1. A Swedish Perspective on Artistic Research Practices in First and Second Cycle Education in Music

Abstract

This chapter seeks an understanding of in what ways practices of artistic research are contributing to developing the teaching and learning of music performance in Higher Music Education (HME). It is built on two of the authors’ long-term experience of teaching artistic research methods and supervising theses in first and second cycle programs in Sweden. The chapter consists of three main parts. First, we provide a brief historical overview of how artistic research in music was implemented in Sweden, with particular attention to knowledge claims and method development. Second, we consider the impact of the Bologna process on HME in Sweden, a process in which the authors have been personally involved. It has, among other things, demanded a shift from teacher-driven provision toward student-centred higher education. The third part presents an overarching qualitative and quantitative analysis of completed bachelor and master theses from 2020–2022 within the bachelor and master programs in music performance in the Piteå School of Music at Luleå University of Technology with regard to aims, research questions and methods. For each of the six identified categories, one thesis was selected for a more detailed qualitative analysis, after which the authors were interviewed. The study proposes three main implications for HME: artistic research has shown potential to enable more student-centred forms of teaching and learning, based to a great extent on its use of reflexive methods; the use of reflexive methods shows great potential to enhance life-long learning; and finally that the role of artistic experimentation, as expressed in the student theses, suggests that the notion of the artistic research laboratory may be a potential model for how the offerings of HME to teaching and learning may be reconsidered.