Staff mobility in higher music education

Based on this question and with funding from CEMPE, three of my colleagues and I started a pilot project in 2021 with the aim of investigating what increased staff mobility between jazz education programmes in Norway could lead to. We wanted to find out what benefits increased collaboration in Norwegian jazz education could bring to students and what value this would have for teachers. We were also curious about whether the collaboration would be fruitful enough to build on after the project period had ended. Four jazz bass teachers participated in the national collaboration project: Ole Morten Vågan from the Norwegian Academy of Music, Magne Thormodsæter from the Grieg Academy at the University of Bergen, Per Zanussi from the University of Stavanger and myself, Michael Duch, from the jazz programme at NTNU. During the project period, we have visited each other's institutions and taught each other's students. Our students have therefore received both individual and group lessons from three external teachers in addition to their local bass teacher.

Through exchanges and guest lectures at each other's institutions, we wanted to investigate whether there is a common jazz methodology and how well it might work. Despite the fact that all the jazz bass teachers involved in this project have their background from the jazz programme at NTNU, feedback from the students has shown that they all have different approaches to teaching the instrument. In jazz methodology, the term planking is used to describe an ear-based approach to music, which includes listening to recordings and imitating what is happening musically. One of the questions we asked beforehand was how planking is used at the various educational institutions. Through discussions between the teachers and feedback from the students, we gained insight into different approaches to bass teaching and what can work well for the students.

«Personally, I found it instructive to hear from the students how you had worked with them. It's clear that we have some slight differences in approach and teaching style, and that inspired me.»

All in all, we feel that we're off to a good start. We have developed a pilot project that can easily be continued by us or others. One very positive result is that other bass teachers in higher performing music education have expressed an interest in helping to develop this work further. Among other things, the project was presented at a symposium for jazz bass teachers organised by CreaTeMe at the University of Agder. Here, where we discussed how we can learn from each other, through conversations about instrumental teaching, relevance to working life and student active learning.

We hope that this project can be the start of a larger and broader collaboration that can lead to increased staff mobility between different programmes in both jazz and rhythmic music throughout the country.