Attending Musical Performances: Teachers' and Students' Expectations and Experiences at a Youth Programme in Madrid

Abstract

In order to understand the characteristics of young audiences' experiences, a study was carried out that focused on primary and secondary students who attended a youth programme in Madrid that provided opera, classical music and dance performances. The study did not investigate its artistic or instructional features. Instead, it aimed at comprehending the meanings attributed by children and adolescents to all the aspects of the performances; on what influenced that meaning construction; and on the different types of learning that took place. The research design included the observation of performances and follow-up lessons in schools, individual open-ended interviews with teachers and group interviews with students. Teachers' perspectives were analysed in relation to their previous experiences as audience members, to their pedagogical approaches, and to their expectations about students' learning. Students' perspectives were analysed in relation to school, family and social expectations, and in relation with their own experience. The findings suggest that young people's expectations were influenced by their social context but could vary after attending the performances, depending on their teachers' pedagogical approaches, which were crucial in the meaning attributed to the experience.

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Marianallet Mendez for her careful reading of the manuscript.

Notes

¹Music is compulsory and taught by specialists in primary schools from first to sixth grade, and in the second and third year of secondary, equivalent to eighth and ninth grade (for a historical account of music in Spanish compulsory schooling, see Rusinek & Sarfson, 2010). Secondary music is only ‘general music’ and excludes learning orchestral instruments or participating in bands or orchestras, activities which are offered by other institutions such as elementary and intermediate level conservatoires or community schools of music. See Aróstegui (1998, 2000) for case studies of teaching and learning music in primary schools, and Rusinek (2006, 2008) for case studies in secondary schools.

²There was a parallel programme for families with the same productions, some presented at the university auditorium and others at the Teatro Real building. We observed 12 performances, which we triangulated with fieldnotes by five external observers, and carried out 58 short semi-structured interviews with parents and their children before and after the performances. In this article only the data collected at the programme for schools will be discussed.

³All the interviews were held in Spanish, and the translations are ours.

⁴In the transcription of interview data we used numbered codes to maintain anonymity. For adults: PMTn (primary music teacher), PGTn (primary generalist teacher), HMTn (primary headteacher who is also a music teacher), SMTn (secondary music teacher), and I (interviewer). For students, as they were interviewed in groups, we used codes followed by a number for the interview and a number for the interviewee within that group: PS(i)n (primary student), and SS(i)n (secondary student).

⁵Of course there were many exceptions, as we found in the interviews with other parents attending the same performances in the parallel programme for families, not discussed here, who had a commitment to offering their children an early exposure to the arts.