ABSTRACT
Elliott argues that the ability to talk and write about music is of secondary importance to ‘knowing-in-action' in music education. The music classroom is a place where educational as well as musical aims and values are at play, key amongst them the aim of providing access for students to the world of ‘powerful knowledge'; the realms of abstract thinking. One of the most intriguing areas in which musical knowing-in-action is manifested is the act of jazz improvisation, where the best improvisers appear to be able to produce original musical ideas out of thin air. Richardson notes that ‘the publicly visible discourse of jazz tends to originate in the field of practice and expresses the logics and priorities of that field, not pedagogy'.
