Abstracts PhD projects in progress, NNMpF 2014

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1 Abstracts PhD projects in progress, NNMpF 2014 Anna Backman Bister Tine Grieg Viig Tuula Jääskeläinen Sanna Kivijärvi Tina Kullenberg Lia Lonnert Susanna Leijonhufvud och Johan Nyberg Annette Mars Eeva Siljamaki Jon Helge Sætre Anders Rønningen Tuulia Tuovinen

2 Playing by the Rules A paper on knowledge formation in music within three musical classrooms Anna Backman Bister PhD Student, KMH Stockholm In this paper I will draw on findings from my own PhD study in progress, discussing knowledge formation in music within the classrooms of secondary and upper secondary school in Sweden. In Sweden, the demand for individually adapted education is stated in the curricula, even when teaching large groups of students. The aim of the PhD study is to explore criteria characterizing music teacher s strategies when trying to adapt their teaching to individual students. The interaction of three music teachers with their students was explored in longitudinal case studies in different parts of Sweden (a pre-study, and the main study consisting of two parallel studies). The research interest especially concerns teaching class ensemble addressing teenagers in the tuition provided under the curriculum of Swedish secondary and upper secondary school. The PhD study adopts the perspective of cultural psychology (Bruner 1996, Cole 1996, Wells 1999, Rogoff 2003) according to which learning is understood as being relational, taking place in a cultural context, depending on available cultural resources and affected by it. Cultural tools are considered mediators of meaning and crucial for learning. Of special interest to the present study are the ways in which teachers distribute knowledge to their students, which cultural tools they use in doing so, and how they use these cultural tools. The pre-study concerned my own teaching: here one aim was to and conceptualize strategies and the use thereby of cultural tools as a starting point for capturing and describing strategies employed by the teachers participating in the main study. Many-sided data were collected in all case studies: series of lessons were observed and video-documented; preliminary observation results were followed up in semi-structured interviews with the teachers, respectively. The results show similarities in the use of general strategies such as peer teaching and learning in the classroom, and developing learning by playing together or developing new cultural tools. Besides these similarities results also show three individually diverging practices; REHEARSAL-ROOM- PRACTICE, SUPERVISOR-PRACTICE, and ENSEMBLE-LEADING-PRACTICE. According to Bruner, teaching within the western tradition, has often been fitted into a mold in which a single omniscient teacher tells/shows presumably unknowing learners something they presumably know nothing about. He suggests what he calls a mutual learning community; where learners help each other learn, each according to their abilities. This does not exclude somebody serving in the role as teacher, but the teacher does not have the role as a monopoly (Bruner 1996, p.20-21). The frequent use of peer teaching and learning and knowledge development through playing together in the results evokes the idea that the three practices in different ways and to different extent function as mutual learning communities. Another kind of community is the community of practice, a concept developed by Wenger (1998). I have not used this concept since it embraces notions I have not investigated in my study. For example, the community of practice is tightly connected to the identity, which falls out of the range of my study. But when discussing the community of practice, Wenger discusses a matter also relevant to my study.

3 He claims that the local community of practice has to be connected to other communities. When the local community of practice becomes too local, there is a risk it may lose the bridge to other communities (Wenger 1998). This is highly relevant to my study, considering the results that the three local practices develop local cultural tools. One example is the development of local notation that is developed to facilitate music-making for the beginners. If this notation is not gradually complemented with notation that is also used in other music practices, the bridge of notation may be burned. The use of local notation must therefore always be used bearing this in mind. The three practices; REHEARSAL-ROOM-PRACTICE, SUPERVISOR-PRACTICE, and ENSEMBLE-LEADING-PRACTICE could with the help of Gadamer be seen as arenas or games with their own set of game rules. Gadamer use game in comparison to cultural actions (Hultberg 2006, 2009), meaning individuals are assigned tasks within the scope that the tradition offers (Gadamer 1997, p.86). In this case the three practices offer different sets of rules and possible tasks to the participating students. Gadamer claims that the rules of the cultural game can become so obvious that the participants in fact rather are played by the game. This means that the game itself affect the individuals to act according to the cultural set of rules without reflecting upon what they are participating in. Gadamer refers to Huizinga s (1949) theory that conceptualization in original human cultures are tied to game-like rituals with clear rules. To function in a culture, an individual need to handle the rules applied there (Gadamer, 1997, s. 85). The concept game rules can be compared to the concept Script, used by Bruner and Cole (Cole 1996, s.126). A script can be described as a generalized schema for certain occasion, a kind of cultural game rules. According to Cole, a script can be seen as a dual entity, one side is a mental representation, and the other is imbedded in speech and action. This is consistent with Bruners notion that thought and learning always is culturally situated and dependent of the local cultural resources. I would like to claim that the three practices are three arenas for interaction, bound by the situation and time. (Cole 1996). An unexpected result is that the concept individually adapted ensemble teaching may be understood very differently among music teachers actively involved in teachers education. The need for development of professional concepts is further underlined by the findings that teachers develop new cultural tools within different practices. Professional concepts would facilitate the exchange of professional experience among teachers and improve the quality development of music teaching and music education. One question that also comes to mind is whether we in our music classroom are playing by the cultural rules- or are being played by them? References: Bruner, J. (1996). Kulturens väv. Utbildning i kulturpsykologisk belysning. Göteborg: Daidalos Cole, M. (1996). Cultural psychology. A Once and Future Discipline. London: Harvard University Press Gadamer, H-G. (1997). Sanning och metod i urval. (Arne Mellberg, ed). Göteborg: Daidalos. Hultberg, C. (2006). Spelande lärande (opublicerat manus, 200 s.). Hultberg, C. (2009) En kulturpsykologisk modell av musikaliskt lärande genom musicerande. I F. V. Nielsen, S. G. Nielsen, S-E Holgersen (red.), NNMPF:s årbok 2009 (pp ). Oslo: Norges Musikkhøgskole. Huizinga, J. (1949). Homo Ludens. A study of the play-element in culture. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd

4 Rogoff, B. (2003). The cultural nature of human development. New York: Oxford University Press Wells, G. (1999) Dialogic Inquiry In Education: Building on the Legacy of Vygotsky. In C.D. Lee & P. Smagorinsky (Eds.) Vygotskian Perspectives on Literacy Research. Constructing Meaning through Collaborative Inquiry. (pp ). New York: Cambridge University Press Wells, G. (1999) Dialogic Inquiry. Toward a Sociocultural Practice and Theory of Education. New York: Cambridge University Press Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of Practice. Learning, Meaning and Identity. New York: Cambridge University Press

