Brokering reflective spaces: Experiential learning in a summer opera program

Abstract

Formal music performance studies within university settings strive to prepare the next generation of performers and pedagogues for musical engagement beyond university. Yet literature suggests that these spaces of study do not always lead to a sense of readiness for potential professional worlds, due in part to a lack of opportunities for guided, in-depth, critical reflection that helps students connect theory and practice. This article articulates findings from a study that sought to consider the impact of deliberate opportunities for reflection in The Accademia Europea dell’Opera (AEDO), a university-affiliated summer opera intensive experiential learning program. Utilizing a communities of musical practice framework, researchers worked collaboratively to help participants engage in guided critical reflection as they developed high-level musical skills through rehearsals and performances. This article specifically considers the ways in which a ‘broker’ helped participants develop practices of reflection and personal agency both within and beyond this context.

Keywords

Communities of practice music performance reflective practice experiential learning music education

Introduction

Careers in the performing arts are rarely linear, static, or defined. As such, many students enrolled in post-secondary¹ music performance programs will likely enter a series of professional experiences that differ from those of their mentors or professors (Bennett, 2016; Bennett and Bridgestock, 2015; Munnelly, 2020). Opportunities to develop musical and personal agency through reflection can be a central element in helping students understand and navigate this constantly shifting professional world (Carey and Grant, 2014; Carey et al., 2017; Willink and Jacobs, 2011). In particular, experiential learning, that is opportunities for students to engage in practice-oriented experiences that are interwoven with reflection, can be a fruitful element of the university experience. Such experiences can help students link theory to practice, preparing them for a variety of future career pathways (Allison and Seaman, 2017). Scholars have investigated the implementation and impact of reflective engagements in experiential learning within one-on-one contexts in the performing arts (Carey and Coutts, 2018; Carey et al., 2017). Research that investigates the implementation and impact of reflection on these practices in communal settings such as one might find in a summer opera program, however, is lacking.

As music performance and music education researchers, we engaged in a collaboration to explore and interrogate the possibilities and limitations of structured reflection and reflective practice within the Accademia Europea dell’Opera (AEDO), a five-week summer opera program for pre-professional performing artists in Lucca, Italy. In order to realize these goals, we developed a model of reflective practice that was implemented over the course of the program. Utilizing a communities of practice framework (Wenger, 1998), we explored the ways in which this model impacted participants’ musical and personal agency within this environment, as well as the impact such a model had on participants’ perceptions of future career readiness. In this article we focus on the role of the broker (Davies, 2005; Wenger, 1998) in helping facilitate processes of reflection.² The broker was a member of the research team who sought to deliberately support participants’ reflective practices through weekly reflection sessions. We begin by outlining literature related to experiential learning, reflection, and agency, particularly as they relate to the performing arts. We then articulate the communities of practice framework that guided the study and our analysis of the data. The project context and researcher roles are described, as well as the methods of data generation and analysis that were used. The findings drawn from our analysis of the data are explored through three emergent themes: recognizing a continuum of experience, addressing personal and professional challenges, and future pathways. Recommendations and implications for experiential learning and reflection in the performing arts are then offered, focusing on the ways in which the findings may enhance student learning in multiple performance-based contexts.

Engaging in practice-based, experiential learning opportunities

Experiential learning is designed to purposefully engage learners in direct experiences and focused reflection in order to increase knowledge, develop skills, clarify values, and develop people’s capacity to contribute to their communities.³ Building on the work of educational paragons such as Rousseau (1712–1778) and Dewey (1859–1952), Kolb came to define experiential learning as a ‘process where knowledge is created through the transformation of experience,’ and his work highlights the ‘central role that experiences play in the learning process’ (1984: 20). Learning in this context, then, can be defined as knowledge that results from engaging in and reflecting upon experiences in and with the world (Southcott, 2004).

Processes of experiential learning may take place within a variety of contexts. These often include internships, fieldwork, practicum placements, community-engaged programming, simulations, and exchanges, among others. Allison and Seaman note that experiential education differs from vocational training in that its prioritization is not only ‘subject area mastery,’ but also ‘social-emotional growth, communication and teamwork skills, and self-awareness’ (2017: 978). Within the performing arts, experiential learning can occur when an individual has the opportunity to practice their craft in a manner that is directly connected to or mimics professional realities in both collaborative and independent settings. Bennett et al. posit that the need for experiential or work-integrated opportunities is ‘heightened in disciplines such as music, where graduates are likely to encounter portfolio and non-linear careers featuring multiple concurrent roles’ (2017: 462). In particular, experiential learning opportunities can enable ‘a re-imagination of possible future musical selves involving the modalities of future-oriented thinking, self-actualization, contextualization of knowledge and meaning making’ (p. 471). Kindelan notes that such experiences, when well-planned and executed, can help performing arts students ‘develop the critical thinking and leadership skills necessary in building and sustaining professional careers’ (2010: 31). In addition, when experiential opportunities encourage reflective engagement alongside technical study, they can help students become ‘contributing members of society engaged in thinking about complex social issues and taking responsible civic action’ (p. 31).

