The student as research collaborator: advocacy and sustainability for professional musicians

This paper investigates the student and academic collaborative research environment through the views of students at upper secondary school, higher education undergraduate, postgraduate levels, an alumnus, plus the academic, when undertaking research on topics of interest to all collaborators. The literature offers many positive outcomes ranging from advocacy for the collaborative student/academic research relationship, specific aspects of the research process itself, and sustainable effects on future work and practice which have a resonance with collaborative professionalism. Each research project underlying this paper had a different social agenda within the discipline of music, however, the aim here was to explore what each researcher gained from the research experience. The study adopted what we called a practice-led case study approach with all researchers/authors responding to questions about what was learnt/hoped to be learnt from the process and experience of collaborative research. Across the range of researcher responses was an understanding that research skill knowledge deepens with years of education and employment. There was a move from interest in the self, one's own artistic practice and one's own research process, to wider thinking about research skills in future work. Researchers wrote of their short term and long-term thinking about using research skills, indicating they were growing into a research identity. This was also about sustainability in relation to chosen career goals for professional musicians plus the transferability of some of the research skills into senior undergraduate work, into future performance teaching and assessment, secondary school level teaching pedagogy, academic research and one's own arts practice. The academic had a nurturing role, plus learning, enjoyment and refreshed research thinking. This can be an innovative learning and teaching practice for all with potential for advocacy of the professional development of student musicians across a range of levels with connections to lifelong learning and careers.