Institutional and pedagogical background

MA Music is a 1-year programme delivered at Leeds Conservatoire, devised with my colleague Professor Andrew West. The course is open genre and open discipline, offering flexible provision in performance, production and composition (including songwriting). We adopt a correspondingly multi-modal pedagogy, combining discipline-specific individual specialist tuition with multidisciplinary group teaching strategies bringing together all students within a single class. This means group teaching must cater to a diversity of musical backgrounds, skill levels and learning goals; in any one group, there may be classical violinists, pop songwriters, electronic music producers and musical theatre vocalists. The intention is that students will benefit both from the narrow focus of specialised study and the more lateral outlook afforded within mixed disciplinary settings. Consequently, I have been able to rethink where my value as a “teacher” lies: in some cases, I can fulfil the conventional role of a practitioner with greater experience and knowledge than my students; at other times, my students may be working outside of my immediate specialism or may have very different stylistic goals to my own. In the latter context, I must think critically about ways in which I can enable students to enhance their practice; my role thus moves variously between teacher, facilitator, coach and even “co-producer” with the student (Clark, Reference CLARK2018, p. 89). My job is to help students design a methodology to solve a particular developmental problem by scaffolding (Land et al., Reference LAND, HANNAFIN, OLIVER, Land and Jonassen2012) learning collaboratively with them, and in many cases, also with their peer group.

In the United Kingdom, the Teaching Excellence Framework, Postgraduate Taught Experience Survey and National Student Survey (NSS) all ask students to rate their programmes of study, and most institutions also undertake internal quality assurance. Focus on quality courses is a good thing for students and educators alike; however, the questionnaire design for surveys like the NSS implies a binary provider–consumer relationship between students and their teachers. In reality, higher education students and teachers can learn from one other, each can take charge of the learning process at different times, and they share a responsibility towards setting and reaching goals. This shared responsibility is very important in the case of HME where the research or development goals may be highly personalised and difficult to quantify. In an attempt to provide a meaningful pedagogical response to the requirements of monitoring and, at least within the United Kingdom to the increasing numbers of graduates leaving higher education, educators are turning to a range of terms to focus their practice, account for student voice and differentiate their approach. These terms, which are often used interchangeably, include: active learning; content-focussed teaching; student-centred teaching; student-centred learning environments; inquiry-based learning; case-based learning; learning-focussed teaching; student-activated teaching; problem-based learning and project-based learning (Nerland, Reference NERLAND2018).

Of the bewildering range of terms available to describe student-focussed models for learning and teaching, I find “student-centred” to be most useful. This is because “centred” implies a reciprocity between teacher and student, meaning both must place themselves in the position of a learner, albeit a more-experienced (teacher) and less-experienced (student) one. This terminology also encapsulates other useful pedagogies, such as research-based learning. Research-based learning is mirrored in the real-world requirements of being a professional musician, where practitioners must be able to develop knowledge independently to deliver a convincing musical product or experience. However, the term “research-based” does not necessarily imply that the questions being asked are relevant to the student’s own ambitions and value perspectives (either in supporting or challenging them). Thinking about learning and teaching as student-centred helps to ensure that such research problems are formulated, or scaffolded (Land et al., Reference LAND, HANNAFIN, OLIVER, Land and Jonassen2012), with reference to this individual context. These approaches can be conceived of as simultaneously instrumental and transformative in their benefits (Clark, Reference CLARK2018), i.e., leading both to more knowledge and to more proactive critical engagement with how that knowledge is gained.

Building student motivation

Student-centred pedagogies are derived from a constructivist model of learning (Nerland, Reference NERLAND2018) in which students are understood to form their own view of their discipline. Student motivation is located dualistically, formed through both intrinsic and extrinsic forms of motivation (Ibid). These motivational dimensions are based on validation from the teacher (extrinsic) and the student’s developing sense of “self-efficacy” derived from an internalised understanding of their personal motivations for study (intrinsic). Perception of self-efficacy – the ability of individuals to effect change in their lives – has been positively linked to the amount of time students spend on practising and developing, and is perhaps one of the most important prerequisites for the successful acquisition of new knowledge (Miksza, Reference MIKSZA2011; Ritchie, Reference RITCHIE, Miller, Sharp and Strong2012). Self-efficacy involves developing a technical knowledge of what one is practising and an emotional–psychological understanding of why it is important (James, Reference JAMES, Carnell and Fung2017). Cultivating this in students implies not only that HME courses should enable a deepening of professional (or contextual) disciplinary knowledge but that they should help students to identify ways in which this knowledge could be applicable for their own development. The resultant sense of self-efficacy will help graduates to sustain enthusiasm and drive in response to the rapidly changing nature of work within different creative industries. Even for those going on to work professionally in areas other than music, it is desirable that they retain their passion for the subject.