The role of reflection in experiential learning

Reflection is a foundational element in experiential learning, and scholars agree that participant reflection is necessary in order to promote growth (Allison and Seaman, 2017; Fenwick, 2001; Harvey et al., 2016; Russell, 2005). Joplin notes that ‘experience alone is insufficient to be called experiential education…it is the reflection process which turns experience into experiential education’ (1981: 17). Joplin’s words echo the sentiments of Dewey (1933) who argued that it is the process of reflecting on experience that helps people move from routine reliance on tradition or external structure toward a careful consideration of knowledge and the possibility for future change. Studies on the role of guided, purposeful reflective practice in supporting student learning outcomes have grown in recent years. For example, researchers have considered the impact of guided reflection in one-to-one engagements in an Australian conservatoire (Carey et al., 2017) and with community vocal teachers (Carey and Coutts, 2018), suggesting that such practices may help students better prepare for ‘diverse and changing musical, educational and employment opportunities’ (Carey and Coutts, 2018: 185). Isaak et al. (2018), however, argue that reflective practice is still often seen as an afterthought in experiential learning, noting that there is often a prioritization of activity content and, thus, a neglect of pedagogical relations and contextual nuances.

Developing one’s own ability to reflect is also an important skill for understanding professional practice and engaging as a performing artist (Carey et al., 2017; Esslin-Peard et al., 2016; Gaunt, 2016; Georgii-Hemming et al., 2020; Kandlbinder and Peseta, 2009). Reflection has been shown to help students better understand the motives that drive their professional practice, as well as the multiple possible outcomes of their personal and artistic decision-making (Ryan and Ryan, 2013). Studies in reflection and music performance often focus on independent practice work (Esslin-Peard et al., 2016; Jørgensen and Lehmann, 1997), the development of practice strategies (Nielson, 2001) or educator pedagogy (Parkinson, 2016). Scholarship suggests that, often, programs focus on independent reflection-based activities, such as essays (Esslin-Peard et al., 2016) and the viewing of post-performance videos (Nicol and Macfarlane-Dick, 2006) as tools for musical improvement.

Scholars also argue that reflective practice has the potential to increase students’ sense of both personal agency and autonomy (Carey and Grant, 2014; Carey et al., 2017; Willink and Jacobs, 2011). Agency is a complex and oft used term, but here the literature refers primarily to a sociological view of agency, suggesting that reflective practice may help students increase their ‘capacity to understand what they do while they do it’ (Giddens, 1984: xxii). Through reflection, students cultivate awareness of their daily actions and consider how those actions impact their personal and professional lives.

In this study, we chose to view agency through a different lens, drawing from the work of Biesta and Tedder (2007) to consider agency as both relational and temporal. Rather than understanding agency as a capacity to be developed, relational agency is ‘the interplay of individual efforts, available resources and contextual and structural factors as they come together in particular and, in a sense, always unique situations’ (p. 137). Understanding that our processes and practices are also temporally dependent, one’s individual efforts are guided by personal past experience and have the potential to impact future practice. ‘Viewing agency in such terms thus helps to understand not only how humans are able to be reflexive and creative…but also how individuals are enabled and constrained by their social and material environments’ (Priestly et al., 2015: 22–23). In this way, reflective experiences might help create the conditions for agency to be achieved within one unique context while also potentially impacting future practices in participants’ professional lives.

Multiple models for reflection have been designed and implemented within experiential learning contexts, including those of Kolb (1984) and Schön (1983). Russell (2005), however, notes that there is a lack of scholarship that examines the actual teaching of models for reflection. In particular, he notes that there is a need to explore how such models are understood as ongoing processes that are transferable to multiple settings. Russell and others (Luckner and Nadler, 1997; Seaman, 2008; Sugerman et al., 2000) argue for the incorporation of an individual who acts as a guide in learning settings. They suggest that such an individual can not only lead reflective exercises but can also help make reflection a more explicit process wherein participants understand reflection as being relevant both within and beyond their immediate experiences.

Incorporating a guide, however, can also present limitations. Reflection can become guarded as learners aim to please a teacher or facilitator, writing or saying what they think is expected, rather than engaging in an honest examination of their thoughts, beliefs, and practices (Finlay, 2008). In response to these limitations, contemporary literature seeks to help educators and facilitators encourage reflection that is critical and simultaneously individual and collective (Finlay, 2008; Seaman, 2008). In such practices, reflection can ‘emerge as a form of action, embrac[ing] contexts, purposes, and alternative realities’ (Kushner, 2006: 20). Reflection, then, is not simply a means to an end, but an ongoing and embedded part of the learning process.

