The impact of formal and informal learning on students’ improvisational processes

Abstract

This article, based on my PhD empirical study, was conducted in a qualitative and holistic approach. It had examined how students had used formal and informal strategies, styles and situations while improvising and composing for the research task. Eighteen research groups made up of a total of 40 males and nine females had participated in improvising in their choice of popular styles of music. An average of four participants to each group, ranged in ages from 12–13 years, 13–14 years, 14–15 years, and 15–16 years, participated in the task. Certain participants requested to work with their friends partaking in more than one research group affecting the numbers in some of the groups. These participants were chosen from three different Australian school settings; a Public Sports High School, a private Anglican School, and a Catholic Systemic School, so as to avoid bias in the data. The task was an unstructured one. The participants chose to use any of the following; audio-technology such as iPods, instruments, singing, or the compositional software ‘Garage-Band.’ The data were collected from the pre-questionnaires and midi-files, as well as semi-structured interviewing which was then sorted, coded, and collated through triangulation processes. The results indicated the importance of the participants’ auditory memory that influenced their integrated improvisational skills particularly with the use of technology.