One problem with such an individualistic conceptualisation of student-centred pedagogies is that it could lead to an atomised student experience, predicating discourse on self-“other” binaries. A more nuanced approach needs to attend additionally to the ways in which these individual subjectivities are interdependent with and inter-reliant on one another. These issues might be especially vexed for those students who embody comparatively marginalised identities on account of their racial, gender, sexual orientation or other characteristics. Where agency is performed individualistically the ways in which this is defined relative to wider social, political and material forces will remain underexplored. This risks replicating normatively White, male, cisgender, heterosexual ways of being in pursuit of individual autonomy, thereby erasing the self (-efficacy) of students whose identities and bodies are shaped differently (Bayley, Reference BAYLEY2018). One way in which responsive student-centred pedagogies might be able to overcome this is by directing learning intra-personally, so as to engage students as they interact (and intra-act) in group settings. This encourages students to “listen to those who have been marginalised and learn from them, and realise that the dominant view is not the only way to approach the world” (Clark, Reference CLARK2018, p. 95). Intra-action thus leads to what could be termed intratrinsic motivation based on the mutually impactful dynamic between individuals within a class.

This could enable student-centred pedagogy to move beyond dualistic formulations, in order to focus on the “distributive agency” (Bennett, Reference BENNETT2010) of student–teacher groups (Hood & Kraehe, Reference HOOD and KRAEHE2017) through which efficacy and motivation are collectively (per-) formed. This would align student-centred pedagogy somewhat with a posthumanist understanding of agency as something which “happens because material bodies are always dependent on one another” (Hood & Kraehe, Reference HOOD and KRAEHE2017, p. 34), i.e., not divided into autonomous selves, but inter-reliant. In the case of group critique, students may feel how their sense of self is performed by the class and how their internalised motivations for study have a corresponding collectivity. As Clark observes, non-hierarchical partnership-based pedagogies demonstrate to students and teachers that “knowledge is socially constructed and that truth is sometimes hard to pin down” (Clark, Reference CLARK2018, p. 87). This makes teaching a causally non-linear process in which it is difficult to trace the precise origin of student motivation to any single actor; instead, efficacy is distributively performed. The teacher also performs their pedagogical knowledge through the class, meaning that the “student group” might conceivably comprise only a teacher and an individual student. Following Bayley’s recommendation that pedagogies should seek “performativity” rather than “performance” (i.e., emergence and movement rather than the acting out of fixed representations) (Bayley, Reference BAYLEY2016), one might go so far as to propose pedagogy as student-centring rather than merely student-centred, since the centres to which teachers and students must attend are in a constant state of flux and intra-action. Figure 1, below, illustrates this through a three-dimensional model of motivation, incorporating intrinsic, extrinsic and intratrinsic forms.

Figure 1. Three-Dimensional Model of Motivation.

Under the right circumstances then, validation can be a synthesis of teacher, student and peer group perspectives: teachers must carefully scrutinise students’ work and make clear their own background and value perspectives; students must act as independent thinkers by forming and investigating their own questions and peer-to-peer forms of learning must be developed for students to engage with and distributively shape one another’s development. In each case, validation comes not from positive comments about a student’s work but from making clear that their development is significant both to their peers and their teachers, and that they are capable of effecting and participating in positive change themselves. Once a student realises that their development is valued by others based on the work they have produced and will produce, it follows that they themselves recognise value in their practice even when they are not yet producing their best work. Students need not be high-level practitioners for this to be the case; part of recognising their own value perspectives lies in them developing an understanding of why they would like to further develop their practice. In a student-centred approach, learning comes as a result of a student’s teachers and peers recognising and engaging with these motivations.

