B: Research in and for Higher Education

Teaching and learning in higher music education

Research and professional development in this context will also support the Academy’s work to enhance the quality of the education that it provides.

This focus area encourages studies of teaching and learning that strengthen collaboration between artistic and academic staff, and where synergies of such collaboration are used as a basis for common reflection.

More specific examples of topics include:

• Instrumental and vocal teaching in difficult musical genres
• Organisation and leadership of efforts to enhance educational quality
• Learning processes in performing and creative artistic work
• Teaching about the performing of music at a time when new forms of artistic expression, target audience groups and performance arenas are emerging
• The relationship between the teaching of music to children and music in higher education
• The education of music teachers and the music teaching profession
• The development of text books, guides etc. for music in higher education

Three of the projects within the field "Teaching and learning in higher music education":

1. The 21th Century Music Academy/Conservatoire as a Resource for Musician’s Learning

Head of project: Harald Jørgensen

Project start-up: August 1. 2007

Project co-workers: Ingrid M. Hanken og Siw G. Nielsen

About the project:
Institutions for Higher Music Education are numerous and spread all over the world. What does research tell us about these academies, conservatoires and schools of music? An ongoing research project at the Norwegian Academy of Music has resulted in studies of the international research output in relation to quality improvement and studies of teaching and learning in conservatoires.

News:
Harald Jørgensen will present his latest publication Research into Higher Music Education. An overview from a quality improvement perspective on "Forum for FoU", October 21st at the Norwegian Academy of Music.

2. Development of Musical Talents on Different Instruments in the Cultural Schools in Norway

Head of project: Bjørg J. Bjøntegaard

Project start-up: August 1. 2008

- A project on challenges associated with how the different cultural schools concentrate on developing musical talents in their local area

In Norway it is established by law that every municipality shall have a cultural school for children from 0 -20 years of age. The cultural schools in Norway are of different sizes, from less than 50 pupils to several thousand. The schools organize their activities in different ways, depending on the size of the school, where the school is located, number of pupils in the school, number of teachers and the qualifications of the teachers.

The main goal of this project is to show how the different cultural schools concentrate on organizing lessons for talented pupils from 10-20 years old.
The project started in 2008 when a questionnaire concentrating on development of the talents, was sent to 378 cultural schools in Norway.

The aim of the project is:
To study how the different schools define a talent on the instrument
To study if the cultural schools give special attention to talented pupils
To study how the cultural schools concentrate on their talents
To study if the teachers are qualified to teach talents on different instruments
To study the challenges concerning development of the talents
To study if- an how the different cultural schools collaborate on talent development
To suggest possible models for talent development in the schools of different sizes
The project will be finished by spring 2010.
 

3. MUSIC TEACHER EDUCATION AS PROFESSIONAL STUDIES

Chair:
Professor Geir Johansen, Norwegian Academy of Music
geir.johansen@nmh.no

Participants:
Assistant professor Brit Ågot Brøske Danielsen.
Professor Geir Johansen.
Associate professor Signe Kalsnes.
Professor Siw Graabræk Nielsen.
Associate professor Vegar Storsve.
Associate professor Inger Anne Westby
Reader Cecilia Ferm Thorgersen, Karlstad University, school of Music, Sweden
 

1. Purpose

The purpose of music teacher education as professional studies is to contribute to the knowledge base for strengthening music teacher education and to enhance the research and development endeavors within and among the academic staff in music teacher education along with improving the connections between professional education and the vocational practices of music teachers.

By conceiving music teacher education as aiming at a profession and by directing the attention towards its relevance quality in the relations between the institution, the practicum and the vocational arena we want to develop a knowledge ground for educating future music teachers that are better enabled than hitherto for facing the challenges on the increasing variety of music teaching arenas.
We also want to document the cooperation between the Norwegian Academy of Music as a research community of music education and other research communities nationally as well as internationally.
These ways we want to increase the research and development competence of the academic staff of the Norwegian Academy of Music and contribute to the further development of a national and international network for the research on music teacher education.
 