5 Tine Grieg Viig Development of an Analytical Method for Case Study Research on Composing Processes in Music Education My ongoing Ph.D. dissertation study Composing processes in music education is founded on the research question How are composing processes involving collaboration between children and professional artists developed through interpersonal relations, creative strategies and knowledge sharing? Through a multiple case study research project (Stake, 2006), three cases with different professional artists and varied pupil groups have been video-observed, and a focus group in each case was interviewed during and after the composing process. These cases were interconnected only by the fact that the participants are professional artists and children, or young adolescents, cooperating to compose music for performance to an audience at the end of the composing project week. Implementation of this study has raised several questions, particularly in terms of how observed collaborations involving pupils and a professional composer and participants reported experiences of creative processes in such collaborative music composition partnerships can be most meaningfully analysed and interpreted. Another important issue is how the musical sound, as observed through the composing process and reflected upon in interviews, actually develops in such creative partnerships. Prominent data collection and analysis methods for case studies are developed by Stake (1995, 2006) and Yin (2009). As a starting point for the analysis, Yin (2009, p. 135) suggests playing with the qualitative data material by searching for patterns, insights or concepts that seem promising. Through this kind of analysis, the data is to be diverged into categories (Stake, 2006). However, in case studies of music composition, merely arranging the transcribed material into themes does not necessarily serve to highlight the musical sound under development in a way that meaningfully reflects the process of composing. Therefore, I decided to develop a different approach, deriving from compositional analysis: through writing a detailed description of the music in the final performance, the analytical process started from the musical product and moved backwards through the data material and the composing process to uncover the creative origins and developmental processes. All interviews, observations and research descriptions are used in this analysis, tracing the musical motifs and ideas developed throughout the week. A case involving two professional artists and two fifth grade classes will serve as a sample of the analytical method under development in this presentation. The project lasted for a week: five days with two school hours work each day per class, and a concert on the final day. The two classes compositions were interwoven on the final day into a performance lasting for approximately 15 minutes. This final musical product consisted of a complex web of different musical motifs, constructed through use of a changing background and foreground texture with different players and instruments. For example, in one of the groups was a bass player, who played a motif moving up and down half a tone at different tempi and locations in the piece. This motif had a bit of an improvisatory character in the performance, and was planned to evoke a

6 particular feeling in the audience. Tracing this motif backwards, I found that the motif and its use in the final product had its origins both within interactions among the pupil group and the professional musicians. The electric bass was not introduced until the final day, creating a certain texture that had not been a part of the music before that point. Also, when tracing the idea back to its origin, it turned out that another pupil first introduced the idea in a vocal session earlier in the week, announcing this motif as an attempt to give the sensation of excitement and tension. Through a negotiation and interaction between the pupils, the professional artists and the music under development, the idea retained its original characteristics and meaning, but evolved in terms of texture and structure to become an essential part of a greater whole in the final product. These negotiations will be described further, and also will be used together with more of the data material, to shed light on different aspects of the problem statement concerning interpersonal relations, creative strategies and knowledge sharing encountered within composing processes in music education. References Stake, Robert E. (1995). The art of case study research. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage. Stake, Robert E. (2006). Multiple case study analysis. New York: Guilford Press. Yin, Robert K. (2009). Case study research: Design and methods (Vol. 5): Sage.

7 NNMPF Conference in Stockholm, April 23rd 2014 Abstract for paper presentation of PhD in progress Tuula Jääskeläinen, Doctoral Student in Music Education MuTri-Doctoral School/Sibelius Academy, University of the Arts Helsinki Conceptions and Experiences of Learning in Higher Music Education Research in university arts students learning has grown in international recognition. Although the previous research has focused mainly on the results of learning, i.e. creative performance, within the field of music education there have been increasingly international studies on university students and teachers learning concepts and practices (e.g. Bernard, 2009; Ferm Thorgesen, 2010; Ferm & Johansen, 2008; Reid, 2010). In Finland there are also studies in higher music education on teaching, practicing styles, one-to-one-tuition, master class and collaborative learning (e.g. Huhtinen-Hildén, 2012; Odendaal, 2013; Rikandi, 2013; Rikandi, Karlsen & Westerlund, 2010; Westerlund & Karlsen, 2013). University pedagogy research results show that the quality of university activity can be reinforced by taking into account disciplinary characteristics in teaching and learning development (Nevgi & Lindblom-Ylänne, 2009.) Aim of the study and research questions The aim of this doctoral study is to research students conceptions and experiences of university learning within the Sibelius Academy, University of the Arts Helsinki. The research questions are: 1. What kinds of findings in higher music education arise in Bachelor s and Master s degree students conceptions and experiences of university learning in the Sibelius Academy? 2. How do Bachelor s and Master s degree students experiences of learning and learning environments and approaches to learning change during their studies in the first, the third and the fifth years of study in the Sibelius Academy? Theoretical background The base of the study is the classification of learning for the surface, deep and strategic approaches according to Entwistle and Ramsden (1983) and Biggs (1987). The theoretical background for examining the learning environment is based on Biggs s (2003) concept constructive alignment and the model of alignment teaching. The constructivist learning theory emphasises student s active role in studying and interaction between teacher and student. The learning environment is a changing entity, in which students, teachers, teaching methods and subjects all interact in the learning. In the 1970 s there was found in higher education research two qualitatively different kind of ways in learning processes of text: processing in surface level and in deep level. From this point of view there was created a concept called approaches to learning, which means student s way of learning, in other words how student interprets, understands and experiences the learning of a task. Approaches are traditionally separated for deep approach and surface approach to learning. The deep approach to learning means student s efforts to understand learning, critical and analytic studying and managing entities. The surface approach to learning means emphasising the study by repeating things and memorising. (Entwistle, 1988; Entwistle & Ramsden, 1983; Marton & Säljö, 1976a; 1976b; 1997.)

8 Method I have started my research by developing an appropriate questionnaire for higher music education. Since autumn 2013 I have observed teaching and interviewed 20 teachers to get an overview of various kinds of teaching, learning and assessment in the 15 departments of the Sibelius Academy. The gained data will be the basis for adapting the Finnish university-developed LEARNquestionnaire to the study of students learning approaches and learning environment experiences. A particular focus will be to obtain information on their links to each other. The LEARNquestionnaire (Parpala, 2010) is a modified version of the British standardised Experiences of Teaching and Learning Questionnaire ETLQ (Entwistle, McCune & Hounsell, 2003). The two main parts of the LEARN-questionnaire are derived from the sections of the ETLQ, which measure students approaches to learning as well as their experiences of the learning environment. Moreover, the LEARN-questionnaire contains claims and questions regarding a student s course workload, progress of studies and their generic skills. The LEARN-questionnaire s third dimension of study is systematic study, which emphasises a student s self-regulation skills and time management. The developed questionnaire will be tested by a pilot questionnaire for a small group of students. The questionnaire will be accomplished in spring 2014 for all students in the Sibelius Academy and again in spring 2016 and spring 2018 for the Bachelor- and Master-level degree students who have started their studies in year All questionnaires are conducted in internet (webropol surveys). In addition to the data collected by the questionnaire concerning students experiences of learning and learning environments and approaches to learning, supplementary data concerning students conceptions of learning will be collected by interviewing students. The research material will consist of the questionnaire answers which were carried out to all students and as a follow-up survey to first-, third- and fifth-year Bachelor- and Master-level degree students. The analysis of the questionnaire material gathered on the Likert-scale will be based on statistical analysis and the testing of the significance of the results. Content analysis will be performed on the answers given in the open questions of the questionnaire and on the transcribed interviews. Discussion and implications International studies in the field of music education have demonstrated that it is also possible to study approaches to learning and learning environment experiences with a theoretical frame of reference not only in scientific learning but artistic as well. Arts pedagogies do stress, however, that methods in researching learning in science universities most likely will neither translate into the arts as they are, nor are they sufficient enough to research learning that consists predominantly of experiential learning, physicality, as well as narrative. The study will be carried out as a theory-bound study, where the analysis of findings is not directly based on theory, but the connections to it are detectable. This is to ensure that using the frame of reference for concepts and theories derived from science universities is also possible in the analysis of special findings for university learning in the artistic field of music. The aim is to build a solid foundation for other university learning study in the arts, and thereby strengthen university pedagogy research in the arts. 2

