Mihaela Mitescu Lupu1
University of Arts “George Enescu” Iasi Abstract
This paper explores music undergraduates’ conceptions of learning as depicted in their narratives of studying an instrument. Transcripts of voice-recorded interviews taken with music undergraduates from a Romanian university are subjected to an analysis that takes the Cultural Historical Activity Theory as its theoretical framework and main methodological tool for exploring how students question, author responses and position themselves in the activity of learning whilst situating it in different periods in their history of learning to play the musical instrument. This work was supported by CNCSIS-UEFISCSU, project number PN II-RU 21/2010
Keywords: conceptions of learning, music, cultural historical activity theory;
1. From ‘concept’ to ‘conception’ of learning
Entwistle & Peterson (2003) studied the relationship between students' understandings of learning and their approaches to learning and proposed a shift from the notion of 'concept' to the one of 'conception' of learning in an attempt to capture within the new term the variety of meanings, the flexibility of meaning making processes and the affective component attached to the notion of learning. Conceptions can develop from naïve, experiential forms to more 'scientifically accurate' (Vosniadou & Kollias, 2007), can co-exist and are contextually related Halldén (2003). In this paper the same type of shift (from concept to conception) is proposed with reference to the notions of ‘learning’ and 'teaching'. As a result of his explorations, Entwistle & Peterson (2003) produced research instruments helping to diagnose and differentiate between respondents’ preferences for three distinct approaches to study: a) deep learning approach: indicates the respondent’s tendency towards an approach to learning focusing on seeking the meanings of what is learned, on seeking connections between the different aspects of learning, actively seeking arguments to sustain proposed ideas (by oneself or the others), an interest for ideas and monitoring the efficiency of actions pursued in the space of the learning activity; the strategic learning approach: indicates the respondent’s orientation towards an approach to learning focusing on a tendency to organize the learning, to manage the time resources, a focus on academic results and performance and a high responsiveness to learning contexts
1 Mihaela Mitescu Lupu. Tel.: +40-751-208-276; fax: +40-232-236-744 E-mail address: office_lupumihaela@yahoo.com
Mihaela Mitescu Lupu/ Procedia – Edu World 2010
where individual assessment is stressed upon; the superficial learning approach: indicates the respondent’s focus on memorizing the learning contents (without making connections or significantly link the memorized sequences of contents memorized), the absence of developmental goals correlated to the learning on long term, confinement to the prescriptions of the syllabus and the teachers requirements and fear of failure. Hardly spaces of undisturbed co-existence for all discursive instances' conceptions of teaching, school-based educational programs need to acknowledge and validate the importance of each and propose resourceful approaches to learning for their students.
The socio-cultural activity theory emphasises (through distinct strands of research) on the importance of both collision and co-existence of multiple discourses and conceptions for (learning. Edwards (2005) distinguishes and discusses differences between the cultural psychology following Vygotsky, where the emphasis is on how society or the collective is incorporated into self) and the interactionist and dialogic concerns of the adaptable self found in North America. Learning - defined as ' a change in state, which alters how we act on the world and in turn change it by our actions' (Edwards, 2005) needs to be understood, approached and assessed in formal education settings as more than learning how to become a member of a community; interest in 'how we might transform our worlds through our increasingly informed actions on them' (Edwards, 2005) is crucial. Simply regarding learning as elicited by allowing someone access to a community of practice may not take us further than accepting that naïve conceptions (of knowledge and practice) may as well coexist with the ones prevailed by the community affording the access; focus needs to be shifted (as Edwards argues) from how the system enables its participants to what happens with the participants themselves, how and what is it that they learn. The metaphor of learning by participating reveals, thus, a new meaning: it is not simply about fixing our analytic lenses on the structuring environment and how it produces or allows certain ways of participating and the construction of particular identities (Lave & Wenger, 1991), as it is about how do individual learners come to shape their actions and tools in the world and change it by their very participation in it.
Work still needs to be done in raising the level of understanding about not only how society or the collective is incorporated into self – e.g. how the systems afford individuals participation and shape their identities - but also on how participants shape their world through 'an increasingly informed action' on it (Edwards, 2005).From this very perspective, it becomes important to follow a research inquiry attempting at understanding how different conceptions and approaches to learning come to shape and are being shaped in the course of actions bridging in enacted discourses the outer and the inner in the learning activity, in a reciprocal interchange of actions and reactions that come to continuously shape them both. In pursuing possible insights into this research field of inquiry, in this study the focus is on music undergraduates’ conceptions of learning as reflected in their narratives of studying an instrument. Particular interest is being paid to a field – that of music performance teaching and learning – that has been scarcely shown interest in the research literature to date. As Bautista, Pérez Echeveria & Pozo (2010) also notice, there has been little research into the conceptions music performance teachers have about learning and instruction, by either psychological and educational researchers. Studies exploring learners’ conceptions of learning and teaching and the relationship between them and the manner in which they are shaped by and come to shape the activity of learning they’re participants in are even less available.
