Improvisation is a distinguished feature of many music practices. Many researchers have argued that music education in schools should provide more improvisation activities (e.g. Burnard, 2012; Sawyer, 2003). Also current national curricula highlight the need to advance inventive and creative tasks in the learning environment (English National Curriculum: music programmes of study 2013, ACARA, 2012; Skolverket, 2011). Yet existing international literature (Whitcomb, 2007; Ferm & Zandén, 2014) shows that improvisation tend to be an overlooked activity in general music classrooms. Music teachers find improvisation challenging and they say they are uncomfortable teaching it, are not well educated in improvisation practices and have neither time nor space for improvisation activities in the classroom (Whitcomb 2013, Ferm & Zandén, 2014).
In the National Curriculum in England; music programmes of study (2013) improvisation and creative tasks are emphasised as well as in the Australian Curriculum: The Arts (2013). In the Swedish curriculum (Skolverket, 2011) improvisation is designated “obligatory content”. On the other hand, it is not one of the stated knowledge requirements for a passing grade. Music teachers shall include improvisation tasks, but they are not expected to assess or grade the students’ improvisational skills. More knowledge is needed about how music educators deal with this situation, why improvisation is neglected in music education and how educators’ practices in teaching improvisation can be developed and empowered.
Improvisation in the general music classroom is an overlooked phenomenon in music education research. Existing research on improvisation features fairly prominently in academic scholarship in anglophone countries (Burnard, 2012; Tomlinson, 2013) but has attracted little attention in continental Europe and Scandinavia (Larsson & Georgii-Hemming, in progress). Current research focuses on improvisation as an initial stage of composition and to facilitate the scholarly study of improvisation, researchers orchestrate projects that take place in school but outside of regular music lessons (Burnard, 2000; Nilsson, 2002). Existing research centre on children and students and their creative competence (Tomlinson, 2011: Whitcomb, 2013) while so far, however, there has been little discussion about teachers´ didactic competences and beliefs concerning improvisation.
The overall purpose for this study is to investigate what conceptions of improvisation there are to be found amongst music educators and how these conceptions affect their educational practice. Also what hinders improvisation and what possibilities do music educators see? What needs to be done to overcome those hindrances and to develop those possibilities? In this paper I will discuss the empirical and methodological challenges for researching improvisation in the general music classroom. An observation study would probably not be useful since, put simply, there seem to be few sufficient improvisation activities to investigate. I therefore suggest a collaborative action research method, Participatory Action Research (PAR) (Herr & Anderson, 2004), in combination with a practical epistemological analysis method based on the pragmatism of John Dewey and developed by Wickman and Östman (2002).
The pragmatic standpoint formulated by John Dewey, with its emphasis on process and change, will be used as theoretical framework. Dewey’s concept of experience, habit and continuity are important in this paper for understanding learning and meaning making. In focus is the relational process in people’s encounters with the social, historical and cultural environment. Meaning is not understood as a mental process that is invisible but on the contrary meaning is visible in action. The transactional theory is here used in order to explore music educators’ experiences and meaning making in the process of developing and implementing methods for improvisation in music educational settings. Experience in a transactional perspective is about the continuous process where people are facing the consequences of their own actions (Wickman, 2006).
