The Current Situation of Instrumental Teaching in Higher Education with Particular Reference to 'Reality and Challenges' in the Artistic Education in Woodwinds Department of Faculty of Arts in Kosovo

• Author: Fatbardh Gashi
• Position: University 'Haxhi Zeka' Peja, Kosovo
• Pages: 390-395

ISSN 2410-759X

Acces online at www.iipccl.org

Balkan Journal of Interdisciplinary Research

IIPCCL Publishing, Tirana-Albania Vol. 1 No. 3

January 2016

390

The Current Situation of Instrumental Teaching in Higher Education

with Particular Reference to “Reality and Challenges” in the Artistic

Education in Woodwinds Department of Faculty of Arts in Kosovo

Prof. ass. Fatbardh Gashi

University “Haxhi Zeka” Peja, Kosovo

Abstract

This paper brings out an overview of the situation of instrumental teaching in higher

education, specifically, the reality and challenges that undergoes the learning and teaching

process of woodwind instruments program of one of the Kosovo Faculty of Arts.

Currently, at the Faculty of Arts, department of Artistic Education on Woodwind

Instruments are offered courses only for six instruments (woodwind family). Regarding

the issue, in order to improve students’ potentials should be started by identifying the

challenges and obstacles that may occur during the program accomplishment. The main

part of the paper approaches the concerns faced by the students as well as the teaching

staff. The department of instrumental teaching has been initiated from the need to

expand the capacities of instrumentalists and this is the second year of study. Since this

program is at the initial stage, the scope is to meet students’ needs and enhance their

potentials. A questionnaire survey has been distributed among students and teachers

to find out the current issues that need to be improved. And, the results have shown that

both the students and teachers are undergoing some core difficulties that may impede

the learning-teaching process. Although, there were individual challenges among

students, a common feature was the lack of teachers’ goals including specific tasks and

systematic teaching patterns within the program, particularly, pedagogy issues.

Keywords: instrumental teaching, challenges, instrumental educators, continuous praxis

and improvement, woodwinds future career.

Introduction

While music education matters and has a large impact on the development of

students’ character, music classes and musical instruments should be included in

the school programs since the beginning of education. In order to realize that, it is

more than needed to be offered a program that increase the practical potential and

prepare good future instrumentalists. And, such program has started at the Faculty

of Arts in Peja since 2014. This is the only one program that except the professional

courses includes courses related to music pedagogy. Respectively, in the program

are included six instruments: clarinet, flute, trumpet, oboe, bassoon and saxophone.

Currently, there are nine students studying in this department. In the first year

have been enrolled only three students, two of them in the section of clarinet and

only one in flute. Whereas, in the second year, the number of students have been

increased to nine, and now there are students in the section of bassoon and

saxophone as well. The purpose of this study was to explore the instrumental music

teaching with a particular scope to the context and the reality.