9 Nordic Network for Research in Music Education PhD seminar April 22, 2014: Poster presentation Figurenotes notation reforming music education system and society in Finland MSc., PhD student Sanna Kivijärvi University of Helsinki. Finland There is a growing interest in music education that focuses on students with Special Educational Needs (SEN). With regard to Finland, among the most best-known achievements is that musicians with developmental or cognitive disabilities can work as appreciated professionals among other artists. Also various concerts, video clips, prize-winning documentaries and other publications have popularized the recent progress in the field. It appears that this positive following, which the advances in special musical education have attracted, is not purely pedagogical. Besides the individual progress of students with SEN, which can be seen and heard in musical performances, something else engages human nature: the interaction between diverse members of society and the potential for inclusion, equalization and social change that special music education awakens. The concerts increasingly appear to interest listeners without any personal relationship to the performers with disabilities. These aforementioned phenomena are the chief factors that have motivated this research. The research focus is on Figurenotes notation - a pedagogical innovation and contribution - that creates and furthers the changes in the musical scene where new group of active members has recently appeared. Figurenotes is a straightforward way of notating music that has been developed at the Special Music Centre Resonaari (Helsinki, Finland). The notation relies on colours and figures to indicate pitch levels and the keys or frets of an instrument: each note has a corresponding coloured symbol. Figurenotes is a form of musical notation and gives all the same musical information as conventional notation, such as notes, note values, rests, sharps, flats, chords etc. It can be applied to all kinds of music-making, both instrumental and vocal. The purpose of the research is to evaluate and discuss how, why and to what extent Figurenotes notation is reforming the Finnish music education system and society in general. The innovation is approached as a product, change and process. For the research purposes (expert) interviews, document analysis and a national survey are conducted. The dissertation is part of a larger project managed by the interdisciplinary Music for All research group.

10 ABSTRACT to NNMPF 2014 Tina Kullenberg PhD student ( ), The University of Gothenburg, Sweden, studying Educational Science with focus on Arts Education (Sw. Estetiska uttrycksformer med inriktning mot utbildningsvetenskap). The double dialogicality reflected in children s music teaching The following elaborates on the present study of mine, i.e. the PhD- project in progress, called Signing and Singing Children in Teaching Dialogues. However, I found it appropriate to pragmatically select only some parts of it here, in order to open up for particular discussions within our field. Hence, I will leave out some facts and results in my study referred to, instead ending up with addressing an issue of interest for the ongoing philosophical debate in music education; the contentious issue of the current neo- liberalist discourse (and some sub- discourses implied). By way of introduction, some words about my study and the relation to the aim in this abstract are needed. The primary research interest is to explore social premises for learning and teaching. That includes probing into the communicative premises for creativity in general. More specifically, my concern is how cultural and social dimensions constitute aesthetic learning, particular young people s musical learning. In focus is children s co- constructed teaching. What makes sense for them when coming together for a particular musical task? And what role does culture play in their collaborative work? With these research questions in mind I try to conceive of how some children, aged 9-10, organize their joint music- pedagogical work together in terms of communication. Theoretically I base my findings on a sociocultural perspective, discussing the ideas of classical theorists as Bakhtin, Vygotsky and Bruner. In the music- educational context Hultberg (2000, 2007, 2009), Barrett (2006, 2012), Johansson (2012), Lagergren (2012), Mars (2012) and Wallerstedt et al. (2013) with others represent this overall epistemological framework. The ambition is to contribute with an alternative epistemology in contrast to the traditional experimental one in research of children s musicality. Experimental designs with a cognitivist (somewhat positivist) approach are argued to embrace a reductionist approach in its epistemological ambition. I also point at the ethical problem in the methodology of putting young individual s musical action into decontextualized and rigid procedures. For example, it is really ethical unproblematic to tell, or not tell, children that the research aims at mapping out the children s musical mistakes in terms of errors and inaccuracies? And, further, is it that kind of facts that takes us to subtle understandings of social learning in arts? This discussion has to do with underlying statements and is resonant with the music- educationalists who argue that the philosophical view on music and human beings

11 resides behind the conducted research (cf. Alerby & Ferm, 2005; Olsson, 1993; Pio & Varköy, 2012; Varköy, 2009, 2012; Wallerstedt, 2010). It is thus possible to look at musical experiences in a more existential way, beyond a mentalist (cognitivist) framing. In my analysis as well as in my conclusive reasoning, however, I draw on Linell s (2009, 2010, 2011) dialogue- theoretical (and sociocultural) writings. They outline principles for how to analyze dialogical sense- making within communicative activities. Linell (ibid.) introduces two concepts pertinent to my study, and this abstract as well: the notion of the double dialogicality and the notion of CATs. In short, the double dialogicality implies the actors orientation to both the interactional level in situ the situated social interaction as it unfolds on the interpersonal level, and the actors simultaneous orientation to the culturally constituted level. The latter embeds cultural values, conventions and established knowledge forms throughout history. In a CAT a communicative activity type - people engage in a situation type in which a central task for the participants is to interpret the situation definition in order to make joint sense and to establish intersubjectivity as a basis for their actions. In my present study, one of the main results is the particular way the participants chose to organize their singing and signing activities. They employed different kinds of cultural resources in its multiplicity, and one type of resource in their teaching was an organizing resource, leaning on an established social convention; the institutional knowledge development. The children framed their conversations in a formal style, clearly orienting to a particular CAT: to do a music lesson in a schooling way. That implies how they indulged in the reproduction of a traditional school- discourse, consistently acting out the social roles of acting a teacher vs. a pupil (the instructor and the apprentice respectively). For example, they were focused and very structured in their work, not talking about other things than the task. Written texts and notations were crucial aids for their pedagogic ideal of memorizing and reproducing the songs. Moreover, according to earlier research conversations in school are permeated by evaluations. My participants showed a distinctive preference for a highly evaluative discourse, realized in a routinized, recurrent fashion. In sum, the children in my study displayed skills in the task culture of school (Ericsson & Lindgren, 2010) and in social skills as well. They focused on reproductive elements of music, pedagogy and social attitudes, constructing tasks, making sense of the structure of a school- lesson (here called a CAT). So they displayed a double dialogicality. They also embodied a neo- liberalist discourse, I would say, emphasizing efficacy, instrumentality and meta- awareness. The same discourse has produced the idea of the autonomous, self- dependent and productive individual, in need of knowledge that allows for assessment and measurement (cf. Aspelin, 1999, 2012; Aspelin & Persson, 2011; Bergqvist, 2010, Bergqvist & Säljö, 2004; Biesta, 2009a, 2009b, 2011; Pio, 2009; Pio & Varköy, 2012; Varköy, 2003, 2009, 2012). Lindgren (2013) points at the neo- liberalist school- discourse in music as one of the two current influences in music- educational practice in elementary school. Folkestad (2006) urges us to consider both informal and formal ways of learning, and the relations between those knowledge forms. What does my empirical main result imply in terms of a creative, experience- based pedagogy and a creative production of musical knowledge? It is possible to problematize further on precisely the links accounted for above between communication, school-

