dr. Sandra Fortuna
The influence of body movement on musical sense-making in primary school children. A multimodal approach in music education
Project description
Her Ph.D research project aimed to investigate the role of body movement on children’s musical sense-making through two empirical studies setup in an educational ecological setting of primary school. In both studies, the children’s graphical representations of the music and their verbal explanations of the drawings were used to probe children’s musical sense-making.
The first study investigated how and in what way a verbal vs. bodily interaction with the music influences the children musical sense-making. Results offer relevant insights into the role of body movement to enhance the identification of more musical features and their temporal organization. Based on the findings of the first study, a second study was carried out to investigate the influence of different qualities (discrete vs. continuous movements) of bodily interactions with music on children’ music meaning formation. Findings of the second study show that based on the quality of movement interaction the children changed the categories of visual representations, arousal, and number of voices of the music described.
About Sandra
Sandra Fortuna is a professor in Pedagogy and Psychology of Music at the Conservatory of music of Frosinone (Italy) and lecturer in the Master on Artistic Research at the Conservatory of Rome. She holds MA degrees in Musicology, Music Education, and Music Performance (Violin), and obtained a PhD in Music Education, at Ghent University- Department of Systematic Musicology (Belgium). Currently, her research is focused on the influence of body movement and visualization in music performing.
She presented her works at several conferences and lectures in Europe and published her works in national and international journals.
She is also a member of the review board for several academic journals.