You are cordially invited to present at the 2013 Research Poster Session!!!

Each year, KMEA sponsors a research poster session at the February In Service Workshop. This year, the session will be on Friday, February 22, from 3:00 - 3:55 PM in Room 205 of Century II. The session includes poster presentations of music education research by public school educators, university faculty, and university students. Each presenter has an exhibition area where they display materials pertaining to their research. If you are interested in presenting original research at this session, please contact me, Chris Johnson, KMEA Research Chair, by February 15. You may email me at the address shown at the top of this page.

The poster session is an excellent opportunity for workshop attendees to discover many things. This session allows you to learn what the current burning questions in music education are, and what we know about these topics. You will also have opportunities to speak with the researchers who can tell you not only about the project in hand, but also about many diverse topics in music education. This session is one where people can drop in and stay for a few minutes to talk with one person who may well have interesting information, or stay for the entire hour and glean informed views from many participants regarding all manner of topics. We usually see about 200 people come through this event. This year, we hope even more people will come by to take advantage of this dynamic learning opportunity.

2013 General Research Session
The general research session will include three presentations of recent research in music education and the psychology of music. As in all years, the research arm of KMEA seeks to identify and include research from the very best the state has to offer. This year's session will feature three presentations that I am sure will inform and engage. The first presentation will feature Teddi Ricketts, Nancy McKellar, Randall Ellsworth, and Elaine Bernstorf discussing "Relationships Between Instrumental Music Participation and Academic Achievement in Low Socioeconomic Students." Their results showed a statistically significant relationship between sixth grade instrumental music participation and reading scores, as well as math scores, and also suggested that duration in a string instrumental music class may be important to increases in academic achievement on state assessments. The second presentation will feature Sheri Cook-Cunningham who will discuss a project entitled: "University Singers' Hearing Dose and Voice Use During a Choir Concert: A Case Study." The purpose of this case study was to document sound doses acquired by female university singers (N = 4), simultaneous voice use and sound doses acquired by 2 participants, and to solicit participants' perceptions of hearing and singing effort during a college choir concert. Finally, Frederick Burrack and Phil Payne will be discussing a pilot study identifying if there is a relationship between success in university Engineering programs and number of years involved in arts in secondary school (5-12 band, choir, orchestra, theater, and visual art).

These presentations represent the best research efforts of researchers in Kansas and focus on topics that are pertinent to what is going on in society today. The general session this year will be on Friday, February 22, from 12:55 - 1:45 PM in Room 205 of Century II. As always, we will have abstracts for the general session available at the door as you enter. We hope you will come by, look at the talks to be presented, and come on in to see how the newest knowledge in our profession can make your classroom a more effective experience for your students.