12 discourses, framing activities, culture and musical knowledge development. I will come back to this issue in the following paper to NNMPF. References Alerby, E., & Ferm, C. (2005). Learning Music: Embodied Experience in the Life-World. Philosophy of Music Education Review. Vol. 13, nr.2, pp Aspelin, J. (1999b). Banden mellan oss. Stockholm/Stehag: Symposion. Aspelin, J. (2012). How do relationships influence student achievement? Understanding student performance from a general, social psychological standpoint. International Studies in Sociology of Education, 22:1, Aspelin, J., & Persson, S. (2011). Om relationell pedagogik. Malmö: Gleerup. Barrett, M.S. (2006). Inventing songs, inventing worlds: The genesis of creative thought and activity in young children s lives. International Journal of Early Years Education, 14, Barrett, M.S. (2012). Troubling the creative imaginary: Some possibilities of ecological thinking for music and learning. In: Hargreaves, D.J., Miell, D. & MacDonald, R.A.R. (Eds.). Musical imaginations: multidisciplinary perspectives on creativity, performance and perception. Oxford: Oxford Univ Press. Bergqvist, K. (2010). «Think of how you can know that you have reached your goals.» Reflection as self-control in late-modern schooling. Nordic Studies in Education, Vol. 30, pp Oslo. ISSN Bergkvist, K. & Säljö, R. (2004). Learning to plan. A study of reflexivity and discipline in modern pedagogy. I J. van der Linden & P. Renshaw (Red.). Dialogic learning (ss ). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer. Biesta, G. (2009a). Good education in an age of measurement: on the need to reconnect with the question of purpose in education. Springer Science. 21: Biesta, G. (2009b). Witnessing deconstruction of education: why quasi-transcendentalism matters. Journal of Philosophy of Education. 43(3), pp Biesta, G. (2011). Philosophy, Exposure, and Children: How to Resist the Instrumentalisation of Philosophy in Education. Journal of Philosophy of Education, Vol. 45(2), pp

13 Ericsson, C., & Lindgren, M. (2010). Musikrummet i blickfånget: Vardagskultur, identitet, styrning och kunskapsbildning. Halmstad: Högskolan i Halmstad. Folkestad, G. (2006). Formal and informal learning situations or practices vs formal and informal ways of learning. British journal of music education. 23:2, s Hultberg, Cecilia. (2000). The Printed Score as a Mediator of Musical Meaning. Approaches to Music Notation in Western Tonal Tradition. (Ph. D.) Lunds universitet. Hultberg, C. (2007). The Printed Score as a Mediator of Musical Meaning. In: Folkestad, G. (Ed.) A Decade of Research in Music Education. Malmö: Malmö Academy of Music, Lund University. Hultberg, C.K. (2009). En kulturpsykologisk modell av musikaliskt lärande genom musicerande. I FV Nielsen, SG Nielsen, SE Holgersen (red.). NNMPF:s årbok, pp Johansson, K. (2012). Organ improvisation: Edition, extemporization, expansion, and instant composition. In: Hargreaves, D.J., Miell, D. & MacDonald, R.A.R. (Eds.). Musical imaginations: multidisciplinary perspectives on creativity, performance and perception. Oxford: Oxford Univ Press. Lagergren, A. (2012). Barns musikkomponerande i tradition och förändring. Diss. Göteborg: Göteborgs Universitet. Lindgren, M. (2013). Kontext och diskurs som lärandets villkor en discussion med utgångspunkt i forskning kring estetisk verksamhet i skola och lärarutbildning. I: Marner, A. & Örtegren, H. (red.). KLÄM konferenstexter om lärande, ämnesdidaktik och mediebruk. Tilde skriftserie nr 1. Institutionen för estetiska ämnen. Umeå: Umeå universitet. Linell, P. (2009). Rethinking language, mind and world dialogically: interactional and contextual theories of human sense-making Charlotte, NC. Information Age Publ. Linell, P. (2010). Communicative activity types as organisations in discourses and discourses in organisations. In: Tanskanen, S-K., Helasvuo, M-L., Johansson M., & Raitaniemi, M. (Eds.). Discourses in Interaction. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Linell, P. (2011). Samtalskulturer. Kommunikativa verksamheter i samhället. Volym 1 och 2. Linköping: Linköpings universitet. Mars, Annette.(2012). Musikaliskt lärande i kulturmöte. En fallstudie av gambiska och svenska ungdomar i samspel. Licentiatuppsats i musikpedagogik. Lunds universitet. Olsson, B. (1993). SÄMUS - musikutbildning i kulturpolitikens tjänst?: en studie om en musikutbildning på 1970-talet. Diss. Göteborg : Univ. Göteborg. Pio, F. (2009). Sanselighedspaedagogik og livsduelighed. Skolens vej mod en omvurdering af music som sanselig-aestetisk fag. I: Nordisk musikkpedagogisk forskning. Årbok 11, Oslo: Norges musikkhögskole.

14 Pio, F. & Varköy, Ö. (2012). Reflection on Musical Experience as Existential Experience: An Ontological Turn In: Philosophy of Music Education Review.Vol. 20, No. 2, pp Varköy, Ö. (2003). Musikk strategi och lykke. Bidrag till musikkpedagogisk grunnlagstenkning. Oslo: J.W. Cappelens Forlag. Varköy, Ö. (2009). The role of music in music education research: Reflections on musical experience. Nordisk musikkpedagogisk forskning. Årbok 11, Varkøy, Ø. (red.) (2012). Om nytte og onytte. En innledning. I: Om nytte og unytte. Oslo: Abstrakt forlag. Wallerstedt, C. (2010). Att peka ut det osynliga i rörelse. En didaktisk studie av taktart i musik. Doktorsavhandling. Göteborg: Göteborgs universitet. Wallerstedt, C., Pramling, N., & Säljö, R. (2013). Learning to discern and account: The trajectory of a listening skill in an institutional setting. Psychology of Music. Psychology of Music. 0(0), 1-20.

