Making the Grade: Theorising Musical Performance Assessment

Abstract

This thesis is a theoretical work that explores approaches for conceptualising and interpreting musical performance assessment practices in higher education contexts. Musical performance assessment is characteristic of higher music education, and the principal form of assessment associated with tertiary musical performance training. Although educational assessment is a ubiquitous feature of higher education around the world, it has remained a contested realm of practice for decades, reflecting competing purposes, approaches, and philosophies. Despite much theoretical advancement having been made over recent decades, assessment practices themselves have been slow to change. This is especially true in higher music education contexts where traditional approaches continue to be valorised. This situation has prompted calls for new ways of viewing assessment, which is what this research is about. This thesis describes an explorative, qualitative research project that sought to investigate meaningful ways of conceptualising musical performance assessment practices. Three main questions guided the research, each reflecting a different facet of assessment practices. 1. How can bases for achievement in musical performance work be meaningfully conceptualised? 2. How can bases of legitimation for assessment participants be meaningfully conceptualised? 3. How can bases of legitimation for assessment practices in higher music education be meaningfully conceptualised? The emphasis on legitimation in these questions reflects the theoretical positions that frame the research, including the adoption of Legitimation Code Theory (LCT), which is a sociological framework for studying social practices. The questions are underpinned by a basic view of assessment as a sociallysituated practice, characterised by multiple overlapping systems of legitimation. In exploring these questions, the aim was to develop useful conceptual resources for viewing assessment practices by explicitly connecting theoretical concepts with data. In this, the intention was to produce theoretical ideas that could actually relate to musical performance assessment practices. To anchor this process, data were purposefully collected from a range of sources, including the academic literature, interviews with assessment participants (n=26) including both assessors and students involved in Australian higher music education, and the body of publicly available documentation that governs assessment practices in this sector. The data were analysed using a multi-strategy qualitative methodology, and the exploration of intersections between the data and concepts from LCT was the main approach by which the research questions were explored. The research has several main outcomes. The conceptual framework developed in the first part of the thesis provides a package of perspectives and resources for studying and theorising musical performance assessment practices. It situates musical performance assessment in higher education as an object of study and outlines a set of theoretical ideas than can be used to make sense of assessment practices. The latter part of the thesis develops responses to the research questions and offers theoretical resources for conceptualising various aspects of musical performance assessment practices. The main focus is on translating between concepts from LCT and aspects of substantive musical performance assessment practices. As part of this process, the later chapters of the thesis describe theoretical approaches for 1) conceptualising underlying characteristics of criteria for musical performance assessment, 2) for conceptualising how the attributes of assessment participants matter in terms of their ability to successfully participate in practices, and 3) for conceptualising and interpreting the legitimation of assessment practices themselves. Ultimately, these outcomes are starting points. Although the work described in this thesis is deliberately oriented toward the world of practice, it is nonetheless primarily theoretical, and so its main contribution is to offer points of departure for further research and/or the development of approaches for use in substantive contexts.