important new direction, especially in our appraisal of the findings from the intergenerational singing-infused curriculum. As described in their book, Children’s social and emotional wellbeing in schools: A critical perspective, Watson, Emery, and Bayliss’s (2012) conception of wellbeing is predicated on several propositions that transgress many other conceptions of wellbeing that we discussed in chapter one. The first proposition is that wellbeing is “subjectively experienced” (p. 7). Wellbeing, they allege is “phenomenally experienced” (p. 7) within the body, and this body is never singular but rather multiply experienced and constituted as physical, social, and (at least) political bodies. The circumstances of these bodies are crucial meaning that wellbeing is a “contextual and embedded” concept that is enacted and realized through these circumstances and their constituent “encounters” (p. 7). This means that any concept of wellbeing must include that it is “relational” (p. 7). Proposing that wellbeing is relational acknowledges that it is produced between and among people, but it also requires an ethical posturing where one does not absolutely decide for the other what wellbeing means. Watson, Emery, and Bayliss reject a totalizing conceptualizing of wellbeing where the alterity of the other is compromised. At the same time they recognize that children, especially the very young (and we might note certain elders), may need to be in “co-relation” (p. 226) with an educator or other adult to bring wellbeing into being. The co-relation is a complex ethical encounter with the other which Watson, Emery, and Bayliss identify as being “mediated” by eudaimonia as “human flourishing” (p. 227). Our study findings also lead us to understand wellbeing through a qualitative lens of flourishing and possibility, as we have opened up the question of if/how the expansion of people’s literacy and identity options might be therein implicated, particularly in relation to multimodal literacy. 134

Towards a (Re)Conceptualization of Wellbeing

Like Watson, Emery, and Bayliss’ (2012), our analysis of the study findings indicate that wellbeing is a complex, nuanced, and situated concept. Within the domain of the curriculum and through the data generated within its implementation, we wondered how opportunities for wellbeing and reconceptualization of the concept might be forged through the intersections between people’s constructions of their sense of self relative to others and their ability to make sense of the world and communicate that sense to others. This question arose from observations that there is a symmetry of sorts between the expansion of people’s literacy and identity options. More specifically, we wondered too, given the emphasis on singing in the intergenerational curricula, how conceptions of wellbeing might be related to this practice of singing which has been little researched in general but in particular with regards to multimodal literacy. Our exploration of understandings of eudaimonic wellbeing and multimodal practices, most notably singing, began with Ansdell and DeNora’s (2012) contemplation of the role of music in wellbeing and their interpretation of eudaimonia. Ansdell and DeNora created a conceptualization of wellbeing from an account of a philosopher who found “health within illness” (p. 110) and a translation of eudaimonia as “an activity of the soul in accordance with excellence” or “higher flourishing” (Vernon cited in Ansdell & DeNora, 2012, p. 110). Ansdell and DeNora quote Carel (2008) as saying: “Wellbeing is the invisible context enabling us to pursue possibilities and engage in projects. It is the condition of possibility enabling us to follow through aims and goals, to act on our desires, to become who we are” (p. 110, emphasis ours). They then synthesized these ideas in relation to music and wellbeing saying, we need a shift from an excessive attention to “cure,” towards a consideration of wellbeing cultivated through care and the cultivation of broader human flourishing. Here both illness and health are reconfigured within a more spacious social and cultural landscape. Wellbeing involves our flourishing together, within our sociocultural community. (p. 110) The emphasis here is on community, the communion of people being well together and wellbeing being subjective, relational, and situated. Brilliantly, such a sense of wellbeing may be facilitated through multimodality, in particular, Ansdell and DeNora (2012) note, through music: “For many people wellbeing emerges in the spaces made between people and music. This was after all an insight the pioneer music therapists Paul Nordoff and Clive Robbins came to 50 years ago through their work: that when music flourishes people flourish too” (p. 111). Our study findings suggest that explicitly social multimodal practices like singing, can produce spaces for wellbeing to be conceptualized and flourish. Such practices are sensory, and we use this term to suggest that like Watson, Emery, and Bayliss’ proposition, they too are physically, socially, and politically embodied. Literacies that leverage multiple semiotic systems, such as art and song, seem to provide an entrée for sensory-oriented interaction between and among participants. 135

CHAPTER 4

It is through the engagement of these senses within the practice of meaning making that we see opportunities for the evocation and invocation of relationship. As we illustrate throughout this book, within the curricula people made sense or constructed meaning from signs as they engaged the senses in fabricating and ruminating on those signs. Literacy in such a case is meaning-full, in that it both carries and ascribes meaning to people’s interactions with their environment and each other, offering new possibilities for how people see themselves and the world and their experiences with both. It creates opportunities for people together to construct new possibilities. We define multimodal literacy, then, as sense making or making sense, either expressively or receptively, in ways that are inclusive of myriad modes and media, including art and singing. Fulsome opportunities for communicating in a variety of ways, that is, one’s literacy options, are vital for opening up possibilities for flourishing. In general, young children’s and elders’ literacy options may be somewhat distinct. Some researchers have suggested that the modes through which people express themselves and make meaning from the expressions of others (i.e., literacy options) may be more expansive early in life. Fraser and Gestwicki (2002), for instance, have noted that children have “not yet settled into the fairly narrow range of methods of communication used by the adults around them” (p. 249). A comparative study of young children’s and elders’ literacy practices in an intergenerational setting (Heydon, 2012) reinforces Fraser and Gestwiski’s notion. It found that children experimented more with modes and media in their literacy practices when compared to the fairly narrow and conservative practices of the elders. How the children and elders were communicating had implications for what they were communicating. The children seemed to be more open to possibility—for themselves and their literacy practices—than the elders. Thus in the study, we saw children provoking adults to engage in literacies that they might not otherwise have (think Keith and singing). In turn, all participants explore possibilities for literacies, for themselves, and for others. Multimodal literacy takes on a grave significance in the project given its links to identity. There has indeed been a documented reciprocal relationship between people’s literacy options and the possibilities they have for their identity formation (i.e., their identity options (Cummins, 2001)). Expansive literacy options correlate with expansive identity options. This expansion creates possibilities for individuals and by extension, communities. Intergenerational communities are not merely purposeful or rational in the sense of consisting of individuals who are loosely linked together merely for their realization of particular tasks or to fulfill individual needs. Rather, the relationships that develop within intergenerational communities as we have seen and documented in the study happen among participants who are socially interdependent and “who share practices that both define the community and are nurtured by it” (Bellah et al., 1985, p. 323). In intergenerational communities, like the group of people in the study who came together to learn and be with each other in and through multimodal practices, 136

Towards a (Re)Conceptualization of Wellbeing

old and new literacy practices were passed across generations (not just down) and remixed to suit the occasion. There is a living and breathing of the uniquely human endeavour of multimodal literacy so wonderfully captured by Finnegan (2014) in the closing of her book, Communicating: The multiple modes of human communication: We [humans] have pushed at our basic communicative resources and continue to do so. We have extended them through creative uses of our bodily capacities intertwined with human-made artefacts; communicated nearby and at a distance; enlarged the possibilities of sound; mingled the different modalities in both fluid and more standardized ways; and exploited a wonderful multimodal and evocative mix of arts. We have developed not a thin fashion of communicating but a richly stranded mix of multimodal interactions, marked by multiple overtones and creative enactments. Through all these modes, muddled and vulnerable as they sometimes are, we human communicators continue to forge our active interconnectedness and in doing so have fashioned routes towards transcending our bodily separations and interconnecting with other human creatures, those nearby as well as those at other places and times. (pp. 281–282) Our research on singing-infused multimodal intergenerational curricula offers evidence that singing can be a powerful vehicle for bringing people together in ways that matter to them, because their experiences are meaningful (through emotions, memories, and associations) and shared (through a sense of community and relationship-building that is interdependent). Literacy practices and participation become possible precisely because “beliefs, values, commitments, and even emotions and passions are shared in common” and there is a “willingness to really listen, to seek to understand what is genuinely other” (Bernstein, 1992, p. 65). The fundamental significance here is that singing-infused multimodal curricula can create opportunities for enhancing wellbeing by stirring emotions, evoking memories and associations, and engaging participants in process of “reciprocity between literacy as embodied and literacy as grounded in relationships” (Heydon & Rowsell, 2015, p. 469). Because of the findings of the study we are able to announce that curricular openings for multimodal literacy create possibilities for expanded literacy and identity options embedded in relationship, or otherwise put, for spaces for situated versions of wellbeing. The impetus to make sense of one’s world and share and extend that sense with others is the backbone of multimodal literacies, and it has been recognized as a set of practices that are foundational to our humanity (Albers & Murphy, 2000). Literacies here are social, they involve people longing to fathom themselves in relation to others and their worlds, to literally and figuratively make sense. Throughout this book, we wondered about the above being integral to wellbeing and it is through the design and implementation of a sensory-rich multimodal intergenerational curricula that we sought to create opportunities for possibility 137

CHAPTER 4

and to learn more about multimodal literacy, intergenerational learning, and new directions for considering wellbeing. We also mused about how singing could be a catalyst that invited participants to juxtapose their own meaning making and experiences with those around them who may differ from themselves, thus opening up possibilities for transformative experiences and communicative relationships from which new forms of social action could emerge. In this place where we now choose to rest, our hope is that we have offered new insights into how singing might be conceptualized as a multimodal practice, brought into view the nature, texture, and effects of singing as an important component of a multimodal literacy repertoire, offered opportunities to visualize a curriculum that is built on these ideas, and (re)consider how literacy might be integral to a sociocultural, situated conceptualization of wellbeing.

