The Future of Education

In this paper, we characterize the opportunity for musical participation made available for the academic community at School of Education and Social Sciences from the Leiria Polytechnic, a Portuguese public higher education institution. Students, teachers, researchers and staff have the opportunity to take part in a musical band, as one of the elective activities offered. Throughout peoples’ lives, the desire to learn and to take part in musical practices may be conditioned by different factors, may be driven by different motivations and fulfil different purposes (Pitts, 2005). As research on musical development has shown, developing a commitment to musical participation is connected to opportunity and motivation. These two factors may vary throughout the lifespan (Hargreaves, 1986). As we move towards adulthood, the opportunities of musical participation may vary. Nevertheless, as shown by Milhano (2012) in a research developed with children in the Leiria region, there is a need to provide students with more opportunities for access to musical experiences, being increasingly important not to neglect the importance of nurturing their opportunities to actively take part in each one of the potential and desirable contexts of music participation. As Lucy Green as shown that there are many routes to lifelong involvement, emphasising informal learning in music (Green, 2002). In academic educational contexts, those opportunities are still important to nurture and may include the participation in musical activities as a compulsory subject or as an elective activity, and outside academy, as an elective subject in formal and informal dimensions. Therefore, through an exploratory study, the theme of continuity in musical participation in adulthood will be addressed in the context of the academic community, exploring participants’ views and self-concepts in the specific situation of their participation in this musical community.

Keywords: Informal learning, continuity in musical participation, musical community, music education;

References:
[1] Pitts, S. (2005) Valuing musical participation. Aldershot: Ashgate.
[2] Hargreaves, D.J. (1986) The Developmental Psychology of Music. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[3] Milhano, S. (2012) Primary school children’s opportunities and motivations In music: a research in different contexts of music education. Barcelona: EDULEARN12 International Association for Technology, Education and Development.
[4] Green, L. (2002) How Popular Musicians Learn: A Way Ahead for Music Education. Aldershot: Ashgate.