The article Instrumental Exams and Assessment Forms in Conservatoire Education: A First Overview of Current Reality was published in Educ@tional Circle. The study critically examines the examination-centred model of conservatoire education and its relationship with broader, more multidimensional approaches to assessing musical learning.
The research analyses piano examination records from a Greek conservatoire across an eleven-year period. Results reveal limitations in a model based primarily on performance and numerical grading and support the need for assessment processes that are organically connected with teaching, feedback and students’ creative, aesthetic and social development. The longitudinal analysis also makes it possible to consider the stability of examination practices over time and to relate numerical assessment to the way everyday teaching is organised. Assessment is consequently framed as part of the overall pedagogical philosophy of a conservatoire rather than simply as a certification procedure at the end of a course of study within the institution.
