Student-centred Pedagogies to Inculcate Self-Identity:
A Case Study with Primary School Students
Suriati Suradi, Programme Manager, STAR
SECTION II: EpisodeS Page 42
Reflective Snapshots
Chapter 3 Page 44 What does brain research say about a student-centred approach to music learning?
Li Yen See, Master Teacher, STAR
Originally published in STAR-Post (Music), July 2012t
Chapter 4
Page 45 Why Improvise?
Eric Favaro, Visting Fellow with STAR in Apr 2011
Originally published in STAR-Post (Music) May-June 2011
Chapter 5
Page 46
Chapter 6 Page 47
Children’s Singing: Natural and Nurtured by Teachers
Patricia Shehan Campbell,
University of Washington, Visiting Fellow with STAR in Sept 2012
Originally published in STAR-Post (Music), October 2012
Gelang Sipaku Gelang : A Musical Reading
Ho Hui Ping, Programme Manager, STAR
Originally published in STAR-Post (Music), August 2011
Chapter 7 Page 48 The Search for National Identity through Music
Suriati Suradi, Programme Manager, STAR
Originally published in STAR-Post (Music), August 2011
Chapter 8 Page 49 How is Singaporean Identity embodied through Music?
A Reflection Inspired by Dick Lee
Ho Hui Ping, Programme Manager, STAR
Originally published in STAR-Post (Music), April 2012
SECTION III: Experimentation Page 50
Expanding Horizon: Seeing New Connections in Music Learning and Teaching
Chapter 9
Page 52
Chapter 10 Page 66
Chapter 11 Page 87
Chapter 12 Page 98
Chapter 13 Page 110
Chapter 14 Page 127
Chapter 15 Page 143
Piloting Informal and Non-formal Approaches for Music Teaching in Five Secondary Schools in Singapore: An Introduction
Ho Hui Ping, Programme Manager, STAR
Chua Siew Ling, Programme Director, STAR
Rollin’ in at the Deep End: Choice, Collaboration and Confidence through Informal Learning with the Guitar
Ho Hui Ping, Programme Manager, STAR
Informal Learning for Song Writing
Chua Siew Ling, Programme Director, STAR
Negotiating the Boundaries of Formal and Informal Learning
Pamela Costes-Onishi, Research Scientist, UNESCO-NIE CARE, Nanyang Technological University
Connecting the Curricular and Co-curricular through Formal and Nonformal Teaching
Ho Hui Ping, Programme Manager, STAR
STOMPing Up Musical Engagement the Non-formal and Informal Way
Chua Siew Ling, Programme Director, STAR
Connecting Findings, Reflections and Insights: Student-centricity Musically, Creatively
Chua Siew Ling, Programme Director, STAR
Ho Hui Ping, Programme Manager, STAR
Appendices Page 155
Appendix A Page 156
Appendix B Page 162
Appendix C Page 163
Appendix D Page 164
Pre-Pilot and Post-Pilot Questionnaires
Intraclass Correlation
Factors Predicting Students’ Enjoyment of Music in School (Linear Regression)
Wordsplash of Students’ ‘One-word’
Foreword
The strength to have an idea to create many ideas has been the source of inspiration of this compendium. The ideas in this compendium connect and weave in ways that make sense of the many music classroom routines we have. The deeper understanding of these routines for the arts has a special impact on the child as music gives strength to every new beginning. Ideas that bring life will inspire the quality of conversations we can have with each child. Ideas that bring design thinking into our planning of those precious few minutes will also create new understanding and awaken thoughtful thinking.
The Academy is committed to create such dialogic spaces for the collective voices to come together as a professional fraternity. We would like to thank all those who have taken up personal choices to conceptualise their ideas and made them into visible expressions, especially where our students can have a better opportunity to understand the artist within. On both the individual and collective fraternity level, this dialogue will continue to promote, reframe and legitimise the state of arts education in our Singapore landscape. For this burgeoning work, I am hopeful and look to the future for more of these collaborative platforms to rise.