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2. Method
This paper introduces an exploratory initiative to understanding how students question, author responses and position themselves in the activity of learning whilst situating it in different periods in their history of learning to play the musical instrument.
The analysis employs theoretical instruments inspired by the Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT).
Data subjected to analysis in this study has been generated in audio-taped interviews with undergraduate music students. Six students – two males and four females -accepted to participate in this study and attended one hour interview sessions at the university where they pursued a bachelor degree in music. All participants major in instrument interpretation, are aged 19 to 20 and are in their junior year the university. The interviews aimed at entailing Mishler’s model of planning and conducting the interview situation, that is relying on the principles of: 1) considering the interview an event of communication; 2) with both participants involved in co-constructing the discourse of the interview encounter; 3) analyzing and interpreting on the grounds of a discourse and meaning theory ; 4) re-thinking the meaning of the questions and answers in relation to the contexts in which they emerged (1986, p.ix). Coding the textual data considered Rampton’s [2007] conversation analysis coding specifications.
Analyzing the data generated in interviews with the music undergraduates employs theoretical instruments inspired by the Cultural Historical Activity Theory. The CHAT framework used to analyze the data generated in this study is based on six interdependent elements: 1)Object – activity is purposeful; objects need to be considered in both their material properties, as well as carrying socially (and culturally) defined properties; 2)Subject - a person or group engaged in the activities; subjects work on activity objects operation with mediation tools (artifacts); internalization is a key psychological mechanism and was defined by Vygotsky as internal reconstruction of an external operation; 3)Community - the social context; 4) Tools - the artifacts (or concepts) used by subjects to accomplish tasks. Tools shape the way human beings interact with reality and reflect the experiences of other people who have tried to solve similar problems. Tools are created and transformed during the development of the activity itself and carry with them a particular culture. The use of tools is a means for the accumulation and transmission of social knowledge. It influences the nature, not only of external behavior, but also of the mental functioning of individuals; 5) Division of labor - social strata, hierarchical structure of activity, the balance of activities among different people and artifacts in the system; 6) Rules - conventions, the code and guidelines for activities and behaviors in the system
Echoing throughout generations of research, Vygostky's (1920's) idea of cultural mediation of actions has inspired over the years various attempts to theorizing learning and activity. Amongst most representative, the cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) knows nowadays it's third generation of thought and research proposing an inter-systemic representation of the learning activity by 'taking two interacting activity systems as its minimal unit of analysis' (Engeström, 2001). One of the CHAT’s third generation of representatives in contemporary research on learning, Engeström takes further Leont'ev's (a representative of the second generation of CHAT) dyad of interaction within activities (subject vs object) and adds it a third analytical perspective: the community. In doing this, CHAT distinguishes itself from other inter-subjective approaches to development and learning and builds an argumentative stance for itself that relies on the inference that the social determination of activity does not have the same meaning as Mead's symbolic interactionism reliance on social, interactive construction of physical objects through
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symbols (originating in gestures given to both human and animals).The construction of objects is above all sensuous; communication and symbolization are seen as derivative, though organically intertwined aspects to the construction of objects. Knowledge stops being public and impersonal; Mead's 'generalized other' is seen as a 'general other' (in a post-Mead sense – Morss, 1988), knowledge is interpersonal and situational, as well as culturally and historically determined and determinative.
Engeström (2001) proposes understanding learning as systemic expansion a concept the author explains by starting from understanding learning as an activity system within which the actions of the participant subjects (agents) on the activity object (also called the problem space) are ever mediated by the use of the tools (cultural artifacts, collective in nature through their continuous development throughout the system's history) available in the system and constantly informed and conditioned by the system's rules and existent division of labour announcing the close interdependence of the system with the community within which it exists. In Engeström's view, the activity systems are a locus of multiple discourses (of traditions, stances, interests, knowledge and expertise incorporated in the available artifacts, etc), have specific histories and are perceived as transformative entities for which contradictions are the main source for change. The systemic expansion is understood as reconceptualization of the object of activity so that it thus open a horizon of actions significantly larger than the one previously accessible to the system's functionality (2001). Learning as expansion requires the system's double movement: one in a vertical plane of every day concepts rowing into scientific ones and scientific concepts growing in every day understandings, and another in an horizontal plane of exploring the new meanings (tools) in a variety of practical contexts, thus forcing the semantic and experiential enrichment of the learning process through its exposure to diverse forms of contradictions emerging in various spaces of action.
In this study the concept of learning - central to all of the narratives explored here – employs Stenning et al’s (2002) constitutive actions of problematizing, authoring and positioning. Problematizing implies identification of an argument or an interrogation in the learning setting for which participants in the learning activity have to find solutions or answers at in order to solve what Il’enkov (in Engeström, 2007) named a pressing internal contradiction and Piaget identifies in the need to re-establish a state of internal equilibrium. For Engeström (2007) the contradictions play a central role for the learning activity as they are sources of change and development. Identifying a problem sets the ground for unraveling a new object of activity or for exploring the object that participants to the learning activity are already engaged with. Authoring is understood as learners’
interventions in the conversation, so that their voices are heard; their assertions may be argumentative, exploratory or explanatory or any other type of phrasing that imply exploring alternatives of action relevant for the problem space opened for inquiry.