138

REFERENCES

Aday, R. H., McDuffie, W., & Sims, C. R. (1993). The impact of an intergenerational program on Black adolescents’ attitudes towards the elderly. Educational Gerontology, 19, 663–673. Aikendrum [Recorded by The Singing Kettle]. (2003). On Singalong songs from Scotland. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Folkways Recordings. Albers, P. (2007). Finding the artist within: Creating and reading visual texts in the English language arts classroom. Newark, DE: International Reading Association. Albers, P., & Murphy, S. (2000). Telling pieces: Art as a literacy in middle school classes. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Albers, P., & Sanders, J. (2010). Multimodal literacies: An introduction. In P. Albers & J. Sanders (Eds.), Literacies, the arts, and multimodality (pp. 1–25). Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English. Alice the camel [Recorded by The Countdown Kids]. (2005). On 150 fun songs for kids. St. Laurent, QC: Madacy Kids. Allison, T. A. (2008). Songwriting and transcending institutional boundaries in the nursing home. In B. D. Koen (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of medical ethnomusicology (pp. 218–245). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Andrade, A. D., & Urquhart, C. (2010). The affordances of actor network theory in ICT for development research. Information Technology & People, 23(4), 352–374. Ansdell, G. & DeNora, T. (2012). Musical flourishing: Community music therapy, controversy, and the cultivation of well-being. In R. MacDonald, G. Kreutz, & L. Mitchell (Eds.), Music, health, and wellbeing (pp. 97–112). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ayala, J. S., Hewson, J. A., Bray, D., Jones, G., & Hartley, D. (2007). Intergenerational programs: Perspectives of service providers in one Canadian city. Journal of Intergenerational Relationships, 5(2), 45–60. Baker, D. (2005). Numeracy and funds of knowledge. Reflect, 3, 16–19. Bakhtin, M. M. (1981). The dialogic imagination: Four essays. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Baltes, P. B., & Smith, J. (2003). New frontiers in the future of aging: From successful aging of the young and old to the dilemmas of the fourth age. Gerontology, 49(2), 123–135. Bangerter, L. R., & Waldron, V. R. (2014). Turning points in long distance grandparent-grandchild relationships. Journal of Aging Studies, 29, 88–97. Banville, J. (2005). The sea. New York, NY: Vintage. Barrett, M. (2012). Belonging, being and becoming musical: An introduction to children’s musical worlds. In S. Wright (Ed.), Children, meaning-making and the arts (2nd ed., pp. 57–84). French Forest, NSW: Pearson Australia. Barton, D., & Hamilton, M. (1998). Local literacies: Reading and writing in one community. London: Routledge. Barton, D., Ivanic, R., Appleby, Y., Hodge, R., & Tusting, K. (2007). Literacy, lives and learning. London & New York, NY: Routledge. Bedard, C., & Fuhrken, C. (2011). Writing for the big screen: Literacy experiences in a moviemaking project. Language Arts, 89(2), 113–124. Bell, T., & Romano, E. (2015). Permanency and safety among children in foster family and kinship care: A scoping review. Trauma, Violence, & Abuse, 1–19. Bellah, R. N., Madson, N., Sullivan, W. M., Swidler, A., & Tipton, S. M. (1985). Habits of the heart: Individualism and commitment in American life. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Berger, A., & Cooper, S. (2003). Musical play: A case study of preschool children and parents. Journal of Research in Music Education, 51(2), 151–165. Berghoff, B., & Borgmann, C. B. (2007). Imagining new possibilities with our partners in the arts. English Education, 40(1), 21–40.

139

References Beynon, C. A., Heydon, R., O’Neill, S. A., Zhang, Z., & Crocker, W. (2013). Straining to hear the singing: Toward an understanding of successful intergenerational singing curriculum. Journal of Intergenerational Relationships, 11(2), 176–189. Bhabha, H. K. (1994). The location of culture. New York, NY: Routledge. Bingo [Recorded by The Countdown Kids]. (2005). On 150 fun songs for kids. St. Laurent, QC: Madacy Kids. Boilès, C. L. (1982). Processes of musical semiosis. Yearbook for Traditional Music, 14, 24–44. Bradburn, N. M. (1969). The structure of psychological well-being. Chicago, IL: Aldine. Brennan, D., Case, B., Flaxman, S., Hill, T., Jenkins, B., McHugh, M., & Valentine, K. (2013). Grandparents raising grandchildren: Towards recognitions, respect and reward. Social Policy Research Centre, 14/13, 1–193. Brummel, S. W. (1989). Developing an intergenerational program. Journal of Children in Contemporary Society, 20(3–4), 119–133. Bruni, L. (2006). Civil happiness economics and human flourishing in historical perspective. New York, NY: Routledge. Burack, O. R., Jefferson, P., & Libow, L. S. (2002). Individualized music: A route to improving the quality of life for long-term care residents. Activities, Adaptation & Aging, 27(1), 63–76. Burke, C. S. (1939). Robin in the rain [Recorded by Raffi]. On Singable songs for the very young: Great with a peanut-butter sandwich [CD]. Cambridge, MA: Rounder Records. (1996) Burnard, P. (2006). The individual and social worlds of children’s musical creativity. In G. E. McPherson (Ed.), The child as musician (pp. 343–374). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Bushe, G. (2013). Generative processes, generative outcome: The transformational potential of appreciative inquiry. In D. L. Cooperrider, D. P. Zandee, L. N. Godwin, M. Avital, & B. Boland (Eds.), Organization generativity: The appreciative inquiry summit and a scholarship of transformation. Advances in appreciative inquiry (Vol. 4, pp. 89–114). Bingley, UK: Emerald Group. Cairns, R. B., & Cairns, B. D. (2006). The making of developmental psychology. In R. M. Lerner (Ed.),  Theoretical models of human development: Vol. 1. Handbook of child psychology (6th ed., pp. 89–165). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. Campbell, P. S. (1998). Songs in their heads: Music and its meaning in children’s lives. Oxford, UK; New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Chen-Hafteck, L. (2004, July 5–10). Music and movement from zero to three: A window to children’s musicality. In L. Custodero (Ed.), Proceedings of the ISME Early Childhood Conference ‘Els Mons Musical Dels Infants’ (The Musical Worlds of Children). Barcelona, Spain. Christopher, J. C. (1999). Situating psychological well-being: Exploring the cultural roots of its theory and research. Journal of Counseling & Development, 77, 141–152. Clap your hands [Recorded by Pete Seeger]. (1953). On American folk songs for children. New York, NY: Folkways Records. Clark, S. S., & Giacomantonio, S. G. (2015). Toward predicting prosocial behavior: Music preferences and empathy differences between adolescents and adults. Empirical Musicology Review, 10(1), 50–64. Clift, S. (2010). The significance of choral singing for sustaining psychological wellbeing: Findings from a survey of choristers in England, Australia and Germany. Music Performance Research, 3(1), 79–96. Clift, S., & Hancox, G. (2001). The benefits of singing: findings from preliminary surveys with a university college choral society. Journal of the Royal Society for the Promotion of Health, 121(4), 248–256. Clift, S., Hancox, G., Staricoff, R., & Whitmore, C. (2008). Singing and health: A systematic mapping and review of non-clinical research. Canterbury: Canterbury Christ Church University. Retrieved from http://www.canterbury.ac.uk/centres/sidney-de-haan-research Clift, S., Nicol, J., Raisbeck, M., Whitmore, C., & Morrison, I. (2010). Group singing, well-being and health: A systematic mapping of research evidence. Folkestone, UK: Sidney De Haan Research Centre for Arts and Health. Collins, J., & Blot, R. K. (2003). Literacy and literacies: Texts, power, and identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

