Musician as Educator - PgCert

This PgCert Musician as Educator course is ideal for professional practitioners working across a variety of music education settings, such as schools and community centres, to develop professional skills and network with a range of music educators at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire. This part-time course is flexible and structured to enable you to learn around working patterns. 

Access high-quality CPD that can be scheduled around their regular working hours to enhance their practice. You will be introduced to a spectrum of areas relevant to the 21st-century music educator. These will include the position(s) of music in society and the importance of equality, diversity and inclusion; creative approaches to curricula and assessment strategies; and situating your practice within the wider music education landscape.

Lectures and workshops will be interspersed by roundtable sessions, facilitated by staff from RBC’s Pedagogy and Community Department, where you will be encouraged to think about the application of learning theories and other pedagogical issues to your own practice. The rationale for this approach is to enable you (along with students working across different music education contexts) to tailor the module content to suit your own requirements, goals, and interests, whilst building and learning alongside, and from, like-minded professionals. Through group work and pre-/post- session tasks, you will share ideas about your emerging understanding, and be supported to collaborate and extend these conversations between taught sessions.

You will track your ongoing development through a reflective journal. Engaging in ongoing reflection and close professional mentoring will assist you in finding the precise focus that is of most benefit/interest to your professional development. You will be allocated a pedagogy mentor and be supported in devising and undertaking a small-scale research project in an area of your professional practice. The assessment brief contains significant flexibility to allow you to present your work in a format appropriate to you, including for dissemination in professional contexts.

This course may interest:

• Conservatoire and university music graduates who have recently started teaching and do not wish to pursue classroom training via PGCE or similar routes, and are seeking to build on the pedagogical training offered at undergraduate level.
• Instrumental/vocal/composition teachers at different stages in their teaching careers who are working in private practice where CPD opportunities are limited or not easily accessible.
• Employers, including independent schools and Music Education Hubs, who are signposting formalised training routes for their instrumental teaching staff.
• Generalist teachers of any discipline who are employed as music-coordinators in their primary school.
• Musicians from a diverse range of musical backgrounds who deliver music workshops in the community.
• Visiting instrumental teachers working in Higher Education Institutions.
• Composers and music technologists working individually or collaboratively within the music education field.
• International students will not normally be eligible for this course since it is part-time. However, students with ‘indefinite leave to remain’ can apply for this course. It may also be possible for students holding ‘pre-settled’ status to apply. Applications would need to be checked on a case-by-case basis due to multiple additional eligibility criteria. Please contact the Course Director for a discussion about this.

This course does not lead to QTS.

RBC’s Pedagogy and Community Department is a vibrant and thriving community of staff and students who are all incredibly passionate about their work. As a student on this course you would be part of this learning community, giving access to opportunities to connect with professional practitioners, partner organisations, and a wide range of events relating to music education. We have an experienced alumni network who contribute to our modules and courses, providing direct connections to the musical workforce at all career stages and across a range of settings.

Royal Birmingham Conservatoire’s £57 million music building opened in September 2017, and is located on Birmingham City University’s City Centre Campus in the Eastside ‘learning quarter’ of the city.

This brand new music facility includes five public performance venues – a 500 seat Concert Hall, 150 seat Recital Hall, Organ Studio, Eastside Jazz Club and the experimental black box performance venue known as The Lab. As well as these stunning performance venues, we have nearly 100 practice spaces; including 70 small practice rooms and larger ensemble rooms and workshops.

Our new home is the first conservatoire built in the digital age, and as such it has been vital to ensure that the technical infrastructure installed is on par with any advanced commercial facility. We have seven recording studios, a mastering suite, a distance learning hub, and all of our performance venues feature high specification audio-visual equipment that enables interconnectivity and advanced functionality throughout the building.

These impressive modern facilities guarantee that we are able to excel in our unique dual purpose of providing the highest standard of music education deserved by our students, as well as meeting our role as a concert and performance venue for the people of Birmingham; taking our place in the vibrant cultural landscape of the UK’s second city.