It Takes Its Own Time: Reflections on Aural Learning and Higher Education

This paper uses a method frequently used in jazz education – the aural imitation method (AIM) – as a paradigmatic example of slow academia. More precisely, we will argue that AIM engages the students in a process that arguably is neither “slow” nor “fast,” as it does not fit into a linear time scheme but literarily takes its own time. Evoking typical aspects of AIM, we try to show how the aural learning practice is conceived within the enactivist framework, which has gained ground within contemporary lived experience literature. Against the background of this analysis, we propel a more general discussion on how human processes that can be said to take their own time are acknowledged (or not) in academia and theories on educative processes. We contrast the enactivist view by evoking Etian Wilf’s study, which shows how AIM is implemented in large-scale US jazz educational programs. Finally, we draw on our work in university pedagogy and with jazz education at our university and show how the different understandings of AIM concretize and sharpen issues of formal and institutionalized time and pace in higher education in general and how linear, competitive, and standardized time creates a problematic room for educative processes as life processes.