what are my questions for research?
In this series, I will present parts of my dissertation, ‘What strategies, activities and methods would help develop the teaching of music improvisation in UK secondary school education?’. I aim to give you insight into my improvisation research by informally presenting my findings, opinions and thoughts. It may start a discussion of the justifications, merits, and advocations for music improvisation or completely put you off and double down on why improvisation should be left out of music education. Either way, I believe it’s a meaningful conversation.
This part of my research was the hardest to create. Many hours and emails to my supervisor were spent devising the questions, particularly the survey. My case study and research success was down to getting this right (no pressure then!). If the interview and survey questions didn’t align with my topic, my data wouldn’t match my outcomes, thus making my research null and void.
I wanted my data to be an honest, accurate reflection on what educators employ in their improvisation practice and express their experiences at learning, or not learning, improvisation at school, how they learned and developed improvisation and what they do as educators to teach/encourage improvisation.
Looking back on my project proposal, my supervisor’s comments led me to reflect on the specificity of questions and how these would guide me when collecting data. Comments such as:
- ‘Are these things (questions) based from your research? Or do you mean through your research?’
- ‘Is it (research) about imagination, or making findings accessible for a wider community, or utilising more diverse forms of knowledge?’
The first comment was challenging, relating to the context of the questions. If my questions were formed from research, then that would imply that my literature review has a significant influence and requires a robust understanding and definitions to validate my work. If through then I consider the literature review a step in the research process.
With the second comment, I did want to make the findings accessible to all. My goal was a research project defined by, contributed with and presented to music educators, with a dash of utilising forms of knowledge. I wanted my data to be an honest, accurate reflection on what educators employ in their improvisation practice as well as express their expereinces at learning, or not learning improvisation at school, how they learned and developed improvisation and what they do as educators to teach/encourage improvisation.
Here are my two research questions:
What would be the most effective strategies, activities, and methods for teaching improvisation?
The term ‘effective’ is ambiguous for good reason. I was not looking for responses that demonstrate successful results but instead represent success through the objectives of the participants. Educators think student buy-in and inclusivity for improvisation as the ‘success’? Great! Improvising over an irregular time signature? Also great! The research was not designed to signpost improvisation’s secondary role by creating selectivity in particular viewpoints of improvisation. My selection process came from teachers of all improvisatory experiences sharing their opinions and experiences, helping me to make a pro forma for those planning and delivering improvisation lessons.
Strategies, activities, and methods were chosen as reference points to represent how a music educator teaches music. Before the project, I believed improvisation could be taught in secondary schools; it just needed a collective pedagogy that is accessible to all, easily adapted, and changed to fit the context of what the educator wants to teach.
Not all music teachers use lesson plans, schemes of work, and unit plans, but all use strategies, activities and methods to plan workshops, lessons, lectures etc. The term promotes relatability in teaching, which secondary school improvisation will need to achieve for wider inclusion in music education.
What role does genre play in secondary improvisation?
This examines genre’s role in teaching improvisation in secondary education and its impact from educators’ standpoint. In my opinion, genre helps identify the listener with the music and associations with what the genre represents to them. As an improviser, I acknowledge genre regarding stylistic choices and associated musical features with the genre. However, teaching it to secondary students would require some thinking regarding how one addresses gender teaching improvisation. Students may have formed opinions on genres associated with improvised music, and educators, too, have similar opinions, struggling to break stereotypes down. Perhaps improvisation is thought of as something exclusive to specific genres that require skill and technique to perform, i.e. Jazz or Blues, not aware that it’s a transferable skill which can be used as a devising technique for composition and other genres not strongly associated with improvisation. The role of genre is important enough to explore in secondary education, and I hope it could produce significant findings for teachers to consider teaching improvisation if this turns out to be a barrier.
By following these two questions, and not the half dozen I originally intended (!), my lecturers explained that this was necessary not only for sticking to the topic but also for the next stage of research, results and coding. I now recognise the logical nightmare the latter would have been if I had gone with a scattergun approach to questions!
Mike Wright Music Education 