Working in music: Becoming a performer-teacher

Mills, Janet

doi:10.1080/1461380042000281712

Cited by 49 publications

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“…Although there is an important body of work focusing on musicians' career aspirations/orientations and the careers of musicians (for example Corkhill 2005;Miller and Baker 2007;Mills 2004aMills , 2004b, this work has not tended to explore the meaning and significance of transitions for musicians, even though such transitions appear to be salient in respect of future career development (MacNamara et al 2006). That said, such work does acknowledge the transition to working life as a period of intense flux and change.…”

Section: Creative Identities In Transitionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tracing the Transition from Study to a Contemporary Creative Working Life: The Trajectories of Professional Musicians

Juuti

Littleton

2011

Vocations and Learning

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The classical music academy is a site dominated by traditional meanings of creative practice and an image of professional creative careers as solo performers only fully available to a very few students after graduating. The purpose of the study reported in this paper is to explore career-young professional pianists' talk about the transition from study within a music academy to working life. The focus is on the ways in which they characterize the nature and significance of this transition from very traditional practice, and how they (re)negotiate their professional identities as working musicians and pianists in contemporary working lives. Four classical pianists were interviewed in-depth about their musicianship, including their transition from studies to working life. The qualitative analyses presented here suggest that, as they talked about their transitions and developing musicianship, the speakers constructed, reconstructed and oriented to notions of professional trajectories. Such trajectories are emergent and relational, and are contextually constituted (Sawyer 2003;Miell and MacDonald 2002;Moran and John-Steiner 2004). Crucially, the transition from study to working life is implicated in the process of assuming agency in respect of one's own musicianship and career. Agency in terms of one's identity as a professional musician involves (re)negotiating one's own pathways, narrations and trajectories. We suggest that such trajectories are not 'canonical' -being fixed or dependent on communal expectations, but reflect creative freedom and independence, encompassing multiple influences.Keywords Identity work, musicians, research interviews, transition 3 Musicians and transitionsThe characterization of musicians' development as a process involving progression through a fixed sequence of developmental stages (see for example Sosniak 1985;Manturzewska 1990;MacNamara et al. 2006) has emerged from a long tradition of music research concerned with theorizing musicians' development and identity construction. However, the process of becoming a musician is not simply about sequentially passing through particular developmental stages. Rather, the process of becoming a musician entails the negotiation of significant, complex transitions involving changing contexts. Some of the most notable macro transitions that occur during many musicians' early adulthood are those associated with gaining admission to an institution, such as a music academy or conservatoire, with the intention of studying to become a professional musician and those associated with negotiating the passage from such study to working life (see MacNamara et al. 2008MacNamara et al. , 2006. With respect to the transition into study Burt and Mills (2006), have argued that, in order to help students manage this transition smoothly, we need to understand the multiple tensions and conflicts that music students encounter and struggle with. 5We explore how professional pianists discuss their transition from their study context, within the Sibelius Academ...

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Section: Creative Identities In Transitionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tracing the Transition from Study to a Contemporary Creative Working Life: The Trajectories of Professional Musicians

Juuti

Littleton

2011

Vocations and Learning

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“…Musicians may have the luxury of more time to devote to practice, as students, than when financial pressures mount after leaving education. Professional musicians may require a variety of well developed skills from sight reading or improvising in recording sessions, perform both solo and in groups, and the array of skills required to teach different students (Mills, 2004). Developing self-regulatory skills will enable these students to utilize their skills for more efficient and effective learning.…”

Section: Uncorrelated Behaviorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Measuring Musical Self-Regulation: Linking Processes, Skills, and Beliefs

Ritchie¹,

Williamon²

2013

Journal of Education and Training Studies

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This research explores self-regulated learning behaviors as used by 174 students in higher music education during learning and practice, with the aim of demonstrating the interaction between processes, skills, and beliefs. A three-factor structure was identified within a newly adapted, ten-item Musical Self-regulated Learning Questionnaire, illustrating (1) reflection and frameworks for progress, (2) improvement in and outside of practice, and (3) setting the learning context. The four behaviors in Factor 3 least used by these students were arranging/imagining rewards/punishments, rearranging the physical setting, keeping records of events, and reviewing records of past events/performances. Significant positive correlations were found between behaviors and self-ratings of musical skills/attributes and with self-efficacy for musical learning. However, there were no significant correlations with self-efficacy for musical performing. Students' perception of the importance of self-regulated learning behaviors, their relationships to skills and beliefs, and implications for learning and teaching are discussed.

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“…Hallam, et al (2009) similarly found that confidence in teaching music is dependent on the amount of musical training generalist teachers receive in their teacher education programs. Thus, a pervading idea in the literature is that the best music teachers are also capable musicians (Kerchner, 2006(Kerchner, , 2010Mills, 2004), andBouij (2004) posits that the discipline (music education) translates this into the valuing of music-specific identities over pupil-centred teacher identities.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Developing music teacher identities: An international multi-site study

Ballantyne

Kerchner

Aróstegui

2012

International Journal of Music Education

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This study investigates pre-service music teacher’s (PSMT) perceptions of their professional identities. University-level education students in the United States America (USA), Spain and Australia were all asked interview questions based on general themes relevant to teacher identity development, and their responses were subjected to content analysis. Similarities were found in their perceptions of the role of ‘music teacher’ and their pre-university experiences/influences. Across the sites it seems that there was a dynamic and shifting relationship between PSMTs’ understandings of themselves as ‘musicians’ or as ‘teachers’ during their university years. This study confirms previous research in the area and contributes to the field in its discovery that these themes are found across three international sites. Implications of the findings are discussed and recommendations made for future research and practice.

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Working in music: Becoming a performer-teacher

Cited by 49 publications

References 0 publications

Tracing the Transition from Study to a Contemporary Creative Working Life: The Trajectories of Professional Musicians

Tracing the Transition from Study to a Contemporary Creative Working Life: The Trajectories of Professional Musicians

Measuring Musical Self-Regulation: Linking Processes, Skills, and Beliefs

Developing music teacher identities: An international multi-site study

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