Acting our Way into Being: Rituals of Relation in the Choral Classroom

Rituals of Relation: Acting our way into belonging

In this session at the Iowa choral directors association, I hope that Mary and I can engage you in an activity that allows us to use our bodies to act our way into new forms of being and belonging. In so doing, we will use this session to explore:

1. Values - research findings on the centrality of values of belonging.

2. Intentional Practices - structures of intention that create the conditions for collective effervescence

3. Synchrony and entrainment - the "magical sauce" that brings bodies and minds together, offering lasting steps into belonging.

Values

Thanks to the work of Claude Steele and Geoffrey Cohen and colleagues, the intersection of stereotype threat and values may be one of the most methodically researched areas in social psychology. Collective research on stereotype threat and "belonging uncertainty" led Cohen, Walton, and others to test a values affirmation methodology as a means of mitigating the effects of stereotype threat. In this classic methodology, students were asked to write down values that were important to them. Students then returned the values sheets to the researcher with the understanding that the teacher would read about their values as a way of getting to know students.

The hypothesis at play was that knowing that a teacher knew more than just your name and what you look like, but also about what you value and what you care about, would minimize stereotype threat and other threats to belonging. Stereotype threat is experienced most intensely by populations who carry a marginalized identity that carries stereotypes within particular academic contexts. For instance, many women struggle in male-dominated engineering classes when a test score or performance seems to confirm the fear of conforming to a stereotype that "I am not meant to be here." However, if a female-identifying student in a male-dominated engineering class knows that the teacher knows them at a deeper level, this offers a protective factor when a student encounters adversit.

The results of values-affirmation research have been deeply convincing. A 2006 research study by Cohen and colleagues conducted a study that offered values affirmation to some students and a control condition to others. Students in the experiemental condition completed a worksheet that allowed them to communicate their values to the teacher. Students in the control condition did a worksheet unrelated to values. As assignments became more difficult across a multi-week course, students in the values-affirmed condition demonstrated resiliency in the face of challenge. This resiliency was statistically significant for members of a marginalized identity. A 2009 follow-up study found that the impact of this very small activity had a statistically significant impact even two years after the completion of the first study.

So what can music educators and peacebuilders learn from this?

It all comes down to the fact that when we are known at a level deeper than our racial or gender group identity, or the stereotypes that our presenting identity may carry, we excel and are more resilient in the face of challenges. As a teacher, I think about the moments when I excelled at knowing students uniquely for who they were, individuating students and caring deeply for who they were. I also think about the times when class sizes were too large or I was too distracted. In those instances, I failed to know students for what they cared about.

This act of communicating our values to each other and creating shared values is fundamental to the art and science of belonging.

So, what is an example of this done well?

In a video that I share below from Edutopia, I am inspired by the way in which a history teacher has asked students to uniquely communicate their values. This history teacher begins each class period with a prompt for a student to "dedicate" the class to a role model or mentor who is significant for them. In essence, they are communicating the influence of someone who demonstrates what they value. These dialogues may offer a chance for a student to relate the influence of a family member, a loved one, or a lifetime hero.

As I reflect upon the brilliance exhibited in this history classroom, I wonder about how I might incorporate something similar within a music classroom. In the words of Cohen, as teachers we have opportunities to be "situation crafters" where students may flourish in their belonging and being fully known.

The Tripartite Model of Social Influence

My podcast interview work with Mica Estrada and Donna Hicks led me to an understanding of the collective power of self-efficacy, identity, and values. In much of Mica Estrada's work, she has sought to understand belonging and persistence in scientific communities and the notion of protective factors for marginalized groups.

Examining this across several studies from studies of academic persistence to community response to climate change, Estrada and colleagues note that we need the following:

1. Self-efficacy - we need to know that we can make a difference.

2. Identity - we need to be able to identify as a part of the community for belonging to occur.

3. Values - we need to feel that our values align and are recognized by the communities that we inhabit.

When these three are in alignment, an individual feels as if they belong, and this belonging offers persistence through hardship. Let's take a look at two examples (one not-musical and one that is choral) where a gap may explain a barrier to belonging.

Values Mismatch in Scientific Communities

In an example similar to one Estrada presents, a woman in a medical or academic profession may possess the affirmations of self-efficacy and identity to belong within a community, but then may experience a tension between their values and the values of the community. Academic and scientific communities often prioritize values of productivity and achievement, sometimes over the time that one spends with their family. If an individual holds a differently ordered set of priorities, they may experience a sense that "this community is never going to completely fit me."

