Plans and Methods

Based on the historical account provided in the literature review about the emergence of the Professional Music Schools (PrMS), and the creation of the Office for Technological, Artistic and Professional Education (GETAP), the research team decided to contact the key figure of this process, Professor Joaquim Azevedo, the mentor and righteously considered the ‘father’ of the whole Professional Education and Learning System (PELS). He was given that task in 1987 and interviewing him seemed the most appropriate step to be able to design the project in terms of its key research questions.

The meeting took place in December 2019 in his office at the Portuguese Catholic University in Porto, and the interview was conducted by the PIs along with another member of the research team. Taking into account the universe of the PrES, the interview was focused fundamentally on four main aspects: the background of the creation of the PrMS, the main organisational and pedagogical characteristics of the PrMS, the influence and consequences of the PrMS on the other educational music system, and the importance of the PrMS for the development of the performing arts and of the local social environment.

Subsequently, the following key points were extracted from the interview:

The urgent need to expand artistic and technological education in Portugal, taking advantage of the creation of GETAP in 1988 (Decree-Law nº397 of 8 of November of 1988), and the framework provided by the law.
This was achieved through funding from the Portuguese government and the EU for the foundation of the Professional Artistic Music Schools in performing arts.
The opportunity to design an integrated curriculum in performing arts education, and specifically in music, different from the whole previous experience in the Portuguese Educational System with the centenary music conservatoires.
The emergence of an institutional Ethos, with the whole curriculum being taught in the same physical space, in small schools, placing the instruments and the orchestra in the centre of all the work, leading to a rich professional artistic environment.
Professional music education and learning as a life project.
The implementation of the PrMS as a social project – breaking the vicious circle where only the elite had access to the public music conservatories or to the network of private and cooperative music schools.
The decentralisation of the PrMS from the main cities, including most unlikely places in the interior.

In sum, the idea of transposing the old craftmanship atelier to the teaching and learning of a musical instrument in a completely controlled artistic environment.

Against this backdrop, the following research questions were identified which are grouped under two major lines of inquiry:

Mapping the History – What kind of development trajectory is possible to observe in thirty years of existence of this network of Schools/Artistic Professional Music Courses (the number of schools that opened and closed, what type of schools provide the different courses, where are they geographically deployed, institutional history, curricular organisation, teacher academic and professional profile student’s frequency, number of students who continued their studies in higher education)?

What kind of development trajectory is possible to observe when we look at a public Music Conservatoire during this same period (institutional history, curricular organisation, teacher academic and professional profile, student’s frequency, number of students who continued their studies in higher education)?

Mapping the Outcomes – A. What are the evidences that tell us that the PrMS were able to bring about a significant change in the Portuguese musical panorama (emergence of individual musicians, orchestra musicians, chamber music ensembles, schools, teachers, local audiences and social and cultural changes)? B. What distinguishes the training of instrumentalist musicians carried out in the traditional public Music Conservatories or in the network of private and cooperative music schools, and the training in PrMS (the pedagogical characteristics of the organisation, the curriculum and the pedagogical methodology or the social involvement)? C. How is the relationship between the PrMS, as secondary schools, and music in Higher Education, and between themselves and the professional music world (politics, school directors, teachers, and old students)? D. How far did the PrMS social model reach social classes until then systematically absent from access to artistic/musical education? E. What is the opinion of the different stakeholders (politics, school directors, teachers, and old students) about the PrMS after thirty years of existence? F. What are the relevant changes, in terms of educational and social principles and assumptions, between the beginning of Professional School of Music, which started with Decree-Law nº26 of 1989, and the present professional schools, regulated by Decree-Law nº92 of 2014, which impart professional courses of artistic music, under the Ordinance nº 235/A of 2018?

With the systematic and comparative approach to these questions it is expected to be able to answer the main subject, which results from the statement contained in the title of this project: The Professional Artistic Music Schools, created in 1989, were the foremost turning point in the Portuguese musical panorama. Without them this wouldn’t be the same.

In order to meet the complexity of the above stated research questions, the present research proposal will be developed within a mixed-methods approach (Cresswell & Plano Clark, 2007) and is methodologically set up as a multi-case study involving the three schools listed in the literature review and the main public music conservatoire of the region (Stake, 2010).

We acknowledge that, by its very nature, data in this project may inform theory much in the sense of a grounded theory approach. This may be particularly important for the initial exploration of either quantitative or qualitative data, bearing in mind that grounded theory is understood in this investigation as a research strategy that emphasises the processual and interactive nature of the investigation, by opposition to a mere inductive process of data coding (Atkinson & Delamont, 2008). In other words, it is recognised as a mean to capture “the need for systematic interactions between data and ideas as well as the emergent properties of research design and data analysis, which are in constant dialogue” (Atkinson & Delamont, 2008). The use of multiple methods, or triangulation, goes in hand with listening to multiple voices, different perspectives, and different visions of the same reality. Interpretation and meaning will be at the centre of this investigation, assuming that our interviewees may have radically different ways of interpreting the creation and subsequent development of the PMS, in view of their relationship with its implementation both in time and in place. In this sense, subjectivity will not be purely suppressed but assumed and negotiated (Denzin & Lincoln, 2008).

The following methods for data collection will be used: a) Extensive analysis of documents produced on the creation and development of the PrMS, including the identification of all stakeholders, and funding sources of any kind; b) Extensive analysis of documents produced for the PuMS from 1983 to the present; c) devise of an extensive questionnaire survey for the agents involved in the PrMS and PuMS; d) devise of semi-structured interviews with the mentors and initiators of the first PrMS, former and present teachers, students; e) devise of semi-structured interviews with former and present directors, teachers and students of the PuMS; and f) devise of semi-structured interviews with relevant personalities of the politic and educational milieu.

The implementation of all these methods for data collection must observe the constrains of the academic calendar.

The first part of this investigation, related with research question 1 (Mapping the history), will extensively map the implementation of the first PrMS and of the PuMC, in terms of the above listed methods a), b), and c). According to the results of the first phase, it will proceed to identify main actors in the creation and development of those schools and design the semi-structured interviews, methods d), e), and f).

Regarding former and present students of the PrMS and PuMC, this project is anticipating the construction of thirty sociological portraits, a methodology devised by the French sociologist Bernard Lahire (2002, 2003, 2010). The sociological portraits allow us to get closer to the participants’ life stories or, at least, to key moments in their trajectories, while considering their socialisation inside any given musical project and the internalisation of dispositions and skills potentially useful to other dimensions of their lives. Globally, the sociological portraits suggest – and often clearly show – real consequences in the objective trajectories and subjectivities of the participants as a result of participating in musical projects.

In the process of constructing the semi-structured interviews, the following issues will be taken into account:

Assumptions in view of the Organisational Model (PrMS and PuMC)
Assumptions in view of the Pedagogical Model (PrMS and PuMC)
Assumptions in view of the Sociocultural Model (PrMS and PuMC)

The Research team members will be assigned to the above listed methods according to their particular areas of expertise. This will be accomplished in its different moments following an extensive process of literature reviewing. From the very beginning of the investigation a strict code of ethics will be elaborated as to assist all procedures involving the participants of this project.