Abstract

In higher music education (HME), the notion of “private teaching, private learning” has a long tradition, where the learning part rests on the student's individual practicing between instrumental lessons. However, recent research suggests that collaborative learning among peers is beneficial in several aspects, such as sense of belonging, motivation and self-efficacy. This is consistent with the concept of vicarious learning. In this study, we conducted a survey among bachelor music students in church music, performance or music education programs enrolled in a music academy (N = 96), where parts of the questionnaire addressed peer learning and peer's influence on the students's instrumental practicing, and the degree of satisfaction with their practicing. These issues were seen in relation to gender, musical genre and study program. Overall, the students reported engaging in peer learning related to their instrumental practicing, to various degrees. This involved discussing practicing matters with peers, and practicing together with peers. However, student's reports of their views on peer learning, show that they perceive it more beneficial than the amount of time reported doing it would indicate. No significant gender differences were found, but students within improvised music/jazz engaged the most in peer learning, and church music students the least. Neither the degree of engaging in peer learning nor reported influence from peers correlated significantly with the degree of satisfaction. We discuss whether a general dissatisfaction is caused by being in a competitive learning environment combined with a privatized culture for learning. Finally, we suggest that collaborative forums for instrumental practicing within HME institutions can function as constructive and supportive arenas to enhance students learning and inner motivation.

Highlights

  • Collaborative learning is steadily gaining more attention in educational research in music, and the concept of learning from peers is frequently addressed (Gaunt and Westerlund, 2013)

  • Hanken (2016, p. 365) argues for the strong benefits of peer learning in diverse disciplines, when she claims: There is a substantial body of research which indicates that learning from peers and together with peers can be beneficial in many ways for students in higher education studying diverse disciplines (...) It is, not surprising to see that many universities have implemented various strategies to enhance peer learning in practice

  • The present study focuses on peer learning in instrumental practicing, and the research questions are: 1. To what degree do students report engaging in specific kinds of peer learning related to their instrumental practicing, and how is this related to gender, music genre and study program?

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Summary

BACKGROUND

Collaborative learning is steadily gaining more attention in educational research in music, and the concept of learning from peers is frequently addressed (Gaunt and Westerlund, 2013). Several studies indicate that students may acquire important instrumental or vocal skills from the instrumental lesson, they do not necessarily learn how to transfer such skills to different contexts (Mills, 2002), nor to develop the independency needed for self-problem-solving (Kennel, 2002; Burwell, 2005) This deficiency of the one-to-one learning context might be attributed to the hierarchical power relation between teacher and student (Nerland, 2004; Gaunt, 2010). In her study of how jazz students practice improvisation, Johansen (2016) found that to jazz students, collective practicing in bands was often considered a necessary learning arena for developing aspects of improvisational competence, such as musical responsiveness and collective agency (Edwards, 2009), intertwined with social dynamics in empathic creativity (Seddon, 2005) Such aspects may inform us about some reasons for genre related tendencies and differences in engagement in peer learning. To what degree does engaging in specific kinds of peer learning relate to how satisfied the students report being with their own practicing and their perceived success as performers?

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