Selff-efficacy and identity challenges in choral contexts

From having read literature by Patrick Freer (2009; 2018) and others about voice changes and transitions, I recognize early adolescence is a time of immense vulnerability for our students. During a voice change, individuals experience impacts to their sense of self-efficacy (i.e., 'Am I a good enough musician?') and identity (i.e., 'Am I a musician?') If we wish to offer students protective factors for this transitional time, we can prepare or communities to support students across changes, we can select literature that builds confidence in self-efficacy, and we can choose to use language that never questions a student's status as a musician, instead championing their resilience.

• As we consider the rituals we create and the language we use, how might we use values, self-efficacy, and identity to build vibrant communities of belonging in our music classrooms?

• Where do our students feel vulnerable?

• Where do they experience challenges of self-efficacy? How do we craft situations for independence and success?

• What are the rituals where students develop affirm their identity?

Intentional Practices

Our intentions matter as we craft contexts of belonging. In one of the podcasts on peacebuilding that has influenced me deeply, Wendy Kroeker discussed the concept of "retutoring the body." From this notion, peacebuilders increasingly understand that peace is not made from words and peace treaties alone. Sometimes we also need to retutor our bodies into deeper forms of belonging and peace-filled living.

Wendy Kroeker from the Music & Peacebuilding Podcast

The Filipino peacebuilders that Kroeker worked with used Tinikling dance as a form of bodily retutoring, where bodies recenter their relationship to one another and practice the interlocked synchrony necessary to build bridges across individualized identities.

Tinikling dance is an excellent example of the power of ritual. The history of micro-sociology has looked at the ingredients of rituals that effect a change in group membership and the sense of self. Adapted from Collin's (2004) text on interaction rituals, the ingredients are bodily co-presence, a door apparatus that makes it special and safe to be on the "inside," and finally a looping intensification of mutual focus and entrainment of rhythm and emotions. At some point, when this intensifies enough, it reaches a transformative experience of collective effervescence, in which group membership is altered, and a group establishes a new symbolic language as an outcome of shared experience.

Interaction Ritual adapted by Collins' text on Interaction Rituals

We know this process well from choral experience. In the ingredients, we have the co-presence of ourselves and we enter the set-apart space of the choral rehearsal room. When these elements are present long enough, we may eventually "heat up" these elements through an intense rehearsal or a concert in a moment of collective effervescence. From this point, we develop further looping cycles of increasingly deeper forms of belonging and group membership.

Two Vignettes

I want to interrupt the flow of this conversation to offer two vignettes of choral classrooms that I have observed. Please know that the point of these vignettes is not to point at good choral programs versus bad choral programs, but rather to point to the conditions that allow a choral program to flourish. As I write these, I reflect that I have taught two different classes exactly like these at some point in my career.

Vignette 1: The Silent Choral Classroom

I entered a choral classroom some years ago to observe a student teacher. As I typically do, I opened my computer to start getting all of the observation paperwork and forms prepared for when my student teacher took the podium. As I prepared these forms, I sensed that something felt odd -- the choral classroom was completely silent and yet the entire choir was in the classroom. Looking up, I saw a classroom of bodies seated on the risers and yet huddled over their cell phones. In the eerie silence, I recognized that this may be one of the first impacts I am seeing of the use of cell phones within what I consider to be the sacred space of a music classroom. The resulting rehearsal was effective, but lacked the connection that makes a good rehearsal great. Years later, I can't help but wonder if the eerie silence is an absence of bodily co-presence and synchrony, the essential conditions necessary for group belonging.

Vignette 2: Feeling awe in a choral classroom

It is a noisy morning in High School C. Students roam the halls as I make my way through crowded high school hallways to an early morning choral rehearsal (7:40am start time!). I notice a line of students placing their cell phones into pouches. As students mingle, their choral director interrupts, "Ok guys, we need to get started soon! Places!" Students find their places and take seats, waiting for the morning announcements to start over the intercom. At the conclusion, the choir director begins a section of "announcements and highlights." Students listen to the choral director as she offers announcements on upcoming events, and then she turns to celebrate students in sports and other events who have recently had breakthroughs. Students offers snaps and laughter as they encourage each other in the morning. The group has not sung yet, but already I feel like they are "together." The student teacher then seamlessly launches the group into a warm-up with the full attention from every student in attendance. Something magical is happening in this space.

Returning to Intentional Practices

Diego Pinto (2022) recently applied this interaction ritual model to describe the experience of singing in a Black Christian Gospel Choir at Northwestern University. His partiicpants descibred how the experience became transformative. The narratives he captured in his ethnography seemed to further describe how the intersection of values and identity offered an intensification of experience.