These are the essential ingredients that went into the writing of this compendium. More significantly, they represent the thought leadership of the following contributors. We would like to thank:
• Dr Eric William Favaro, Nova Scotia, Canada, STAR’s Visiting Fellow, April
– June 2011
• Professor Patricia Shehan Campbell, University of Washington, USA, STAR’s Visiting Fellow, September 2012
• Assistant Professor Lum Chee Hoo, Head of UNESCO-NIE (National Institute of Education) CARE (Centre for Arts Research and Education), Singapore
• David Price, OBE, Musical Futures Founder, UK
• Paul Griffiths, Collaborative Practice Tutor, Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London, UK
• Our Music colleagues at Arts Education Branch, Student Development Curriculum Division, Ministry of Education, Singapore
Our special appreciation and gratitude go to the Principals and teachers of the following schools, for their openness and courage in trailblazing the way forward for the fraternity:
• Elias Park Primary
• Hillgrove Secondary
• Mayflower Primary
• Nan Chiau High
• Nanyang Girls’ High
• Pasir Ris Secondary
• Paya Lebar Methodist Girls’ (Secondary)
• Tampines North Primary
• Yio Chu Kang Secondary
• Yishun Secondary
Editorial Team
Chua Siew Ling, Programme Director, Music Ho Hui Ping,
Programme Manager, Music
Rebecca Chew
Academy Principal Singapore Academy for the aRts
Exploration
Stars.
The substance of wonder. Curiosity. Stories.
Connecting the Stars is a compendium of stories. Stories about student-centred music education.
A collection of essays that satisfies our insatiable curiosity about what student-centred music teaching and learning can look like in our music classrooms.
A document of wonder that charts the amazing teacher professional transformation through the reimagining of practices and discourses on student-centricity.
Each and every star featured in this collection is precious in its own right. Not least because of the energy they bring to the discussion. Not least because of the unique angles they shine on the subject. Not least because of the passion they reveal glowing deep within every issue discussed. But because of how they thread. How they connect. Why so?
Student-centricity in Music Explored
Student-centred Music Lessons? Let's Talk!
Introduction
“…the future of the human species depends on the capacity of its members to make metaphorical transformations, to ask the question ‘what if’, [.....] Music has its part to play in this discourse, in these conversations, which define what it is to be human”.
(Swanwick, 1999)
What if our music lessons in the classroom became a different kind of classroom, a classroom that would enable us to make transformations and partake in conversations? How would it unfold when the learning “requires invention and self-organisation on the part of the learner” (Fosnot, 1996) and the teacher is neither the sole content expert nor the controlling classroom supervisor? When our musical learning and teaching is student-centric, how will it enable the learner to develop his/her cognitive, metacognitive, affective, developmental, personal and social domains?
In this essay, we define the student-centric lessons as lessons that place the student at the centre of the music learning process, and focus on nurturing the whole child, including the development of skills, knowledge and sound moral values. Through the use of appropriate learning programmes and pedagogical tools, teachers can empower, engage and motivate their students as active learners in their own learning processes. By knowing their students well, the teachers can create a student-centric classroom learning experience for them that fosters thinking and life-long learning. The term “student-centred” is used synonymously with “learner-centred”, and used to contrast with “teacher-centred” teaching.
The purpose of this paper is to discuss some principles of student-centred music lessons and describe music teaching practices that reflect these principles in the context of primary and secondary general music classes in Singapore.
Li Yen See, Master Teacher, STAR
In Search for Student-Centric Music Lessons
It is with the intent to observe and learn about student-centricity in music learning that a learning journey to Nova Scotia1 took place in October 2011. The team members are four music middle managers from schools, two members from the Singapore Teachers’ Academy for the aRts (STAR) and an Assistant Professor from the National Institute of Education, Singapore. From the lessons observed in Nova Scotia, there was a high value placed in student-directed learning in the processes of creating, making, presenting, perceiving, reflecting and responding. Students were given many opportunities to make music decisions independently (individually or as a group) as they created music, to reflect and think critically about what they had created and performed. Students were also given opportunities to lead the class in music making. Careful scaffolding and facilitation of the creative process had enabled students to explore, develop and express their musical ideas. Opportunities were provided for critical thinking and reflection through peer critiques. The teachers helped their students to make connections to real-life situations through the music lessons. What came out from these observations, reflective and generative conversations among the team were preliminary findings that could be consolidated as guiding principles for student-centred music teaching and learning.