Guillaumier (2016) posits that such reflection in experience-oriented arts education can be challenging to operationalize. She argues that reflection and creative practice are inextricably connected. Reflective practice in the arts, then, must be taught alongside and embedded within artistic practice, enabling students to focus on the context, application, processes and products of their creative endeavors. It is through this interweaving that she suggests students might come to develop a deepened sense of ownership over their own creative and reflective selves. Scholars have recently explored such an interconnected approach to reflection and creative practice in dance education (Petsilas et al., 2019a, 2019b) and production arts (Laube, 2017). Within university and conservatoire programs research has focused on theoretical understandings (Guillaumier, 2016) and the role of reflection in one-on-one experiential contexts (Carey and Coutts, 2018; Carey et al., 2017). Studies have not yet extended into the examination of reflection within experiential-based performing arts education in communal contexts at the university level.

Given the above, we sought to develop our own model of reflection that was responsive to the unique setting of the performing arts and the particular needs of the learners in the context of this study. This model included a facilitator or broker whose role was to help participants expand their own reflective practice within the communal, ensemble-oriented setting of an opera production. While this model was outlined in advance of fieldwork, it was adapted weekly to respond to participants’ personal and musical experiences in an effort to support their achievement of agency within this particular context.

Embracing a communities of practice framework

In order to consider the ways in which reflective practice was employed in the context of this summer opera program, we adopted communities of practice (CoP) as a framework through which to consider participants’ experiences (Lave and Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998). CoP focuses on the ways in which learning and knowing are inherently tied to one’s active participation in spaces of shared practice. A CoP has three necessary components: (1) a shared domain of interest, (2) a space (broadly understood) in which members regularly interact and engage in this domain of interest, and (3) active practice in and with the domain, often resulting in a shared repertoire of resources (Wenger, 1998). In this study, the CoP was defined by intersecting domains including musical (specifically operatic) practice and reflective engagement. In addition, the unique environmental context of Lucca, Italy also played into the CoP, as only one participant in the program originated from Italy. Researchers suggest that programs that involve learning in an unfamiliar cultural context can be transformational in nature (e.g., Rowan-Kenyon and Niehaus, 2011). Our data collection and analysis sought to take these environmental issues into consideration. However, though this context may have impacted participants’ experiences within the program, it did not emerge as a significant theme in our data collection or analysis. We acknowledge this as a potential limitation to this study.

The CoP framework has been utilized in musical environments, seen most prominently in the work of scholars such as Kenny (2016) and Barrett (2005). Kenny notes that, due to the personal and embodied nature of music making, ‘music becomes inseparable from the people who make it’ (2016: 131). Such communities, then, are unique in that music making is more than a domain of interest, but also an essential part of identity formation and social relations.

Learning in a community of practice occurs both independently and through social interaction. Members hold varying levels of experience that contribute to the community, and individuals take on ‘fluid membership roles that span from ‘legitimate peripheral participation’ to ‘expert’’ (Kenny, 2016: 11). In an educational context, this might mean that individuals possess varying levels of experience and expertise in the given domain. As individuals engage together in social processes related to a shared purpose and within the particular domain of knowledge, learning occurs as individuals interact with one another. In the case of opera, interaction is of particular importance, as the final presentation is a collaborative work that relies on investment and participation from all involved parties.

Also important to this study are the ways in which distinct communities of practice operate in tandem with one another. Within this framework, musical learning is grounded in the context of the community and is shaped by the experiences of each unique group of participants (Kenny, 2016). A CoP, then, cannot be identically replicated, but individuals can transfer skills and knowledges between communities. The development of personal reflective practices and/or heightened agency within one community, therefore, may contribute to how one interacts in future communities. This transfer can be challenging but scholars suggest that opportunities to engage in ongoing guided reflection can help individuals make this transition (Reid et al., 2011)

The role of the broker

The role of a broker in this particular CoP was central to our study. A broker is an individual (or group of individuals) who assists in facilitating learning in a CoP by helping participants consider multiple perspectives and creative approaches to educational and personal inquiries (Davies, 2005). Brokers are particularly important in helping individuals make ‘new connections across communities of practice’ through their involvement in processes of ‘translation, coordination, and alignment between perspectives’ (Wenger, 1998: 109).

Brokering, as Wenger articulates, requires a specific type of membership in a CoP. In order to mediate power imbalances, the broker has to be someone who can ‘manage carefully the coexistence of membership and non-membership, yielding enough distance to bring a different perspective, but also enough legitimacy to be listened to’ in the CoP (1998: 110). Following this definition and in our context, a primary instructor or musical director would likely find it challenging to fulfill this role. Rather, someone who is able to exist on the periphery of the community while still maintaining knowledge of the shared repertoire is more likely to see possibilities for change from multiple perspectives (Davies, 2005). Davies notes, however, that the broker’s role is complex. While a peripheral position is a start, there are often other barriers of access, acceptance, and hierarchy involved that may inhibit the broker from having any impact on the community of practice. He argues, therefore, that there must be a mutual acceptance and openness from both broker and participants, wherein ‘innovative practices’ that might be presented by the broker are considered and potentially acted upon by participants (p. 574).

