Guro Gravem Johansen

• PhD
• Professor of Music Education at Karlstads Universitet

The article gives an account of the practice of copying from recordings, as a part of jazz students’ instrumental practise. The article is based on a PhD thesis, which was designed as a qualitative interview study with 13 Norwegian and Swedish jazz students, within an activity theoretical framework. Results show that copying as learning practic...

This article seeks to discuss approaches to instrumental practicing directed towards developing improvisation competence, by analyzing empirical data from a qualitative study on jazz students’ instrumental practicing. The concept explorational practice is derived from the theory of expansive learning, and compared against the concept deliberate pra...

In music academies and conservatoires, the culture of teaching and learning seems to nurture individuality and hierarchic structures at the cost of collaboration and sense of community. This could indicate a privatized conception of teaching and learning musical skills. As current research suggest that students’ learning may benefit from collaborat...

In higher music education (HME) contexts, free improvisation is currently a rapidly evolving field across musical genres. Previous research indicates that teaching and learning improvisation can be challenging, depending on students’ experience and how improvised music-making is facilitated, but few studies address free improvisation in HME. Our st...

This article is a conceptual analysis of the concepts of enactive mastery experience and vicarious learning experience from Albert Bandura’s socio-cognitive theory, applied to the empirical case of the Norwegian learning centre Improbasen. I outline some historical and socio-psychological contexts that posits jazz practice as a masculine stereotype...

The third volume of Nordic Research in Music Education encapsulates five articles, all published during the autumn of 2022. Directly or indirectly, the articles address issues of power, hegemonies, and the place and treatment of marginalised groups in music education contexts. Several articles in this issue address attempts at expanding the domains...

By exploring the supposedly democratic ideal in jazz and improvised music, Corey Mwamba and Guro Gravem Johansen ask whether this music is everyone’s music. Their point of departure is the oft-cited narratives that emphasise jazz and improvised music as being “collaboratively oriented by nature and thus inherently democratic” (p. 29), alongside con...

Volume 20 of the Nordic Research in Music Education Yearbook marks the yearbook’s transition from printed physical book to open access publishing under the name Nordic Research in Music Education (NRME), as part of a newly established collaboration between the Norwegian Academy of Music and the Norwegian publishing house Cappelen Damm Akademisk. As...

In higher music education (HME), the notion of “private teaching, private learning” has a long tradition, where the learning part rests on the student's individual practicing between instrumental lessons. However, recent research suggests that collaborative learning among peers is beneficial in several aspects, such as sense of belonging, motivatio...

Understandings of teaching and learning rest on our understandings of what it is that we teach or learn. Much of research in music education in the Western world is situated within Western classical music, often with the implicit assumption that this specific music tradition carries universal features. Thus, the norms, values, procedures, and socia...

This article presents an empirical study on instrumental practice among Scandinavian jazz students, with a particular focus on how improvisation competence is developed. The study has a qualitative research design and employs Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT). Findings showed that a central value for the participants was the development of...

This article explores historical narratives about authenticity in learning jazz in relation to how jazz students within higher music education describe their practices of instrumental practising. In a qualitative study of such practices among Scandinavian jazz students, aspects of autonomy emerged as central. These aspects are musical freedo...