Expert improvisers’ formal, informal and situated influences on learning, motivation and self-efficacy: a qualitative study

Abstract

For musicians, learning to improvise requires individual and collaborative skill and knowledge that in experts is acquired over years of immersion and enculturation. Learning formally, informally or a combination of both, improvisers ‘learn to learn’ by evolving meta-cognitive capabilities necessary to develop and refine improvisational expertise. This qualitative study explores the learning of musical knowledge across the lifespan by five prominent Australian improvising musicians. Using the conceptual lenses of practice, community and identity, this study investigates formal and informal ways of acquiring skill and knowledge, and the ways interpersonal and collaborative activity shape metacognitive processes, beliefs and understandings of improvised music making. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis is used to examine the understandings of how expert improvisers think about the ways they acquire knowledge, skills, and negotiate within shared, situated learning environments. Findings suggest informal approaches to skill development and experiences engage processes that lead to independent, co-operative and collaborative expertise. This study informs educators who work with young musicians about expert improvisers’ experiential formal and informal learning, critical thinking, and evolution of creative and metacognitive processes. A model of formal and informal learning traits in improvisation/jazz education informs educators in developing formalised informal learning, and nuanced aspects of optimising meaningful educational practice in improvisation.

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