ABSTRACT

This chapter discusses several factors in the process of engaging second year university music performance students in practice-led reflective essay writing. Students were asked to enhance this reflection through videoing or recording their performing. The chapter outlines the topics designed to capture reflective essay writing, what equipment students find most conducive to video their performing, and levels of reflection drawn into the students’ observations and writing. The performative research paradigm includes research about arts practice, research drawn from and/or informed by one’s own arts practice, and arts practice itself. Pivotal to practice-led research, and use of portable computing devices to record one’s performing, is the ability to reflect on one’s work. The essay topics outlined below were offered to students over several years of delivering the subject. Each set up a different practice-led paradigm for undergraduate music performance, each sought to encourage reflective and reflexive thinking, and required the video recording of an aspect of students’ performing for this reflection.