ESTA MA Music – Percussion
About the course
The instrumental teaching profession demands constant reflection and improvement from its practitioners. This course will help you to validate your personal development and formalise your academic qualification to teach.
Our programme of study is designed to enable you as an instrumental or vocal teacher to progress from the stage you are in your career and to take a fresh look at the way you approach your teaching.
Your studies will be online, engaging with tasks including webinars, meetings with your mentor, taking part in discussion groups, reading, making videos. You will reflect on and develop your teaching focusing on the context in which you work. This will help you to question things you may have taken for granted, explore work with and without notation and develop a holistic approach to your teaching.
You will be assigned a mentor who shares your specialism (e.g. brass, bowed strings, piano, voice, woodwind, percussion, plucked strings) and your mentor’s job is to guide you through the course, lead study sessions and feedback on your work and progress.
Being a student on this course is all about developing as a reflective practitioner, someone who is willing to stand back and look at their work and contemplate changing aspects if both you and your students will benefit. Your course leader will provide an overview of the whole course, lead study sessions, and also make assessments of all students’ work to ensure fairness.
To gain the maximum benefit for your investment in this programme of study you should plan your diary carefully to make sure you have all the deadlines for completion and submission of work highlighted – and then please take notice of them.
This programme is delivered by ESTA and validated by the University of Chichester.
Who is it for ?
Moving on from the ESTA PG Cert in Teaching, the ESTA MA (Percussion) Practical Teaching provides students with the opportunity to reflect more deeply and demonstrate the application of learned theory in their own personal teaching setting.
The instrumental teaching profession demands constant reflection and improvement from its practitioners. This course will help you to validate your personal development and formalise your academic qualification to teach.
Participants will:
Develop practical skills in teaching musical and technical material, fostering an engaging and student-appropriate approach to music learning and performance
Foster an investigative and inquisitive approach to teaching by developing skills in both research and reflection
Actively develop communication skills to enable effective teaching
Develop skills in curriculum planning that are highly relevant in the profession.
Who teaches the course
Head of Department – Percussion
ANDY GLEADHILL
Musician, Educator, Author, Composer, Ethnomusicologist and Teacher Trainer
A Musician, Educator, Author, Composer, Ethnomusicologist and Teacher Trainer. He has over thirty-five years’ experience as a professional Musician and Educationalist.
As a Drummer and Percussionist Andy has played with some of the leading Recording Artists and Orchestras in the world for Film, Television, and Recording Sessions as well as many West End Shows. As an Ethnomusicologist, Andy has travelled widely around the world especially in Africa, South America, South East Asia and India playing and learning about music of other cultures and regularly lectures on the Music of Diverse Cultures.
Andy Gleadhill is internationally acknowledged as a leading authority on teaching World Music. Andy has had many papers and articles published on World Music and Music Education topics and his books have been published on African Drumming, African Drumming Book Two, Indonesian Gamelan, Brazilian Samba, the Music of India, Caribbean Steel Pans, Composing with World Music, Classroom Percussion and Percussion Buddies. He wrote the chapter on Music for the recently published academic book “Popular Culture, Pedagogy and Teacher Education in Education” (Routledge 2014). Andy has worked at every level of music education from Early Years settings to Post Graduate teaching at Conservatoires and Universities around the world. For over ten years he has been, and remains, a visiting lecturer in Ethnomusicology at Bath Spa University where he teaches on the specialist secondary music PGCE course.
Andy was for many years the head of Bristol Arts and Music Service and the director of the Bristol Centre for Music and the Arts which he built into a leading music support service and where he pioneered the introduction of world music styles for class instrumental teaching, setting new standards in accessibility and inclusiveness. He went on to establish and become the first head of the Music Education Hub “Bristol Plays Music”. Andy has also served on the Music Hub Advisory Group for Arts Council England. He is a member of the Royal Society of Musicians and serves on the Executive Committee of the British Musicians’ Union. Andy has recently delivered workshops and lectures to the annual conferences of the Music Masters and Mistresses Association, the National Association of Music Educators, the Federation of Music Services, Music Mark, Music Learning Live, the Schools Music Association (ISM), the International conference on Innovation and Creativity in the Hands of the Young (Iceland), the International Conference on Arts and Humanities (Hawaii, USA), the Second International Conference on Popular Culture in Education (Hong Kong), the Schools Music Association (Incorporated Society of Musicians, U.K.), the Scottish Association of Music Educators (SAME) and Music Learning Live Asia (Singapore). Andy also works as a consultant to the Ministry of Education in Singapore, the Government of Malaysia and the Ministry of Defence Service Children’s Education (UK). He is active as a composer having had his music recorded and published as well as broadcast by the BBC. Andy has also worked as an examiner for the Guildhall school of Music and Drama and Trinity College London, has co-authored the Trinity/Guildhall Drum Kit examination syllabus and has been retained as a consultant to the ABRSM. He is currently a consultant to RSL Awards (Rockschool).
