One of the many lessons of the COVID-19 pandemic has been the nature of it: it has been, and stil... more One of the many lessons of the COVID-19 pandemic has been the nature of it: it has been, and still is, an evolving situation in which there are many questions, but not always immediate or easy answers. Some of the pandemic experience has been shared, as almost 1.6 billion learners’ educations have been disrupted and teachers have reported increased work-related stress, anxiety, and burnout. Billions of dollars in music industry income have been lost and patterns of music engagement and consumer spending appear to be significantly altered. Other aspects of the pandemic have highlighted deep inequalities. The vulnerability of creative workers at a policy level, for example, reflects the precarity of a specific group of people, and the enormous complexity and uncertainty that shapes their personal and professional circumstances. Although some musicians have reveled in the opportunity to reinvent themselves through new sites for their work, for many, work in music has gone from challeng...
Teachers’ confidence in navigating the complexities of ‘being a teacher’ influence their behaviou... more Teachers’ confidence in navigating the complexities of ‘being a teacher’ influence their behaviour, how they are perceived, how they make sense of their environment and circumstances and their successes. A web-based survey was developed and distributed to music teachers via an online community of practice. This paper reports on the respondents’ self-reported confidence through the use of an Importance-Confidence Analysis. The responses of early career music teachers and experienced teachers are also compared to understand confidence over the career. Results show that both early career and later career teachers placed greater importance on pedagogical knowledge and skills relative to professional knowledge and skills and music knowledge and skills. Later career teachers reported greater confidence with respect to pedagogical knowledge and professional knowledge compared with teachers who were early in their career, whereas music knowledge and skills were viewed quite similarly by tea...
Student populations in Australian classrooms tend to exhibit more diversity (social, ethnic, econ... more Student populations in Australian classrooms tend to exhibit more diversity (social, ethnic, economic) than the profiles of their teaching population, which most often reflect those who come from middle-class, Anglo-Saxon backgrounds (Mills 2009). This imbalance is an acknowledged challenge in developing awareness of social justice issues in the teaching population (pre-and in service). Previous work in this area (see Ballantyne and Mills 2008; Mills and Ballantyne 2010) suggests that despite the desire to improve social and learning outcomes for students, pre-service teachers, for example, tend not to demonstrate an ability to enact social justice in the classroom. Ballantyne and Mills (in press), in their systematic review of the literature in the area of music teacher education, found that “immersion or ‘real-life’ experiences of diversity challenges or social justice issues, combined with guided reflection, enable pre-service teachers to confront their own pre-dispositions, whic...
Action, Criticism, and Theory for Music Education, 2021
The COVID-19 global pandemic has delivered a significant career shock at every level of the music... more The COVID-19 global pandemic has delivered a significant career shock at every level of the music sector, bringing with it renewed recognition of the vulnerability of many creative people. Multiple research approaches are needed to understand the consequences of the pandemic for musicians as workers and the ways in which musicians frame and describe their career choices. In this paper, I offer a way to amplify our listening to musicians’ stories through combining narrative inquiry with a narrative therapy lens as a means of tuning into musicians’ background music—the guiding beliefs that shape professional identity development and artistic practice. Simon’s narrative portrait forms the centrepiece of this article. Through exploring how his approach to informal learning developed and sustained his professional identity, Simon’s story demonstrates how a convergence framework of narrative inquiry and narrative therapy can be harnessed to understand identity continuity in musicians’ car...
There is growing interest in examining the gendered nature of music practices worldwide. Recent i... more There is growing interest in examining the gendered nature of music practices worldwide. Recent investigations of access to and equity in the music industry have included studies of gender discrimination in classical music, popular music, film music, and within the structure of colonization. This article contributes to this work by reporting the findings of a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) of research that addresses the gendered nature of jazz and improvised music practices in education settings, ensembles, and professional performance environments. Our purpose was to generate an understanding of the phenomenon of gendered jazz and improvised music practices through the following research questions: (1) what is the scope and focus of existing empirical research on gender in jazz and improvised music? (2) where has this research been undertaken, by whom, and to what purpose? (3) what methodological approaches have been employed? (4) how has gender been understood in this research...
This essay explores the role that maverick qualities – ‘independent or unorthodox behaviour’ ( Th... more This essay explores the role that maverick qualities – ‘independent or unorthodox behaviour’ ( The Oxford Dictionary, 2015) – play in developing and sustaining musician employability. Whilst career education for musicians often highlights new career models (Bridgstock, 2005), there is limited evidence of how these concepts work in practice (McCowan and Wyganowska, 2008). Savickas (2011) suggests that ‘individuals take possession of their lives by connecting who they are to what they do’ (13). Findings from my recent study of the beliefs, values, work and learning of eight independent professional musicians highlight the links between independent beliefs and values (who they are) and subsequent pathways (what they do). These approaches suggest new roles Higher Education might play in fostering the attributes needed to navigate the often self-directed career pathways of musicians.