140

References Cooperrider, D. L., Zandee, D. P., Godwin, L. N., Avital, M., & Boland, B. (Eds.). (2013). Organizational generativity: The appreciative inquire summit and a scholarship of transformation. Bingley, UK: Emerald Group Publishing. Cornali, F. (2011). The strange relationship between literacy and well-being: The results of an international survey with special focus on Italy. International Journal of Social, Management, Economics and Business Engineering, 5(2), 8–17. Cornell, D. (1992). The philosophy of the limit. New York, NY: Routledge. Cornish, J., Gottwalk, L., & Kelly, C. (2009). Party in the USA [Recorded by M. Cyrus]. On The time of our lives [CD]. Burbank, CA: Hollywood Records Inc. Creech, A., Hallam, S., McQueen, H., & Varvarigou, M. (2013). The power of music in the lives of older adults. Research Studies in Music Education, 35(1), 87–102. Creech, A., Hallam, S., Varvarigou, M., & McQueen, H. (2014). Active ageing with music: Supporting wellbeing in the third and fourth ages. London, UK: Institute of Education. Cross, I. (2005). Music and meaning, ambiguity and evolution. In D. Miell, R. Macdonald, & D. J. Hargreaves (Eds.), Musical communication (pp. 27–44). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow: The psychology of optimal experience. New York, NY: Harper & Row. Cummins, J. (2000). Language, power and pedagogy: Bilingual children in the crossfire. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters. Cummins, J. (2001). Negotiating identities: Education for empowerment in a diverse society (2nd ed.). Los Angeles, CA: California Association for Bilingual Education. Cumming, E., & Henry, W. (Eds.). (1961). Growing old: The process of disengagement. New York, NY: Basic Books. Dacre, H. (1892). Daisy bell (Bicycle built for two) [Recorded by E. M. Favor]. On Daisy bell (bicycle built for two) [Edison brown wax cylinder]. Orange, NJ: The Edison Phonograph Company. (1894) David, H., & Bacharach, B. (1969). Raindrops keep falling on my head [Recorded by B. J. Thomas]. On Raindrops keep falling on my head [Record]. Nashville, TN: Gusto Records Inc. Delle Fave, A., Brdar, I., Freire, T., Vella-Brodrick, D., & Wissing, M. (2011). The eudaimonic and hedonic components of happiness: Qualitative and quantitative findings. Social Indicators Research, 100(2), 185–207. DeNora, T. (2000). Music in everyday life. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. de St. Aubin, E., McAdams, D. P., & Kim, T. C. (Eds.). (2004). The generative society. Washington, DC: APA Books. Diener, E. (2001). Psychology of well-being (subjective). In N. J. Smelser & P. B. Baltes (Eds.), International encyclopedia of the social and behavioral sciences (pp. 16451–16454). Oxford, UK: Pergamon. Diener, E., & Diener, M. (1995). Cross-cultural correlates of life satisfaction and self-esteem. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 68(4), 653–663. Diener, E., Saptaya, J. J., & Suh, E. (1998). Subjective well-being is essential to well-being. Psychological Inquiry, 9, 33–37. Dissanayake, E. (1992). Homo aesthetics: Where art comes from and why. New York, NY: Free. Down by the bay [Recorded by Raffi]. (1976). On Singable songs for the very young: Great with a peanut-butter sandwich. Cambridge, MA: Rounder Records. Doyle, W. (1992). Curriculum and pedagogy. In P. W. Jackson (Ed.), Handbook of research on curriculum (pp. 486–516). New York, NY: Macmillan. Dyson, A. H. (1992). The case of the singing scientist: A performance perspective on the “stages” of school literacy. Written Communication, 9(1), 3–47. Dyson, A. H., & Genishi, C. (2005). On the case. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Ellis, A., & Beattie, G. (1986). The psychology of language and communication. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. Employment and Social Development Canada. (no date). Learning-student literacy. Retrieved from http://www4.hrsdc.gc.ca/[email protected]?iid=81

141

References Ereaut, G., & Whiting, R. (2008). What do we mean by ‘wellbeing’? And why might it matter? London, UK: Linguistic Landscapes. Erikson, E. H. (1963). Childhood and society (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Norton. Erikson, E. H., Erikson, J. M., & Kivnick, H. Q. (1986). Vital involvement in old age. New York, NY: W. W. Norton. Evans, M., McDonald, J., & Nyce, D. (1999). Acting across boundaries in Aboriginal curriculum development: Examples from Northern British Columbia. Canadian Journal of Native Education 23(2), 190–205. Finnegan, R. (1989). The hidden musicians: Music-making in an English town. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Finnegan, R. (2002). Communicating: The multiple modes of human interconnection. New York, NY: Routledge. Finnegan, R. (2014). Communicating: The multiple modes of human communication (2nd ed.). London: Routledge. Finnegan, R. (2015). Where is language? An anthropologist’s questions on language, literature and performance. London: Bloomsbury. Fraser, S., & Gestwicki, C. (2002). Authentic childhood: Exploring Reggio Emilia in the classroom. Albany, NY: Delmar Thomson. Friedman, B. (1997). The integration of proactive aging education into exciting educational curricula. In K. Brabazon & R. Disch (Eds.), Intergenerational approaches in aging: Implications for education, policy and practice (pp. 103–110). Binghamton, NY: The Haworth Press. Frierson-Campbell, C. (2008). Beyond Lucy Green: Operational theories of informal learning. Visions of Research in Music Education, 12(1). Retrieved from www.usr.rider.edu/~vrme/v12n1/vision/ EDITORIAL.Volume%201 2%20-%20Green.pdf Foucault, M. (1980). Power/Knowledge: Selected interviews and other writing 1972–1977. Toronto, ON: Pantheon Books. Fuller-Thomson, E., Serbinski, S., & McCormack, L. (2014). The rewards of caring for grandchildren: Black Canadian grandmothers who are custodial parents, co-parents, and extensive babysitters. GrandFamilies: The Contemporary Journal of Research, Practice and Policy, 1(1). Retrieved from http://scholarworks.wmich.edu/grandfamilies/vol1/iss1/2 Furness, J. (2013). Principles and practices in four New Zealand family focused adult literacy programs: Towards wellbeing in diverse communities. Literacy and Numeracy Studies, 21(1), 33–58. Gablik, S. (1992). Connective aesthetics. American Art, 6(2), 2–7. Gauntlett, D. (2007). Creative explorations: New approaches to identities and audiences. London, UK: Routledge. Gergen, K. J. (1978). Toward generative theory. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 36(11), 1344–1360. Giddens, A. (1991). Modernity and self-identity: Self and society in the late modern age. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Glaser, K., Di Gessa, G., & Tinker, A. (2014). Grandparenting in Europe. Grandparents Plus Report. Retrieved from http://www.grandparentsplus.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/ESR-GrandparentReport_Oct14-2.pdf Goble, J. S. (2010). Not just a matter of style: Addressing culturally different musics as social praxes in secondary school music classes. Action, Criticism, and Theory for Music Education, 9(3), 8–34. Gottlieb, G., Wahlsten, D., & Lickliter, R. (2006). The significance of biology for human development: A developmental psychobiological systems view. In R. M. Lerner & W. Damon (Eds.), Handbook of child psychology (6th ed., pp. 210–257). New York, NY: Wiley. Green, L. (2005). Meaning, autonomy, and authenticity in the music classroom. London, UK: Institute of Education. Gregory, E., Long, S., & Volk, D. (Eds.). (2004). Many pathways to literacy: Young children learning with siblings, grandparents, peers, and communities. New York, NY: Routledge Falmer. Gruber, F. (Composer), & Mohr, J. (Lyricist). (1818). Silent night [Recorded by B. Crosby]. On White Christmas [CD]. London, UK: Decca Records.

