Published articles by Leon R de Bruin
Frontiers in Psychology, 2021
For many countries instrumental music tuition in secondary schools is a ubiquitous event that pro... more For many countries instrumental music tuition in secondary schools is a ubiquitous event that provides situated and personalized instruction in the learning of an instrument. Opportunities and methods through which teachers operate during the COVID-19 outbreak challenged music educators as to how they taught, engaged, and interacted with students across online platforms, with alarm over aerosol dispersement a major factor in maintaining online instrumental music tuition even as students returned to “normal” face to face classes. This qualitative study investigated the practices employed by instrumental music educators in secondary schools in Melbourne, Australia, analyzing teacher perspectives to music tuition amidst the restriction of interaction with students remotely via online means. Thematic analysis of the interview transcripts revealed music educational approaches that fostered connection, empathy and receptiveness to relationship-building, guiding students in slower and deeper learner-centered approaches, asserting pedagogical practices that reinforced and promoted interpersonal connectedness in and through musical experience and discovery. These findings provide a framework for how music educators can facilitate connection, motivation and student autonomy generating personal meaning and commitment to music making and the learning relationship, which can translate to significant student learning and value in the learning music. Exploring teachers’ pedagogical practices and behaviors within this dyadic teacher-student relationship is a significant addition to the literature, enabling the consideration of the type of connective behaviors required to stimulate and develop long-term interest in music.
International Journal of Music education 38(2), 208-225.. , 2020
The one-to-one teacher–student relationship is a common learning configuration within jazz educat... more The one-to-one teacher–student relationship is a common learning configuration within jazz education. However, opportunities to learn through engagement in ensemble performances and industry-level recording opportunities with esteemed jazz performers are rare classroom environments the tertiary jazz music institutions offer. This qualitative study examines ‘real-world’ jazz performance contexts within an Australian tertiary music course, exploring students’ learning experience spanning three diverse collaborative projects. Bandura’s Social Cognition Theory is utilized to elucidate an ecological system of musical development, where learning occurs in a social context within dynamic, reciprocal interactions between learners, environment and students’ adaptive behaviours that are bounded by context, culture and learner history. Findings from pre- and post-participation interviews reveal student and educator perspectives of engaging in authentic experiential learning situations. A stratum of positive influences impacting students included metacognitive, behavioural, emotional affordances, as well as the cultivation of a wider social, environmental and cultural/creative confidence and an expanding collaborative community influencing individuals’ learning decisions. Students and educator participants expressed professional-level expectations, real-world outcomes, and a deeper musical connection and understanding by students of the guest artist/composers’ intention, musical aesthetic and expert band direction. The authors maintain that inclusion of experience-based education and embedding of authentic professional industry experience and creative music-making contexts within educational settings enhance the learning of students and potentially enculturate richer musicianship in students and their developing creative communities.
This paper explores musical improvisation, examining the learning processes utilized in acquiring... more This paper explores musical improvisation, examining the learning processes utilized in acquiring improvisational skill, and the development of creative processes and expression of six elite Australian improvisers. Taking a socio-constructivist approach to examining how groups and individuals engage in, sustain, support, and productively develop processes of collaborative learning, this phenomenological study investigates the temporal and sequential characteristics of SRL and SSRL regulation that can inform teachers’ facilitation of group learning in the creative music ensemble. Concepts of meta-cognition and regulation of activity as a stable trait are challenged by the diverse ways self-regulation, co-regulation and socially shared regulation impact and shape thinking and learning. Distributed development and refinement of strategies and conceptualizations shaped by individual, teacher-student, and group activity impacting feedback, reflection and goal-setting of creative processes are discussed, with findings suggesting multiple creativities are distributed and interrelated amongst individual, teacher-student pairings and wider shared group activities. The study argues for informed thinking and teaching that develop multiple distributed creativities and awareness in teacher practice that enhance effective regulatory processes and learning.
