One-to-one teaching as cultural practice: two case studies from an academy of music

Abstract

This paper explores one-to-one teaching in an academy of music as culturally constituted. Taking Foucault's concept of discursive practice as a point of departure, the practice of two instrumental teachers is analysed and compared with regards to how the teachers adopt professional discourses to construct their teaching in quite distinct ways, and how the enacted discourses provide the students with different opportunities for learning. The data utilized derive from a multiple case study carried out at a Nordic Academy of Music. The study showed that strategies of teaching emerge from a complex network of discourses that form a certain logic through which the modes of thinking, learning and doing music are regulated. These mechanisms are, however, often taken for granted by the participants. Thus, the provision of various case studies of teaching may open reflexive thinking in a way that is significant for the professionalisation of music education.

Notes

1. The term ‘professional’ refers to discourses that are profession-related in their character, that is, discourses that are developed within music communities and that take aspects of music, music performance, teaching or learning as their objects. Discourses that relate to a more private domain, for instance to parenthood or to a general gender identity, are not explored in the study.

2. At the time the study was conducted, only three of the professors of performance teaching at the academy were female. For several reasons, among them illness, it was not possible to include any of them in the study.

3. However, as the level of analysis was placed on discourses understood as ways of thinking and as systems of ideas that constitute the practice, I did not follow a system for detailed transcription of linguistic interaction, e.g., the Jefferson system. For further discussion about different approaches to transcription, see Oliver et al. (2005).

4. This participation included such activities as in-house concerts, master-classes, entrance auditions, performance exams, and the social life in the cafeteria.

5. The participants are given fictitious names throughout the paper.

6. All quotations from participants in the study are translated by the author.