142

References Guzzetti, B. J., & Bean, T. W. (Eds.). (2013). Adolescent literacies and the gendered self: (re)Constructing identities through multimodal literacy practices. New York, NY: Routledge. Halliday, M. A. K. (1978). Language as social semiotic: The social interpretation of language and meaning. London, UK: Edward Arnold. Hamilton, A. (1955). I can sing a rainbow [Recorded by F. Penner]. On Fred Penner: Sing with Fred [CD]. Toronto, ON: Casablanca Kids Inc. (2002) Harste, J. (2003). What do we mean by literacy now? Voices from the Middle, 10(3), 8–12. Hascher, T. (2008). Quantitative and qualitative research approaches to assess student well-being. International Journal of Educational Research, 47(2), 84–96. Hayward, K., Pannozzo, L., & Colman, R. (2007). Background information literature review: Developing indicators for the educated populace domain of the Canadian index of wellbeing. Retrieved from https://uwaterloo.ca/canadian-index-welbeing/sites/ca.canadian-index-wellbeing/files/uploads/files/ Historical-Educated_Populace_Literature_Review_Doc2_August_2007.sflb_.pdf He’s got the whole world in his hands [Recorded by Raffi]. (1996). On Rise and shine. Cambridge, MA: Rounder Records. Healey-Ogden, M., & Austin, W. (2011). Uncovering the lived experience of well-being. Qualitative Health Research, 21(1), 85–96. Heath, S. B. (1983). Ways with words: Language, life, and work in communities and classrooms. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hedges, H., Cullen, J., & Jordan, B. (2011). Early years curriculum: Funds of knowledge as a conceptual framework for children’s interests. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 43(2), 185–205. Helliwell, J. F., & Putnam, R. D. (2004). The social context of well-being. Philosophical transactions of the royal society B: Biological sciences, 359(1449), 1435–1446. Heydon, R. (2007). Making meaning together: Multimodal literacy learning opportunities in an intergenerational art programme. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 39(1), 35–62. Heydon, R. (2012). Multimodal communication and identities options in an intergenerational art class. Journal of Early Childhood Research, 10(1), 51–69. Heydon, R. (2013a). Learning at the ends of life: Children, elders and literacies in intergenerational curricula. Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press. Heydon, R. (2013b). Learning opportunities: A study of the production and practice of kindergarten literacy curricula. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 45(4), 481–510. Heydon, R., & Iannacci, L. (2008). Early childhood curricula and the depathologizing of childhood, Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press. Heydon, R., & O’Neill, S. (2014). Songs in our hearts: The affordances and constraints of an intergenerational multimodal arts curriculum. International Journal of Arts and Education, 15(6), 1–36. Heydon, R., & Rowsell, J. (2015). Phenomenology and literacy studies. In K. Pahl & J. Rowsell (Eds.), Routledge handbook of literacy studies (pp. 454–471). London, UK: Routledge. Heydon, R., & Wang, P. (2006). Curricular ethics in early childhood education programming: A challenge to the Ontario kindergarten program. McGill Journal of Education, 41(1), 29–46. Heydon, R., Moffatt, L., & Iannacci, L. (2015). ‘Every day he has a dream to tell’: Classroom literacy curriculum in a full-day kindergarten. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 47(2), 171–202. Hicks, D. (2002). Reading lives: Working-class children ad literacy learning. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Holladay, S. J., & Seipke, H. (2007). Communication between grandparents in geographically separated relationships. Communication Studies, 58, 281–297. Horner, B. (1998). On the study of music as material social practice. The Journal of Musicology, 16(2), 159–199. Houston, D. M., McKee, K. J., Carroll, L., & Marsh, H. (1998). Using humour to promote psychological wellbeing in residential homes for older people. Aging and Mental Health, 2, 328–332. Huppert, F. A., & So, T. T. C. (2013). Flourishing across Europe: Application of a new conceptual framework for defining well-being. Social Indicators Research, 110(3), 837–861.

143

References Hurka, T. (1999). The three faces of flourishing. In E. F. Paul, F. D. Miller, & J. Paul (Eds.), Human flourishing (pp. 44–71). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. I know a little pussy [Recorded by Sharon, Lois & Bram]. (1980). On Singing & swinging: Playground rhymes, silly songs and swing set sing-alongs. Toronto, ON: Elephant Records. I’ve been working on the railroad [Recorded by Pete Seeger]. (1990). On Song and play time. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Folkways Recordings. Ilari, B. (2002). Music perception and cognition in the first year of life. Early Child Development and Care, 172, 311–322. i2i Intergenerational Society. (2014). Goals of IG Immersion. Retrieved from http://www.intergenerational.ca/ index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=24:goals-of-ig-immersion&catid=18:goals& Itemid=15 Jaffurs, S. (2004). Developing musicality: Formal and informal practices. Action, Criticism, and Theory for Music Education, 3(3). Retrieved from http://act.maydaygroup.org/articles/Jaffurs3_3.pdf Jarrott, S. E. (2007). Programs that affect intergenerational solidarity. Proceedings of the United Nations Expert Group Meeting “Intergenerational Solidarity: Strengthening Economic and Social Ties,” New York, NY. Jarrott, S. E. (2011). Where have we been and where are we going? Content analysis of evaluation research of intergenerational programs. Journal of Intergenerational Relationships, 9(1), 37–52. Jarrott, S. E., & Bruno, K. (2007). Shared site intergenerational programs: A case study. Journal of Applied Gerontology, 26(3), 239–257. Jarrott, S. E., Kaplan, M. S., & Steinig, S. Y. (Eds.). (2011). Shared site intergenerational programs. Common Space, Common Ground [special double issue], 9(4). Retrieved from http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/spissue/wjir-si1.asp Jewitt, C. (2008a). Multimodal discourses across the curriculum. In M. Martin-Jones, A. M. de Mejia, & N. Hornberger (Eds.), Encyclopedia of language and education: Discourse and education (2nd ed., pp. 357–367). Boston, MA: Springer Science+Business Media LLC. Jewitt, C. (2008b). Multimodality and literacy in school classrooms. Review of Research in Education, 32(1), 241–247. Jewitt, C., & Kress, G. (2003). Multimodal literacy. New York, NY: Peter Lang. Kaplan, M., Duerr, L., Whitesell, W., Merchant, L., Davis, D., & Larkin, E. (2003). Developing an intergenerational program in your early childhood care and education center: A guidebook for early childhood practitioners. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University. Kashdan, T. B., Biswas-Diener, R., & King, L. A. (2008). Reconsidering happiness: The costs of distinguishing between hedonics and eudaimonia. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 3(4), 219–233. Keyes, C. L. M. (2002). The mental health continuum: From languishing to flourishing in life. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 43(2), 207–222. Keyes, C. L. M., & Haidt, J. (Eds.). (2003). Flourishing: positive psychology and the life well-lived. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Keyes, C. L. M., & Ryff, C. D. (1998). Generativity in adult lives: Social structural contours and quality of life consequences. In D. P. McAdams & E. de St. Aubin (Eds.), Generativity and adult development: How and why we care for the next generation (pp. 227–263). Washington, DC: APA Press. Kim, H., Schimmack, U., & Oishi, S. (2012). Cultural differences in self- and other-evaluations and well-being: A study of European and Asian Canadians. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 102(4), 856–874. Kolb, G. R. (1996). Read with a beat: Developing literacy through music and song (teaching reading). Reading Teacher, 50(1), 76–77. Kress, G. R. (1997). Before writing: Rethinking the paths to literacy. London, UK: Routledge. Kress, G. R. (2003). Literacy in the new media age. London: Routledge. Kress, G. R., & Jewitt, C. (2003). Introduction. In C. Jewitt & G. R. Kress (Eds.), Multimodal literacy (pp. 1–18). New York, NY: Peter Lang. Kress, G. R., & van Leeuwen, T. (2006). Reading images: The grammar of graphic design (2nd ed.). London: Routledge.

