Award of Excellence for Elisabeth Eder
Elisabeth Eder, a lecturer at the Department of Music Education Salzburg, received an Award of Excellence for her dissertation, which explores learning strategies for memorizing music. Congratulations!
On December 14, 2022, the certificates were presented in a ceremonial setting by Department Head Alexander Marinovic in the Aula der Wissenschaften in Vienna, in addition to congratulating Elisabeth Eder on her forthcoming doctorate sub auspiciis praesidentis.
Elisabeth Eder's excellent dissertation (supervisor: Marin Losert) dealt with memorization in music. The dissertation focuses on exploring learning strategies for memorizing music. In a large-scale empirical study, 1091 musicians from 64 different countries described how they memorize. Furthermore, the participants of the study evaluated their learning strategies and justified their choice of the degree of effectiveness. Based on the study and instrumental pedagogical literature, learning strategies were identified or categorized, the strategies were examined in terms of their effectiveness, and instrument-specific, age-specific, country-specific, gender-specific, and training-specific differences and similarities regarding the choice of learning strategies were explored.
The dissertation also deals with memory forms and models, or how music-related information can be stored and retrieved and also forgotten. Another section is devoted to the ways that teachers and learners can support the process of memorization independent of learning strategies. She has been teaching and researching at the University Mozarteum Salzburg's Department of Music Education since 2018 and can be seen on numerous stages as a harpist and soprano.
The Award of Excellence is a state prize of the Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research, which has been awarded since 2008 to the 40 best graduates* of doctoral studies of the previous academic year.