2. Content

Background
The practicum arena of music teacher education constitutes the fields and situations in which the pre-service training of student music teachers take place. As such it reflects the great variety of vocational sites of music teaching in the contemporary society. The concepts of practicum and vocational arena thus entail the same kinds of institutions and locations albeit differ as to their functions. Whilst the practicum arena has a direct educational function the vocational arena serves, in a more indirect way, as a field of reference and experience. Most student music teachers have experiences from the vocational arena by working as music teachers besides their studies an all of them are experienced from “the other side of the vocational role” (Handal and Lauvås, 2000: 181) as former students in primary and secondary school or by learning to play an instrument.
When seen together the variety of future vocational arenas raises a multitude of challenges and requirements to music teacher education and the function and role of the music subject. Contemporary music teachers are educated within and for a multi-cultural society and must relate to a very broad spectrum of multi-cultural practices, genres and expressions. This causes challenges for the subjects and courses of that education.

Two kinds of education
Taking such challenges as its point of departure the present research project focus at the education of what we have chosen to call ’performing music teachers’. This education takes place at the Norwegian academy of music and within the earlier music conservatories, presently organized as parts of universities and university colleges, along with a recently initiated practical-esthetic teacher education at those colleges.

Music and the arts constitute significant parts of the core within all these kinds of teacher education. However, the competences developed differ since they are being based upon various combinations of music, arts and educational knowledge. When aiming at enabling the student teachers to become flexible professionals it is necessary to strengthen the connections between these kinds of teacher education and their various vocational arenas.
In the present project two vocational and practicum arenas are focused: music in compulsory school and music in the culture school. Since both are encompassed by the same legislation and since the traditional boundaries between them as musical learning arenas is about to be transcended, we consider them as two parts of a whole.

Recent formal documents (St.meld. 38: 2002/2003; 39: 2002/2003; 8: 2007/2008) underline the need for common competence development in the educational and cultural sector along with the need for developing new dissemination strategies towards children and adolescents.
This was further reinforced by the Norwegian governmental strategy for the strengthening of art and culture in education in the period of 2007-2010.The strategy put weight to the development of the culture school as a local culture education centre within which the formation of cooperation models between the culture school, compulsory education and the field of community music are expected to take place. The role of the culture school will then change into a driving force for cultural activities in all the elementary and secondary schools of its municipality.

By considering the two vocational arenas in a wholistic perspective we intend to contribute to the development of new knowledge about music teachers’ manifold albeit still unified profession and professional performances. By directing the reserach interest partly at the student music teachers in the institution with special attention to the institution based forms of instruction and partly at the student teachers in the practicum with respect to the particular challenges of this field along with the vocational situation of former student music teachers now working as professional music teachers we will discuss the relations between the institutional, practicum, and the vocational arena.

Focus
Our analytical focus is the relevance quality of music teacher education with respect to how activities at the three arenas, separately as well as in common, can contribute to enhance the vocational relevance of music teacher education. A central feature is the quality of teaching and learning, entailing the student music teachers’ learning and its interrelations with the professors’ teaching.

Research questions
The project’s main research question is:
How can the student music teachers’ learning and hence the relevance quality of music teacher education be described in the relations between the institution, the practicum field and the vocational arena?
Aswers to the main question are sought for by attending to two sub questions concerning student music teachers in their meetings with different practicum arenas and vocational arenas. In turn, each sub question is operationalized into a group of more detailed queries (A - G) which serve as the starting points for the projects’ 7 studies.

Method
Answers to the research questions will be sought for by utilizing a set of various methodological strategies and the triangulation of quantitative and qualitative information. In large our methodological strategies include questionnairies, interviews, observations/field studies, text analysis, and theoretical studies and combine a longitudinal design with case design and action research.

3. Sub projects and studies

Sub project 1: Student music teachers in their meetings with different practicum arenas.
• Study A: Community music in a refugee camp as a practicum arena.
• Study B: The Cultural Rucksack as a practicum arena
• Study C: The different practicum arenas of music teacher education
• Study D: Perceptions of musikdidaktik in the relations between the institution
and the practicum arena.

Sub project 2: Music teacher freshmen in their meetings with the vocational arena.

• Study E: The outcomes of a 4 year program for specialist teacher education in
• practical and aesthetic subjects.
• Study F: The relevance of music teacher education with respect to the music teacher vocation.
• Study G: Professional music teachers in their meetings with various vocational arenas and challenges.