Promoting purposiveness through intentional affective musicking: An autoethnographic study

Abstract

This dissertation explores how intentional affective musicking (IAM), a concept introduced in this study, can characterise practical musicking guided by affective and ethical intent, offering music educators a means to promote students' sense of purposiveness. Using a qualitative autoethnographic approach, this study investigates the author's lived-experiences as a music educator while creating, rehearsing, and performing a nativity musical with primary school choristers and instrumentalists (ages 7-14): IAM is situated at the intersection of emotion, spirituality, meaning-making, and musicking. It uses philosophical, musicological, and educational literature to explore how learners' sense of purpose is shaped by emotional engagement and value-driven aesthetic practice. Personal journals, observations, reflective writing, Scriptural study notes, and student interactions provided the data, which were then analysed using inductive coding techniques. The results show six interconnected themes that shed light on how a music educator's personal philosophy and spiritual worldview influence their pedagogical intent, namely emotions, beliefs, relationships, secular vs spiritual music, aesthetic values, and artistic intent. The study suggests that when musicking is supported by aesthetic, moral, and spiritual intentionality and when students are invited into reflective, relational, and emotionally meaningful artistic processes, purposiveness arises. This study proposes IAM as a philosophical approach to music education, rooted in the values of truth, beauty, and goodness, and as a counter-narrative to the fragmented aestheticisation of modern culture. It provides a structural framework for artistic intentionality that may benefit music educators and art practitioners seeking to integrate emotion, spirituality, and meaning-making within a socially and culturally responsive pedagogy.