2025 Theses Doctoral

Criticality in Collaborative Songwriting: Participatory Action Research Through Creative Cooperation in the Choral Classroom

Wasko, Christopher

This study introduced critical pedagogy into a novel songwriting curriculum offered to a high school choral music ensemble. The purpose was to explore how critical pedagogy affected the perpetuation of students’ agentic, collaborative, creative process, as well as how the students’ dialogue and process affected the teacher’s pedagogy.

Informed by critical theory, this qualitative study used a design-based framework to facilitate teacher/researcher reflexivity, as well as a youth participatory action research framework to position the students as co-researchers, knowledge creators, and stakeholders in the study’s findings. The student participants set the parameters for the project and provided the teacher with personal preferences to guide assigning them into smaller groups. Once groups were assigned, they completed an iterative process of dividing into separate spaces to collaborate then returning to share drafts and feedback, all while the teacher collected data, conferred with a criticality partner, and adjusted instruction based on the challenges each group experienced.

The groups received comparable degrees of instruction but engaged in notably different processes shaped by their communication, shared interests, willingness to experiment, and level of fun. The groups produced similarly distinct musical outputs and generative themes based on their collaborative work, offering insights into the differentiation critical pedagogy requires to authentically serve each student, the influence of institutional pressures on critical work, and the role of trust and play in generating critical themes.