Abstract: This qualitative study investigates the dialogic interactions
between teacher and stude... more Abstract: This qualitative study investigates the dialogic interactions
between teacher and student that enhance learning and teaching
within the one-to-one music improvisation lesson. This study analyses
the ways teachers elicit student actions, thoughts and processes that
develop student skills, critical and creative thinking processes
necessary for improvisational development. Interactions and interplay
between six Australian conservatoire improvisation students and their
teachers were investigated. Data reveal dialogic interactions that
span instruction, conversation, inquiry and enablement of student
knowledge and skills that constitute a complex socio-cultural tapestry
of discursive threads. Teacher-student interactions that activate
desired creative student activity engage meta-cognitive processes and
the cultivation of creative habits of mind that allow improvisational
skill to flourish. Teachers engage in dialogic interaction and shape
interactional behaviour, asserting a learning culture that makes
explicit and visible the acquiring of skills and knowledge. Implications
for skilled teaching that can effectively craft the at times
improvisatory and ephemeral nature of teacher-student interactions
are suggested.
Abstract How creativity in education is applied by teachers to secondary school
contexts is depen... more Abstract How creativity in education is applied by teachers to secondary school
contexts is dependent on how the term ‘creativity’ is grounded, politicised, and
practised. This paper reports on an international study of secondary schools in
Australia, USA, Canada, and Singapore investigating how creativity is understood,
negotiated, valued and manifested in secondary schools, focusing on teacher and
student understandings, actions, benefits and impediments to creative and critical
thinking. Participant reflections revealed inter-, trans- and cross-disciplinary
learning shaped by teacher collaboration, dialogue and classroom organization that
fosters critical and creative thinking. Implications are made for the ways practicing
teachers develop and foster creativity via pedagogical approaches that enhance
connectivity and interdisciplinarity of teaching practices between domains of
learning. An education-based Creativity Index through which administrators and
teachers can gauge, assess and implement creative skills, capacities, pedagogic
practices and assessment of creativity within secondary schools is posited. Implications
for STEM/STEAM education and centralizing creative capacities in
teaching, learning, and educational change are offered.
ABSTRACT
Schools’ administrators and teachers feel the necessity to apply
creative education with... more ABSTRACT
Schools’ administrators and teachers feel the necessity to apply
creative education within their learning environments, despite
grappling with understandings of what creativity is and how
best teachers can foster it in their students. This qualitative
international study spanning the USA, Canada, Singapore, and
Australia investigates teachers’ perceptions regarding creative
pedagogies that enhance creativity. Analyzing teachers’
reflections on classroom pedagogy and school practice, this
study explores ways teachers nurture critical thinking that foster
creative intelligences. This study identifies pedagogical practices
involving dialogic scaffolding, inter-disciplinarity, and creative
environments and school practices that promote learning and
thinking “out-side the box” in secondary school learners. This
article posits a creativity index through which schools can gauge
and assess attributes to nurturing creativity.
Instrumental tuition has predominantly been conceptualized in terms of a master–apprentice model ... more Instrumental tuition has predominantly been conceptualized in terms of a master–apprentice model that
facilitates the transmission of skills, knowledge and cultural intellect through teaching and learning.
Research suggests the one-to-one tuition model needs to evolve and adapt to meet the demands of the
21st century musician. Within the jazz/improvisation lesson, the learning and teaching of improvisory
ability is a complex activity where developing improvisers hone motor-specific skills, audiative ability,
imaginative and creative impulses that connect and respond to strategic individual and collaborative
catalysts. Observing the negotiation of learning and teaching in three lessons in improvisation between
expert practitioner-educators and their students, this study reveals a cognitive apprenticeship model
that can provide a framework for teachers to develop students’ cognitive and meta-cognitive abilities,
and understandings of expert practice. Case studies of three teacher-practitioners and their advanced
students explore the “in the moment” teacher–student interactions and teaching techniques that expert
improviser-educators utilize in developing mastery and expertise in their students. Teaching to an
advanced improvisation student is a dynamic, fluid and reflexive interplay of pedagogical applications
of modelling, scaffolding, coaching, and reflective processes. The holistic imparting of knowledge can be
understood as a cognitive apprenticeship. Careful guidance by a teacher/mentor can offer the student
an immersive environment that brings thinking, action and reflection to the forefront of learning.
Implications are identified for more effective, collaborative and inventive ways of assisting learning
and inculcating deeper understandings of factual, conceptual and problem-solving concepts that draw
students into a culture of expert practice.