One researcher who has looked at collective effervesence extensively is Dr. Shira Gabriel. Across many studies in which she is a part, she has explored how music and ritual more broadly create senses of change and group belonging across identities that may not initially feel like they belong together. Dr. Gabriel serves as a resident advisor of collective effervesence to the Koolulam organization. This organization and this model bring together diverse identities for one day, teach a song to a massive group of people, and culminate in the singing of this song for a video-recorded performance. Moments like this, of collective effervesence, have a lasting impact on the individuals who participate.

Watch this video below of a celebration of diverse women who sing "Titanium." As I watch this video, I notice how bodies move in synchrony, how individuals exchange shared senses of affect through an intensification of being. The collective change is unmistakable. How do we craft situations of collective effervesence like this through our bodily presence, entrainment, and shared attention?

Synchrony and Entrainment

Finally, synchrony and entrainment. A repeated finding in the literature is that when we move our bodies or experience music in a rhythmically coordinated way, this is the fundamental building block that leads to social cohesion. This applies to neurscience literature as well as social psychology literature. A 2013 study by Reddish, Fischer, and Bulbulia brought students into a room to dance in either a synchronized or an unsynchronized manner with other participants. The outcome measures used tests of group belonging and identification, as well as an incredibly fascinating measure of group trust. In this measure, researchers told students that they could keep $5 and run, or they could put the $5 back into the hat. If everyone who was in the room returned the $5, they would receive the larger payout of $20. Essentially, this measurement game was testing "how much do you trust the other people in the room."

Remarkably, the condition in this study where humans synchronized their bodies yielded significantly greater outcomes in measures of trust and group membership. Dancing together appears to link beings at a level that impacts experiences of belonging and trust. In essence, we act out way into forms of belonging by synchronizing our bodies.

Synchrony in bodily movement, photo from Wix

As we think about how this applies to choral spaces, I think back to the vignettes that I offered earlier and how choral spaces might create the conditions for synchronous experience. I also think about the subtle movements of our bodies when we sing and how our bodily movements and co-presence are the foundation of group inter-being. And I reflect on how I might be more intentional with choral warm-ups that move and loosen bodies in synchronous ways.

I hope that this reflection on the use of "acting our way" into being offers useful reflections on how we can use our choral spaces as micro-ritual spaces. When we bring together our values, our intentions of co-presence, and our bodily experiences of synchrony, we make the experience of belonging real and tangible in the here and now.

References

Cohen, G., Garcia, J., Apfel, N., & Master, A. (2006). Reducing the racial achievement gap: A social-psychological intervention. Science, 313(5791), 1307-1310. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1128317

Cohen, G., Garcia, J., Purdie-Vaughns, V., Apfel, N., & Brzustoski, P. (2009). Recursive processes in self-affirmation: Intervening to close the minority achievement gap. Science, 324, 400-403.

Cohen, G. L. (2022). Belonging: The science of creating connection and bridging divides. W. W. Norton & Company.

Collins, R. (2004). Interaction ritual chains. Princeton University Press.

Hicks, D. (2011). Dignity: The Essential Role It Plays in Resolving Conflict. New York, NY: Yale University Press.

Estrada, M., Woodcock, A., Hernandez, P. R., & Schultz, P. W. (2011). Toward a model of social influence that explains minority student integration into the scientific community. Journal of Educational Psychology, 103(1), 206-222. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0020743

Estrada, M., Schultz, P. W., Silva-Send, N., & Boudrias, M. A. (2017). The role of social influences on pro-environment behaviors in the San Diego region. Journal of Urban Health, 94, 170-179. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11524-017-0139-0

Estrada, M., Eroy-Reveles, A., & Matsui, J. (2018). The influence of affirming kindness and community on broadening participation in STEM Career Pathways. Social Issues and Policy Review, 12(1), 258-297. https://doi.org/doi.org/10.1111/sipr.12046

Freer, P. K. (2009). ‘I’ll sing with my buddies’ - Fostering the possible selves of male choral singers. International Journal of Music Education, 27, 341-355. doi:10.1177/0255761409345918

Freer, P. (2018). Research-to-resource: Initial steps in vocal technique for boys experiencing difficulty with phonation during the adolescent voice change. Update: Applications of Research in Music Education, 37(1), 9-12. https://doi.org/10.1177/8755123318779880

Reddish, P., Fischer, R., & Bulbulia, J. (2013). Let’s dance together: Synchrony, shared intentionality and cooperation. PLOS one, 8(8), 1-13. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0071182

Steele, C. (2010). Whistling Vivaldi: And other clues to how stereotypes affect us. W. W. Norton & Company.

Walton, G. M., & Cohen, G. L. (2007). A question of belonging: Race, social fit, and achievement. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 92(1), 82-96.

Walton, G. M., & Cohen, G. L. (2011). A brief social-belonging intervention improves academic and health outcomes of minority students. Science, 331, 1447-1451.