2026 Theses Doctoral

When Policy Gets in the Way of Practice: Stories of Applied Music Instruction in Three California Community Colleges

Paulson, Daniel I.

This narrative multi-case study examined how music faculty within three California Community Colleges navigated, reinterpreted, and reimagined applied music instruction within policy environments shaped by efficiency, accountability, and transfer-oriented reforms. Historically grounded in individualized, one-to-one instruction, applied music now operates within systems that prioritize enrollment, completion, and standardized pathways.

Guided by an Appreciative Inquiry framework and informed by portraiture methodology, this study drew on faculty narratives to explore how meaningful musical learning was sustained within these constraints. Findings revealed that faculty acted as adaptive agents, extending their roles beyond instruction to include program design, resource coordination, and advocacy. In response to structural limitations, faculty developed innovative approaches that redistributed learning across communal and multi-modal environments.

Central to these findings was the emergence of communal pedagogies and shared studio practices in which learning was socially constructed, participatory, and distributed among students, faculty, and extended networks. These approaches redefined rigor as continuous and multidimensional, while expanding the definition of success to include identity formation, belonging, and participation in musical communities. This study introduces a communal framework of applied music and calls for reimagined funding, assessment, and instructional models.