144

References Kreutz, G., Bongard, S., Rohrmann, S., Hodapp, V., & Brebe, D. (2004). Effects of choir singing or listening on secretory immunoglobulin A, cortisol, and emotional state. Journal of Behavioral Medicine, 27(6), 623–635. Krueger, P. M., Jutte, D. P., Franzini, L., Elo, I., & Hayward, M. D. (2015). Family structure and multiple domains of child well-being in the United States: A cross-sectional study. Popular Health Metrics, 13(6). Kuehne, V. (2003). The state of our art: Intergenerational program research and evaluation: Part one. Journal of Intergenerational Relationships, 1(1), 145–161. Kuehne, V., & Kaplan, M. (2001). Evaluation and research on intergenerational shared site facilities and programs: What we know and what we need to learn (Project SHARE Background Paper#1). Washington, DC: Generations United. Labbo, L. D., & Place, K. (2010). Fresh perspectives on new literacies and technology integration. Voices from the Middle, 17(3), 9–18. Lally, E. (2009). “The power to heal us with a smile and a song”: Senior well-being, music-based participatory arts and the value of qualitative evidence. Journal of Arts and Communities, 1(1), 25–44. Larkin, E., & Newman, S. (1997). Intergenerational studies: A multi-disciplinary field. Journal of Gerontological Social Work, 28(1), 5–16. Laslett, P. (1989). A fresh map of life: The emergence of the third age. London, UK: Weidenfeld & Nicholson. Lather, P. (1991). Feminist research in education: Within/against. Geelong, Vic: Deakin University. Lavallé, C. (Composer), Routhier, A. B. (French Lyricist), & Weir, R. S. (English Lyricist). (1880). O Canada [Recorded by N. Yanofsky]. On O Canada [CD]. Vancouver, Canada: VANOC. (2010) Lee, D. B., Miyata, L., & Cavoukian, R. (1976). Willoughby wallaby woo [Recorded by Raffi]. On Singable songs for the very young: Great with a peanut-butter sandwich [CD]. Cambridge, MA: Rounder Records. (1996) Leonardo’s Mona Lisa. (2005). Retrieved from http://smarthistory.khanacademy.org/leonardo-moalisa.html Lerner, R. M. (2002). Concepts and theories of human development (3rd ed.). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Lerner, R. M. (2006). Developmental science, developmental systems, and contemporary theories of human development. In R. M. Lerner (Ed.), Theoretical models of human development: Vol. 1. Handbook of child psychology (6th ed., pp. 1–17). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. Lerner, S. (1933). Popeye the sailorman [Recorded by B. Costello]. On Classic children’s favorites [CD]. Golden Valley, MN: K-Tel International. (2013) Lewis, A. R., & Dorais, L. J. (2003). Two related indigenous writing systems: Canada’s syllabic and China’s A-HMAO scripts. The Canadian Journal of Native Studies, 13(2), 277–304. Lewison, M., Flint, A. S., & Van Sluys, K. (2002). Taking on critical literacy: The journey of newcomers and novices. Language Arts, 79, 38–392. Lloyd, J. (2008). The state of intergenerational relations today: A research and discussion paper. London, UK: International Longevity Centre. MacDonald, R. A. R., & Miell, D. (2002). Music for individuals with special needs: A catalyst for developments in identity, communication, and musical ability. In R. MacDonald, D. Hargreaves, & D. Miell (Eds.), Musical identities (pp. 163–178). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mackenzie, S. L., Carson, A. J., & Kuehne, V. S. (2011). The Meadows School project. Journal of Intergenerational Relationships, 9(2), 207–212. Malloch, S. (1999). Mothers and infants and communicative musicality. Musicae Scientiae [Special Issue 1999–2000], 29–57. Malloch, S., & Trevarthen, C. (Eds.). (2008). Communicative musicality: Exploring the basis of human companionship. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Manderson, L. (2010). Social capital and inclusion: Locating wellbeing in community. Australian Cultural History, 28(2–3), 233–252. Mans, M. (2009). Informal learning and values. Action, Criticism, and Theory for Music Education, 8(2), 79–93. Marek, D. H. (2007). Singing: The first art. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow.

145

References Marriage & Family Encyclopedia. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://family.jrank.org/pages/903/ Intergenerational-Programming-Program-Models.html Martin, M., Schuster, K., Kotecha, S., & Pérez, A. (2010). DJ got us fallin’ in love [Recorded by Usher]. On Versus [CD]. Atlanta, GA: LaFace Records. McAdams, D. P. (1993). The stories we live by: Personal myths and the making of the self. New York, NY: William Morrow & Company. McAdams, D. P. (2001). The person: An integrated introduction to personality psychology (3rd ed.). Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt College Publishers. McAdams, D. P., & de St. Aubin, E. (Eds.). (1998). Generativity and adult development: How and why we care for the next generation. Washington, DC: APA Press. McAdams, D. P., & Logan, R. L. (2004). What is generativity? In E. de St. Aubin, D. P. McAdams, & T. C. Kim (Eds.), The generative society (pp. 15–31). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association Press. McGillivray, M., & Clarke, M. (Eds.). (2006). Understanding human well-being. New York, NY: United Nations University Press. McIntire, J. M. (2007). Developing literacy through music. Teaching Music, 15(1), 44. McKee, L., & Heydon, R. (2014). Orchestrating literacies: Print literacy learning opportunities within multimodal intergenerational ensembles. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 15(2), 227–255. McKenna, S. P., Doward, L. C., Alonso, J., Kohlmann, R., Niero, M., Prieto, L., & Wiren, L. (1999). The qol-aghda: An instrument for the assessment of quality of life in adults with growth hormone deficiency. Quality of Life Research, 8(4), 373–383. Merrill, B. (1952). How much is that doggie in the window? [Recorded by P. Page]. On Patti Page’s greatest hits [CD]. New York, NY: Sony Music Entertainment Inc. Michalos, A. C. (2005). Arts and the quality of life: An exploratory study. Social Indicators Research, 71(1–3), 11–59. Miell, D., MacDonald, R., & Hargreaves D. J. (2005). How do people communicate using music? In D. Miell, R. MacDonald, & D. J. Hargreaves (Eds.), Musical communication (pp. 239–259). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Milan, A., Laflamme, N., & Wong, I. (2015). Diversity of grandparents living with their grandchildren. Insights on Canadian Society, 2015(1), 1–17. Miller, S. (2010). Reframing multimodal composing for student learning: Lessons on purpose from the Buffalo DV project. Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education, 10(2), 197–219. Mitchell, J., & MacDonald, R. (2011). Active ageing: The symbiosis of music and health in third age relationships. Paper presented at ‘Striking a Chord’ Music Health and Wellbeing: A conference exploring current developments in research and practice, Canterbury, United Kingdom. Mithen, S. (2005). The Singing Neanderthals: The origins of music, language, mind and body. London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson. Mithen, S., Morley, I., Wray, A., Tallerman, M., & Gamble, C. (2006). Review feature of “The Singing Neanderthals: The Origins of Music, Language, Mind and Body,” by Steven Mithen. Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 16, 97–112. Moje, E. B., Ciechanowski, K. M., Kramer, K., Ellis, L., Carrillo, R., & Collazo, T. (2004). Working toward third space in content area literacy: An examination of everyday funds of knowledge and discourse. Reading Research Quarterly, 39(1), 38–70. Moll, L. C. (1992). Literacy research in community and classrooms: A sociocultural approach. In R. Beach, J. L. Green, M. L. Kamil, & T. Shanahan (Eds.), Multidisciplinary perspectives in literacy research (pp. 211–244). Urbana, IL: NCTE. Moll, L. C., Amanti, C., Neff, D., & Gonzalez, N. (1992). Funds of knowledge for teaching: Using a qualitative approach to connect homes and classrooms. Theory into Practice, 31(2), 132–141. Monelle, R. (1992). Linguistics and semiotics in music. Chur, Switzerland: Harwood Academic. Morganroth Gullette, M. (2011). Agewise: Fighting the new ageism in America. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