Critical response process

One tool I have found especially useful in undertaking student-centred learning and teaching is CRP, a pedagogy designed by Lerman and Borstel to allow for the giving and receiving of useful feedback (Lerman & Borstel, Reference LERMAN and BORSTEL2003). I have used CRP with groups of students from very different musical backgrounds taking it in turns to present work to one another. CRP meets the definition given above of student-centred learning because it establishes a dialogue which variously engages the student, teacher and peer group. The process enables peers to comment on creative work in a way that does not damage relationships between members of the group or give rise to unduly positive (or negative) feedback. This is generally guided by a facilitator who helps ensure that participants do not stray from the structure and occasionally must play the role of referee if feedback is not constructive. CRP takes the form of a four-step process, beginning with the presentation of a piece of work in progress by a “presenter,” followed by “statements of meaning” given by a group of “responders” commenting on their experience. Facilitators initiate these statements by posing an opening question, such as “What was stimulating, surprising, evocative, memorable, touching, meaningful for you?” (Ibid, p. 19). These statements are followed by questions from the presenter to the responders, then by a series of neutral (or open) questions from responders designed to uncover more about the presenter’s motivations and creative approach, and finally a series of “permissioned opinions” (Ibid) from responders based on the presenter’s answers to the neutral questions posed. Intriguingly, because responders must first state the topic of their opinion the presenter can decline to hear these opinions if the stated topic does not appear relevant. This is intended to empower the presenter and thereby support them in the vulnerable task of showing their work.

CRP has been used in fields such as contemporary dance for some time but is less commonly practiced in music or music education. This may in part be due to a perceived conflict between music as a skill-based craft and music as a wider artistic practice. On the one hand, playing a violin to a high standard requires intensive physical training and the (often linear and graded) acquisition of a range of technical skills; on the other hand, knowing what to express and how to express oneself musically through these skills requires an artistic experience that needs to be developed through more reflective, less goal-directed study. In this sense, CRP acts as a mirror through which practitioners are able to see the gaps between their personal image of themselves and their work and its reception with others. Certainly, some of these gaps may require bridging through the undertaking of technical training, though where the need for this has been identified through a CRP session, the student will be able to understand the artistic need that drives this.

One of the principal tools of CRP is “neutral questioning,” meaning that questions are posed in such a way as to avoid revealing (or imposing) the opinion of the questioner. For example, instead of asking, “Why did you include the long guitar solo in the middle of the composition?” the responder asks something like, “How does the guitar solo extend or develop the drama?”. The former question suggests that the responder has the opinion that the guitar solo is too long, whilst the latter question indicates that the responder believes it is worth discussing the guitar solo but does not reveal exactly in what sense. This challenges the presenter to consider the wider context of the material in their composition and to reflect on how it might be used best. The presenter is asked not to attempt to read into the questions for embedded opinions but to assume the responder wants to learn more about how the presenter can develop their work. Conversely, the responder asking the question will be able to determine if their opinion on the guitar solo will be of relevance. For example, if the presenter answers by saying that the guitar solo is part of a guide track that will be replaced then the responder knows the presenter does not need to hear an opinion about it in its current form. In a mixed group of musicians with differing experiences and skillsets another benefit of using CRP is that, even when the precise technical demands of the practice may lie outside the knowledge base of those responding, the group as a whole are able to use the practice of neutral questioning to find ways of encouraging the presenter to find their own solutions.

CRP is effective at delivering on the triple goals of intrinsic, extrinsic and intratrinsic motivation described above. Firstly, it is beneficial in helping students to develop intrinsic motivation flowing from the control invested in them by the process. They do not need to practice scales simply because their teacher (or some other source of authority) tells them it is necessary; they do so because their peers have helped them understand what might be possible creatively if they develop these skills. Furthermore, in the forming of neutral questions and selection of permissioned opinions, they have been obligated to think critically about how well their current skill level allows them to communicate their intentions and on what areas they should be focussing for further development. Secondly, CRP provides extrinsic motivation for presenters by creating an expectation that responders will engage in helping them to find workable approaches rather than simply validating their work through praise (which in any case might be given disingenuously). The process asks responders to suspend their competitive instinct for a short time and to invest themselves in helping the presenter get a better perspective on their practice. Responders should aim to help the presenter “to do their best work, not something only as good as your last work” (Lerman & Borstel, Reference LERMAN and BORSTEL2003, p. 14). When the student’s peers take time to truly consider how they might develop as a practitioner, this external support provides additional motivation for further study and practice.

Thirdly, as a structure, CRP affords considerable opportunities for intratrinsic motivation to develop. Establishing a clear process acknowledges that the collective knowledge, skills and resources brought together in a given class can work together beyond the sum of their parts. CRP acts to constrain certain behaviours (e.g., competition) and enable others (e.g., cooperation) in pursuit of more creative, receptive and collaborative intra-actions. Without a defined structure, feedback sessions can be diffuse and unproductive; without clearly defined roles, it is difficult for students to know what is expected of them and harder for them to articulate their obligations towards one another. This means that professional rivalries can easily creep in with responders feeling pressured to give responses that reveal their own accomplishment or experience. CRP thereby potentiates the kind of non-linear, intrapersonal learning discussed above, enabling presenters and responders to responsively modify their understanding of one another’s work (and one another). In this sense, the process presupposes that learning will occur amongst all members of a group and that pedagogical agency is similarly distributed. Of course, teachers can invoke their institutional or professional authority to redirect the session focus, though such a move effectively constitutes a suspension of the process and, where a strong sense of distributive classroom agency is engendered, such a unilateral move might even be rejected by the students.