15 Paper presentation PhD project in progress NNMPF conference Stockholm 2014 Lia Lonnert Intuition och musikutövande Musikutövande kan beskrivas som att den som spelar oavbrutet fattar många beslut. Beslut gällande nyanser, klangfärg, timing, frasering och så vidare i ett enormt komplext samspel. Denna mängd av beslut måste fattas oerhört snabbt och i det flöde i tiden som musikstycket är. Musikern måste ta hänsyn till det resultat som är närmast föregående, till exempel ett avslutande av en fras leder till hur nästa fras kommer att börjas. Musikern måste ta hänsyn till nuet, till exempel hur akustiken i rummet är. Musikern måste ta hänsyn till framtiden, hur idén om eller formandet av stycket sker. Delar av detta kan naturligtvis etableras genom övning, men det är i stunden som besluten om just detta musikstycke, just denna gång det spelas sker. Eftersom detta sker så snabbt i tid, och är oerhört komplext kan det knappast bestå av att man först tänker lite och därefter handlar utan att både handling och teori är sammanvävda. Det kan inte heller bestå av en rent verbal kunskap, att kunna förklara ett i grunden icke-verbalt uttryck. Kunskapen om att spela musik måste bestå av att kunna spela musik. Kunskapen om att spela musik måste även bestå i att det inte, i de flesta fall, består av att utföra något rätt eller fel utan att valmöjligheterna är närmast oändliga. Ett sätt att betrakta den ovan nämnda förmågan till beslutsfattande är att processen är intuitiv. Intuitiv i denna betydelse kan förstås som en omedelbar lösning till skillnad från en diskursiv lösning som betyder en stegvis lösning av ett problem. Detta paper behandlar lärande om musikutövande utifrån ett intuitionsperspektiv och utgår från Hans Larssons, John Landquists, Dreyfus och Dreyfus, Aristoteles och Augustinus idéer.

16 Susanna Leijonhufvud & Johan Nyberg Abstract for paper presentation NNMPF 2014 Conference, Stockholm Assessment of musical quality a case study of achieving a World Champion title in chorus singing In 2013 the World Champion title in female barbershop singing was awarded the Swedish chorus Rönninge Show Chorus. This achievement was historical not only because the winning score was the highest ever in the history of the competition, but foremost because it was made by a non-american chorus. How did this become possible? All participating choruses are assessed by a standard, which among other criteria includes being in command of American English in order to perfect formants, and thereby the united sound of the Chorus. This event has triggered our interest in researching the assessment protocol of the competition, and how such criteria guide the pedagogical work of the chorus work that has led to mastery and scoring a new world record. In our presentation we will describe the atomistic standard used in the assessment of musical qualities of the female barbershop singing competition environment: Music, Sound, Expression and Showmanship. These four categories are in turn divided into a number of assessment units. In relation to music education we will focus on the first three categories, which we find to be relevant in any musical work. In addition to this, our presentation will describe the underlying choral work based on interviews with the two conductors of the Rönninge Show Chorus. Finally, we will discuss the barbershop learning practice in relation to a musical educational context: What can we learn from this explicit, atomistic judgement practice in the ongoing discussion regarding atomistic and holistic assessment in music education? Susanna Leijonhufvud, PhLic in Music Education PhD student in Musicology at Örebro University [email protected] Johan Nyberg, PhLic in Music Education PhD student in Music Education at Luleå University of Technology [email protected]

17 Musical tools in collaborative learning project. The band in a high school musical as a case. Annette Mars PhD student at Luleå Tekniska Universitet, Musikhögskolan i Piteå. I would like to have the following focus at the discussion: Mediating tools for musical learning, continuity line in a written culture, culture psychology. Tina Kullenberg and I would prefer to do our presentation together. Background and research questions: In my licentiate essay Musical learning in a cross- cultural setting - A case study of Gambian and Swedish adolescents in interaction, the main aim of the study was to explore in what ways adolescents acquire music, and to analyse this in a context of cultural identity. The primary research question was: What characterizes musical learning in a situation where the intention is that young people from different cultures learn in interaction with each other? In that study different tools for learning music where discovered. In the following study the main aim is to explore in what way ninth grade Swedish students in a musical project acquire musical knowledge, and what tools for learning they use in that cultural context. Design: Based on a socio cultural perspective and ethnomusicology a design of field studies and interviews with the youths and their music teacher was constructed. Field studies were carried out filming Swedish ninth grade students in music ensemble when they playing music, creating music and teaching music. The context of the learning situation was a musical project where the students created music and lyrics for the musical in cooperation with the teacher. Interviews were conducted with the music teacher in connection to the field studies and with the students in the end of the field studies. The interview with the teacher was carried out as an informal conversation made directly after the music lesson and in writing through where the music teacher got a short presentation of what tools the analysis shown that he used when teaching and what words he used in conversation with the youths; he corresponded back with an with his thoughts. In the interview with the students small bits of the films were shown, and there was a base for a group discussion on what was being seen. The material was analysed in five different steps. In the first step, the experiences while watching the videos from the musical interaction between the youths were written down, trying to adopt the perspectives of both researcher and teacher. The second step was to find categories, which was done by transcribing the videos using the software programme Transana. In this stage several categories were crystalized. At this point of the analysis it became necessary to acquire distance from the material, which led to the

18 third step: to give each category a code. In the fourth step, these coded categories were quantified and transferred to a chart, thereby enabling an understanding of frequency, at what time and moments the strategies were used, and by whom. Separate charts were made for every meeting and individual respectively, as well as for the group as a whole. Working through these different steps it is possible to analyse what tools for musical learning that have been used by these participants and to what extent. In the fifth and final phase of the analysis the material is transformed into a whole. This is accomplished by field notes, interview transcription, video transcription, and coding is made into a narrative that describes how these Swedish ninth graders learn and teach others music. During this process the ambition was to view the material with an eye as objective as possible, and that none of the different perspectives where favoured; the use of codes in the analysis was helpful in handling this aspect of the process. The codes also allowed the researcher going even further away from the initial expectations of the empirical data. Theory: The theoretical points of departure are to be found in socio- cultural theories of learning, with a focus on how cultural tools are used in the learning as well as teaching processes. Drawing from Cole (1998), Hultberg (2005; 2009), Rogoff (1990), Säljö (2000) Vygotsky (1978; 1980; 1986; 1999) and Wertsch (1985; 1998; 2002). Theories of written and oral culture are taken from Ong (1990/2007), Finnegan (1988). The methodological point of view is drawn from music ethnology and the concepts of emic and etic through for example Headland, Pike, Harris (1990), Finnegan (2006), Lundberg och Ternhag (2002), Nettle (2005). Results: The preliminary result imply that the Swedish youths use tools that where connected to a literate culture in Mars (2012), the tools where repetition, to explain, to write down, to watch. As Hultberg (2005) states the students are affected by their teacher. The youths in the musical project mimic the music teacher when teaching someone else a music piece. Further more the youths need written notes and/or chords and text in order to remember how the music sounds and how their instruments are to be played. According to Ong (1990/2007) the knowledge in a written culture is remembered and developed by the written text. In a written culture the written text operates as continuity line in the words of Säljö (2000), the written text is the mediating tool for knowledge.