Eckert and Wenger argue that brokers have a specific place in the community, ‘span[ning] structural holes, mediating loose ties, [and] provid[ing] reasonably strong links between otherwise separate networks’ (2005: 587). In order for a broker to exist, it is necessary for there to be a demand for resources ‘across the structural hole that they span, and they must actually deal in those resources’ (p. 587). For example, if an aim of a learning space is to help participants develop personal reflection skills, the broker must have experience in working with such practices. Similarly, if the learning context is based in the performing arts, the broker must also have a background that allows them to understand the uniqueness of such environments. As the broker engages in activities with participants, these processes are seen to enable coordination and integration, while also opening up ‘new possibilities for meaning’ (Wenger, 1998: 109).

Though relatively common in business scholarship, literature on brokering in educational settings is rather sparse. Within the literature that does exist, the broker is often understood as a socio-cultural translator (He, 2008; Ng et al., 2004) or as a link between JK-12 schools⁴ and universities (Bates et al., 2011; Luneberg et al., 2014; Martensson et al., 2019; Willegems et al., 2016). In each of these contexts, however, the broker only emerges to triage in the immediate present, clarifying implicit understandings and responding to issues as they arise. In contrast, our study places the broker as a key player in the community of practice from the very beginning of the engagement, aiming to help make the learning process both explicit and visible for all participants.

The broker was a researcher in this study who participated in the planning of all reflection activities and facilitated their implementation through exercises such as group discussion, one-on-one conversation, and independent photo journaling. She was present in Lucca and, as a music educator, her background and experiences helped her understand and participate in the community. She was not, however, a member of the artistic staff nor was she a performer or participant in the summer program, which offered an outsider status that helped her propose alternative perspectives to topics and issues discussed. We were interested in how the presence of a broker in this context might help participants use reflection to draw connections between AEDO and other communities of musical practice including university programs, semi-professional, and professional contexts. In addition, we were also curious as to the role the broker might play in helping participants develop their self-reflective practices and personal agency within this context and in what ways that might impact and strengthen their engagement in future communities of musical practice.

Methodological approach

The qualitative case study on which this article is based took place in June-August 2019 at the Accademia Europea dell’Opera (AEDO) in Lucca, Italy. The main research questions with which this article is concerned were: what was the role of the broker in helping participants engage in reflective practices? And how did such engagements impact participants’ personal and musical agency in this context?

In order to align with our theoretical framework and the unique context of a summer opera experiential learning program, we adopted a qualitative interpretive phenomenological lens for this study. Qualitative case study was chosen as the methodological approach, as it offers an ‘in-depth exploration from multiple perspectives of the complexity and uniqueness of a particular project, policy, institution, programme or system in a real-life context’ (Simons, 2009: 21).

As participant-observers, the researchers supported and engaged in facilitating reflective activities throughout the study. Data collection included audio- and video-recorded reflection sessions, participant journal entries, individual interviews, and field notes. A semi-structured interview schedule and reflection session plan for participants was generated based on the literature above. Analysis of data was ongoing from the beginning of data collection in order to engage in ‘early and continuing analysis’ (Miles et al., 2014: 93), and to inform further action and data collection. Therefore, additional interview schedules and reflection session plans were generated in response to ongoing analysis throughout the study.

Upon completion of the study, we engaged in open, descriptive coding, which helped us highlight emergent themes, followed by pattern coding, which enabled us to find relationships in the data (Saldaña, 2009). During this process, we also revisited the literature to seek out convergences and divergences with our original theoretical framework. As we underwent the coding process, it became clear that particular elements of the communities of practice framework (Wenger, 1998) were central to this study. Namely, the concept and role of the “broker” in communities of practice (Davies, 2005) emerged as a pathway to help us make sense of the data. As such, we returned to and re-examined the data, developing categories and subcategories that linked back to the concept of the broker in subsequent cycles of coding.

Participants and setting

AEDO, based in Lucca, Italy, is a unique five-week European opera experience for music performance students. During AEDO, undergraduate students, graduate students, and semi-professional performers from around the globe work with professional pianists, conductors, and directors to focus on the preparation, creation, and performance of full operatic roles in an intense environment of musical and dramaturgic study. In addition to daily rehearsals, participants take part in coachings and lessons, as well as Italian language courses. AEDO is a collaboration between Western University (Canada) and Centro Studi Opera Omnia Luigi Boccherini (Italy), but participants need not be enrolled in either institution to participate. While the program has been operating since 2010 and has welcomed over 400 participants, no research on AEDO has taken place. 19 participants and 8 faculty members from 5 countries participated in this study over the course of 7 weeks (1 week pre-departure, 5 weeks on-site, 1 week upon return). The broker was a member of the research team who held no position in the artistic faculty at AEDO but was an experienced music educator with a background in vocal music.

The model for reflective practice utilized in this study was designed to be flexible and responsive to the developing community of musical practice at AEDO. Researchers aimed to design reflection sessions that offered opportunities for participants to interact with the broker and consider their experiences at AEDO both collaboratively and independently. Reflection sessions took place once per week in a group setting. The reflection sessions were planned on an ongoing basis in an effort to be responsive to the needs of the participants in this context. Reflection sessions included a variety of activities such as improvisatory acting, photo journals, participant interviews, and one-on-one dialogue sessions with the broker.