Creativity has a significant role to play in how educational praxis evolves to meet the demands o... more Creativity has a significant role to play in how educational praxis evolves to meet the demands of future workforces and their lifelong learning. There now exists an abundance of discourse activity pertaining to creativity in education that stress nurturing it as an essential yet complex and multifaceted aspect of education. The need to recalibrate creativity in education beyond simplistic notions of accommodating creative industries and domain-centred thinking is stimulated by more holistic and ecologically responsible and responsive organisational and pedagogical practices. This article details findings from a three-year international study of creativity in Australian, Singaporean, American and Canadian secondary schools. A Whole School Creativity Audit that considers school policies, teacher pedagogies, the nurturing of student and teacher practices and processes for creativity, school environments and local/global creative partnerships is posited. Whole-school engagement in cultivating united, interconnected understandings and practicalities, and interdisciplinarity that fosters ‘wise creativity’ as a holistic ecological approach in schools is identified as a crucial component of a modern education.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10833-017-9311-2#citeas
Current educational policy is dominated by a discourse of transferability, scalability and innova... more Current educational policy is dominated by a discourse of transferability, scalability and innovation, within a climate politicised by ‘creative industries’ and STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) education in Australia. STEM has been promoted as an authentic and engaging approach to education, particularly as Australia tries to boost its performance in international testing. However, STEM has consistently been challenged by STEAM, where ‘arts and design’ represent the ‘A’. STEAM advocates for creativity and expression to be included as a core part of any interdisciplinary approach. There is no defensible reason why the ‘A’ of arts should not be included in domain interconnectedness and the development of critical and creative thinking skills’ preparation of students for the global economy. Assessing the ‘state of play’ involving STEM and STEAM in Australia, this paper considers the widespread adoption of STEM in education, and its missed opportunity for integrating arts skills and capacities into the creativity agenda. Harris (2016) has argued in favour of a more ‘ecological’ whole-school approach to fostering creativity that promotes not only creative approaches to STEM subjects, but importantly arts subjects as well, including environmental, partnership and professional development components. The Harris Creativity Index is reviewed, and salient creative skills and capacities posited which allows teachers to implement pedagogical procedures that can improve creativity within schools through more whole-school transdisciplinary STEAM approaches.
The way an improviser practices is a vital and significant aspect to a musician’s means
and capac... more The way an improviser practices is a vital and significant aspect to a musician’s means
and capacities of expression. Expert music performers utilize extensive self-regulatory
processes involving planning, strategic development, and systemized approaches to
learning and reflective practice. Scholars posit that these processes are constructivist
and socioculturally explained and manifest in individual, jointly negotiated, and shared
learning. This qualitative study explores the regulatory processes of four prominent
Australian improvising musician-educators and four tertiary improvisation students.
Expert and developing musicians’ processes in learning and teaching improvised musicmaking
were investigated through observations of self-regulation, co-regulation,
and shared regulation strategies. I identified and analyzed regulatory learning
strategies located from practice, training, and experience using interpretative
phenomenological analysis. Findings suggest insights of evolving self-regulative
behavior that are dynamic, task-specific, personalised, and contextually contingent
across individual and collaborative tasks and activity. An integrative regulatory
model of learning offers guidance and reflection of metacognitive flow within a
social constructed view of learning. Implications for researchers and educators are
drawn for meaningful educational practice by knowing and understanding expert
improvisers’ complex concepts of self-regulation, critical thinking, problem solving,
and the evolution and evaluation of creative processes in improvisers.
Creativity in education is currently dominated by discourses pertaining to both a neo-liberalisat... more Creativity in education is currently dominated by discourses pertaining to both a neo-liberalisation of arts education and a more widespread attention to the economic potential of diverse creativities. This study applies new thinking regarding creative educational advancement that is adaptive and critically reflexive to the tasks of reconciling the need for safe, ethical and empathetic learning environments and the production of adaptive and innovative 21st century workforces. This study of Australian secondary schools analyses perceptions, understandings and actions, and impediments to creativity in classrooms. This study asserts significant implications for the need to foster effective environmental and ecological approaches to engaging in creative practices in Australian secondary schools. It establishes a creativity index through which school leaders and teachers can routinely measure, develop and adjust their school environment’s, students’ and teachers’ creative skills and capacities, pedagogic practices and assessment of creativity across the 'education lifespan'.