19 Referenslista Cole, M. (1998) Cultural psychology. A once and future doscipline. Cambridge, Massachusetts and London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Finnegan, R. (1988). Literacy & Orality. Oxford: Blackwell Finnegan, R. (2006). Oral Tradition and The Verbal Arts. New York: Routledge. Headland, T. Pike, K., Harris, M. (1990). Emics and Etics. The insider/outsider debate. Newbury Park Kalifornien: SAGE Hultberg, C. (2005). Practitioners and researchers in cooperation Method development for qualitative practice-related studies. Music Education Research 7, Hultberg, C. (2009). En kulturpsykologisk modell av musikaliskt lärande genom musicerande [A cultural psychology model of musical learning through musicking]. Yearbook of Nordic Research in Music Education, 11, Lundberg, D & Ternhag, G (2002). Musiketnologi En introduktion [Music-ethnology An introduction. Södertälje: Gidlunds Förlag. Mars, A. (2012). Musikaliskt lärande i kulturmöte. En fallstudie av gambiska och svenska ungdomar i samspel. Malmö: Musikhögskolan i Malmö. Licentiatuppsats. Nettl, B. (2005). The study of ethnomusicology. Thirty-one issues and concepts (2e edition). Illinois: University of Illinois Press. Ong, W. J. (1990/2007). Muntlig och skriftlig kultur. Teknologisering av ordet [œral and written culture. Technologization of the word]. Uddevalla: Anthropos AB. Rogoff, B. (1990) Apprenticeship in thinking. New York: Oxford University Press. Säljö, R. (2000). Lärande i praktiken - Ett sociokulturellt perspektiv [Learning in practice a socio cultural perspective]. Stockholm: Prisma. Vygotsky, L.S. (1978). Mind in society. The Development of Higher Psychological Processes. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. Vygotskij, L.S. (1980). Psykologi och dialektik. En antologi i urval av Lars-Christer Hydén. Stockholm: P. A. Norstedt & Söners Förlag. Vygotsky, L. (1986). Thought and language. (A. Kozulin, translator, Ed). London: The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society. The Development of Higher Psychological Processes. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.

20 Vygotskij, L.S. (1999). Tänkande och språk. Göteborg: Bokförlaget Daidalos Wertsch, J.V. (1985) Vygotsky and the social formation of mind. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press. Wertsch, J.V. (1998) Mind as action. New York: Oxford University Press. Wertsch, J.V. (2002) Voices of collective remembering. New York: Cambridge University Press.

21 PHD PROJECT IN PROGRESS PAPER ABSTRACT TO BE SUBMITTED FOR THE 19TH CONFERENCE OF NORDIC NETWORK FOR RESEARCH IN MUSIC EDUCATION Social interaction at the heart of choral singing - An ethnographic case study on free vocal improvisation through applied principles of improvisational theatre in FIC Eeva Siljamäki, University of the Arts Helsinki, Sibelius Academy [email protected] The Finnish Improvisation Choir (FIC) challenges existing choral traditions, more specifically, group improvisation by applying techniques and the philosophy of improvisational theatre to its practices and free choral improvisation. The objective of the improvisational theatre method is to unlock the actor s full capacity for creative self-expression (see Spolin 1963; Johnstone 1997) and is based on e.g. listening, accepting, reacting, no denial, avoiding planning, accepting mistakes as a possibility and supporting co-creators (see Johnstone 1997; Sawyer 2003b). This grass-root theory of discursive action emerged from practice (Sawyer 2003b) results in the emergence of collaborative creativity (Sawyer e.g. 2003a & 2007), thus in FIC, musical improvisation. In this study I focus on the negotiation of the social processes and emerging practices that lead to the creative processes of free choral improvisation in the Finnish Improvisation Choir. Researchers argue that improvisation is a skill that can be learned by anyone regardless of technical proficiency or age (Clarke 2012) and improvisation should be at the core of every syllabus (Sawyer 2008; Giacomelli 2012), including teacher education (Sawyer 2004). Yet improvisation is still regarded mostly as a tool or vehicle to something, and not as an end in itself. Music education has repeatedly called for democratic praxis with dialogic learning and teachers acting as facilitators (Wright 2010, ), while free improvisation where the authority between the participants is continuously negotiated musically can be viewed as an ideal learning situation and the effect of social context and cultural meanings has been acknowledged (Thomson 2008). In FIC the role of the conductor is transmuted through applying theatre improvisation practices to facilitate the real time creation of music and the singers are given the authority and responsibility of developing the aesthetic criteria and practices of the music. As social interaction becomes the core of improvisation the definition of skill in this particular choral context is reformed and the essence of music lies not in musical works but in taking part in performance, in social action (Small 1999). The FIC members markedly different levels of musical skill manifests the loosening of the boundaries between professionals and amateurs as musicians (MacDonald, Wilson & Miell 2012) linking the study to the discourse of democratic participation in this context (see e.g. Dewey 1916; Väkevä & Westerlund 2007), and creates new boundaries that also hold potential for learning (Wenger 1998). In FIC social interaction is at the core of music making as the principles of

22 improvisational theatre, also understood as principles of effective social interaction, are applied to choral improvisation. Thus a wider sociocultural perspective to learning and education is adopted. Instead of transmission, learning is seen as participation, where social engagement is related to identity construction in relation to the community (Wenger 1998) and the collaborative development of mediating artifacts is emphasized (Paavola & Hakkarainen 2005). The study also leans on the theory of collaborative learning (Häkkinen & Arvaja 1999), and critical pedagogy (Freire 2005). This study aims to explore What principles inform the processes of music making in SIK and what is the educational and aesthetic value of SIK s practices in relation to both the traditional choral context and other forms of musical improvisation? The overarching questions will be answered in 3-4 articles focusing on the emerging creative processes, learning, the conductors task and how these relate to existing ideas of improvisation, learning, choral participation, collective improvisation and democracy. This study is an ethnographic (Creswell 2007) case study where the goal is not simply to describe the uniqueness, but to understand the phenomenon and the contexts of the interaction behind the phenomenon through instrumental case study method (Laine, Bamberg & Jokinen 2007). The research material has been collected during a rehearsal period of six months consisting of audiovisual recordings of FIC rehearsals and five performances, stimulated recall interviews with 8 members of the choir, fieldnotes of the researcher from participant observation, two in-depth interviews with the conductor and documents such as previous radio interviews, public audiovisual recordings, FIC blogue, advertising material, and other public material for and from the media. Triangulation of data is used to verify the results, and is an addition to the empirical and conceptual understanding of the case in hand (Laine, Bamberg & Jokinen 2007.) Theoretical reading analysis (Miles & Huberman 1994, ) will be used as a starting point for developing a method to analyse the communication manifested in verbal, non-verbal, and musical interaction. During the study I have adhered to ethical guidelines (Finnish advisory board on research integrity 2012) on the conducting of research on human subjects. Studying the interactional process of creative collaborations accumulated and refined during rehearsals and performances will enhance the understanding of the social processes of negotiating community practices collaboratively, of the musical practices especially those concerning improvised and non-improvised choral music, and of the potential implications of these techniques for other group teaching and learning contexts. The study of an instrumental case (Stake 1995), the Finnish Improvisation Choir, will give new meaning beyond the choral context to musical performance aesthetics, hierarchies and democratic participation in educational contexts, building communities in musical ensembles, further understanding the importance of the concepts of flow and group flow in choral and other music-making context and rethinking the role of interaction in music. In total, this study will provide an insight into how the principles of improvisational theatre, also understood as the rules or principles of effective social interaction, function and respond as the core element of music-making and how they should and could be the core of musical activity and education on the whole.

