Dr. Sangmi Kang's article accepted for publication in JRME

Dr. Sangmi Kang, a PhD music education alumna and adjunct assistant professor of music education, has had an article based on her dissertation accepted for publication in the Journal of Research in Music Education (JRME). JRME is often considered the most prestigious music education research journal. In her study, “Motivation and Preference for Acoustic or Tablet-Based Musical Instruments: Comparing Guitars and Gayageums,” Kang found that students generally preferred acoustic instruments to tablet-based instruments. However, low-motivated students did not demonstrate a marked preference for either the tablet-based or acoustic guitars, perhaps because the tablet-based guitar was easier to play to produce a pleasing sound than the acoustic instrument. Yet, this was not the case for the culturally unfamiliar instrument, the gayageum, a Korean stringed instrument. In spite of the challenge inherent in playing the acoustic gayageum, students, including low-motivated students, preferred the acoustic gayageum over the tablet-based version of the instrument, likely due to its novelty to them. The findings have implications for the approaches that music teachers may take to introduce acoustic and tablet-based versions of Western and non-Western musical instruments to students of varied motivation levels.