The influence of music learning cultures on the construction of teaching-learning conceptions

Abstract

Current research in music education tends to put the emphasis on learning processes outside formal academic contexts, both to rethink and to renew academic educational formats. Our aim is to observe and describe three music learning cultures simultaneously, including formal, non-formal and informal settings: Classical, Jazz and Flamenco, respectively. We observed the conceptions of learning, teaching and evaluation within the framework of implicit theories. We used multiple-choice questionnaires to infer the profiles of these conceptions in 30 guitarists who are starting out on their professional careers in the three cultures and analysed whether there are related profiles. The results show that: (a) the Flamenco culture differs significantly from the others in the conception of teaching; (b) the three cultures are most alike in the conception of evaluation, for which conceptions are more sophisticated; (c) the classical culture is closer to constructive conceptions and farther from direct positions, while the opposite is true of Flamenco.