One of the many lessons of the COVID-19 pandemic has been the nature of it: it has been, and stil... more One of the many lessons of the COVID-19 pandemic has been the nature of it: it has been, and still is, an evolving situation in which there are many questions, but not always immediate or easy answers. Some of the pandemic experience has been shared, as almost 1.6 billion learners’ educations have been disrupted and teachers have reported increased work-related stress, anxiety, and burnout. Billions of dollars in music industry income have been lost and patterns of music engagement and consumer spending appear to be significantly altered. Other aspects of the pandemic have highlighted deep inequalities. The vulnerability of creative workers at a policy level, for example, reflects the precarity of a specific group of people, and the enormous complexity and uncertainty that shapes their personal and professional circumstances. Although some musicians have reveled in the opportunity to reinvent themselves through new sites for their work, for many, work in music has gone from challeng...
Teachers’ confidence in navigating the complexities of ‘being a teacher’ influence their behaviou... more Teachers’ confidence in navigating the complexities of ‘being a teacher’ influence their behaviour, how they are perceived, how they make sense of their environment and circumstances and their successes. A web-based survey was developed and distributed to music teachers via an online community of practice. This paper reports on the respondents’ self-reported confidence through the use of an Importance-Confidence Analysis. The responses of early career music teachers and experienced teachers are also compared to understand confidence over the career. Results show that both early career and later career teachers placed greater importance on pedagogical knowledge and skills relative to professional knowledge and skills and music knowledge and skills. Later career teachers reported greater confidence with respect to pedagogical knowledge and professional knowledge compared with teachers who were early in their career, whereas music knowledge and skills were viewed quite similarly by tea...
Student populations in Australian classrooms tend to exhibit more diversity (social, ethnic, econ... more Student populations in Australian classrooms tend to exhibit more diversity (social, ethnic, economic) than the profiles of their teaching population, which most often reflect those who come from middle-class, Anglo-Saxon backgrounds (Mills 2009). This imbalance is an acknowledged challenge in developing awareness of social justice issues in the teaching population (pre-and in service). Previous work in this area (see Ballantyne and Mills 2008; Mills and Ballantyne 2010) suggests that despite the desire to improve social and learning outcomes for students, pre-service teachers, for example, tend not to demonstrate an ability to enact social justice in the classroom. Ballantyne and Mills (in press), in their systematic review of the literature in the area of music teacher education, found that “immersion or ‘real-life’ experiences of diversity challenges or social justice issues, combined with guided reflection, enable pre-service teachers to confront their own pre-dispositions, whic...
Action, Criticism, and Theory for Music Education, 2021
The COVID-19 global pandemic has delivered a significant career shock at every level of the music... more The COVID-19 global pandemic has delivered a significant career shock at every level of the music sector, bringing with it renewed recognition of the vulnerability of many creative people. Multiple research approaches are needed to understand the consequences of the pandemic for musicians as workers and the ways in which musicians frame and describe their career choices. In this paper, I offer a way to amplify our listening to musicians’ stories through combining narrative inquiry with a narrative therapy lens as a means of tuning into musicians’ background music—the guiding beliefs that shape professional identity development and artistic practice. Simon’s narrative portrait forms the centrepiece of this article. Through exploring how his approach to informal learning developed and sustained his professional identity, Simon’s story demonstrates how a convergence framework of narrative inquiry and narrative therapy can be harnessed to understand identity continuity in musicians’ car...
There is growing interest in examining the gendered nature of music practices worldwide. Recent i... more There is growing interest in examining the gendered nature of music practices worldwide. Recent investigations of access to and equity in the music industry have included studies of gender discrimination in classical music, popular music, film music, and within the structure of colonization. This article contributes to this work by reporting the findings of a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) of research that addresses the gendered nature of jazz and improvised music practices in education settings, ensembles, and professional performance environments. Our purpose was to generate an understanding of the phenomenon of gendered jazz and improvised music practices through the following research questions: (1) what is the scope and focus of existing empirical research on gender in jazz and improvised music? (2) where has this research been undertaken, by whom, and to what purpose? (3) what methodological approaches have been employed? (4) how has gender been understood in this research...
This essay explores the role that maverick qualities – ‘independent or unorthodox behaviour’ ( Th... more This essay explores the role that maverick qualities – ‘independent or unorthodox behaviour’ ( The Oxford Dictionary, 2015) – play in developing and sustaining musician employability. Whilst career education for musicians often highlights new career models (Bridgstock, 2005), there is limited evidence of how these concepts work in practice (McCowan and Wyganowska, 2008). Savickas (2011) suggests that ‘individuals take possession of their lives by connecting who they are to what they do’ (13). Findings from my recent study of the beliefs, values, work and learning of eight independent professional musicians highlight the links between independent beliefs and values (who they are) and subsequent pathways (what they do). These approaches suggest new roles Higher Education might play in fostering the attributes needed to navigate the often self-directed career pathways of musicians.
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Papers by Nicole Canham