Andy now balances his work as a professional musician and Education consultant with delivering World Music Workshops, Training and Professional Development to Schools, Colleges, Universities and both music and generalist teachers around the world through his unique intensive training and bespoke mentoring schemes.
Course content by unit
Unit 1: Teaching percussion instrument technique to children and young people learning percussion instruments
Posture/Playing positions
Grip
Independence
Balance between hands
Encouraging the tone from percussion instruments
Mallet technique
Rudiments
Warm up exercises
Orchestral Percussion
Tuned Percussion
Timpani
Drum Kit
World Percussion
Studio technique
Working as a section member/Playing as part of an ensemble
Care and maintenance of instruments
Unit 2: How children and young people learn to play percussion instruments
How learners learn
Simultaneous Learning
Learning spiral
My learners now
Understanding, assimilating and consolidating.
Skills, knowledge and understanding
Learning music musically
Developing aural awareness/perception and acuity
Pupil/teacher relationships
Learning scales and studies
Starting a lesson
Unit 3: Teaching strategies for percussion teachers working with children and young people
Understanding my teaching now
Preparation for teaching
Expectation of teaching outcomes
Diagnosis of learners’ needs
Audio-Visual-Kinaesthetic learning
Aptitude for learning
Motivation for learning
Simultaneous learning
Assessment
Exams/Festivals/Competitions
Tutors/methods
Teaching whole classes/small groups/individuals
Proactive and reactive teaching
Unit 4: Developing a percussion teaching curriculum for children and young people
Understanding what is meant by a curriculum and a syllabus
Preparing and implementing schemes of work
Short/medium and long term planning
Personalising learning
Becoming a reflective practitioner
Communicating as a musician
Playing and performing
Chamber music
Special Needs
Schools of Brass playing
Unit 5: Teaching Individuals
This module covers a solid base of teaching and learning theory and introduces students to core concepts in psychology having to do with learners as individuals, self-belief, motivation, and thinking processes. The structure of a private music lesson and methods for engaging learners as creative individuals are presented. Students explore various traditional and innovative music teaching methods and consider how these can be adapted for a range of learners.
This module challenges students to focus on the differences present in individual pupils. Students consider their choice of repertoire and how that relates to their critical approach to teaching each individual student. Topics to be covered include:
Skills in written communication when articulating and planning teaching content
Collecting and organising musical materials to support targeted strategies for teaching different learners
Comparative analysis of learners’ progress over time
Scholarly presentation and referencing
Experience with private teaching in a variety of settings
Key Skills
Autonomous learning required for managing complex tasks
Psychological, imaginative, and intuitive understanding
Development and sustaining arguments to solve problems
Use research and extend current teaching methods to broaden understanding
Unit 6: Creative Repertoire
Throughout the semester, students explore various core pieces of technical and performance repertoire for their instrument. The focus is on the learning concepts in these pieces and how to address these concepts by engaging students and incorporating elements of creativity and fun.
Students are assigned pieces of music to examine and identify other pieces as models from within their traditional teaching and performance repertoire. They then create new purpose-designed repertoire for teaching using various structures and styles.
This newly created material can include adapted versions of existing material, use theme and variations, include duet or multi-player parts and /or be interactive repertoire. Students will explore creating repertoire in diverse styles (other than the original) such as using pop, jazz, blues, and classical models.
Key Skills
Autonomous learning required for managing complex tasks
Creative problem solving
Use of research tools in extending knowledge and understanding
Skills in music arrangement / composition to address musical and technical learning
Awareness of the needs of individual learners (their pupils)
Strategies for teaching technical / musical content
Unit 7: Dissertation – Teacher and Student learning process (double module)
This module focuses on a holistic understanding of the learning experience, from both the teacher and the student point of view. The student view is authentic as learners on the MA become first-hand students as they undertake new learning experiences. The fresh look at learning and teaching prepares students to write a considered dissertation that reflects a current knowledge and understanding of aspects of practical teaching in the field.