Teaching in Higher Education, 2017
Effective teacher-student learning relationships can propel students to advanced ways of knowing ... more Effective teacher-student learning relationships can propel students to advanced ways of knowing and acting. In much arts based higher education learning, dynamic and fluid interplay of cognitive, meta-cognitive and aspirational aims and goals are prevalent and passed to students in a learning relationship that can be described as a cognitive apprenticeship. Interpretative phenomenological analysis is used to explore four conservatoire teachers and their musical improvisation students. Investigating in the lesson experiences reveal pedagogical applications of modeling, scaffolding, coaching, reflection and developing mastery and expertise in students. A cognitive apprenticeship model can provide a framework for teachers to understand how to develop increased student control, ownership of learning, and contextually situated instructional strategies that brings cognitive and creative thinking, action and reflection to the forefront of learning and teaching. The study reveals how educators can develop trajectories of learning and problem-solving concepts that draw students into a culture of expert practice.
Harris, A., Davis, S., Snepvangers, K., & de Bruin, L. R. (2017). Creative Formats, Creative Futures. Departures in Critical Qualitative Research, Vol.6(2), 48-61. As creative economies and industries continue to impact emerging markets and
cultural conversatio... more As creative economies and industries continue to impact emerging markets and
cultural conversations, creative education seems no more central to these conversations than it
was a decade ago. Two recent Creativity Summitsmarked a collaborativemilestone in the global
conversation about creative teaching, learning, ecologies and partnerships, signaling a turn from
nation-based approaches to more globally-networked ones. This essay and the summits offer
not only an international and interdisciplinary survey of the “state of play” in creativity education,
but also collaboratively-generated strategies for strengthening creative research in tertiary
education contexts, teacher education, cross-sectoral partnerships, and policy directions internationally.
KEYWORDS Creativity; Creative ecologies; Interdisciplinary; Education; Creative industries
International Journal of Music Education, 2017
Music institutions predominantly utilize the one-to-one lesson in developing and supporting music... more Music institutions predominantly utilize the one-to-one lesson in developing and supporting music students' learning of skill and knowledge. This paper explores the effect interpersonal interaction plays in shaping pedagogical applications between teacher and student. Observing the learning of improvisation within this individualized social context, dynamic systems theory (DST) is used to explore how learning and development of musical improvisation skills are shaped by interpersonal behaviors and learning relationships. Through the dimensions of teacher 'action' and 'affiliation', this phenomenological study investigates the interactive behaviors of five expert Australian educator/improvisers and their students. Interpretative phenomenological analysis is utilized to identify modes of behavioral interactions that evolve through dynamic and fluid interplay. Interactive behavior positions and facilitates the delivery of skill, knowledge, teacher attitudes and understandings of the improvisation process. An interpersonal model of behaviors within the instrumental music lesson is posited, and implications for ongoing critical reflection of interpersonal and pedagogical approaches in the one-to-one context are suggested.
Keywords: Interpersonal learning, dynamic systems theory, phenomenology, jazz improvisation
Australian jazz has evolved from a wholly imported form of music making to a vibrant and diverse ... more Australian jazz has evolved from a wholly imported form of music making to a vibrant and diverse range of styles, dialects and concepts that emanate from within its music communities. Emerging from Anglo-Celtic and African American traditions, Australian improvising musicians have developed their own expressive capabilities and personal voices. Distance from American jazz culture contributed to early Australian jazz musicians experiencing an imitative, assimilative and intuitive process of appropriation and interpretation of styles, conventions and performance within an emerging Australian culture. Current jazz and improvisation students participate in formal and informal learning amidst an array of cultures with innovative local improvisers and an education system influenced by dominant canon and hegemony. This article investigates the lifespan learning practices and enculturation of five professional Australian improvisers, investigating how as developing musicians they negotiate learning within a continuum from conformity and innovation and evolve perspectives to improvised musicking, and the role communities of musical practice play in these emergent understandings. Implications are drawn from the diverse ways of learning and collaborating, used by Australian improvisers who employ innovative vocabularies within vibrant and receptive communities. I argue for a more personally situated and reflexive learning of improvisatory skills and knowledge, urging engagement of students in frameworks of learning that provide more holistically fulfilling and creatively based improvised music making activities.
