Reframing the Composition Teaching Process as Mentorship

Is there a difference between teaching and mentoring? Varying definitions are available for these terms. The focus for this chapter is to understand the role of the teacher as composition mentor—one who provides opportunity for exploration, supports growth, offers guidance, and serves as a role model for music composition students in the classroom. This is a different path for instruction than a path providing didactic instruction or a pedagogy with a narrow focus on specific strategies. Examples of effective composition mentorship can be found in all levels of education. Mentorship can be also be recognized through other terms in the literature such as facilitation, scaffolding, and experiential and constructive learning in music composition, to mention just a few. All of these areas are worth exploring to help support this vision of collaborative mentorship as a pathway for developing musicianship in our students.

Composition Mentorship in Collegiate Settings.Shulamit Ran (2012), Pulitzer Prize-winning composer, penned an essay reflecting upon her personal development as a composer and shared beliefs about teaching composition. Ran’s personal definition of a good composition teacher?

An ideal composition teacher, at any level, is (1) able to help the student listen, critically, and in a deep way, to his/her own music, and (2) considers it a priority to develop and refine the kind of technical tools that will help the student implement his/ her personal artistic vision. (p. 307)

While Ran is speaking about teaching composition on a professional level, this definition can be easily adapted for teachers in K-12 settings. If our role as composition mentors includes enabling our students to listen to their own musical ideas deeply and critically, and encourages our students to develop musical “tools” that will expand their musical and artistic vision, then I think we are on the right track. Listening critically is the first step for students to begin revision and extension of their musical ideas. Developing musical tools is indicative of gaining knowledge that will improve compositional ability. This knowledge may also transfer directly to areas of musicianship beyond the composition classroom.

Margaret Barrett (2006) conducted an “eminence study of teaching and learning in music composition” (p. 195), by studying composer-teacher interactions between an established and well-respected (eminent) university composition professor and two collegiate level composition students. After reviewing videorecorded lessons and completing interviews with both the composition teacher and students, Barrett identified 12 composition teaching strategies that were observed in the data.

The eminent composer-teacher in this study:
- Extended thinking, provided possibilities
- Referenced work to and beyond the tradition (signposting)
- Set parameters for identity as a composer
- Provoked the student to describe and explain
- Questioned purpose, probed intention

- Shifted back and forth between micro and macro levels (p. 201)
- Provided multiple alternatives from analysis of student work
- Prompted the student to engage in self-analysis
- Encouraged goal setting and task identification
- Engaged in joint problem-finding and problem-solving
- Provided reassurance
- Gave license to change. (p. 202)

Barrett felt that studying the composition teaching process from an eminence perspective provided valuable information for music educators planning effective music composition instruction in K-i 2 school settings. These twelve strategies may help teachers to better understand the musical “tools” necessary for successful composition instruction mentioned by Ran (2012). Barret’s strategies help us to define the collaborative nature of composition experienced by students and their teachers who participate meaningfully in the process. Most if not all of the 12 strategies used by the composer to guide the university level composition students are easily transferred to music composition experiences in any K-12 music education context.

However, it is important to highlight some phrases in particular: setting parameters (giving guidance and setting accomplishable limits), engaging in joint problem-solving (working together to discover musical ideas), extending thinking (encouraging students to go beyond their initial ideas), providing possibilities and alternatives (sharing musical suggestions and choices to guide student progress), giving license to change (it is always possible to change an idea), and providing reassurance. These key areas are necessary in creating a climate of mentorship in K-12 composition classrooms.

In 2006, Barrett suggested that teaching and learning compositional skills is really a form of “creative collaboration” between teacher and student, finding that the “emergent view of the teaching and learning process in music composition is one of a dyad working towards shared goals in a process characterized by collaboration, joint effort, and social support” (p. 195). This view lends support to the idea that we may not need to think of teaching composition through the traditionally structured teacher-student relationship, but instead see it as a joint problem-solving process between teacher and student. We should redefine the role of composition teacher as composition mentor, working in collaboration with the young composers in our classrooms.