Student questionnaire on CRP

As part of the research for this article, I asked students taking part in a 4-week series of CRP sessions, led by my colleagues and me at Leeds Conservatoire, to comment on their experiences via an anonymous questionnaire (see Appendix 1). Respondents positively rated the effect that the sessions had on their self-efficacy and as a tool for developing a constructively critical group study environment. Responses to “Q1. What have you found most useful about the work in progress sessions on the course?” particularly highlight the agentially distributive nature of the CRP process. For example: “[…] collective opinions of the group, especially clashing opinions”; “[…] learning about other peoples [sic] methodologies and influences”; and “[…] the process of coming up with questions for the presenters makes me consider my own approaches to making music.” These responses illustrate intratrinsic forms of motivation enacted intrapersonally through the distributive agency of the CRP class; this enables responders to enrich their own disciplinary understanding whilst engaging the presenter in expressing their own perspective. These pedagogical benefits would not be possible without the combined and often “clashing” perspectives and capabilities of the whole group, including the teacher.

Responses to “Q2. How helpful did you find the Critical Response Process we used in sessions?” suggest that students view CRP was a useful structure to guide feedback sessions and drive personal development. For example: “[…] Insightful. Allowed us to be open and honest in a really positive way”; “Very helpful for personal development”; “Helpful as it structures the session”; “[…] it results in far more useful feedback than an unstructured feedback session would” and “[…] it makes you think in a different way.” However, on being asked “Q3. How well do you feel you understand the Critical Response Process?” students commented on the challenge of accurately following the four stages and of forming neutral questions, e.g., “The only area I struggled with is creating a question for this process”; and “I sometimes forget the stages but it is so useful!” These responses reveal the facilitative role which the teacher must play to make CRP effective; whilst the teacher may contribute subject-level expertise they must also be an expert at applying critical methodologies to uncover different ways of thinking and doing. Responses to “Q4. What would you like to see more of during work in progress sessions?” perhaps indicate scope in our MA Music curriculum for more and longer CPR sessions, e.g., “More of these sessions with everyone.” Other responses also relate to specific practical constraints on, for example, room size and availability which are likely peculiar to each institution, e.g., “[I would like] live performances, instead of backing track and mp3.”

Responses to “Q5. How have you acted on feedback received during work in progress sessions?” and “Q6. Is there anything else you would like to add?” indicate a broadly positive view of CRP as a motivational and developmental framework. For example: “It’s been really helpful, inspirational. It’s made me think and feel more supported within the course amongst my peers”; and “[…] it was helpful to play my music to people who don’t normally listen to that kind of music.” Overall, students commented that CRP was an effective pedagogical tool: “The process is the best way I’ve ever given on record feedback”; and “I think the Critical Response Process works really well.” This positive report is echoed in similar reviews of work in progress sharing at other institutions (e.g., Harris, Reference HARRIS, Haddon and Burnard2016). Of course, CRP is not a panacea, and a small number of responses suggest resistance to the non-hierarchical student-teacher relationships implied, e.g., “I felt that the feedback was good but I was hoping for some extra in depth feedback from the lecturers if possible”. This may relate to historical expectations about master–pupil relationships within a conservatoire setting based on a unidirectional understanding of knowledge transmission from teacher to student. Whilst we do not mandate MA Music teachers at Leeds Conservatoire to use CRP for individual tuition, this student comment perhaps indicates further scope for individual and group sessions to be more closely and transparently integrated so that student–teacher relationships can be consistently and robustly modelled throughout the student experience. In fact, one student suggested this directly in their response commenting, “I just think we should do it [CRP] throughout the whole course”.