146

References Morrison, A. (2010a). Scrabble in a conceptual toolbox. In A. Morrison (Ed.), Inside multimodal composition (pp. 27–64). Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press Inc. Morrison, A. (2010b). Views from the inside out. In A. Morrison (Ed.), Inside multimodal composition (pp. 3–26). Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press Inc. Moss, J. (1970). People in your neighbourhood [Recorded by Bob and the Anything Muppets]. On Sesame street: Platinum all-time favorites [CD]. New York, NY: Sesame Workshop. (2010) Mr. Sun [Recorded by Raffi]. (1976). On Singable songs for the very young: Great with a peanut-butter sandwich. Cambridge, MA: Rounder Records. Noddings, N. (1992). The challenge to care in schools: An alternative approach to education. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Norton, K. (2016). Singing and wellbeing: Ancient wisdom, modern proof. New York, NY: Routledge. Nussbaum, M. (1993). Non-relative virtues: An Aristotelian approach. In A. Sen & M. Nussbaum (Eds.), The quality of life (pp. 242–269). Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press. Nussbaum, M. C. (2000). Women and human development: The capabilities approach. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Nussbaum, M. C. (2001). Upheavals of thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. O’Neill, S. A. (2012a). Transformative music engagement: Making music learning matter. Keynote Address presented at the conference on Music Learning: Benefits for the 21st-century Learner, University of Laval, Quebec, Canada. O’Neill, S. A. (2012b). Personhood and music learning: An introduction. In S. A. O’Neill (Series Ed. & Vol. Ed.), Research to practice: Vol. 5. Personhood and music learning: Connecting perspectives and narratives (pp. 1–15). Waterloo, ON: Canadian Music Educators’ Association. O’Neill, S. A. (2014a). Music and media infused lives: An introduction. In S. A. O’Neill (Series Ed. & Vol. Ed.), Research to practice: Vol. 6. Music and media infused lives: Music education in a digital age (pp. 1–15). Waterloo, ON: Canadian Music Educators’ Association. O’Neill, S. A. (2014b). Mind the gap: Transforming music engagement through learner-centered informal music learning. The Recorder: Journal of the Ontario Music Educators’ Association, 56(2), 18–22. O’Neill, S. A., & Heydon, R. (2013, August). Elders connecting to young people through singing: Evidence of generativity in an intergenerational program. Paper presented at the 5th Annual Meeting of AIRS: Advancing Interdisciplinary Research in Singing, Ryerson University, Toronto, Canada. Old MacDonald had a farm [Recorded by Kidzone]. (2014). On Old Macdonald had a farm. Bridgeport, CT: CYP Productions. Oppelaar, J., & Dykstra, P. A. (2004). Contacts between grandparents and grandchildren. The Netherlands’ Journal of Social Sciences, 40(20), 91–113. Oughton, H. (2009). “We all play teacher”: Naturally-occurring student discourse as data in adult numeracy classrooms. In G. Griffiths & D. Kaye (Eds.), Proceedings of the 16th International Conference of Adults Learning Mathematics – A Research Forum (ALM) incorporating the LLU+ 7th National Numeracy Conference (pp. 201–216). London, United Kingdom: London South Bank University. Oughton, H. (2010). Funds of knowledge: A conceptual critique. Studies in the Education of Adults, 42(1), 63–78. Overton, W. F. (2006). Developmental psychology: Philosophy, concepts, methodology. In R. M. Lerner (Ed.), Theoretical models of human development: Vol. 1. Handbook of child psychology (6th ed., pp. 18–88). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. Pahl, K. (1999). Making models as a communicative practice – observing meaning making in a nursery. Reading, 33(3), 114–119. Pahl, K. (2003). Children’s text-making at home: Transforming meaning across modes. In C. Jewitt & G. Kress (Eds.), Multimodal literacy (pp. 139–155). New York, NY: Peter Lang. Pahl, K., & Rowsell, J. (2005). Literacy and education: Understanding the new literacy studies in the classroom. London, UK: Sage. Papoušek, H. (1996). Musicality in infancy research: Biological and cultural origins of early musicality. In I. Deliége & J. Sloboda (Eds.), Musical beginnings: Origins and development of musical competence (pp. 37–51). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

147

References Penn State College of Agricultural Sciences. (2003). Developing an intergenerational program in your early childhood care and education center: A guidebook for early childhood practitioners. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University. Pierpont, J. L. (1850). Jingle bells [Recorded by F. Sinatra]. On Christmas songs by Sinatra [CD]. New York, NY: Sony Music Entertainment Inc. (1994) Post, S., & Neimark, J. (2007). Why good things happen to good people: How to live a longer, healthier, happier life by the simple act of giving. New York, NY: Broadway Books. Potter, J., & Sorrell, N. (2012). A history of singing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pottle, S., & Geiss, T. (1977). Sing after me [Recorded by M. Kahl and Grover]. On The stars come out on sesame street [CD]. New York, NY: Sesame Workshop. Pussy cat, pussy cat [Recorded by The Genius Baby Players]. (2008). On Nursery rhymes. Los Angeles, CA: Big Eye Music. Queen Elizabeth II. (2014). Retrieved from http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/person/mp01454/ queen-elizabeth-ii Rain rain go away [Recorded by Pamela Beall and Susan Hagen Nipp]. (2007). On Wee sing. The best of wee sing. Newberg, OR: Early Bird Recordings. Raibley, J. R. (2012). Happiness is not well-being. Journal of Happiness Studies, 13(6), 1105–1129. Rao, D. (1987). Artistry in music education. New York, NY: Boosey S. Hawkes. Rollins, J., & Nelson. S. (1950). Frosty the snowman [Recorded by G. Autry]. On Christmas: 16 most requested songs [CD]. New York, NY: Sony Music Entertainment Inc. (1995) Routman, R. (2000). Conversations: Strategies for teaching, learning, and evaluating. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Rowsell, J. (2013). Working with multimodality: Rethinking literacy in a digital age. London, UK: Routledge. Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2000). Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being. American Psychologist, 55(1), 68–78. Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2001). On happiness and human potentials: A review of research on hedonic and eudaimonic well-being. Annual Review of Psychology, 52(1), 141–166. Ryff, C. D., & Keyes, C. L. M. (1995). The structure of psychological well-being revisited. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 69(4), 719–727. Ryff, C. D., & Singer, B. (1998). The contours of positive human health. Psychological Inquiry, 9(1), 1–28. Ryff, C. D., & Singer, B. (2000). Interpersonal flourishing: A positive health agenda for the new millennium. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 4(1), 30–44. Ryff, C. D., & Singer, B. H. (2008). Know thyself and become what you are: A eudaimonic approach to psychological well-being. Journal of Happiness Studies, 9(1), 13–39. Sandgren, M. (2009). Evidence of strong immediate well-being effects of choral singing – with more enjoyment for women than for men. Paper presented at the 7th Triennial Conference of the European Society for the Cognitive Sciences of Music, Jyväskylä, Finland. Schellenberg, E. G., & Trehub, S. E. (1994). Frequency ratios and the perception of tone patterns. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 1, 191–201. Schellenberg, E. G., & Trehub, S. E. (1996). Children’s discrimination of melodic intervals. Developmental Psychology, 32, 1039–1050. Schön, D. A. (1979). Generative metaphor: A perspective on problem-setting in social policy. In A. Ortony (Ed.), Metaphor and thought (pp. 254–283). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Schwab, J. (1971). The practical: Arts of eclectic. School Review, 80, 493–542. Schwab, J. (1973). The practical 3: Translation into curriculum. School Review, 81, 501–522. Scott, L., & Wood, L. (1976). Five little frogs. [Recorded by Raffi]. On Singable songs for the very young: Great with a peanut-butter sandwich [CD]. Cambridge, MA: Rounder Records. (1996) Sefton-Green, J., Marsh, J., Erstad, O., & Flewitt, R. (2016). Establishing a research agenda for the digital literacy practices of young children: A white paper for COST Action IS1410. Retrieved from http://digilitey.eu

148

References Seligman, M. E. P. (2011). Flourish: A visionary new understanding of happiness and well-being. New York, NY: Free Press. Sen, A. (1993). Capability and well-being. In M. Nussbaum & A. Sen (Eds.), The quality of life (pp. 30–53). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Serafini, F. (2014). Reading the visual: An introduction to teaching multimodal literacy. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Shields, C. M., Bishop, R., & Mazawi, A. E. (2005). Pathologizing practices: The impact of deficit thinking on education. New York: Peter Lang. Silbereisen, R. K., & Lerner, R. M. (2007). Approaches to positive youth development: A view of the issues. In R. K. Silbereisen & R. M. Lerner (Eds.), Approaches to positive youth development (pp. 3–30). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Silver, F., & Cohn, I. (1922). I’ve got the yes! We have no bananas [Recorded by E. Cantor]. On The roaring 20’s unplugged: Volume one acoustic recordings 1921–1925 [CD]. Van Up Records. (2009) Skinner, D., Holland, D., & Adhikari, G. B. (1994). The songs of Tij: A genre of critical commentary for women in Nepal. Asian Folklore Studies, 259–305. Skrtic, T. M. (1995). Disability and democracy: Reconstructing [special] education for postmodernity. New York, NY: Teachers College. Small, C. (1998). Musicking: The meanings of performing and listening. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press. Statistics Canada. (2003). Age groups (12B), number of grandparents (3A) and sex (3) for grandchildren living with grandparents with no parent present, for Canada, provinces and territories, 1991 to 2001 censuses – 20% sample data. [Data set]. Retrieved from http://open.canada.ca/data/en/ dataset/187a5d97-5905-4360-9f71-a02fc99877f9 Stein, P. (2003). The Olifantsvlei fresh stories project: Multimodality, creativity and fixing in the semiotic chain. In C. Jewitt & G. Kress (Eds.), Multimodal literacy (pp. 123–138). New York, NY: Peter Lang. Stein, P. (2008). Multimodal pedagogies in diverse classrooms: Representations, rights and resources. London, UK: Routledge. Street, B. V. (1985). Literacy in theory and practice. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Swadener, B. B., & Lubeck, S. (1995). The social construction of children and families “at risk”: An introduction. In B. B. Swadener & S. Lubeck (Eds.), Children and families “at promise”: Deconstructing the discourse of risk (pp. 1–16). Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Taylor, A. (2011). Older amateur keyboard players learning for self-fulfilment. Psychology of Music, 39(3), 345–363. Taylor, A., & Taylor J. (Lyricists). (1806). Green, J. (Composer). (1860). Twinkle, twinkle little star [Recorded by Raffi]. On Quiet time: Songs for a pause, a cuddle, or a nap [CD]. Cambridge, MA: Rounder Records. (2006) Tepper, S., & Bennett, R. (1951). Suzy snowflake [Recorded by R. Clooney]. On The ultimate White Christmas [CD]. New York, NY: Ideal Music. (2011) The Eensy Weensy Spider [Recorded by Raffi]. (2002). On Let’s play. Cambridge, MA: Rounder Records. The more we get together [Recorded by Raffi]. (1976). On Singable songs for the very young: Great with a peanut-butter sandwich. Cambridge, MA: Rounder Records. Trainor, L. J., & Trehub, S. E. (1992). The development of referential meaning in music. Music Perception: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 9(4), 455–470. Trehub, S. E. (2001). Musical predispositions in infancy. Annals of the New York Academy of Science, 6, 1–16. Trehub, S. E. (2003). The developmental origins of musicality. Nature Neuroscience, 6, 669–673. Trehub, S. E. (2006). Infants as musical connoisseurs. In G. McPherson (Ed.), The child as musician (pp. 33–49). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Trehub, S. E., & Schellenberg, E. G. (1995). Music: Its relevance to infants. Annals of Child Development, 11, 1–24.

