The nature of lesson interactions in instrumental teaching and learning in Higher Education is investigated in this thesis through the micro-analysis of a small scale case study. The case, nested within a larger research project undertaken in a university music department, draws upon video observations of two individual clarinet lessons, undertaken by undergraduate students with an expert teacher, along with interviews with the three participants. Collaborative lesson activity is analysed in terms of performance, verbal and nonverbal behaviours, and contextualised with reference to the epistemology of skill and apprenticeship. The foregrounded lesson interactions are also contextualised by the background consideration of social, cultural and institutional frameworks. The rich description of lesson interactions, enhanced by the use of descriptive statistics in the analysis of subunit behaviours, serves to highlight issues characteristic of the setting, including multimodal approaches to the cultivation of performance skill, demonstration and imitation, and the nature of the teacher-student relationship. Ways of understanding the collaborative procedures of instrumental teaching and learning are proposed, and implications for researchers and institutions of Higher Education considered.

This thesis is concerned with educational drama practices and the British form of Theatre in Education (TIE). The research has been undertaken with special regard to the potential of educational drama for Kenya and how the participatory nature of those practices offers new paradigms in education. Educational drama practices include forms such as dance, music, instrumentation, mime and story telling. The participatory research approach provided opportunities for these art forms into a public expression through the process of their performances. Section One is concerned with current theory and different practices in educational drama. It begins by tracing the wider theoretical issues and puts in perspective terms used in drama and theatre work within the educational spectrum. The areas of culture, education and contemporary theatre practices in Kenya are surveyed and the basis for their existence is established. within the main chronological thrust the study develops along generic lines: the state of educational drama in Kenya is explored; Oral Literature as a major intervention in performance forms is discussed and the Drama Festival as a major cultural and educational occurance over the past forty years is given as a prime example. TIE theory and practice has had a seminal influence on theatre writing and performances in Kenya. This part of the thesis evaluates the nature and function of TIE and provides case studies of TIE programmes that examine concepts, techniques, and TIE critical methodology. It is suggested that TIE strategies and dramatic devices have parallels with the story telling tradition which is viewed as a participatory and performance mode. At the end of this section it is pointed out that the relevance of these dramatic devices are manifested as elements of educational drama. section Two focuses on performances observed which illustrate how Drama functions as a mode of Creative learning and as an instrument for social change. Case studies of programmes devised to develop language skills, create social awareness, and change attitudes are provided. They point to the need for a more creative approach to education and make apparent in the programmes the impact of a synthesis of education and the creative arts. The Drama Festival Performances are illustrations of emerging forms of writing, performance techniques, audience developments and a cul,tural intervention within the educational establishment that locates the cutting edge for the future prospect of Kenyan Theatre.

This study into the wider opportunities pledge for instrumental music making has been conducted over a six-year period within one North West Instrumental Music Service (lMS). The aims of the study were primarily twofold, to look at large-scale pupil access to music service instrumental lessons and to consider how a music service could be used to enrich the school music curriculum. These two strands were investigated through a number of developed activities formed into a series of case studies; three of which are detailed within this thesis. One of these focused on methods of pupil curricular enrichment through themed and informative concerts given to whole school communities. The other two investigated methods of offering greater access to instrumental lessons to whole classes of children. A philosophical rationale was developed and presented as a possible model through which to support and justify these activities. The outcomes and conclusions from these cases in conjunction with the philosophical rationale offer insights into issues of teacher identity, staff training, organisation of instrumental services, as well as models for future practice and pedagogy. In this thesis I explore a series of methodological tools and how they have aided the collection of data, its analysis and the resulting understanding I have gained. I describe how an overarching Action Research methodology is used to frame and develop a series of related case studies, policy analysis and philosophical debate through a cyclical pattern of identification, implementation and evaluation of practice (Elliott 1991). Data is viewed through the socio-culturallearning theories of Wenger (1998) and Lave and Wenger (1991) by seeing the class ensemble, the school, and the IMS as inter-related communities of practice. By charting my understanding of aestheticism and praxialism I have been able to ofTer a definition of the function of music and music education as well as a useable (in the context of this thesis) philosophical rationale. The conclusions I draw inform and guide some of the issues I have encountered during this study. This element of the thesis lays bare some of my own theoretical experiences and interpretations on its course towards an understanding of how this educational phenomenon can be explained and supported through theory. The main research findings are drawn together from the conclusions made in a number of chapters. National Education policy and legislation is viewed through its interpretation and implementation at the local level. These external forces have created a unique service structure and modes of operation that shape the manner of engagement with children. Outcomes of case studies are used to forward understanding by offering insights that illuminate how organisations can model learning communities that demonstrate musical life, pleasure and understanding with large groups of children. The design of these cases encouraged a refinement of teaching approaches and the development of musical identities in both pupils and teachers alike. The thesis concludes by charting my personal development through this course of study. It comments retrospectively on my learning and the growth of understanding for scholarly enquiry, musical and educational knowledge. It also makes suggestions as to which avenues of further investigation this study could possibly lead to for others or myself.

This doctoral thesis is a qualitative study drawing upon practitioner enquiry, action research methodology toward curriculum development in Initial Teacher Education. The research project is concerned specifically with the preparation of pre-service secondary art teachers across two universities in the North West of England undertaking the Post Graduate Certification of Education with the following aims: 1. To explore issues of institutional racism in established strategies of teaching cultural diversity in secondary art education. 2. To provide an account of how trainee teachers develop their understanding of cultural identity in relation to the art curriculum and their own creative production. 3. To develop an interpretative model of critical studies in art teaching that promotes an anti-racist teaching approach in initial teacher training. 4. To develop an action research methodology which supports the validation of different ways of constructing and understanding knowledge within the context of curriculum development and plural perspectives. This study critically reviews literature across three main fields including critical and contextual studies in art education, concepts of culture, and Critical Race Theory in support of a reflexive account of the author's established and emerging practices that problematises the teaching of cultural content within the art and design curriculum. It challenges the ethics of working with trainee teachers as research participants and the appropriateness of practitioner enquiry within a curriculum development scenario in Initial Teacher Training, developing a co-researcher programme for future research. The Visual Reflexive Journal has been developed through this study offering a multimodal method for collating a wide range of data in a variety of forms and a framework for creating new knowledge through systematic reflection. This framework provides a clear, rigorous and systematic analysis of initial and subsequent journal entries that responds effectively to prior concerns voiced within the action research community that an uncritical approach to reflective journals is being perpetuated within Higher Education. In challenging chronological research journal writing, the Visual Reflexive Journal offers a process of engagement and re-engagement between entries around key themes emerging through the document as it is constructed. It goes beyond the limitations of monomodal journal accounts to create an illustrated rationale of how multi-layered, inter-textural journal entries can provide the basis of, and the trigger for, reflexivity at the deepest level within the context of practitioner enquiry action research.

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Research addressing the specific problem of the representation of human movement is not very wide. Where there is work on the representation of changes and transformations, this has not focused on the human figure. Rather, such studies demonstrated how young children tend to represent the initial and the end states of moving objects, whereas older children reproduce their intermediary locations as well. It was my hypothesis that dance steps, although more complex than simple everyday types of movements, are in fact more sequential, defined and easy to segment for the purpose of representation. They may offer the condition necessary, to represent the intermediary as well as the end stages of movements. Thus, my objective was to observe how children from different ages, cultures and socio-economic backgrounds master a language for representing movement, and in order to do that four experiments were carried out with 180 children aged five, seven and ten from Brazil and England. In the concrete drawing experiment, children were asked to represent two dances by drawing the human figure. In the abstract drawing experiment, children were asked to represent the same dances by making marks, line drawings or symbols. In the stroboscopic movement experiment, children were asked to reconstruct three classical ballet steps by sequencing a number of shuffled ready made drawings of a dancer performing each step. In the description of movement experiment, a child was asked to describe three ballet steps to a partner who had to identify among many drawings the one being described. Overall, older children produced more elaborate representations of movements than younger ones, however there were evidences of younger children attempting to represent transformations between initial and final stages of movements, and that may be due to the type of movement they were representing. The results also showed that different types of movements resulted in different forms of representation. Thirdly, familiarity with a dance had an effect on representation, with English children having more difficulties in identifying and representing the samba movements than Brazilians. A class effect was also present, with children from poorer backgrounds in Brazil having more difficulties in representing the movements than those from wealthier backgrounds. The dramatic contrasts that exist in Brazil of variables like family income, parents education background and quality of education may explain the difficulties encountered by working class children when trying to solve the tasks.

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