Despite the evidence of the benefits of improvisation in instrumental teaching, research indicates that many piano teachers do not include it in their lessons. The purpose of this study was to investigate the influences on piano teachers' pedagogy to determine what factors impacted the teaching of improvisation. A total of 117 UK-based piano…

This study aimed to understand the factors predicting creative activities and creative achievements among university students. Based on a recently proposed framework of 10 creative spaces, we hypothesized that exploring those creative spaces, alongside the personality trait openness to experience and divergent thinking abilities would predict…

This article concerns how the normative matter of body hair is playfully encountered within a theatre practice for teenage girls. By working with Deleuzian-inspired theories, playfulness is understood as embodied doings, interwoven with the local context. The article explores how playfulness is enacted in relation to the everyday, in particular…

This instrumental case study explores and theorizes on the educational potential and value of free collaborative vocal improvisation, a process that enables equal access to music regardless of musical skills. The focus of the article is on the musical activities of an adult choir in Finland that applied tenets from improvisational theatre to…

This study explores young people's arts participation through music-making in Finland and the factors that may regulate that participation. It seeks to understand the construction of active modes of arts participation in and through adolescents' musical life courses. The interview study was conducted with young people (N = 18) participating in…

Music lessons in Croatia are characterised by the existence of three areas that intertwine and complement each other. Thus, in music lessons, students will listen to music, participate in various activities regarding their musical expression, and learn about music. A music teacher can choose which activities of musical expression he will carry out…

The purpose of this study is to explore the life and work of Pierre Sancan (1916-2008), an exemplary piano teacher who, like many masters in the apprenticeship tradition, is chiefly remembered today by his pupils alone. An all-round musician, Sancan had early success as a composer when he won the Prix de Rome in 1943, and enjoyed a flourishing…

Collective free music improvisation (CFMI) develops musicians' relationships, identity, and communication skills and engages musicians from different cultures by tapping into their diversities in the music-making process. It also develops an open attitude toward working with children's creative potential--by paving the way for open, egalitarian…

In the field of early childhood education, play has become synonymous with curriculum but is sometimes viewed narrowly as a pedagogical tool to enhance child development. However, it is known from a range of multidisciplinary work that child-initiated and child-guided forms and contexts of playing can offer rich insight into diversity in…

Somatic memoirs from the author's participation at dance intensives with acclaimed dancer-choreographer Moustapha Bangoura in the West African Republic of Guinea reveal how solo dance experiences can test acoustic literacy, promote music interaction, and foster an aptitude for movement invention. These skills are fundamental to West African dance…

In 2017, I developed a computer application entitled "Sanka Play," which enables audience members to participate in improvisational performances by making real-time requests to performers. In most cases of free improvisation, the audience atmosphere influences performers. While audience--performer interaction is generally nonverbal,…

This article reports a long-term ethnographic study on jamming and learning from an entwined artistic and educational perspective. The study investigates aspects of learning during a professional band's jamming and recording eight groove-jazz frameworks and a series of subsequent concerts with pre-academy students "sitting in." Fieldwork…

The development of new music technologies necessitates changes in the content of music education. Musical pedagogy is faced with the task of educating creative musicians who are capable of innovative activities and inventive musical thinking. Therefore, primary music education should introduce creative learning technologies aimed at developing…

Improvisation is an area of interest to both music education researchers and music educators alike. The purpose of this literature review was to examine extant studies related to improvisation at the elementary level. Selected research included the nature of improvisation, the amount of instructional time and activity type used, the development of…

Instrumental music practice has been conceived and investigated from the perspective of self-regulated learning (SRL), i.e. how students acquire the tools necessary to take control of their own learning. SRL processes depend on variables such as ways of studying (method), time invested in practice and behavioural and social/cultural factors. Thus,…