Online peer mentoring and remote learning

ABSTRACT

The spread of COVID-19 rapidly altered the way music teachers deliver instruction. Now instead of interacting face to face with their students in a classroom setting, instructors often have to teach their students remotely. This sudden transition from in-person to remote learning presents numerous challenges that require a rethinking of established teaching practices. Peer mentoring, for example, is a widely practiced instructional technique that can provide meaningful learning opportunities for students in remote learning environments. Drawing on the new ecology of learning as a theoretical framework, this review of literature details how educational researchers have investigated online peer mentoring, including how teachers facilitate mentoring, student engagement, mentoring beyond the classroom, and obstacles to online access. Significant findings from this research on online peer mentoring are contextualised by music education research on face-to-face peer mentoring and suggest how music teachers can implement and utilise online peer mentoring in their music classrooms.

KEYWORDS:

• Peer mentoring
• remote learning
• teacher as facilitator
• new ecology of learning

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Andrew Goodrich

Andrew Goodrich is an Assistant Professor of Music, Music Education at Boston University, Boston, MA. Research interests include peer mentoring and exploring why adult amateur musicians continue to engage in music learning and participation. Goodrich has published research in the leading music education journals including The Journal of Research in Music Education, Music Education Research, International Journal of Music Education, the Journal of Music Teacher Education, the Bulletin of the Council for Research in Music Education, and Update: Applications of Research in Music Education. Recent chapter publications include Teaching School Jazz: Perspectives, Principles, and Strategies (Oxford University Press), The Oxford Handbook of Preservice Music Teacher Education (Oxford University Press), and co-author with Keith Kelly in Listening to Voices Seldom Heard: Perspectives and Narratives in Music Education (Springer).