City Research Online

Abstract

This research set out to inform the improvement of instrumental pedagogy by investigating and unveiling some of the hidden practices of several one-to-one teaching studios at conservatoire level. It aimed to engage expert practitioners in a collaborative exploration of their own know-how and widen access to that know-how. It explored expert know-how by situating the researcher as learner, and the practice of learning as research, making the act of learning the nexus for the development of new theory and new practice-oriented pedagogical materials.

The insights gained fed a process of researcher-participant critical reflexion-in-action, based in learning-through-doing, combined with reflection-on/for-action, based in learning through collaborative dialogue, thinking and reasoning. These processes have informed the creation of practice-oriented pedagogical materials designed to empower exploration and discovery so that learners can become researchers of their own practices and originators of their own personalised know-how. The materials to emerge from this inquiry, in the form of two student/teacher-facing manuals, aim to promote personalised modes of experiential learning-through-doing designed to develop student agency, autonomy, motivation, authenticity, imagination, and individuality.

This investigation utilised a Practice as Research (PaR) methodology, reorienting Robin Nelson’s model of PaR to create Expert Learner Practice as Research (ELPaR). ELPaR represents a new model of learner-centred inquiry that situates the researcher as an active learner, instrument-in-hand, within multiple one-to-one teaching studios, to be the driver of new knowledge and practices.

Whilst the specific focus of this investigation was new pedagogy related to tone and timbre in flute playing, ELPaR establishes a way of working with professional experts that can be replicated and adapted by other researchers to further investigate both instrumental pedagogy and other domains of professional expertise. Working in this way within the expert-practitioner domain, academics can build trust, form partnerships, and serve as a bridge between professional practice and expertise and a wider community of practice.

Publication Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Subjects:	L Education > LB Theory and practice of education M Music and Books on Music > M Music M Music and Books on Music > MT Musical instruction and study
Departments:	Doctoral Theses

Export

Downloads