ABSTRACT
This chapter synthesises the work of three case studies investigating the relationship of musical engagement and musical agency as experienced by multi-generational participants in three different music education programs. The study employs a dual theoretical framework comprising Deci and Ryan’s Self-Determination Theory (SDT) (1985) related to engagement, and Karlsen’s (2011) exploration of musical agency to examine the role these constructs serve in the pedagogical practices accompanying successful music programs involving participants at various life stages. While SDT highlights the psychological commonalities of autonomy, relatedness, and competence required to facilitate optimal learning environments and engagement across all programs, each generational cohort in this investigation revealed specific factors that facilitated rewarding learning experiences. Emergent themes pertaining to programmatic and environmental needs that nurtured optimal musical engagement are thus explored. The data extends, however, to illuminate findings regarding agency and the synergy between engagement and agency. Accompanied by an underlying temporal field of continuity and reinforcement these fundamentals were then successful in affording learner agency through developing the participants’ will, ability, and power to act in musical situations. Their demonstration of agency was identified as enacted through motivation, continued engagement, mobility of learning, ownership of the learning process, and ownership of the learning objectives. The research findings contribute to knowledge in this area through an examination of engagement and agency that crosses the temporal plane and links distinct generational age cohorts to one another. As a result, insights are gained into the relationship between pedagogies and specific engagement and agentic needs of varying generational cohorts. It is this iterative relationship between engagement and agency and its fundamental importance to ongoing participation in musicking that is illuminated in this chapter.