Practice as research

As is clear from the example of CRP, student-centred pedagogies challenge students to generate knowledge about their subject under the guidance of their teachers and peer group, making them highly compatible with research-based learning and teaching approaches. Given the inherently multi-modal design of HME (at least within the United Kingdom), which almost invariably blends written or spoken forms of critique with expressive musical practice, there are rich opportunities for such student-centred research to take place. Being based at a conservatoire I am required to coach practitioners in preparation for employment within the creative industries (i.e., professional or non-professional music making in a variety of contexts), so I am especially interested in research models that foreground creative practice as a means of generating knowledge. Musicology or theoretical literature are certainly valuable but students studying practical music degree courses should not be expected to undertake two parallel programmes, one practical the other theoretical, or encouraged to replace their own practical understanding with that of other theoretical commentators. Instead, it is important to promote an equivalence of value between theoretical (largely written) and creative (e.g., musical) outputs and to encourage students to think of their practical and written work as centred on the same artistic and technical concerns. Students can think of themselves as practitioner-researchers exploring musical challenges through written work and testing the claims of theoretical literature through real-world musical practice (on interfaces between theory and real-world practice, see Morley & Jamil, Reference MORLEY and JAMIL2021).

Nelson’s “Dynamic Model for Practice as Research” (Nelson, Reference NELSON2006; 2013) provides a multi-mode model to guide artistic practice-based research projects. Nelson favours the term “practice as research” (PaR) because it implies a synonymity between practice and research, rather than relying on other forms of commentary to validate the knowledge generated through creative work. He also proposes that arts researchers accompany their creative work with a written commentary to further elaborate on the knowledge gained (Nelson, Reference NELSON2013). This is in line with the Research Excellence Framework guidelines 2021 (United Kingdom), which ask participating institutions to provide a short abstract to accompany any submissions in which “the research process, the research insights, and the time and manner of dissemination” are not evident in the output itself (Anon, 2019, p. 102). Nelson’s model highlights three areas of activity which any research project is likely to move between: creative practice, critical reflection and contextual study. Nelson shows how these activities map onto different knowledge paradigms: know-how (practice), know-what (critique) and know-that (context). He proposes that the three areas can all lead into one another so that a research project might begin with a contextual, critical or practice-based form of activity (Nelson, Reference NELSON2013, p. 37). In this respect, Nelson’s model flows naturally from real creative process, which may be initiated in response to practical experience, critical reflection or wider context.

The “Iterative Cyclic Web” (Smith & Dean, Reference SMITH and DEAN2009) is another example of a practice-based model with relevance to research-based pedagogy. The model identifies three domains of activity and associated outputs: “academic research” leading to “critical accounts [and] theorisations”; “research-led practice” leading to “theories and techniques” and “practice-led research” leading to artworks or documentation thereof (Ibid, p. 20). This offers a PaR framework parallel to Nelson’s model, focussed perhaps more directly on enabling practitioner-researchers to plot intended outputs. Whilst such a framework could have benefits for students planning suitable formats for their institutional assessments, I find Nelson’s model to have broader applicability as a pedagogical model due to its clear focus on ways of knowing rather than types of output. In a student-centred pedagogy based on individual, interpersonal and intrapersonal forms of activity, movement between different knowledge paradigms is paramount, with outputs acting predominantly as evidence of learning undertaken rather than a transmission of new knowledge in the academic sense. Indeed, PaR projects may begin without a conventionally formulated problem, instead progressing from “an enthusiasm of practice” (Haseman, Reference HASEMAN2006, p. 3), capturing something of the pedagogical “performativity” (Bayley, Reference BAYLEY2016) discussed above.

Considered as a form of student-centred learning, this kind of research-based study means that the teacher may not always be an expert in the field of enquiry (Clark, Reference CLARK2018). As with CRP, they must be experts in applying critical methodologies to their practice and to the practice of other practitioners. The role of the educator is to guide students as an equal partner through “a shared process that is inherently unpredictable in its outcomes” (Healey et al., Reference HEALEY, FLINT and HARRINGTON2014). Such an enquiry-led approach resonates with existing initiatives such as the Research=Teaching (R=T) initiative at UCL, which aims to identify ways in which staff and students can work in partnership to achieve mutual learning and development (Tong et al., Reference TONG, STANDEN and SOTIRIOU2018). For students, “what is produced and learned may not be new knowledge per se; but it is new to [them] and, perhaps more significantly, transforms their understanding of knowledge and research” (Healey et al., Reference HEALEY, FLINT and HARRINGTON2014, p. 43). This constitutes a “leading through” to knowledge (Nelson, Reference NELSON2006, p. 107), which drives intrinsic motivation by investing students with power, builds extrinsic motivation by challenging teachers to move towards the values and goals to which their student aspire and potentiates intratrinisc motivation by emphasising the distributive agency of the teacher–student group.