149

References Trehub, S. E., & Thorpe, L. (1989). Infants’ perception of rhythm. Categorization of auditory sequences by temporal structure. Canadian Journal of Psychology, 43, 217–229. Trehub, S. E., & Trainor, L. (1998). Singing to infants: Lullabies and play songs. In C. Rovee-Collier, L. P. Lipsett, & H. Hayne (Eds.), Advances in infancy research (Vol. 12, pp. 43–77). London, UK: Ablex Publishing. Trehub, S. E., Bull, D., & Thorpe, L. A. (1984). Infants’ perception of melodies: The role of melodic contour. Child Development, 55, 821–830. Trehub, S. E., Thorpe, L., & Morrongiello, B. (1985). Infants’ perception of melodies: Changes in a single tone. Infant Behavior and Development, 8, 213–223. Trehub, S. E., Thorpe, L., & Morrongiello, B. (1987). Organizational processes in infants’ perception of auditory patterns. Child Development, 58, 741–749. Trevarthen, C. (2002). Origins of musical identity: Evidence from infancy for musical social awareness. In R. A. R. Macdonald, D. J. Hargreaves, & D. Miell (Eds.), Musical identities (pp. 21–38). Oxford University Press. Tulloch, S., Kusugak, A., Ulusqi, G., Pilakapsi, Q., Chenier, C., Ziegler, A., & Crockatt, K. (2013). Stitching together literacy, culture & well-being: The potential of non-formal learning programs. Northern Public Affairs, 2(2), 28–32. Vanderark, S., Newman, I., & Bell, S. (1983). The effects of music participation on quality of life of the elderly. Music Therapy 3, 71–78. Van Leeuwen, R. (1999). Speech, music, sound. London, UK: Macmillan Press. Varvarigou, H., Hallam, S., Creech, A., & McQueen, H. (2013). Different ways of experiencing musicmaking in later life: Creative music sessions for older learners in east London. Research Studies in Music Education, 35(1), 103–118. Wakefield, J. C. (1998). Immortality and the externalization of the self: Plato’s unrecognized theory of generativity. In D. P. McAdams & E. de St. Aubin (Eds.), Generativity and adult development: How and why we care for the next generation (pp. 133–174). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association Press. Walsh, M. (2011). Multimodal literacy: Researching classroom practice. Newtown, New South Wales: Primary English Teaching Association (e:lit). Waterman, A. S. (1993). Two conceptions of happiness: Contrasts of personal expressiveness (eudaimonia) and hedonic enjoyment. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 64, 678–691. Watson, D., Emery, C., & Bayliss, P. (2012). Children’s social and emotional wellbeing. Bristol, UK: The Policy Press. Welch, G. F. (2005). Singing as communication. In D. Miell, R. MacDonald, & D. J. Hargreaves (Eds.), Musical communication (pp. 239–259). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. WHO. (2002). Active ageing: A policy framework. Geneva, Switzerland: World Health Organization. Retrieved from: http://whqlibdoc.who.int/hq/2002/who_nmh_nph_02.8.pdf Wise, G. W., Hartmann, D. J., & Fisher, B. J. (1992). Exploration of the relationship between choral singing and successful aging, psychological reports. Psychological Reports, 70, 1175–1183. Wood, A. (2010). Singing diplomats: The hidden life of a Russian-speaking choir in Jerusalem. Ethnomusicology Forum, 19(2), 165–169. Zandee, D. P. (2013). The process of generative inquiry. In D. L. Cooperrider, D. P. Zandee, L. N. Godwin, M. Avital, & B. Boland (Eds.), Organizational generativity: The appreciative inquire summit and a scholarship of transformation (pp. 69–88). Bingley, UK: Emerald Group Publishing. Zanini, C. R., & Leao, E. T. (2006). Therapeutic choir: A music therapist looks at the new millennium elderly. Voices: A World Forum for Music Therapy, 6(2). Retrieved from https://normt.uib.no/ index.php/voices/article/viewArticle/249/193 Zheng, Z., & Heydon, R. (2014). Lived literacy curriculum in a globalized schooling context: A case study of a Sino-Canadian transnational programme. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 46(3), 389–418.

150

INDEX

A accordian books, 84f, 90 aging processes, 40 AIRS: Advancing Interdisciplinary Research in Singing, 4, 14, 30, 44 Albers, P., 3 Allison, T.A., 46 Andrade, A.D., 48 Ansdell, G., 135 Aristotle (Nicomachean Ethics), 8 Austin, W., 11 B Baker, D., 32–33 Bangerter, L.R., 29 Barrett, M., 37, 39 Barton, D., 3, 33 Bayliss, P., 6–8, 134, 135 Being Together Makes Me Sing (lesson three), 74–83 Bell, S., 19, 41 Beynon, Carol, 49 Blot, R.K., 15, 17 Bradburn, N. M., 8–10 Brdar, I., 11 Bushe, G., 42 C Canadian Index of Wellbeing, 13 Children’s social and emotional wellbeing in schools (Watson, Emery, and Bayliss), 134 Clift, S., 36, 41 Collins, J., 15, 17 colonialism, 15–16 communal agency, 120 communication human, history of, 1, 14

importance of situation in, 33 meaning making, 18, 27, 133 multiple modes of, 137 and relationships, 23, 45, 122 through music, 46 through singing, 15, 19–20, 32, 36, 133 through sound, 2, 16–17, 38 communicative musicality, 34, 46 community choirs, 35–36 concept, deconstruction and genealogy of, 6–8, 134 Cooperrider, D.L., 42 Cornell, F., 6 Creech, A., 37, 40, 41 Crocker, Wendy, 49 Csikszentmihalyi, M., 12 cultural resources, 31 Cummins, J., 45 curriculum, 30, 31, 37, 48, 53–117, 121 See also intergenerational curricula D Davies, Elisabeth, 25 Deci, E.L., 9, 10 deconstructionism, 6 Delle Fave, A., 11 DeNora, T., 46, 135 Diener, E., 10–12 E early childhood education, 31 educational policy, British versus North American, 7 Elo, I., 28 Emery, C., 6–8, 134, 135 emotion in literacy acquisition, 16 epistemology, 33

151

INDEX

equal group status, 31, 45, 130 Erikson, E.H., 42 Erstad, O., 18 eudaimonia, 8–9, 134 eudaimonic wellbeing, 12, 135 See also wellbeing F family literacy, 13 Finnegan, Ruth Communicating: The multiple modes of human communication, 1, 16–17, 137 Where is language?, 2, 17, 38 Flewitt, R., 18 flourishing, 8–9, 12–14, 42, 134–136 Foster Grandparent Program, 27 Foucault, M, 6, 7 Franzini, L., 28 Fraser, S., 136 Freire, T., 11 funds of knowledge, 31–34, 38, 59–60, 122 Furness, J., 13 G Gablik, S., 120 Gardenier, Ed, 25 gathering songs See songs genealogy of concept, 6–8, 134 generativity, 41–43, 48, 130 Gergen, K.J., 41 Gestwicki, C., 136 Ghost Song, 24–26 Giddens, A., 43 Goble, J.S., 20 goodbye songs See songs Green, L., 35, 45 Gus, Edwards, 25 152

