Music Education
The Music Education unit of Sydney Conservatorium of Music offers undergraduate and postgraduate training in a wide range of types of music teaching and learning. These include: classroom music education, popular music ensembles, bands and choirs, studio teaching, and non-Western instrumental groups. The work of the unit focuses on practical experience as the basis of all teaching and learning; it concentrates on creativity as the area through which music is taught and learnt and places cultural diversity at the centre of its programs. Field-based experience is also a feature of Music Education programs.
Research in the Music Education unit is interdisciplinary in nature, combining the methodologies of education with those informed by ethnomusicological, sociological, psychological, historical, and cultural studies influences. Topics undertaken by research students in this Unit reflect the broad view of Music Education adopted at Sydney Conservatorium of Music. This is one which presents Music Education as the study of music teaching and learning from a range of perspectives in all the contexts where it occurs - from early childhood, through various levels of school and university systems, to studio teaching, community music activity, popular music, use of music in therapy, and music in notated and non-notated traditions. The work of Music Education staff is widely published in books and major international journals in music education, ethnomusicology, music psychology, popular music and cultural studies.
Music Education - Staff
Chair/Lecturer
James Renwick, BMus GradDipArts(Res) PhD UNSW
Associate Professor
Kathryn Marsh, BA(Hons) DipEd SydTeachColl PhD
Honourary Associate Professor
Peter Dunbar-Hall, BA(Hons) DipEd MMus PhD UNSW
Senior Lecturers
Jennifer Rowley, BA DipEd MEd GradDipHigherEd PhD UNSW LTCL Trinity RSA Cert TEFLA
Michael Webb, DipMusEd Alexander Mackie CAE MA PhD Wesleyan BMus
Lecturers
Anthony Hood, MSc DPhil York BMus(Hons)
Part-time Staff
Pauline Beston, DipMus(Ed) BEd N'cle(NSW) MMus UNSW PhD
Susan Head, GradDipEd ACU Level 3 ANCOS accreditation
Bronwyn Irvine, BMusEd, ACKME Qld
Patricia Morton, DipMusEd NCastle BME MMus UNSW GradDipCouns & Psych Syd
Sandra Nash, Dalcroze Lic Lond Dalcroze Dip Sup Geneva BMus
Suzanne Oyston, BMusEd SydneyCAE MMus(Ed)
Gary Watson, RSA Cert TEFLA MMus
Anne Wisdom, DipTeach UTS MMus UNSW
Emiko Saraswati Susilo BA (University of California, Berkeley) MA (University of Hawaii)
I Dewa Putu Berata SSen (Sekolah Tinggi Seni Indonesia, Denpasar)
Biographies
Chair/Lecturer
James Renwick, BMus GradDipArts(Res) PhD UNSW
James Renwick is a lecturer in music education, teaching educational psychology, research methods, studio pedagogy, supervising research and practicum students, and co-ordinating the Honours program.
James’s research interests focus on applying the insights of educational psychology to music teaching and learning. His doctoral research at the University of New South Wales involved collaborating with Gary McPherson and John McCormick on a study funded by the Australian Research Council, investigating associations between students’ motivational beliefs, their practising behaviour, and performance achievement. In this mixed-methods research, he analysed large-scale questionnaire data with multivariate statistical techniques such as structural equation modelling, and combined this with case studies of adolescents combining computer coding of observational data, “think-aloud” verbal protocols, and semi-structured interviews. James has developed the application to music of self-regulated learning theory through detailed observational analyses of children’s practising strategies. More broadly, James’ research interests include all aspects of the psychology of music that have educational and developmental relevance, and he is interested in research on the one-to-one pedagogical relationship. James’s previous research has focused on detailed observational analyses of children’s practising strategies. Recent action research has further widened his focus to research on the diversification of music performance training at tertiary level through incorporation of non-Classical genres and pedagogical approaches.
A musicology graduate of the University of Sydney, James worked as a clarinet and saxophone teacher and examiner before his appointment to the Conservatorium and is a keen chorister.