Positioning - the third component of the learning as conceptualized by Stenning et al (2002) – represents the learner’s action of holding a personal stance in reference to the subject of study, object of activity or other participants to the learning activity (teachers, colleagues, etc) either present or evoked in the context of activity in the moment of positioning. Recognizable in the language in “I”– statements, positioning becomes the sign of acknowledging the space (position, freedom, authority) of one’s own agency in the system of activity and of identity in the context.
Learning is also conceptualized in this study as dialogical reasoning (Edwards,2005) Emerging out of the notions of dialogic inquiry (Wells, 1999) and exploratory talk (Mercer, 2004), the concept of dialogic reasoning underlines the public
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(dialogical) substance of the thinking - a feature visible in language in the manner of structuring interrogative, argumentative and counter-argumentative talk – for which internalizing (Vygotsky, 1987) the dialogues with others becomes an essential constitutive mechanism. Understanding learning in this manner is especially important in this study.
Conceived as exploration and dialogue, reasoning escapes the privatism and seclusion of the individual mind and reveals itself in the language – a space where multiple voices engage in disputative, cumulative or exploratory talk (Mercer, 2004) in reference to the alternatives of action in response to a certain problem space. Engaging in dialogue and exploration (searching for arguments to support alternative responses and actions) is considered a form of participation which confirms both the existence of an activity and the presence (the identity and agency) of participant subjects to the system(s) of activity.
3. Findings
One of Vygotsky’s great contributions to understanding the learning activity was how he overcame the separation of mind and world in his emphasis on mediation means which arguably over-ride notions of boundary between mind and world (Edwards, 2005).
By focusing on the functional aspects of consciousness, Vygotsky made consciousness itself the object of study and opened up new ways of understanding the space between the material and the mental where consciousness could be found (Davydov & Radzikhovskii, 1985 apud. Edwards, 2005).
Data generated in this study shows that early on in their history of learning, student musicians evoke a sense of togetherness, of belonging to a collective that is defined by its use of a particular type of a cultural artifact - the musical instrument. This tool becomes an object integrated in one’s identity and central to the activity of learning. This may come to support from the very beginning the idea that when attempting to explore what learning was like in the early stages of their development as musicians, students of musical instruments performance use the musical instrument itself as a mean for self-identification. The artifact central to the activity of learning to play a musical instrument at the schools of music or in students’ encounters with the teachers of music exceeds its material confines and links the inner concept of who the narrator of the learning tale is to the outer systemic world made of pre-existent rules of action (e.g. clefs to play an instrument in, keys etc) and determinant available tools (e.g. the musical instruments).
Learning happens in the presence of a community (e.g, that of players of violin) the state of learning is hard to define in the absence of the possibility of linking the individual learner to preexistent community. In Mihaela’s – a female student, 20 years old, studying viola -case, an attempt to explain to the interviewer how she experienced at age 14 a transition from studying violin to studying viola, after seven years of practice and study in violin represents an occasion for her to express a sense of remembering belonging to the violinists community. Excerpt I presents a small fragment of the transcription made of Mihaela’s voice-recorded speech:
Excerpt I : Mihaela’s manner of self-identification by means of naming the actions, rules and tools of a relevant collective to claim links to
Mihaela: I had this lady teacher in viola who was a bit older and had this gift to teach me a lot in the least amout of time abd then I had this young teacher
Researcher: tell me more about the first teacher of viola
Mihaela: she wasn’t very patient but stimulated me to ask more of myself. Then there was another teacher who came... well I was in her first generation of pupils and she
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tried to impose herself , ‘cause us students think an older lady is more experienced and we don’t mind younger [teachers] as much, I mean we’re not giving the same seriousness’ but for me it wasn’t like that ‘cause she was still a teacher
In her exploratory take on what differentiates teachers in their approaches to teaching Mihaela identifies herself by a linkage to the group of students to whom the supposed resemblance in reasoning about what to expect in terms of teachers’ behavior is source for self-positioning (e.g. ‘cause us students think an older lady is more experienced and we don’t mind younger [teachers] as much, I mean we’re not giving the same seriousness’).
A variety of activity systems interplay in the course of learning. In Lucian’s case – male student, majoring in playing oboe, 20 years of age, who started playing a music instrument early on when he was eight years old - learning as he explores it in his narrative of the beginning of studying music and playing an instrument is an activity for which contradictions are the driving force of change. Data extracted from the interview with Lucian - is relevant for the manner in which this student conceives of learning: as what one does. Excerpt II presents a fragment from Lucian’s interview in which he describes what he perceived as a problem in the course of studying a new instrument – the oboe – at a later stage in his history of learning music, around the age of 13: