Teaching jazz: A study of beliefs and pedagogy using Legitimation Code Theory

Abstract

This thesis explores how playing jazz can be taught to children and young people in a field that can hide its own basis of achievement. How to play jazz, how achievement is measured, and how it can be taught are problematic. The thesis looks at why the basis may be invisible to new players and suggests solutions Research highlights that many Australian and US school music teachers may lack expertise in jazz, it is uncommon for jazz musicians to be trained in pedagogy, and the public face of jazz may hide teaching and expertise, with potential implications for students’ learning or access to jazz for the those who may wish to engage creatively with playing it. Using a qualitative approach, the study first examines the field of jazz education, through a corpus of documentary sources, to explore the basis of achievement in rhetoric about pedagogy. Second, the research utilises case studies of three jazz educators at a jazz camp for young people, looking at what knowledge and ways of knowing were taught and how knowledge and knowing were built over time. Each teacher’s beliefs about the basis of jazz achievement was examined through interviews. Data analysis enacted the Legitimation Code Theory concepts of specialisation codes, semantic gravity, and semantic density. The corpus showed a disconnect between a public face of jazz that emphasises knower aspects of jazz while minimising skills, techniques, or other expertise and a jazz education reality of formal training, practice, and specialist knowledge. Analysis of pedagogy in the case studies uncovered different specialisation codes embodied by each of the teachers, but each illustrative of codes active in the field and with educational implications and affordances. Key conclusions include: (1) widespread assumptions that successful jazz musicians of the past universally learnt through informal means or were self-taught are overstated; (2) the emphasis on knowers and absence of knowledge in public rhetoric about education, and even the absence of pedagogy itself, has implications that restrict legitimacy to certain categories of people or experiences. Neglecting either the knowledge or the knowing aspects of jazz problematises student’s potential to succeed. The study shows that there are ways the ‘rules of the game’ can be made explicit to support more effective pedagogy.