ABSTRACT

While writing is undeniably an essential part of higher education, in music education, musical performance skills form the core of assessing students’ results. However, higher music education is experiencing growing demands on research activities parallel to heightened requirements on music performance students’ abilities to formulate themselves around their main field of study. This paper turns to theses as discursive acts embedded in higher music education. The present study investigates how master theses construct educational ideals by analysing written components of successfully completed theses within music performance programmes in Sweden. The paper shows that the theses treat a variety of subjects which are justified from five different perspectives: Improve, Succeed, Share, Acclaim or to Discover. Two diametrically opposed kinds of purpose statements are revealed; they appear as either impersonal and distanced or intimate and personal. Influences of traditional academic writing manifest themselves while conservatory ideals around craft, individualism and hierarchies are reproduced. It is argued that the self-exploratory approach – which is a characteristic feature on an overall level – excludes collective knowledge building as well as social perspectives on art and music.

摘要

虽然写作无疑是高等教育的重要组成部分，但在音乐教育中，音乐表演技能是评估学生成绩的核心。然而，高等音乐教育对研究活动的需求不断增加，同时对音乐表演学生围绕其主要研究领域形成自我的能力的要求也越来越高。本文将论文作为嵌入到高等教育音乐教育中的话语行为。本研究通过分析瑞典音乐表演项目中成功完成的论文的书面组成部分，调查硕士论文如何构建教育理念。该论文表明，论文处理了从五个不同角度证明合理的各种主题：改进，成功，分享、赞美或发现。揭示了两种截然相反的目的陈述；他们看起来要么是冷漠的、疏远的，要么是亲密的、个人的。传统学术写作的影响体现出来，同时再现了围绕工艺、个人主义和等级制度的音乐学院理想。有人认为，自我探索的方法——这是一个整体水平的特征——排除了集体知识建设以及对艺术和音乐的社会观点。