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Published articles by Leon R de Bruin
between teacher and student that enhance learning and teaching
within the one-to-one music improvisation lesson. This study analyses
the ways teachers elicit student actions, thoughts and processes that
develop student skills, critical and creative thinking processes
necessary for improvisational development. Interactions and interplay
between six Australian conservatoire improvisation students and their
teachers were investigated. Data reveal dialogic interactions that
span instruction, conversation, inquiry and enablement of student
knowledge and skills that constitute a complex socio-cultural tapestry
of discursive threads. Teacher-student interactions that activate
desired creative student activity engage meta-cognitive processes and
the cultivation of creative habits of mind that allow improvisational
skill to flourish. Teachers engage in dialogic interaction and shape
interactional behaviour, asserting a learning culture that makes
explicit and visible the acquiring of skills and knowledge. Implications
for skilled teaching that can effectively craft the at times
improvisatory and ephemeral nature of teacher-student interactions
are suggested.
contexts is dependent on how the term ‘creativity’ is grounded, politicised, and
practised. This paper reports on an international study of secondary schools in
Australia, USA, Canada, and Singapore investigating how creativity is understood,
negotiated, valued and manifested in secondary schools, focusing on teacher and
student understandings, actions, benefits and impediments to creative and critical
thinking. Participant reflections revealed inter-, trans- and cross-disciplinary
learning shaped by teacher collaboration, dialogue and classroom organization that
fosters critical and creative thinking. Implications are made for the ways practicing
teachers develop and foster creativity via pedagogical approaches that enhance
connectivity and interdisciplinarity of teaching practices between domains of
learning. An education-based Creativity Index through which administrators and
teachers can gauge, assess and implement creative skills, capacities, pedagogic
practices and assessment of creativity within secondary schools is posited. Implications
for STEM/STEAM education and centralizing creative capacities in
teaching, learning, and educational change are offered.
Schools’ administrators and teachers feel the necessity to apply
creative education within their learning environments, despite
grappling with understandings of what creativity is and how
best teachers can foster it in their students. This qualitative
international study spanning the USA, Canada, Singapore, and
Australia investigates teachers’ perceptions regarding creative
pedagogies that enhance creativity. Analyzing teachers’
reflections on classroom pedagogy and school practice, this
study explores ways teachers nurture critical thinking that foster
creative intelligences. This study identifies pedagogical practices
involving dialogic scaffolding, inter-disciplinarity, and creative
environments and school practices that promote learning and
thinking “out-side the box” in secondary school learners. This
article posits a creativity index through which schools can gauge
and assess attributes to nurturing creativity.
facilitates the transmission of skills, knowledge and cultural intellect through teaching and learning.
Research suggests the one-to-one tuition model needs to evolve and adapt to meet the demands of the
21st century musician. Within the jazz/improvisation lesson, the learning and teaching of improvisory
ability is a complex activity where developing improvisers hone motor-specific skills, audiative ability,
imaginative and creative impulses that connect and respond to strategic individual and collaborative
catalysts. Observing the negotiation of learning and teaching in three lessons in improvisation between
expert practitioner-educators and their students, this study reveals a cognitive apprenticeship model
that can provide a framework for teachers to develop students’ cognitive and meta-cognitive abilities,
and understandings of expert practice. Case studies of three teacher-practitioners and their advanced
students explore the “in the moment” teacher–student interactions and teaching techniques that expert
improviser-educators utilize in developing mastery and expertise in their students. Teaching to an
advanced improvisation student is a dynamic, fluid and reflexive interplay of pedagogical applications
of modelling, scaffolding, coaching, and reflective processes. The holistic imparting of knowledge can be
understood as a cognitive apprenticeship. Careful guidance by a teacher/mentor can offer the student
an immersive environment that brings thinking, action and reflection to the forefront of learning.
