Browsing by Subject "Relational agency"

This study explores the concept of relational agency (Edwards, 2005b) within the context of Basic Education in the Arts (BEA, 2017; Ministry of Education, n.d.), focusing on the interactions between students and teachers in one-to-one music tuition. Relational agency, a concept rooted in Cultural Historical Activity Theory (Edwards, 2007a), studies the capacities of individuals to effectively work with others to respond to challenges and elicit each other’s expertise (Edwards, 2005b). BEA tuition is to involve the student in planning and evaluation (BEA, 2017) and prior research has identified reciprocity and collaborative practices in students’ development of the craft as key aspects of instrument tuition (Barrett & Gromko, 2007; Gaunt, 2011), thus indicating that instrument tuition fosters relational skills and provides a fruitful setting for research. Using a deductive thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006) of three semi-structured interviews (Galletta, 2013) conducted with one student and two teachers at a Finnish music institution, the research investigates how these people view tuition and the interaction and collaboration within it. The study identifies three distinct themes on how students and teachers engage in negotiations of aligned actions, two themes regarding the recognition and utilisation of each other’s expertise in tuition, as well as two themes on the unique nature of the pedagogical relationship in contrast to the inter-professional settings of previous studies on relational agency (Edwards, 2017). The findings highlight the reciprocal nature of student-teacher relationships, the experienced significance of student participation, and the unique challenges posed by the institutional and expertise-linked tensions of instrument tuition. The study contributes to a deeper understanding of collaborative practices in instrument tuition and offers insights into the limitations of relational agency as an explanatory model for collaboration in a master-apprentice-like setting, such as instrument tuition (Jørgensen, 2000).