23 The music course in generalist teacher education: characteristics, challenges and potential Format: PhD project in progress paper, Jon Helge Sætre Generalist teachers play an important role in music education by teaching music to children in compulsory schooling, but have normally limited musical training from Higher Education. Accordingly, international research studies often focus on the degree to which generalist music teachers feel confident about teaching music. Few studies, however, investigate the music courses through which prospective teachers are being prepared to teach music, even though research for some time has indicated that teachers confidence is influenced by conceptions of what music and musical abilities are, and conceptions of what music teachers do (Mills, 1989; Stakelum & Baker, 2013), and that such conceptions are transmitted by the music courses of teacher education themselves (Green et al., 1998; Bouij, 2004). The overall aim of this research project is accordingly to describe the music course in Norwegian generalist teacher education (GTE) and the teacher educators involved. By doing so, the study aims to start identifying the central characteristics, challenges and potentials of music in GTE settings. The research questions of the project are several, but related. The first focus on the agents and structures of the field of GTE (Bourdieu, 1984, 1990): Who are the teacher educators of music in Norwegian GTE and how do they describe their teaching practice in the field of teacher education? The next question focus on the educational content of the music courses at a general level, in terms of course structure and forms of knowledge: How are the music courses in GTE recontextualised? (Bernstein, 2000). The last questions focus on the representations of school music teaching practice (Grossman et al., 2009): To what degree are representations of music teaching practice included in GTE music; in terms of songs, musical works, teaching plans and ideas, musical work forms and music teaching approaches; and what kinds of representations are chosen? The research design is a mixed methods design including both qualitative and quantitative approaches, based philosophical on critical realism (Bhaskar 1998, 2011). Data is collected from ten individual interviews with teacher educators from six Norwegian GTE institutions, and from a survey sent to all GTE teacher educators of music (N=90). The findings indicate that the teacher educators of GTE music have several communalities, not the least their positions and role identities as musicians or teachers (Bouij 1998) and their positions in the Higher Education field of research. Further, the music courses are recontextualised much in line with a traditional conservatory model of music education; which seems to be a strongly classified discourse (Bernstein 2000). The courses seem to emphasise practical forms of knowledge, either artistic knowledge or profession practice knowledge (Rasmussen & Bayer 2010). The traditional conservatory disciplines are kept despite severe cuts in teaching hours; despite recent development in curriculum documents; and despite the fact that the representations of practice seem to focus on quite other forms of musical discourses. The teacher educators seem to constantly negotiate between the doxa of music education and the fact that generalist student teachers of today often seem to embody very different forms of musical knowledge; competences being to some extent counteracted by the conservatory logic of the music courses. The presentation will elaborate these and other findings.

24 SUBMISSION FOR PAPER AT NNMPF STOCHOLM (Main conference) For the category of PhD project in progress. Anders Rønningen: PhD in regress. En destabilisering av mine egne analyser av flerkulturelle perspektiver på lærebøker i musikk. Gjennom denne paperpresentasjonen vil jeg skissere hva jeg forstår med poststrukturalistiske perspektiver, for så å anvende noen av disse i en refleksiv behandling av egne arbeider som er en del av min PhD-avhandling. Arbeidene er fire artikler som på forskjellige måter tar for seg flerkulturelle perspektiver overfor pedagogiske tekster for musikk i norsk ungdomsskole. Jeg forutsetter ikke at artiklene er lest, men vil bruke begreper og perspektiver fra dem i dette paperet. Refleksjoner over vitenskapsfilosofisk fundament, over forskerposisjon, mulige feilkilder og tolkninger i eget vitenskapelig arbeid bør utgjøre en kontinuerlig del av all forskning. En slik refleksjon kan fungere som en sikkerhetssjekk på om man har fulgt metoder, prosedyrer og forskrifter på høvelig vis, slik at forskningskvaliteten er holdbar og resultatene troverdige. Går man til poststrukturalismen for å finne slike oppskrifter og metoder til direkte anvendelse på empiri, vil man imidlertid og tomhendt hjem. Poststrukturalisme gir ingen klare metodologiske oppskrifter som fører frem til troverdige resultater. Selve ordet metodologi unngås, i stedet snakkes det om poststrukturalistiske analysestrategier. Den Danske kjønnsforskeren Dorthe Marie Søndergaard mener at poststrukturalistiske analysestrategier skifter fokus bort fra å søke essenser eller sannheter, mot det å kaste lys over prosessene der slike sannheter eller essenser blir konstruert. I stedet for å søke å begrunne objektivitet og de valg jeg har gjort i arbeidene gjennom en kvalitetssikring og en refleksjon over hvorvidt jeg fulgte de riktige metoder, (eller en bortforklaring av hvorfor jeg ikke fulgte noen oppskrift,) og slik søke å øke troverdigheten i de resultatene jeg kom fram til, vil jeg i stedet problematisere følgende: Hvordan er det mulig at dette gir mening?

25 Oppgaven i dette paperet blir dermed å søke å kaste lys over hvorvidt de sannheter jeg produserer gjennom arbeidene er meningsfulle, og destabilisere denne meningen gjennom å rokke ved forståelsen av begreper som ressonementene er bygget på. Derav PhD in regress. Poststrukturalistisme er ikke noe helhetlig dogme eller system, men har en del sentrale punkter som legger premisser for hvordan man tenker både om den empirien man står overfor, om kunnskap og representasjon, og over hvordan man kan bedrive vitenskap. Det kan således per definisjon ikke fungere som en basal teori eller metode, men være til inspirasjon for metarefleksive grep der man prøver å unngå de fastlåste kategorier og essensialistiske metoder som tenkning og forskning kan falle inn i. I direkte kontrast til poststrukturalistiske perspektiver står de som forsøker (og tror de evner) å fremstille vitenskapelige sannheter eller essenser av fenomenet som studeres. Poststruktralisme erstatter denne søken etter evig sannhet med problematisering av noen sentrale vitenskapsfilosofiske punkt som har med sannhet og forståelse å gjøre, som jeg vil gå nærmere inn på i dette paperet, før jeg reflekterer over dette i forhold til (noe) av mitt eget materiale fra de omtalte artiklene. Fra mine arbeider vil jeg spesielt være opptatt av forståelser av det flerkulturelle feltet som jeg sier at jeg har arbeidet innenfor. Jeg ser også på begrepene representasjon og autensitet, som er sentrale grunnbegreper innenfor arbeidene. Jeg vil også måtte komme inn på selve musikkbegrepet og spørre hva kunnskap er, ut i fra de arbeidene jeg har gjort.