Implications are identified for more effective, collaborative and inventive ways of assisting learning
and inculcating deeper understandings of factual, conceptual and problem-solving concepts that draw
students into a culture of expert practice.
and capacities of expression. Expert music performers utilize extensive self-regulatory
processes involving planning, strategic development, and systemized approaches to
learning and reflective practice. Scholars posit that these processes are constructivist
and socioculturally explained and manifest in individual, jointly negotiated, and shared
learning. This qualitative study explores the regulatory processes of four prominent
Australian improvising musician-educators and four tertiary improvisation students.
Expert and developing musicians’ processes in learning and teaching improvised musicmaking
were investigated through observations of self-regulation, co-regulation,
and shared regulation strategies. I identified and analyzed regulatory learning
strategies located from practice, training, and experience using interpretative
phenomenological analysis. Findings suggest insights of evolving self-regulative
behavior that are dynamic, task-specific, personalised, and contextually contingent
across individual and collaborative tasks and activity. An integrative regulatory
model of learning offers guidance and reflection of metacognitive flow within a
social constructed view of learning. Implications for researchers and educators are
drawn for meaningful educational practice by knowing and understanding expert
improvisers’ complex concepts of self-regulation, critical thinking, problem solving,
and the evolution and evaluation of creative processes in improvisers.
cultural conversations, creative education seems no more central to these conversations than it
was a decade ago. Two recent Creativity Summitsmarked a collaborativemilestone in the global
conversation about creative teaching, learning, ecologies and partnerships, signaling a turn from
nation-based approaches to more globally-networked ones. This essay and the summits offer
not only an international and interdisciplinary survey of the “state of play” in creativity education,
but also collaboratively-generated strategies for strengthening creative research in tertiary
education contexts, teacher education, cross-sectoral partnerships, and policy directions internationally.
KEYWORDS Creativity; Creative ecologies; Interdisciplinary; Education; Creative industries
Keywords: Interpersonal learning, dynamic systems theory, phenomenology, jazz improvisation
between teacher and student that enhance learning and teaching
within the one-to-one music improvisation lesson. This study analyses
the ways teachers elicit student actions, thoughts and processes that
develop student skills, critical and creative thinking processes
necessary for improvisational development. Interactions and interplay
between six Australian conservatoire improvisation students and their
teachers were investigated. Data reveal dialogic interactions that
span instruction, conversation, inquiry and enablement of student
knowledge and skills that constitute a complex socio-cultural tapestry
of discursive threads. Teacher-student interactions that activate
desired creative student activity engage meta-cognitive processes and
the cultivation of creative habits of mind that allow improvisational
skill to flourish. Teachers engage in dialogic interaction and shape
interactional behaviour, asserting a learning culture that makes
explicit and visible the acquiring of skills and knowledge. Implications
for skilled teaching that can effectively craft the at times
improvisatory and ephemeral nature of teacher-student interactions
are suggested.
contexts is dependent on how the term ‘creativity’ is grounded, politicised, and
practised. This paper reports on an international study of secondary schools in
Australia, USA, Canada, and Singapore investigating how creativity is understood,
negotiated, valued and manifested in secondary schools, focusing on teacher and
student understandings, actions, benefits and impediments to creative and critical
thinking. Participant reflections revealed inter-, trans- and cross-disciplinary
learning shaped by teacher collaboration, dialogue and classroom organization that
fosters critical and creative thinking. Implications are made for the ways practicing
teachers develop and foster creativity via pedagogical approaches that enhance
connectivity and interdisciplinarity of teaching practices between domains of
learning. An education-based Creativity Index through which administrators and
teachers can gauge, assess and implement creative skills, capacities, pedagogic
practices and assessment of creativity within secondary schools is posited. Implications
for STEM/STEAM education and centralizing creative capacities in
teaching, learning, and educational change are offered.
Schools’ administrators and teachers feel the necessity to apply
creative education within their learning environments, despite
grappling with understandings of what creativity is and how
best teachers can foster it in their students. This qualitative
international study spanning the USA, Canada, Singapore, and
Australia investigates teachers’ perceptions regarding creative
pedagogies that enhance creativity. Analyzing teachers’
reflections on classroom pedagogy and school practice, this
study explores ways teachers nurture critical thinking that foster
creative intelligences. This study identifies pedagogical practices
involving dialogic scaffolding, inter-disciplinarity, and creative
environments and school practices that promote learning and
thinking “out-side the box” in secondary school learners. This
article posits a creativity index through which schools can gauge
and assess attributes to nurturing creativity.
facilitates the transmission of skills, knowledge and cultural intellect through teaching and learning.