The broker was also deliberately present and available during all musical and artistic rehearsals. This both added to her legitimacy in this community of practice and encouraged participants to interact with her in small group and one-on-one engagements beyond the weekly meetings. Furthermore, this daily presence helped to cultivate a strong relationship between the broker and artistic faculty and helped link the reflection sessions to participants’ individual artistic growth within the program.

Ethical considerations

After receiving approval from the Western University Research Ethics board, participation in this study was offered to all musicians taking part in the AEDO program in 2019. Participants were provided with a description of the project and informed that their participation was entirely voluntary. Each participant was assigned a pseudonym and the music faculty were not made aware of which individuals elected to participate in the project. All transcriptions were de-identified prior to analysis. In addition, all comments were generalized before being shared with any member of the AEDO faculty, in order to reduce the potential for faculty to identify the participants from their comments.

Contexts of privilege

We recognize that the context for this study is the intersection of two historically privileged contexts: music performance studies and overseas experiential learning (see, for example, Breen, 2012). Attending participants paid personal airfare to travel to Lucca from North America and elsewhere in Europe. They also paid room and board costs, as well as a tuition fee to attend. Those actively enrolled in undergraduate and graduate programs were able to receive course credit for the experience, though not all chose to do so. Several participants also received scholarships or financial aid to attend the program from universities or outside organizations. Critically examining and problematizing the potential barriers of access to these programs is outside the scope of this article, as our focus was on the impact of reflective learning in this particular space. We do, however, acknowledge the limitations of this context and the potential impact on our findings and implications, and we look to engage in future research that further examines these concerns.

Findings

Three main themes related to the impact of the broker emerged through the coding of the interviews, reflection sessions, and observations. These themes included (1) recognizing a continuum of experience, (2) addressing personal and professional challenges, and (3) future pathways. In what follows, we explore each of these themes independently as well as the intersections between them.

Recognizing a continuum of experience

In interviews and reflection sessions, participants often discussed their observations of how faculty interacted with them in rehearsals and lessons. In particular, perceptions of seemingly inequitable attention and feedback often arose as a point of contention among participants. During week three, Rebecca made the following comment about attention from artistic staff in a small group session with the broker:

Some people are getting more attention than others…Because like…level of preparedness. I also feel sometimes like I’m not really getting that much because they’re like ‘Oh, we’re more worried about this person’…And I’m like, ‘But I still want to grow too’ right?

Here Rebecca noted that students who seemed less prepared appeared to be receiving more feedback (and perhaps attention) than others. Equating direct feedback with growth, Rebecca expressed frustration that a lack of such interaction could potentially stunt her advancement during this program.

Having observed rehearsals and engaged with artistic faculty, the broker viewed such interactions as purposeful pedagogical differentiation. For students who were new to an experience such as AEDO, the faculty were observed providing direct, actionable feedback that offered specific support that could be immediately implemented in this context. For more advanced, graduate or pre-professional students like Rebecca, the faculty offered more general and open feedback, seeking to encourage participants to take ownership of their own self-evaluation skills and artistic decision-making as they moved into the professional world. While we believe that, pedagogically speaking, all students should be encouraged to cultivate their own personal and professional agency, this appeared to be an example of the faculty scaffolding the process of helping students move toward professional artistic practice. The shortened time frame and goal of a polished artistic performance often meant that faculty engaged in such processes without making their pedagogical reasoning explicitly known to the participants.

Using this small group as an opportunity to reflect with Rebecca, the broker asked:

Broker: Yeah, I get that. I wonder…do you ever feel like professionals get to a level where no one is giving them objective feedback and they have to figure it out on their own?

Rebecca: Well, that’s interesting…Like the next step is actually just you…You have to figure it out.

The more Rebecca thought through this idea, the more she appeared to reflect on her own relationship with feedback as a performer. At the end of the AEDO experience, Rebecca noted,

When we talked about how a program like this compares to the next step of being in a professional setting…it really kind of changed the way I was looking at the program to be honest…it really just changed my perspective and just kind of like, I don’t know, it re-invigorated me in a way, like I need to take responsibility for things and this is my journey and I can’t always rely on other people to send me in the right way or whatever…I think it helped me to take some responsibility and power back. And less – I don’t know – whining. So that was a really important moment.

The broker’s role here was not to refute Rebecca’s concern, but to listen to and help her reframe her ideas through guided reflection. As Rebecca considered the broader purposes of AEDO, she recognized that this opportunity would be different for all participants and that each needed different types of support depending upon their previous experiences and future goals. She then articulated a decision to agentically take hold of her own experience; to make this opportunity a space of growth for herself as she prepared for the professional world. AEDO, like many similar programs, serves, in part, as a bridge between the educative space of post-secondary schooling and the reality of professional artistic life. Here, the broker’s role was to help participants like Rebecca bridge that gap and encourage them to reflect on possible ways to view this experience as a part of their larger professional journey. Further, this active reflection helped make the learning process both visible and explicit, creating an opportunity for Rebecca to use the feedback as a way of fostering her own personal and musical agency. Finally, Rebecca’s recognition of taking responsibility also indicates a shift toward being able to seek out feedback from others as required and needed, rather than assuming or waiting for feedback to be offered. This shift suggests one way that Rebecca’s experience at AEDO helped her move from student to professional.

