It'd be an honour...

As I mentioned in my last blog posting, epic as it was, I am applying for Honours in Music Education commencing next year. Basically what this involves, I am just now discovering, is that I need to put the rest of my life on hold.

Honours in Music, as part of a Bachelor of Music at the Con, involves studying your regular BMus subjects as well as conducting Honours simultaneously. For the Bachelor of Music (Music Education) Honours course, this commences in the third year of the degree and runs over Semesters 5, 6 and 7. To spare you all the boring and very confusing details... what this translates to is that I am going to have to sign a contract promising to discontinue my work with one of the two societies I am in and considerably lessen the input I have to the one I choose to continue with. As you'll see when you read my proposal below, the choice is a rather obvious one. Technically what this means will happen I am at this stage unsure, but it seems I will only be allowed to be a part of one production over the whole of my Honours study, and that I will need to be involved in it in a way that is beneficial to the research I will be conducting. Tricky stuff...

So, much as it pains me, I really do want to do Honours, and it seems I will have to make some very large sacrifices for this to happen.

Nonetheless... the point of this particular blog posting is to provide you all with a copy of the 'this is where you write a rough idea of what you think you'd like to research' part of my Honours application. I'm going to put it below this post.

Please let me know if it makes sense, if you think it's a good idea or not, any ideas you have for other avenues of research or ideas you might have in general. Any feedback at all would be so very much appreciated and you might just get a mention in the acknowledgements section of an internationally published thesis!

If you have trouble posting feedback please email it to me at patt.howard@gmail.com. I plan to submit my application this Wednesday, 18th November, so don't hesitate to jump in. Thanks guys! It'd be an honour to have your input on something I am so excited about and value so much (I am disgusted with myself for making such an obvious and terrible joke).

Part of My Application:

Outline of Initial Ideas for a Research Topic

The ideas I have for a research topic revolve around the place of musical theatre within secondary schools – in music education, the culture of the school / learning environment and the lives of students.

Below I have provided a list of raw ideas that I have considered to be relevant to my own interests which could be researched as part of this general idea of ‘musical theatre within the secondary school’.

• The role of the student within a school production; a comparative study could be conducted between schools which only allow students to play in the orchestra or perform on stage and those who also allow students to take on production roles such as choreographer, director, etc. Furthermore, seeing how these opportunities benefit both students and a production.
• The marriage of the three performing arts subject areas; are school productions the only time that music, dance and drama should intertwine... could there possibly be benefits from using techniques and material from dance and drama in a music classroom, perhaps in context of a school production the students are involved in at the time?
• How are the ‘Theatre Music’ areas of study in both the Stage 4 and 5 NSW Board of Studies Music Syllabi taught? To what extent does the practical experience of being in a school production assist learning in this subject area, and to what extent is this experience utilised by teachers in the classroom?
• The personal and individual benefits of being in a school production for secondary school music students – musical, social and otherwise. This can be looked at with reference to the ‘Life Skills’ elements of the Syllabi.
• The school production as an extra-curricular school activity...
  - the inability of teachers to provide the experience to students without their electing to partake in the production or to use the production as a compulsory educational initiative,
  - the workload a production entails for teachers and students out of school hours and
  - the availability of funding for productions (which tend to be expensive) and how this affects the experience that can be provided for students. This can be looked at in relation to the value placed on performing arts / school production by a school.

I have a great deal of personal interest in musical theatre and a great deal of experience in both school productions I was involved in during my time in primary and secondary school and in my role in the Sydney University Musical Theatre Ensemble (MUSE) – both on the executive of the society and as a performer and part of the production personnel within its productions. These experiences have lead to my having an increased amount of contacts within the relevant field of study for this research topic, both in Sydney and in regional areas of NSW, as well as an ever-growing passion for musical theatre within an educational context.

I plan to study MUSC2674 – ‘History of the Musical’ and GENS2002 – ‘Practical Stagecraft’ during the course of the third year of my degree and believe these subjects will benefit my research into this subject matter.