Mark Pulman

An important part of the process that enables us to improve ourselves as musicians in group music making involves developing an awareness of our personal attributes as they are displayed in the rehearsal. In order to help students become more aware of themselves and of their band members’ personal attributes as they rehearse, a peer assessment system was established. The project was piloted and developed at Barnsley College and University of Huddersfield (Barnsley Campus) with first year undergraduates on the BA Popular Music course across 2000–2008. Individuals agreed to allow their bands to identify particular personal attributes for each member that, they felt, could be improved and used as peer assessment criteria. In-depth interviews were conducted with 16 students over a 4-year period and the following areas emerged as a focus of these: self-knowledge, feedback, confidence, honesty. The study has implications for devising peer assessment systems that are responsive to individual learners and their unique needs. It also suggests the desirability of providing peer assessment activities that might foster trust among participants and, if so, supports the provision of exceptional feedback. Now in its ninth year, this system has been refined into a model.


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The publication combines a project report and resource pack.

These can be found at:

http://eprints.hud.ac.uk/cgi/search/simple?q=pulman&_action_search=Search&_action_search=Search&_order=bytitle&basic_srchtype=ALL&_satisfyall=ALL

Thanks must go to the many undergraduate bands for being so welcoming and open in their discussions about their rehearsing and to the following institutions for allowing me to conduct interviews with their students: Bath Spa University; University of Westminster; Leeds Metropolitan University; University of Hull; University of Liverpool; University of Huddersfield. I am especially grateful to the following tutors for giving so freely of their time and support by granting me interviews for this project: Joe Bennett, Hussein Boon, Danny Cope, Robert Davis, Davey Ray Moor, Rowan Oliver, Charlotte Orba, Richard J Parfitt, Brian Rice and Andy Stott. Finally, I am indebted to the many HE Institutions who participated in the survey and to PALATINE/The Higher Education Academy for supporting this project.

Dr Mark Pulman, Senior Lecturer in Popular Music, University Campus Barnsley, University of Huddersfield

There seems little reported about group-based rehearsals of popular music and the peer learning opportunities that might arise from this activity. Although there are an increasing number of studies exploring approaches to the assessment of musical ensembles, these often focus on performance rather than rehearsing and, typically, do not specifically address popular music courses (Hunter, 2006). Indeed, Lebler (2008) describes popular music as being usually learned in the broader community as a self-directed activity, sometimes including interactions with peers and group activities, but rarely under the direction of an expert mentor/teacher. The role of the tutor, in facilitating learning opportunities that may be available for students working in popular music genres within a band rehearsal context, can be quite different to that required for rehearsing repertoire which might be described as being drawn from western art music traditions. If so, and given the apparent lack of literature on, and pedagogical resources for, band rehearsing of popular music (Lebler, 2007) within the HE curriculum, the aim of this project is to provide a contribution towards filling that gap.

Abstract
This enquiry investigates the experiences and responses to peer assessment of group work involving cohorts of undergraduate popular music students over a five-year period. Working within the context of band rehearsing and performing, the enquiry focuses on how intra-peer assessment impact on students’ personal attributes and their learning.
The literature review presents an overview of peer learning, group work, peer assessment processes, and a survey of the peer assessment literature on music in Higher Education reveals a lack of research into popular music group work.
An action research design was established to study developing peer assessment activities of group work involving nineteen rehearsing and performing cycles. This allowed interventions and refinements to be made from cycle to cycle from which qualitative interview data and quantitative peer assessment data were collected.
The analysis and interpretation of this data explain the key themes that arose from the students’ experiences of peer assessment in the action research. These include the development of awareness and knowledge about their personal attributes. Confidence, feedback and a moral dimension, often involving honesty and trust, were of particular significance.
A new process model of intra-peer assessment is proposed. It offers a sequence of graduated stages of personal attribute usage, which create experiences over a period of time, that support students’ learning about themselves and about others through intra-peer assessment activities. The key activity, which also gives the model its particular distinctiveness, involves bands decide for each of their members appropriate personal attributes to be used as criteria for intra-peer assessment.
The enquiry emphasises the importance of providing experiential and interactional contexts for intra-peer assessment, as important learning opportunities arise from such settings. This study provides a social constructivist explanation for the development of students’ personal attributes and the building of trust and honesty in the rehearsing and performing cycles.

Over the past few years, instrumental performance has been subject to considerable research in this journal and elsewhere. A great deal of this research has concentrated on the practice strategies and individual lessons, which most students undertake in preparing as performers. Little has been done on raising standards of performance on a larger scale within the context of a large music department. This article describes the outcomes of a two-year programme undertaken with undergraduates at Barnsley College. It looks specifically at the scope for curriculum changes over that period and the way the various individual aspects of performance lessons are brought together through a weekly class which focuses on the demands of a public performance and the strategies required to prepare for that event.

Blue Chicago is one of the better books on music I have read in recent years. It is well written, humorous, engaging and thought provoking. Part of what makes it good reading is the difficulty of the subject. Authenticity is a fascinating concept and has wide application – ...