Reflective Practice in Music: A Collaborative Professional Approach

Abstract

Reflective practice and critical analysis are major components in any creative discipline. For the ephemeral performing arts such as music, keeping art ‘in the conversation about art’ is central to meaningful engagement with a discourse around the creative work (Dillon et al., Physical and virtual learning spaces in higher education: Concepts for the modern learning environment, 2011). Storing, recalling and presenting artworks as digital artefacts offers ways to make the critical analysis process less abstract. Learning about music involves having an understanding of the concepts that frame musical practice and the language to discuss it as an entry point into the musical discourse. In an elective subject titled Sex, Drugs and Rock n Roll students are asked to examine their personal, social and cultural relationships with music in their lives and reflect on these connections using musicological and semiotic analytical tools. Students experience the process of deconstruction, reconstruction and analysis in three cycles of activity that move from the ontological to the epistemological and back to a focus on self-understanding. The reflective process is documented and shared via multi-modal representations including wikis, blogs, video media, eZines, podcasts/vodcasts and creative works. This discussion will draw on examples of student work in the subject by exploring both the ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’ perspective, as encountered in ethnomusicology (Barton, 2014), and reflective practice about the meaning of music for undergraduate university students.