Generating the Guiding Principles for Student-centred Music Learning
From February to May 2012, STAR began the process of generative conversations on student-centred music learning with the teacher-leaders from the Music STAR Champions2 programme. The conversations aimed to work towards producing a set of guiding principles for student-centred arts learning that could nurture the 21st century competencies as defined by Ministry of Education, Singapore (see Fig 1). The guiding principles explored in this essay include:
a. Providing choices and empowering students to make decisions
b. Facilitating creativity in music-making
c. Facilitating critical thinking, reflection-in-action and reflection-on-action
d. Making learning relevant through contextual teaching and learning
A small team comprising STAR and the National Institute of Education staff members worked with the teachers who visited Nova Scotia to trial some music lessons between January and March 2012 to see how these principles could be realised in their music classes. The following sections discuss the student-centric principles by drawing perspectives from different scholars on student-centricity. Some of the observed teachers’ practices will be presented through vignettes to illustrate the different perspectives and how these principles could be realised in the music class. The video excerpts of
1. Based on discussions with STAR’s visiting fellow, music teachers in Nova Scotia are specialist music teachers and were carrying out a new music curriculum which has a student-centric focus.
2. The STAR Champions are music teacher-leaders nominated by the cluster superintendents and supported by the school principals. One of their roles is to lead and facilitate knowledge sharing of effective student-centred arts lessons that can nurture the 21st century competencies.
Fig 1: 21st century competencies
Principles in Practice
Providing choices and empowering students to make decisions
With the belief that "the one who does the work does the learning", studentcentred teaching is about optimising the opportunities for the students “to engage, participate, share and work hard at their learning process” (Doyle, 2011). This happens when teachers create opportunities that will provide choices in how the students can be “engaged with the material, […] demonstrate what they had learned” (ibid.), and also to empower them to make decisions in the learning processes. The opportunity to choose, to make decisions for oneself, and to face the consequences of those decisions, will result in a sense of ownership (McCombs and Whisler, 1997). This ownership, as a result of providing choices to students, will empower and motivate the students.
For Music, student-directed learning is about students engaging in the processes of creating, making, presenting, perceiving, reflecting and responding. It is also about students reflecting and thinking critically about what they had created and performed, and the space to make music decisions independently, whether individually or in groups. Vignette 1.1 describes an example of a music teaching practice that encourages students to think about their music-making and opportunities to create and make musical decisions.
Students began by singing the song “Funga Alafia” in solfège and as they sang, the teacher pointed to the respective solfège on the “solfège staircase” (doh, re, mi, fa, soh, la, ti, doh – each pitch on a cue card, arranged in ascending order) drawn on the whiteboard. The teacher used questions to guide students to understand the concept of the pentatonic scale. The rest of her facilitation unfolded in the dialogue presented below.
Teacher:
We are going to create a four-beat pattern using the five notes. (She pointed to the pentatonic solfèges on the board. The four-beat pattern was referring to 4 crochet beats in a bar and the task was to create a 1-bar ostinato). Can you give me an example using the pentatonic solfège?
Student 1: doh, re, doh, re (Class sang as teacher wrote on the board)
Teacher:
Can anybody give me another example of four beats [sic] (4-beat melody)?
Student 2: soh, me, lah, doh (Class sang as teacher wrote the solfège on the board)
Empowering students to make decisions Giving choices
Teacher:
Let’s try. You can sing the ‘doh, re, doh, re’ pattern continuously and tap the pulse on your shoulders, while I will sing the song (referring to “Funga Alafia”).
(Class sang doh, re, doh, re and tapped the pulse on their shoulders as the teacher sang the song.)
Teacher: Who should be singing louder, you or me?
Student 3: You, because you are singing the song part and we should be softer because we are the rhythm part.
Teacher:
Are you the rhythm? What are you doing? What are you singing?
(She tapped her shoulders.)
Students: The beat.
Teacher:
What was I singing?
Students: The song.
Teacher:
What is the song called?
(The teacher wanted to draw the attention to the music term.)
Students: Melody.
(Teacher wrote the word ‘melody’ on the board.)
Teacher:
You are going to be working in your groups. Come up with a four-beat pattern, using any of these 5 pentatonic notes. You have five minutes to come up with this and to sing it with your group.
(Students discussed and practised what they had created. Teacher then had each group perform their four-beat pattern.)
