The impact of formal and informal learning on students' compositional processes

AbstractThis is an empirical study using a qualitativeapproach. It examines how students use formal andinformal strategies, styles and situations whilstimprovising and performing for the research task.18 research groups made of 40 males and 9 femalesparticipated in improvising in their choice ofpopular styles of music. An average of fourparticipants to each group ranging in ages from12-13 yrs, 13-14 yrs, 14-15 yrs and 15- 16 yrs oldparticipated in the task. These participants werechosen from three different settings; Public HighSchool, a private Anglican School and a CatholicSystemic School so as to avoid bias in the data.The task was an unstructured one. The participantschose to use any of the following: audio technology,instruments, singing, or use “Garage –Band” the compositional software. The data werecollected from pre-questionnaires, midi files, aswell as semi- structured interviewing which wasthen sorted, coded and collated throughtriangulation processes. The results indicate thatstudents regardless of their learning styles orsituations, whether they are formal or informallearners have the capabilities to use the samelistening processes as well as musical strategiesas each other whilst improvising