Semester 1 focuses on the student perspective/experience with the students each receive weekly lessons (as if they were a beginner/student) with course mentors/professor which are video recorded.
Semester 2 delves into planning, reacting to, and working with different students. In this semester students will observe the recorded lessons, including observing each other being taught as well as lessons with different students (children and adults). The focus is shifted from the student experience to shadowing course mentors/staff in order to observe their teaching methods.
The first semester allows the students to get used to the teacher and make progress on particular repertoire and techniques. This also gives the student time to reflect on their learning processes before turning to focus from the teacher’s perspective on planning and methods.
It is understood that when joining the course, students agree to be observed by their peers. Written consent is obtained for videos to become part of future course materials.
Course structure
This part-time course is timetabled over a period of two calendar years with the next intake beginning in August 2025.
There are 7 units of study which must all be completed in chronological order. A further three additional units focus on: safeguarding children and young people in music education; equality, diversity, and inclusion in music education, and promoting children and young people’s positive behaviour.
The course is delivered online plus 4 days summer residential study at Dean Close School, Cheltenham, UK. The course is delivered in English.*
* Travel costs from the student’s location to Cheltenham are not included in the course fee
Course fees
£12,950.00
*Fees include full board and accommodation at the ESTA Summer School.
** Travel costs from the student’s location to Chichester are not included in the course fee.
*** The summer school is a mandatory element of the course.
Entry requirements
There are two routes in to this programme:
1. Completed ESTA PG Cert
This programme has the distinctive feature of welcoming students who have completed the ESTA PG Cert Teaching, a programme delivered by ESTA UK. The PG Cert is available in all instrumental and vocal specialisms and the credits from this count as RPL (requirements of prior learning) for the first four taught modules on this MA. In the ESTA PG Cert students are taught in dedicated, small groups based on their instrumental family specialism, and benefit from a staff of internationally renowned teachers and practitioners.
Students network and develop links within the profession both within their instrument specialism and across instruments through the ESTA staff. All staff are qualified, established professionals currently working within the field of music teaching and performing.
2. Students can apply directly to join this MA from the beginning.
Applicants must hold a degree (which does not have to be in musical studies) that was taught or researched in English and is equivalent to a UK bachelor’s degree or above, or be able to demonstrate performance skills at licentiate diploma level (level 6) in music on the instrument they plan to study, alongside teaching experience.
Alternatively, they may hold an appropriate English language qualification that must be acceptable to the University of Chichester.
Applicants are expected to be proficient as musicians, demonstrating a performance level of a minimum standard equivalent to Grade 8 ABRSM or Trinity College London.
All applicants must have access to an online working environment. Skype will be used for mentor/student interaction on the course.
All applicants will be interviewed face-to-face in their own country or via Skype.
What you need
Students will need online access (at home) before, during and immediately following participation on the course. They will also need the facility to make simple audio and video recordings throughout the course (most smartphones and laptops will have this facility). These will be needed for:
Webinars: These will be prepared and delivered by the course leader, members of the mentor panel and invited guest presenters. Webinars will take the form of pre-recorded video presentations with accompanying audio-visual and reading material, each coupled with setting of follow-up work for students.
Videos of teaching: Students are required to submit videos of themselves teaching. It is the student’s responsibility to obtain written permission from: the student they are teaching; the student they are teaching’s parent/carer or responsible adult, and the school or institution, where appropriate.
Follow-up work may include student discussion online (synchronous or asynchronous) or completion of questionnaires or submission of brief written statements.
Time commitment
Online classes take as much time as regular on-campus classes. You need to set aside sufficient time for study. Plan to spend at least as much time working on the assignments and studying as you would with a traditional course. We recommend that you need to set aside 12-15 hours for study per week in order to get the maximum benefit from the course.
Attendance
Students enrolled on the ESTA MA course are expected to attend and participate fully in all study sessions set out in the course documentation and Handbook.
We understand that musicians are often reluctant to turn down playing opportunities but it is unacceptable to use last minute playing engagements as an excuse to miss study sessions.
Please refer to the course website for details about computer literacy, levels of engagement and our student code of conduct. The course is delivered in the English language.
University of Chichester In-House Test.
The University of Chichester also offers a FREE TESTING service to students applying to Chichester. The test is an IELTS equivalent and is for students who are already in the UK or who are applying through one of our authorised agents in country.
