What the students bring: examining the attributes of commencing conservatoire students

As the range of experiences offered by conservatoires expands to serve an increasingly diverse student cohort, it is no longer reasonable to assume that all students will fit neatly into the traditional expectations of institutions. In the 3P model of learning, the prior learning of students is one of the presage factors that interact with process factors to create products of the system; all three sets of factors should be considered when exploring a learning system. This study explores students ’ preconservatoire music-learning experiences and attitudes in one bachelor of (western classical) music program in the UK and a similar program in Australia, where a popular music cohort was also studied. Results indicate that prior learning experiences and expectations differ among all three cohorts, raising pertinent questions about the need to reject a ‘one-model-fits-all ’ approach to curriculum development. Working from the data, potential lessons from the popular music context are proposed for consideration in the processes of the classical context. Key words classical musicians, comparative, conservatorium, popular musicians, prior learning, student expectation