26 PhD project in progress paper Abstract Tuovinen, T. Musical protagonists- an ethnographic case study of collaborative instrumental groups in a Finnish music institute. This paper is a presentation of a PhD study in progress on the co- construction of instrumental classroom practices in a Finnish music institute. By reflecting on the anticipated changes of the of the new Finnish core curricula 1 this study examines the ways of enacting a student- centered curriculum through the development of co- constructed instrumental learning and assessment practices that enable the shared authority, student autonomy and responsibility of the learning process. In this paper I will outline some perspectives from a review on earlier critical international research on instrumental teaching and learning and discuss the implications of contemporary views on learning for the co- constructed instrumental classroom practices. In this ethnographic practitioner research (Cooper & Ellis, 2011) the negotiation of the classroom practices and curriculum is seen as a way to respond to the challenges of building customized musical learning paths for individual students within their social affiliations. The study acknowledges that while music institutions have become only one of many sources for musical learning (Harwood & Marsh, 2012), institutionalized music learning has also often found itself disconnected from the contexts where children find meaning and social connection. The rapidly changing cultural landscape has thus created a need to response with educational reforms in formal contexts of learning in order for future musicians to have flexible skills to function effectively and creatively in the evolving cultural contexts (Smilde 2012; Gaunt 2013). These issues have also become important from the standpoint of lifelong learning (McWilliam, Carey, Draper & Lebler 2006). For educational reforms to occur, there is thus a growing need for teachers and practitioners to be self- reflective in their own practices (Westerlund & Juntunen 2013) and to acquire and deploy new skills to be able to enact these contemporary views to their classroom curricula and practices. Practitioners are thus seen as key figures in enacting change (Darling- Hammond& Bransford, 2005; Tricoglus, 2001). With growing awareness of the need of rewriting the roles of teachers and students, however, there are few accounts on the ways in which teachers move towards developing transformative approaches into the learning practices of formal classrooms (Sewell, 2006). In music education the focus on the repertoire- related knowledge and technical skills in a master- apprentice setting (Gaunt & Westerlund, 2013) can also be seen as having limited the ways in which the teaching and learning practices have enabled peer- learning, shared authorship and distributed expertise. With growing understanding of the meaning of the social and cultural context for learning, and the importance of empowering students as active agents in their own learning, educators and 1 In Finland the renewal of the national core curriculum for pre- primary and basic education and the curriculum for the basic education in the arts has accelerated the efforts to turn the focus from the practices of teaching into student- learning, fostering individual growth as a part of a community with self- regulatory and critical skills of knowledge construction. The renewed core curriculum for pre- primary and basic education will be completed by the end of New local curricula that are based on this core curriculum should be prepared by the beginning of school year The curriculum for the basic education in the arts will be renewed in

27 researchers have turned to contemporary learning theories to address the future challenges of education. This practitioner study (Cochran- Smith & Lytle, 2009) embarks upon these challenges to examine a process of enacting change and prospective vision in a formal music classroom by using a framework of sociocultural theories on learning (Wenger, 1998; Sawyer, 2006,2011; Hakkarainen & Paavola, 2005; Bruner, 1996) to reconceptualise instrumental learning in the formal classroom. The study is a form of practitioner ethnography, which is interactive, not merely seeking to investigate a practice but to instigate change (Barton 2008). By making connections between sociocultural approaches to pedagogy and instrumental learning, I design and critically examine the development of a co- constructed, collaborative learning environment that uses creative instrumental approaches in group instrumental learning. Improvisation and composition serve as starting points for the collaborations. The focus of my case study are five collaborative instrumentalist groups of 9-15 year old students in weekly workshops over two semesters. The research data consists of interviews, student and researcher journals, recordings, videos and transcriptions of the group collaborations. In various educational contexts, sociocultural theory has provided arguments to reconceptualise teaching and learning interactions in classrooms. With contemporary understandings of learning emerging in educational literature, and the technological and cultural changes taking place in many countries, the traditional transmission models of teaching and learning have been questioned. Rather than the transmission of a set of skills and knowledge, education is viewed as the development of understanding and the formation of minds and identities (Wells & Claxton, 2002). Learning is seen as a transformation of participation in social and cultural contexts (Rogoff, 2003; Rogoff, Matusov & White, 1996; Lave 1988). It is thus important to ask what function education has in these contexts, not as a preparation for life but rather as a culture s way of life (Bruner, 1996). Overall the study aims to contribute towards the development of Finnish music schools as collaborative instrumental learning environments with pedagogical approaches that enhance the development of children s agency in instrumental learning and their engagement for life- long music making. References Barton, T.D. (2008). Understanding practitioner ethnography. Nurse researcher, 15(2), Bruner, J. (1996). The culture of education. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Callan, S. & Reed, M. (2011). Work- Based Research in the Early Years. London: Sage Cochran- Smith, M. & Lytle, S. (2009). Inquiry as stance. Practitioner research for the next generation. Teachers college, Columbia University. Cooper, V. & Ellis, C. (2011). Ethnographic practitioner research. In Callan, S. & Reed, M. (Eds.) Work- based Research in the Early Years: Positioning Yourself as a Researcher. London: Sage Darling- Hammond, L. & Bransford, J. (2005). Preparing teachers for a changing world: What teachers should learn and be able to do. San Francisco: Jossey- Bass. Gaunt, H. & Westerlund, H. (2013). The Case for Collaborative Learning in Higher Music Education.. In Gaunt, H. & Westerlund, H.(Eds.) Collaborative learning in higher music education, Ashgate Publishing Limited, England. 1 9.

28 Gaunt, H. (2013). Promoting professional and paradigm reflection amongst conservatoire teachers in an international community. In Gaunt, H. & Westerlund, H.(Eds.) Collaborative learning in higher music education, Ashgate Publishing Limited, England Hakkarainen, K. and Paavola, S. (2005). The Knowledge Creation Metaphor an Emergent Epistemological Approach to Learning.Science & Education, 14, Harwood, E. &Marsh, K. (2012). Children s ways of learning inside and outside the classroom. In McPherson, G. & Welch, G. (Eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Music Education, vol. 2, Kellett, M. (2010). Children s Experiences of Education. In Littleton, K.,Wood, C. & Kleine Staarman, J. (Eds.) International Handbook of Psychology in Education, UK, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Lave, J. (1988). Cognition in practice: Mind, mathematics, and culture in everyday life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lloyd- Smith, M. & Tarr, J. (2000). Researching children s perspectives: A sociological dimension. In Lewis, A. & Lindsay. G (Eds). Researching children s perspectives. Buckingham: Open University Press. McWilliam, E. Carey, G., Draper, P. & Lebler, D. (2006). Learning and Unlearning: New Challenges for Teaching in Conservatoires. The Australian Journal of Music Education, (1) Merlin, B., Acting. The Basics. Routledge, Rogoff, B., Matusov, E., & White, C. (1996). Models of teaching and learning: Participation in a community of learners. In D. R. Olsen, & N. Torrance (Eds.), The handbook of education and human development (pp ). Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. Rogoff, B. (2003). The cultural nature of human development. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sawyer, R. K. (2006). Educating for innovation. The International Journal of Thinking Skills and Creativity, 1:1, Smilde, R. (2012). Lifelong learning for professional musicians. In McPherson, G. & Welch, G. (Eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Music Education, vol. 2, Oxford University Press. Tricoglus, G. (2001) Living the theoretical principals of critical ethnography, Education Research, 9 (1): Wells, G. & Claxton, G. (2002). Introduction: Sociocultural Perspectives on the Future of Education. In Wells, G. & Claxton, G. (Eds.). Learning for life in the 21 st century. Blackwell Publishing, USA Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Westerlund, H. & Juntunen, M- L. (2013). Reflektointi musiikkikasvattajan ammatillisessa kasvussa. In Juntunen, M- L., Nikkanen, H.M. & Westerlund, H. (Eds.) Musiikkikasvattaja. Kohti refleksiivistä käytäntöä. Juva, PS- kustannus