Rebecca’s experience was not unique, and all participants noted that conversations with the broker helped them ‘make the transition into the real world’ and ‘think about their job as a performer differently.’ Further, three participants also stated that they utilized these spaces as an opportunity to question and analyze their abilities to work independently, noting that they ‘recognized how much they rely on their teachers to tell them what to do.’ Importantly, these conversations did not only occur following the 5-week summer program, but frequently throughout the program, thus impacting how students enacted agency in rehearsals and interactions in the present.

In the unique context of a summer program, there is likely to be considerable variance in age, experience, skill level, and artistic maturity. This differs from most students’ experiences in university programs where classmates are often at similar levels and relatively close in age. Whereas in a university context, comments given to a class might apply to a large percentage of the population due to proximity in age and experience, pre-professional and professional settings often involve individuals that span a range of ages and levels of experience. Therefore, in a community of practice such as AEDO, a broker may be able to help students recognize, think through, and respond to these variances in ways that encourage them to reflect upon and cultivate their own individual personal artistic growth and agency within this setting.

Addressing personal and professional challenges

Challenges and insecurities were common topics in reflection sessions and interviews. The embodied and personal nature of music performance, when paired with issues of self-doubt, often led to an articulated fear of taking risks in rehearsals and coachings. Further, for many participants, a desire to appear both perfect and professional in the highly competitive field of music performance led to an avoidance in sharing such insecurities with both faculty and colleagues:

Jessie: People don’t talk about their challenges as much in music school or with faculty…it seems like it’s something you’d have to hide because it makes you seem weaker and unable to meet the demands of the work. [Interview, Week 3]

The broker was able to fill a unique void here, serving as a relatively impartial third party who was potentially able to invite forward conversations about challenges in group reflection sessions, such as this example in week three:

Broker: Why do we silo ourselves sometimes? I heard you say that it might say something different if someone ‘seems’ to be studying all the time or not studying…

Richie: You’re usually trying to avoid something.

Peter: It’s fear.

Jennifer: It’s also the overestimating and underestimating of things. So, when people feel like they ‘know’ an [operatic] role, they’re actually overestimating how much they actually know it.

Richie: I think also, though, the people who [study less] are afraid to face the reality of not knowing their music and the people who avoid going out are afraid to put themselves out there with the rest of the cast.

Michael: We’re afraid to admit which one we are to the group, nor do we talk about how we’re all coping with these [challenges] and learning from them.

Through a variety of reflective activities such as photo journaling and one-on-one conversations, participants began to engage in self-reflection about their own vulnerabilities, as well as how their insecurities impacted their ability to engage openly in this community of musical practice. Furthermore, as they progressed to share their own challenges with the community through improvisatory acting and peer interviewing, they began to recognize (and were often surprised by) the ways in which their own insecurities often mirrored those of their colleagues:

Peter: I think the sharing is really helpful for me because, again, we sometimes think that our problems are just ours, but here we flesh them out and communicate with one another, and I think it brings us closer and makes us realize that we are having these issues.

Marie: Having someone lead these sessions who was [separate from the faculty] made me think about things that maybe I would have ignored. [Interviews, Week 5]

It appears that the broker’s peripheral position as someone familiar with the musical culture but separated from the faculty helped participants reflect more openly on challenges such as perfectionism, lack of confidence and prior experience, musical and dramatic preparation, and comparison with colleagues. When these issues remain hidden, self-doubt can increase and ability to concentrate on the task can decrease. Through reflection with the broker, however, challenges and personal insecurities could be explored and fleshed out both independently and with others. These findings may suggest that not only is it important that reflection sessions be facilitated, but that they be led by someone who does not hold a high position of power in this context in order to promote open and fluid communication.

Future pathways

Both in reflection sessions and interviews, participants spoke openly and directly about the impact this particular experience might have on their career pathways. While they often articulated a clear picture of their future performance plans, that picture sometimes changed as they progressed through the program. Some participants used their engagements with the broker as an opportunity to think fluidly through multiple possible career futures. For example, Ryan, a student who had recently completed an undergraduate degree in performance used this experience to explore non-performance-based opportunities. In an interview during week five, he noted:

[This summer] I debated on whether or not…opera was the right place for me … I

was definitely considering whether or not going back to school was the right idea. Do I need to take a break from music?

