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Reimagining Music Education: using improvisation to explore new paradigms for learning and teaching

Project Code:REMUSE - 40044236

Project Description:

The place of improvisation as a creative practice within specialist UK HE music environments remains a problem for students and educators alike. Even within a jazz context, where improvisation is often celebrated and given a primary place within the curriculum, pedagogical approaches often fall back on forms of teaching and learning that reinforce a fact based system of knowledge that is imparted through a master-apprentice model of scholarship; these methods largely ignore the physical, cognitive, socio-cultural, and political dimensions of the learning experience.

This project will be structured around three thematic areas:

  • 4.1. Improvisation and decolonisation will involve an interrogation of the histories of institutions and their pedagogies, raising questions of what, how and why we teach.
  • 5.2. De-territorialising the classroom will examine how improvisation can provide innovative ways of reimagining the curriculum, both in terms of practice and more traditionally oriented subjects (history, analysis etc.).
  • 6.3. Improvisation and community engagement will explore how improvisation can provide innovative ways of breaking down barriers between institutions and communities.

The successful candidate will have the flexibility to adapt the project to focus more specifically on one or two of the above as necessary, depending on research backgrounds and interests.

Work will involve a survey of existing uses of improvisation as a pedagogical tool within RBC, charting current educational methods and strategies. This will lead to the development of a range of experiments that draw on the fields of music, cultural studies and psychology.

Anticipated Findings:

The PhD will generate new knowledge on the educational benefits of improvisation alongside insights into innovative teaching practices which take a holistic view of individual and collective student experiences. The PhD will offer concrete models for educational practices that serve to support decolonising, deterritorialising and community-driven strategies.

The doctoral programme will result in findings that will lead to new innovative and deeper understandings on how to develop engaging and empowering approaches to teaching and learning and, ultimately, how to develop more responsible/responsive musical practices.

There will also be the potential to better understand students with particular support needs (such as ADHD) through cognitive experiments as well as developing new models for engaging in STEAM-based approaches to collaboration and co-production.

Findings will be shared among established scholarly networks such as Conservatoires UK and the Association of European Conservatoires.

Contact (and Director of Studies for this project): Prof Tony Whyton,  tony.whyton@bcu.ac.uk

How to apply

To apply for this project, visit the 'How to Apply' section on the Conservatoire PhD course page.