Face-To-Face and Distance Teaching and Learning in Higher Education: Lessons from the Preparation of Professional Musicians

Procedural knowledge that is practical in nature is often denigrated and marginalized in the academy. I suggest that academic programs in higher education can benefit from focusing on procedural as well as propositional (or theoretical and abstract) knowledge. The preparation of professional musicians is relevant because musicians’ focus is often on procedural knowledge gained through doing music. Two approaches to preparing professional musicians are contrasted, namely face-to-face and distance education. They illustrate how the transmission and acquisition of procedural knowledge works. The first, face-to-face teaching and learning, is thought about figuratively in terms of an artist who apprentices pupils or disciples and leads them to become exponents of particular musical practices. The second, distance teaching and learning in music as practiced world-wide, is informed particularly by metaphors of the web, factory, and boutique that invoke notions of connectivity, production, and consumption in music education. The role of technology in mediating the process of teacher and student interaction is explored and implications for distance teaching and learning in higher education are sketched.