Ryan frequently spoke about these internal conflicts with the broker. He often noted that it was the broker’s unique position as both insider and outsider that encouraged him to talk through these ideas with her. As a practicing music educator familiar with the unique challenges and opportunities offered by the performing arts, the broker was able to both understand Ryan’s concerns and help him think through artistic career pathways that extended beyond opera performance. As an outsider, she held no position of power in terms of decision-making in this context. As such, he expressed comfort in confiding in her as he reconsidered whether his career choice matched his ‘role’ at AEDO without fear of it impacting his relationship with the artistic faculty.

Following AEDO, Ryan participated in a follow-up interview with the research team. He was thriving in an artist diploma program and exploring a variety of paths alongside performing, including choral conducting and arts administration. In the interview, he shared that his small group and one-on-one sessions with the broker at AEDO had encouraged him to reach out to administrators and leaders at his university, building networks and engaging with people from multiple pathways that helped him diversify his ideas about the future and expand his conception of his own identity as a performing artist. Though exploring multiple career pathways was not an explicit purpose of the program, Ryan’s actions demonstrate the ways in which his experiences with guided reflection at AEDO helped him broaden his understandings and expectations for a career in the arts.

Some participants attending AEDO had completed their schooling several years prior to this summer program. While it was not our intention to privilege or prioritize careers in music performance specifically, several participants utilized the reflection sessions as opportunities to problematize their past experiences. In particular, individuals often noted a lack of guided reflection in their undergraduate and graduate music programs. Jessie, for example, noted the following:

All this [guided reflection] should be…just as important as practicing. Like, I got to a point [in graduate school] where I couldn’t mentally keep going. I couldn’t sit in a practice room and listen to the people practicing around me and then think straight and practice…I was spending 12 hours in the practice room for one hour of work…If I had gotten my head around this stuff, I likely would’ve kept going. [Interview, week 3]

As Jessie engaged in group and independent reflections led by the broker, she often looked back on her reasons for leaving music behind after completing her master’s degree. She noted that reflection, while encouraged, was often unguided, untaught, and rarely modelled. As such, she articulated that she often felt lost and unable to fully engage in her own reflective practice. She seems to suggest that opportunities to cultivate her own reflective practice may have led to a greater variety of possible career pathways, rather than a foreclosing of possibilities. Here, her interactions with the broker appear to have helped her think through and reframe these experiences, potentially leading her to feel greater agency not only within this particular space, but also in future musical and professional endeavors.

Participants developed varied levels of fluid and reflective approaches to future career choices. Michael, for example, who was completing his undergraduate degree, noted:

Some people aren't cut out for [performance] and they shouldn't be doing this…programs like this are aimed to basically make or break a student…you're either gonna be cut out for it or you're not. And by the end of the program, ideally you should know whether or not music is for you. [Interview, Week 5]

We do not intend to imply that Michael did not engage in reflection throughout the program. On the contrary, he often was a vocal participant in reflection sessions, and he frequently sought out the broker to help him think through ideas related to his own personal musical identity. Rather, this example suggests that not every participant came to see career pathways in music as multiple or fluid. In these cases, perceived failure in their experience at AEDO was translated as perceived failure as a performing musician in the future. Furthermore, it might be interesting to compare Michael’s experience with Jessie’s earlier comment about her own struggles during her Master’s degree. Whereas her time at AEDO helped Jessie re-shape her thinking about musical experiences as being more complex and multifaceted, Michael has not quite reached the same conclusions. For him, agency in regard to one’s professional trajectory was not seen as an interplay between resources, structures, and individual effort that could change in different contexts over time but as fully dependent on this particular context.

Discussion, limitations, and implications

We made a deliberate choice to embed a broker into the summer opera studies program at AEDO, and we remain interested in the ways in which the inclusion of such a role impacted participants’ reflective practice and agency within and beyond this context. In particular, we explored: What was the role of the broker in helping participants engage in reflective practices? And how did such engagements impact participants’ personal and musical agency in this context? The findings above suggest that the broker played a key role in helping open vibrant spaces for reflection and dialogue with participants. This led to opportunities for participants to explore personal and professional challenges, acknowledge and engage with diverse experiences, and consider multiple possible future career pathways.

The background and positioning of the broker arose as being of particular importance in this study. The broker offers an important peripheral perspective, bringing experience in both artistic and reflective practice to the experiential learning context while also maintaining distance from the perceived authority of the performance faculty. This peripheral distance seems to be especially critical in an artistic setting where participants like Jessie and Marie note that performers may be hesitant to acknowledge, explore, or discuss vulnerability with conductors and directors. For several participants, space to engage with someone who does not “hold power” (Ryan) over the artistic decision-making in this setting and who recognized a need to help cultivate a space where the primary purpose was to honor and think through student experiences, helped them cultivate a relationship with the broker in which they felt more confident sharing their own artistic insecurities. A broker, then, may help address concerns raised by Finlay (2008) and Kushner (2006) that reflection can be superficial and guarded when there is a clear and significant power difference in a relationship. This does not imply that faculty members who work with performers cannot also help to create such spaces. Indeed, many music performance faculty do strive to build relationships of mutual respect, trust, and openness with students. Rather, our point here is that a space of musical intensity, such as in this study, may benefit from having an additional or outside person who is uniquely committed to helping participants take a step back from their musical interactions in order to engage with their own vulnerabilities, insecurities, and personal experiences through reflection both independently and communally. This is of particular importance in programs that prioritize the learning practices and processes of students, rather than a sole focus on the creation of a final performance.