Research suggests the one-to-one tuition model needs to evolve and adapt to meet the demands of the
21st century musician. Within the jazz/improvisation lesson, the learning and teaching of improvisory
ability is a complex activity where developing improvisers hone motor-specific skills, audiative ability,
imaginative and creative impulses that connect and respond to strategic individual and collaborative
catalysts. Observing the negotiation of learning and teaching in three lessons in improvisation between
expert practitioner-educators and their students, this study reveals a cognitive apprenticeship model
that can provide a framework for teachers to develop students’ cognitive and meta-cognitive abilities,
and understandings of expert practice. Case studies of three teacher-practitioners and their advanced
students explore the “in the moment” teacher–student interactions and teaching techniques that expert
improviser-educators utilize in developing mastery and expertise in their students. Teaching to an
advanced improvisation student is a dynamic, fluid and reflexive interplay of pedagogical applications
of modelling, scaffolding, coaching, and reflective processes. The holistic imparting of knowledge can be
understood as a cognitive apprenticeship. Careful guidance by a teacher/mentor can offer the student
an immersive environment that brings thinking, action and reflection to the forefront of learning.
Implications are identified for more effective, collaborative and inventive ways of assisting learning
and inculcating deeper understandings of factual, conceptual and problem-solving concepts that draw
students into a culture of expert practice.
and capacities of expression. Expert music performers utilize extensive self-regulatory
processes involving planning, strategic development, and systemized approaches to
learning and reflective practice. Scholars posit that these processes are constructivist
and socioculturally explained and manifest in individual, jointly negotiated, and shared
learning. This qualitative study explores the regulatory processes of four prominent
Australian improvising musician-educators and four tertiary improvisation students.
Expert and developing musicians’ processes in learning and teaching improvised musicmaking
were investigated through observations of self-regulation, co-regulation,
and shared regulation strategies. I identified and analyzed regulatory learning
strategies located from practice, training, and experience using interpretative
phenomenological analysis. Findings suggest insights of evolving self-regulative
behavior that are dynamic, task-specific, personalised, and contextually contingent
across individual and collaborative tasks and activity. An integrative regulatory
model of learning offers guidance and reflection of metacognitive flow within a
social constructed view of learning. Implications for researchers and educators are
drawn for meaningful educational practice by knowing and understanding expert
improvisers’ complex concepts of self-regulation, critical thinking, problem solving,
and the evolution and evaluation of creative processes in improvisers.
cultural conversations, creative education seems no more central to these conversations than it
was a decade ago. Two recent Creativity Summitsmarked a collaborativemilestone in the global
conversation about creative teaching, learning, ecologies and partnerships, signaling a turn from
nation-based approaches to more globally-networked ones. This essay and the summits offer
not only an international and interdisciplinary survey of the “state of play” in creativity education,
but also collaboratively-generated strategies for strengthening creative research in tertiary
education contexts, teacher education, cross-sectoral partnerships, and policy directions internationally.
KEYWORDS Creativity; Creative ecologies; Interdisciplinary; Education; Creative industries
Keywords: Interpersonal learning, dynamic systems theory, phenomenology, jazz improvisation
This paper reports on a qualitative study of five prominent Australian improvising musicians.
Expert musicians’ beliefs, understandings and processes in improvised music-making were investigated, revealing personalised strategies gained from practice, training and experience. The findings suggest that context situated independent, co-operative and collaborative regulatory processes shape learning, motivation and dispositions through complex cognitive and dynamic task-specific processes. The data are reported under three overarching themes: The personal; the interpersonal-learner and more capable other, and; community. Implications are drawn to the diverse ways of learning, sharing and collaborating in improvised music, suggesting a need for more reflexive and personally situated learning of improvisatory skills and knowledge, and how educators can holistically engage students in critical thinking and creative processes that enhance their improvised music making activities.