Connectedness to Others Through Virtual Social Music Improvisation

This mixed methods action research intervention study analyzed the influence of social music improvisation (SMI) on students' behaviors and perceptions of their connectedness to others in a virtual middle school classroom setting. Nine 10-minute SMI sessions allowed for the accumulation of data, with two additional pre-sessions being informative and exploratory to describe the SMI intervention and practice its aspects with participants in the intervention group. This study acquired pretest and posttest data from the Hemingway Measure of Adolescent Connectedness (Karcher, 2005) and observational information through process coding and field notes. Results showed how the presence or absence of SMI influenced 37 virtual middle school music students' perceived connectedness to others. Social music improvisation activities included playing instruments and singing using improvisation cards created by Dr. James Oshinsky (2021, see Appendix F). Qualitative field note data and process coding provided a more personalized snapshot of the results using the teacher-researcher's observations of actions and the nature of communication during sessions (Plano Clark & Ivankova, 2016; Privitera & Ahlgrim-Delzell, 2019). Actions recorded included playing an instrument, singing/speaking, smiling/laughing, and making eye contact. A statistically significant result (p=.035) in the connectedness to school subscale suggests that SMI activities positively influence students’ perceived feelings of connectedness to school, an integral part of this research. Qualitative data through observations and process coding showed that levels of participation during SMI paralleled with increased levels of connectedness to school for participants.