When being asked to write autographical stories of music-making, graduate students at Boston Conservatory often produced writings that reflected transcendent or religious themes (Bernard, 2009). They recounted experiences that felt larger than life, often outside of conscious control. Their attention is hyper-focused in the particular musical activity that they forgot the passage of time and lost track of self-consciousness. In Mary Alberici’s (2004) doctoral dissertation, where she interviewed 10 college-level musicians, she recorded similar accounts of musical experiences and described them as “rising above normal physical and mental fears and concerns to a peak experience that is remembered and sought after again and again” (2004, p. 22). Though these experiences are often described and celebrated in traditional literature as ‘a stroke of genius’ or ‘touched by God’ and are shared by many professional musicians, few systematic academic studies have been conducted to dissect the underlying factors that contribute to such experiences, particularly concerning music education. In this essay, I will briefly summarize prominent research that has attempted to do so.
Perhaps the most well-known attempt at tackling the phenomenon is Csikszentmihalyi’s theory of flow. Driven by a desire to understand what engages people in an activity, he set out to interview people from various professions, ranging from musicians, doctors, dancers to rock climbers (Csikszentmihalyi, 1975). From these interviews, he realized that a particular state of optimal performance was reported across professions. Similar to the accounts of conservatory students, they reported feeling full engagement, deep concentration, and elevated abilities in performing a task. Csikszentmihalyi described this as the ‘flow state,’ analogous to the expression of ‘being in the flow’ many people used in their interviews. He concluded that achieving flow is determinant of both the challenge of the task and the subject’s ability to overcome that challenge (Csikszentmihalyi, 1991).
Subsequently, the preconditions for achieving and maintaining such a balance between challenge and ability in relation to music education have been researched extensively by Lori Custodero. Namely, she conducted longitudinal studies with children from age four to five with follow up studies when they are eleven and twelve years old to derive developmental implementations of flow indicators in young children’s music learning (Custodero 1998, 1999, 2000b). She then used this information to investigate the music education of infants, toddlers, and early school-aged children by systematic observation, aimed at deriving the social factors that contribute to the aforementioned optimal challenge-ability balance (Custodero, 2000a). The results are summarized below.
1. The challenge component in the flow experience is greatly facilitated by the presence of an outside figure, such as family or adult teachers. However, such presence can also be flow-inhibiting. It’s only when they are invited, provide children with clear goals and immediate feedback, and guarantees children’s autonomy in solving the problem, does their presence become flow-inducing.
2. Students must have autonomy in grappling with a challenge. To encourage autonomy, the sequence of studied material should be arranged according to the students’ abilities. The material should also be presented in a somewhat simplified manner to allow for students’ own expansion of knowledge during instruction. Furthermore, extended time for expanding of the studied material in different contexts outside school should be designed into the educational structure.
3. The subject must be enjoyable to the learner for flow experience to emerge. To elicit maximum engagement, the learner must be encouraged to participate and make suggestions to the curriculum, rather than being explained to over a broad spectrum of knowledge. Physical movements also facilitated flow experiences as observed when playing an instrument.
Simply put, to facilitate flow in music learning, we need: a) a clear validated goal offered by adult presence; b) individual time and space to explore and iterate learned knowledge in various contexts; and c) artistic authenticity in the activity relevant to the learner. This insight is perhaps valuable to not only music education, but to various other disciplines as well. We can already see how a) and b) are implemented in machine learning algorithms. With the objective of maximally engaging people’s attention becomes ever more pervasive for all sorts of tech companies, it’s important to understand from both a consumer and a corporate perspective how we are being engaged in activities. Future studies regarding flow states could be relevant to music education, emotional wellbeing, immersive experiences, and more.
Citations
Alberici, M. (2004). A phenomenological study of transcendent music performance in higher education (Doctoral dissertation, University of Missouri-Saint Louis).
Bernard, R. (2009). Music Making, Transcendence, Flow, and Music Education. International Journal of Education & the Arts, 10(14), n14.
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1975). Beyond boredom and anxiety. san francisco: Josseybass. Well-being: Thefoundations of hedonic psychology, 134-154.
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1991). Flow: The psychology of optimal experience (Vol. 41). New York: HarperPerennial.
Custodero, L. A. (1998). Observing flow in young children's music learning. General Music Today, 12(1), 21-27.
Custodero, L. A. (1999). Construction of Musical Understandings: The Cognition-Flow Interface.
Custodero, L. A. (2000a). Engagement and experience: a model for the study of children’s musical cognition. In Proceedings of the sixth international conference on music perception and cognition. Keele, UK: Keele University Department of Psychology.
Custodero, L. A. (2000b). Engagement mid interaction: A multiple-perspective investigation of challenge in children's music learning.
Custodero, L. A. (2002). Seeking challenge, finding skill: Flow experience and music education. Arts education policy review, 103(3), 3-9.