Promoting Excellence in Small Group Music Performance: Teaching, Learning and Assessment
Dr Jane Ginsborg, Royal Northern College of Music
Dr Richard Wistreich, International Centre for Music Studies (ICMuS), Newcastle University
Disciplines: Music
Status: Current
Start date: 1/9/2007
This project addresses the teaching, learning and assessment of small group music performance in conservatoires and university music departments. The reality of professional musicians’ working lives is such that students intending to take up careers as classical, jazz, pop or folk musicians, in concert, stage and/or session work, will need not only to have had appropriate experience in directed ensembles such as orchestras, big bands and concert bands but also in smaller self-directed groups (e.g. Mills, 2004; Mills & Smith, 2006). Likewise, music graduates who go on to careers in music teaching, at all levels of the education system, will find that organising and animating collective music-making in a variety of genres will constitute perhaps the majority of their work.
The position of group performance in the curriculum reflects the recognition that peer or collaborative learning – more generally – is central to the student experience. A range of collaborative learning opportunities, and ways of assessing them, were developed, for example, in the Music Department at the University of Ulster (Hunter, 2006): these include reports illustrating progress on preparation of joint performances, although the performances themselves are not assessed, and peer assessment of performance (Blom & Poole, 2004). Hunter discusses a number of issues relating to these activities: size and composition of ensembles; how students prepare for working in groups; how long they work together and how they are managed; who ‘owns’ collaborative learning; how difficulties are resolved and the extent to which assessment focuses on process and/or product. Both are important for the teaching, learning and assessment of group instrumental and vocal performance. Process can be assessed partly through self- and partly through peer-evaluation, which are both crucial to student learning, but also by the tutors involved in face-to-face teaching and evaluation of students’ self-assessment reports. Product, on the other hand, tends to be tutor-assessed using criteria that reflect those used for individual principal study assessments.
There is one type of music, however, for which individual assessment is particularly inappropriate: improvised music such as jazz. The traditional emphasis on individual marking has been shown to inhibit students’ musical expression such that they are less likely to interact freely and spontaneously, and to take risks in performance (Barratt & Moore, 2005). Innovative methods for assessing ‘true’ group performance – as opposed to individuals performing as a group – have therefore been devised and implemented, for example, at Birmingham Conservatoire (Miles, 2003), Colchester (Allen, 2003) and Trinity College of Music, London (Barratt and Moore, 2005). We would argue that such methods are as essential to the assessment – and therefore to the teaching and learning – of small group performance in classical, folk and pop genres as they are in improvisation.
This project aims, therefore, to 1) address the generic attributes of small group music making as opposed to individual performance, and survey current teaching, learning and assessment methods in UK conservatoires and university music departments, and further afield; 2) explore different approaches to the constitution of small groups and ensembles, and how they might affect the teaching and learning process, and 3) propose a range of methods for assessment that articulate levels of achievement and promote student learning.
References
Allen, A, (2003). The Foundation degree in popular music: the Colchester experience. Assessing Popular Music, Palatine Workshop report http://www.palatine.ac.uk/events/viewdoc/195/ (viewed 27 May, 2007)
Barratt, E. & Moore, H. (2005). Researching group assessment: jazz in the conservatoire curriculum. British Journal of Music Education, 22 (3), 299-314.
Blom, D. & Poole, K. (2004). Peer assessment of tertiary music performance: opportunities for understanding performance assessment and performing through experience and self-reflection. British Journal of Music Education, 21 (1), 111-125.
Hunter, D. (2006). Assessing collaborative learning. British Journal of Music Education, 23 (1), 75-89.
Miles, M. (2003). Assessing Improvised Performance. Assessing Popular Music, Palatine Workshop report http://www.palatine.ac.uk/events/viewdoc/195/ (viewed 27 May, 2007)
Mills, J. (2004). Working in Music: Becoming a performer-teacher. Music Education Research, 6 (3), 245-261.
Mills, J., & Smith, J. (2006). Working in Music: Becoming successful. In H. Gembris (Ed.). Musical development from a lifespan perspective (pp. 131-141). Frankfurt: Lang.