Associate Professor
Peter Dunbar-Hall, BA(Hons) DipEd MMus PhD UNSW
Peter Dunbar-Hall is a music educator and ethnomusicologist known for his research on contemporary aboriginal Australian music and Balinese music, and teaches music education at the Conservatorium of Music.
His current research focus is on music transmission (how music is learned and taught) in Balinese gamelan music. He is also a performing member of Sekaa Gong Tirta Sinar, a Sydney-based Balinese gamelan gong kebyar. He is also a partner investigator in a large ARC grant to research community music across Australia.
Dr. Dunbar-Hall has published widely in the areas of the history and philosophy of music education, Australian cultural history, Aboriginal music, popular music studies, and Balinese gamelan music and dance. He is the author of Strella Wilson: The Career of an Australian Singer (Redback Press, 1997), and is the co-author of Deadly Sounds, Deadly Places: Contemporary Aboriginal Music in Australia (UNSW Press, 2004) with Chris Gibson.
A graduate of the music departments of the University of Sydney (BA Hons) and the University of New South Wales (MMus, PhD), Dr Dunbar-Hall’s doctoral research was a sociological study of the stylistic characteristics of Aboriginal popular music.
Associate Professor
Kathryn Marsh, BA(Hons) DipEd SydTeachColl PhD
Associate Professor Kathryn Marsh lectures in Music Education at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, University of Sydney, where she teaches subjects relating to primary and elementary music education, cultural diversity in music education and music education research methods. With a PhD in ethnomusicology and a professional background in music education, her research interests include children’s musical play, children’s musical creativity, primary and elementary music education, cultural diversity in music education, the influence of the media on children’s learning and creation of music and the role of music in the lives of refugee children. She has written numerous scholarly and professional publications and is regularly invited to present the results of her research internationally. Her book The Musical Playground: Global Tradition and Change in Children’s Songs and Games, published by Oxford University Press won the British Folklore Society’s 2009 Katharine Briggs Award. She is a member of the editorial boards of the International Journal of Music Education and Research Studies in Music Education and the International Advisory Board of the British Journal of Music Education. She has been the recipient of major national research grants which have involved large scale international cross-cultural collaborative research into children’s musical play in Australia, Europe, the UK, USA and Korea. As a member of a cross-disciplinary research team she has also conducted the National Review of School Music Education for the Department of Education Science and Training, exploring the status and quality of music education in Australian schools.
Michael Webb, DipMusEd Alexander Mackie CAE MA PhD Wesleyan BMus
Dr Michael Webb, lecturer in music education at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, researches and publishes in the fields of ethnomusicology and music education. Current research activities include new literacies and classroom music learning, popular culture, ethnomusicology and education, and Melanesian hymnodies.
Webb holds a performance degree from the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, studied trumpet with Armando Ghitalla in the United States and completed an MA in World Music and PhD in Ethnomusicology at Wesleyan University, where he studied with Mark Slobin. He has extensive secondary and tertiary teaching experience, including in Australia, Papua New Guinea, New Zealand (University of Auckland) and the United States (UNC-Greensboro).
For more than a decade, Webb was Head of Visual and Performing Arts at St Paul's Grammar School in Western Sydney where he implemented an innovative program that involved world music ensembles and stage productions including an adaptation of Rachel Perkins’ film, One Night the Moon. He left in early 2006 to join the faculty at the Conservatorium.
Webb is also an active performer in a variety of musical settings and enjoys writing about contemporary Australian jazz.
Jennifer Rowley BA DipEd MEd GradDipHigherEd PhD UNSW LTCL Trinity RSA Cert TEFLA
Jennifer Rowley, a lecturer at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, has been a teacher educator since 1993 and is committed to quality teaching by encouraging effective teaching, reflective practice and the development of a professional practitioner who understands and caters for individual differences. Dr Rowley’s research interests include teacher education, gifted education, teacher’s professional learning, teaching and learning in higher education and professional standards for teachers. She has extensive experience in planning and implementing professional development training programs tailored to a range of workplaces. Rowley has been a teacher, curriculum designer and developer and is experienced in the theory and practice of how adults learn.