Researching Music Teachers and Critical Friends in Collaborative Educational Practices
Structure, participation, courage and lack of prestige have so far proved to be important factors for seminars to lead to both individual and collective academic growth.
Since 2005, the research environment's response-based text seminars have been investigated and developed in collaboration with Ann-Christin Wennergren, now a senior lecturer in special education at Halmstad University, which has been documented in a number of publications, and during the summer of 2014 another chapter will be published that focuses on the seminar's opportunities and challenges on the road to sustainable academic development. Structure, participation, courage and unpretentiousness have so far proved to be important factors for seminars to lead to both individual and collective academic growth. The concept of the critical friend is also central in this context.
In the same spirit, collaboration in postgraduate courses has been investigated in a developing joint study of the course “Collaborative learning in music education contexts” which will be presented at the NU2014 conference on higher education pedagogy in Umeå in October. Here too, the importance of structure, authentic dialogue, participation and not least of enabling leadership is shown.
Even critical friends as a pedagogical tool in higher instrumental education where the one-to-one teaching that has dominated higher music education is challenged has been focused on in a study that has also been published internationally.
Communication within and between the various arenas that are involved when music teachers are offered to improve their skills at postgraduate level has been studied within the framework of the national postgraduate school in music education run by the Royal College of Music in Stockholm. The results as well as the practice-oriented research projects involved have been presented at international conferences and journals, and an anthology has also been published at the department. The fact that the majority of doctoral students have not returned to work in school practice can largely be attributed to a lack of communication, curiosity and understanding between school principals, academics and politicians.
Articles on the project
Collaborative learning amongst doctoral students and teachers in Music Education External link.
NU2014
Luleå University of Technology
How to challenge seminar traditions in an academic community External link.
Music, education and innovation: Festschrift for Sture Brändström
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