H Haidt, J., 12 Hallam, S., 37, 40, 41 Halliday, M.A.K., 36 Hamilton, M., 3 Hancox, G., 36 Hargreaves, D.J., 46 Hayward, M.D., 28 Healey-Ogden, M., 11 Heath, S.B., 3 hedonic wellbeing, 8, 12 See also wellbeing Helliwell, J. F., 11 Heydon, Rachel, 4, 23–26, 32, 37, 45 Holladay, S.J., 29 human capabilities, 9 human communication See communication human connection, 120 human needs, 10 Huppert, F. A., 12 I i2i Intergenerational Society, 30 identity/identity options contribution to wellbeing, 14, 36, 44–45 description/definition, 4 expansion of, 48, 54, 133, 135 of a group, 34 links to multimodal literacy, 136–137 from relationships, 45, 127–130 self-identity, 43 Indigenous peoples, 13, 16, 28–29 intergenerational curricula best practices/equal group status, 31–34, 122, 130 connection with wellbeing, 6, 41, 119–138 literacy practices, 36, 44, 136–137 Miqqut 2, 13–14

INDEX

programming vs activities, 30–31 and shared singing programs, 44, 45f singing in, 34, 119 singing infused, 4, 14, 23–51 intergenerational learning programs benefits of, 29–30 models, 27–28 music/singing, 4, 37, 43–44 intergenerational relationships/ communities building of, 122, 133, 136–137 familial, informal, 19, 28–29, 35, 39, 128 personal stories, 23–27 for wellbeing, 4, 45, 120 interpersonal reasoning, 127 Inuktitut, 14

lesson four (Teaching You about Me), 84–91 lesson six (My Neighbourhood Sings), 97–108 lesson seven (Songs of Us for the World), 108–117 linguistics, 36 literacy, 13, 23, 33, 136–137 See also wellbeing literacy, print, 2, 7, 13, 15–18, 35 literacy options, 3–4, 23, 43–45, 48, 126, 135–136 See also identity/identity options literacy practices, 23, 33–34, 119 See also singing; visual arts Logan, R.L., 127 Lubeck, S., 32

J Jewitt, C., 20 Jutte, D.P., 28

M MacDonald, R., 46 Malloch, S., 34, 38–39 Manderson, Lenore, 11 Mans, M., 35 Marek, D.H., 14 Marsh, J., 18 McAdams, D.P., 43, 127 McQueen, H., 37, 40, 41 memories, 25–26 mental illness versus mental health, 12 methodology and data collection, 48–49 Miell, D., 46 Miqqut 2, 13–14 modes definition/description, 2, 17 multiple, 14, 54, 119, 125–126 See also singing; visual arts Moje, E.B., 33 Moll, L.C., 31 Morrison, I., 41 multimodal curriculum See intergenerational curricula multimodal ensembles, 18

K Keyes, C.L.M., 10–12 kinship care, 28 knowledge, funds of, 31–34 knowledge production, 33 Kress, G.R., 20 Krueger, P.M., 28 Kusugak, A., 13 L Laslett, P., 40 Lather, P., 6 learning environments, 14, 35, 41 lesson plan segments, 53 lesson one (Songs in Our Heads), 54–66 lesson two (Songs in Our Hearts), 66–74 lesson three (Being Together Makes Me Sing), 74–83 lesson five (Singing I Spy), 91–96

153

INDEX

multimodal literacy, 2, 4 See also literacy; singing; wellbeing multimodal pedagogies, 3, 36 musical communication, 17 musical instruments, 1, 43, 67, 71–72, 81–82, 123, 126 music learning authenticity, 35, 46 music/music making, 15, 26, 37, 40, 41, 46 My Neighbourhood Sings (lesson six), 97–108 N Neimark, J., 42 Nepal, 18 New London Group, 2 Newman, I., 19, 41 New Zealand, 13 Nicol, J., 41 Nicomachean Ethics (Aristotle), 8 Noddings, N., 127 Nordoff, Paul, 135 North America, educational policy, 7 Nunavut, 13 Nussbaum, Martha, 9 O O’Neill, Susan, 4 personal stories, 26–27 oral/aural practices, 32 Oughton, H., 32–33 P participatory curriculum development model, 47 PERMA, 12 photography, 84 Picasso Child, 49, 56 Picasso Retirement Home, 1, 49 Plato, 16 portraits, 108, 110, 113–116 Post, S., 42 poststructural theories, 6 154

Potter, J., 14 programmatic curriculum, 47–48 programming vs activities, 30 Putnam, R. D., 11 Q quality of life, 9, 40 quilt squares, 91, 93 R Raisbeck, M., 41 relationships/relationship building, 45, 121, 122, 127, 130 research project protocol, 46–49 lesson summaries, 50 curriculum constraints, 120–121 Robbins, Clive, 135 Rowsell, J., 36, 37 Ryan, R.M., 9, 10 Ryff, C.D., 10, 12 S Saptaya, J. J, 10 Schön, D.A., 42 Schwab, J., 121, 132 Sefton-Green, J., 18 Seipke, H., 29 self-determination theory, 10 self-identity, 43 Seligman, M.E.P., 12 semiosis, 2–3, 20, 119, 125 semiotic chain, 47, 49, 53, 133 semiotic modes, 2, 47 semiotic resources/tools, 18, 36 semiotic systems, 135 Sen, A., 9 silhouette, sample, 55f singing benefits of, 19, 21, 34–42, 38, 44, 137 as communication, 14–15, 19, 32, 38

INDEX

experience of, 24–27, 37, 119, 125, 129–130 as literacy option/practice, 2, 4, 15, 17–19, 36, 44 meaning making, 20, 37 with movement, 19–20, 25, 133 as multimodal practice, 19–21 process versus product, 34 social and cultural functions, 18, 20, 33–34, 39 as social practice, 46, 120 teaching of songs (See individual lessons) and wellbeing, 4–5, 36–37, 40, 45 Singing I Spy (lesson five), 91–96 skipped generations, 4, 28, 37 So, T.T.C, 12 Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), 4 songs contemporary/popular, 62 gathering/welcome, 49, 50, 54, 56, 67, 76, 93, 98, 122, 125 goodbye/closing, 49, 50, 54, 65, 74 as performance, 17 Songs in Our Heads (lesson one), 54–66, 54f Songs in Our Hearts (lesson two), 66–74 Songs of Us for the World (lesson seven), 108–117 Sorrell, N., 14 sound, 1–2, 15–18, 36, 137 See also vocal sounds speech, 2, 14, 16–17, 38 SSHRC (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada), 4 stakeholders, 47, 48 St. Aubin, E., de, 43 Stein, P., 19 storytelling, 2

Suh, E, 10 Swadener, B.B., 32 T Teaching You about Me (lesson four), 84–91 text, in multimodal terms, 4 third space, 32–33 Tij festival, Nepal, 18 transformation, 47 Trevarthen, C., 34, 38–39 Tulloch, S., 13 U Ulusqi, G., 13 United Kingdom, educational policy, 7 United Nations, 9 Urquhart, C., 48 V Vanderark, S., 19, 41 Van Leeuwen, R., 36 Varvarigou, M., 37, 40, 41 Vella-Brodrick, D., 11 visual arts collage, 54, 58, 84 colouring, 97 drawing, 67, 69, 91, 97 painting, 1, 108 visual text, 50–51, 63f, 82, 85, 125, 127, 131 vocal sounds, 20, 38, 133 W Wakefield, J.C., 42 Waldron, V.R., 29 watercolour painting, 75, 77 Watson, D., 6–7, 8, 134, 135 Welch, G.F., 14–15 wellbeing concept of, 7–8, 34, 134, 135 deconstruction and genealogy, 6–12 as flourishing, 12, 14, 135 155

INDEX

formats and spelling, 8, 11 poststructural analysis, 134 from singing, 4–5, 36–37, 120, 135 various perspectives, 9–12

156

See also eudaimonic wellbeing; hedonic wellbeing Whitmore, C., 41 Wissing, M., 11 World Health Organization, 40