When “doing” matters: The emergence of group–level regulation in planning for a music lesson

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe processes of individual and group-level regulation are important mechanisms of all collaborative learning, and we argue that recognising group-level regulatory processes would aid music educators when they guide students in collaborative settings. In music education, there is extensive research on group music-making, whereas the interest towards regulatory processes at group level is just emerging. At the same time educational psychology research has focused on regulation of collaborative learning processes in other domains. This study aims to combine both perspectives by examining the characteristics of self-, co- and socially shared regulation in a collaborative task of planning and preparing a music lesson, relating work on domain-specific learning processes to literature from educational psychology. The regulatory processes of three groups consisting of one music educator and two pre-service teachers were examined through qualitative video analysis. Examples of participants’ verbal interaction and musical activities during episodes depicting group-level regulation are presented. The examples guide the rationalisation that non-verbal musical interaction could validate socially shared regulation, and ways to distinguish co- from socially shared regulation in collaborative music-making are discussed.