Having a broker who is not only familiar with reflective practice, but also with artistic engagement appears to be key as well. This aligns with Wenger’s (1998) argument that a broker must hold enough “legitimacy” in a context to engage with participants in the “shared repertoire” of this particular community of practice. In a setting such as AEDO, conversations with participants like Ryan necessitated an understanding of the larger world of arts employment. Engagement with participants like Rebecca required an ability to discern the pedagogical practices of the conductor and directors, as well as enough background to be able to engage in dialogue with the artistic faculty in order to further strengthen the teaching and learning occurring in this context. This follows Guillaumier’s (2016) assertion that reflective practice in the performing arts is complex, as reflection must be embedded within, occur alongside, and in response to artistic practice. The unique background of a broker may place that individual in a position to help navigate these complexities.

Findings also suggest that the broker helped bring the practice of reflection to the forefront of this experiential learning program, deliberately creating spaces for conscious thinking and discussion to occur. Scheduling regular and ongoing opportunities for participants to engage in reflection enabled the broker to both model and facilitate reflective practice in a manner that helped make the active process of learning both explicit and visible. This potentially encouraged participants to recognize not only the outcome of reflection, but the importance of engaging in the process itself. Reflection, then, was not seen as a task to complete at the end of an experience, but as an integral part of the process of coming to know and understand that was interwoven in and with musical and relational engagements. This is a skill that will likely be valuable regardless of how participants continue to engage in the performing arts (Carey et al., 2017; Esslin-Peard et al., 2016; Georgii-Hemming et al., 2020).

Data also suggest that several participants utilized reflection as an opportunity to empower themselves to act both musically (e.g., Rebecca) and professionally (e.g., Ryan) within and beyond these contexts. In these cases, the broker’s role might be conceived of not only as an intermediary between parties (He, 2008; Martensson et al., 2019; Ng et al., 2004), but also as an active pedagogical player who is interested in cultivating relationships with the participants wherein her role is to help them think through and more deeply engage in and with their learning. In contexts like AEDO, this may help participants make the transition from student to professional practitioner (Bennett et al., 2017; Reid et al., 2011).

This examination of the possibilities of the role of a broker in experiential performing arts settings also has limitations. When this study was designed, allowances were made to incorporate an individual who had experience in both artistic and reflective practice to act as the broker. When the support of a research study is removed, experiential learning programs will likely have to find creative routes to engage a broker who has artistic experience but is also somewhat removed from the context. Within the environ of post-secondary institutions, we wonder if there might be opportunities for the role of the broker to be facilitated by a teaching assistant or upper-level music student who holds necessary knowledge and legitimacy in the performing arts but is removed from the process of assessment. Engaging another student as the broker might help mitigate the power dynamics that can occur between student/participant and the perceived authority figure, as well as provide a fertile space for pedagogical learning for the teaching assistant or student broker. In experiential learning contexts that may be less directly connected to such educational spaces, a broker may become even more important, helping students to engage in purposeful reflection and assisting them as they draw connections across multiple contexts. Finally, we wonder if the engagement of a broker may serve as a first step toward larger scale pedagogical and curricular shifts, an added support that brings an outside perspective to help develop cultures of practice that prioritize deliberate, guided, embedded, ongoing reflection as a foundational element of experiential educational opportunities in the performing arts. We suggest these inquiries as areas for future research.

Finally, we find it important to highlight that the collaboration between music education and music performance was crucial in this study. While these disciplines are intimately related, finding ways to negotiate brokering may be an opportunity for future collaborative work between performers and educators. As music educators and music performers look to increase the ways in which experiential learning opportunities can help foster spaces of meaningful engagement, broker-led reflective practice may be one avenue to help participants develop a sense of agency over their own musical decisions, find connections with colleagues, and explore multiple possible futures.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article:This study was funded in part by the Western University Teaching Fellows Program.

ORCID iD

Kelly Bylica

Author biographies

Kelly Bylica serves as Assistant Professor of Music Education at Boston University. Her research focuses on critical pedagogical practices that encourage music educators and students to challenge assumptions and cultivate critically artistic dispositions. More broadly, her interests are in curriculum development, policy practice, and music teacher education.

Sophie Louise Roland serves as Associate Professor and Chair of Music Performance Studies at Western University in Ontario, Canada where she was appointed Teaching Fellow, a position that supports excellence and innovation in teaching. Recipient of numerous research grants, she maintains a diverse research portfolio and active operatic performing career.

Laura Benjamins is a Ph.D. Candidate in music education at Western University, Canada. Her research focuses on perceptions of inclusion, participation, and relationality in community music contexts. Laura’s research interests also include experiential learning and reflective practices within music education.

Notes

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