Teacher:
Can each group sing your created four-beat pattern twice?
(Teacher wrote the students’ created patterns in solfège - D-do, R-me, M-me, F-fa, S-soh, L-la, T-ti- after each group sang. She also had the class sing back each group’s pattern; MSRD, DLDM. SMRD, DDMS, MSMS, SLSL, DRMD. Teacher selected one pattern – DRMD – and asked the class to sing the pattern repeatedly as they tapped their shoulders. She sang the melody over the ostinato.)
Teacher:
Good, let’s do it this way. This half of the class, you will sing DRMD repeatedly (referring to it as the ostinato). This other half sings the song in solfège.
(The class then swapped parts; with one group singing the song in solfège, the other group singing the ostinato.)
Here, the students had opportunities to interact directly with the subject matter e.g. pentatonic scale. They took an active role in deciding their own learning, for example, they created, as a class, the four-beat pattern, and later, their individual group’s four-beat pattern. This empowered the students in their music learning.
Vignette 1.1 A Primary 3 music lesson
Giving empowerment in the group collaborations Providing Choices
Students can also be empowered to collaboratively make decisions in their creative tasks, which would give rise to a shared understanding that is “socially distributed knowledge or distributed cognition” (Mehan, 1984)an understanding that learning came about from the combined individuals’ understanding and decision making in the group. This resonates with the social constructivist’s view of learning, believing that learning takes place in a social environment where there is interaction with people. When individuals learn from each other, their “communication and shared problem solving inherently bridge the gap between the old and the new knowledge and different understanding of partners” (Rogoff, 1990). When individuals collaborate together during creative process in music, it enriches the individual’s musical thinking. Vignette 1.2 presents an example of a collaborative music decision-making.
Students had, in their groups, created their 1-bar ostinato (of four crochet beats) using the pentatonic mode to accompany the song Funga Alafia in solfège. They were then required to choose one of the patterns which they had created (patterns - MSRD, DLDM, SMRD, DDMS, MSMS, SLSL, DRMD) to include in their performance of the song. Before the students worked in groups, the teacher demonstrated an example on how this could be done. As the students were seated in rows, she had each row of students performing one of the parts - lyrics of the song; solfège of the song; tapping the beat of the song; singing the ostinato (doh, doh, me, soh – in 4 crochet beats); and, clapping the rhythm of the song. The class performed their different parts and at staggered entries (cued in by their teacher). After performing, the teacher elicited responses from the students, the different parts they were performing.
Teacher:
In a minute, you are going to do your own version of your song. I have shown you that there are different parts. Work in a group of eight, and later present what you had created. You can have all five parts, or two or three parts. It’s up to your group to decide. You are going to perform your version of the song. Now these are some of the patterns (referring to the ostinati ) you had came up with in the last lesson. Today, which pattern did you sing as ostinato?
Student 4: DDMS.
Teacher:
Yes, I selected this for you. This week, you can come up with something new, or choose one that you created last week. Later, you are going to perform your version of the song for us. How many parts are there in the song we just sang or performed?
Student 5: Five parts.
Teacher:
Yes, you can choose to have all five parts. If you want to do four parts, it is fine too. You have to work with your group to decide how many parts and who to sing or perform which part. [sic]
(Students went into their groups to work this out. After six minutes, the teacher called them to perform what they had created. After each group’s performance, the teacher asked the students questions with regard to the parts they sang and how the parts related to each other.)
Provide empowerment and choices
Empowerment given to create, to make decisions
It was observed that the groups experimented with various combinations of parts. One group, instead of tapping the beat on the shoulders, had decided to stamp the beat. Another group had sung the first part of the song, and then changed to perform another part. By giving the students choices on how and what they would like to perform, it stimulated their learning. They had tapped on each other’s understanding to grow in their own musical learning. The collaborative task had emphasised the “role of social interaction as a dimension of learning” (Rallis, 1995), thus making each student “stakeholders in the learning process, regardless of the particular field, [..] and learn in ways that are far more enduring in their application to life situations” (Vega and Tayler, 2005).
In empowering students, students can also be given opportunities to lead others in music making. For example, as the teacher guides the class in music creating or performing, the teacher can call upon students, or ask for volunteers to suggest a direction for the group’s creation or performance. Students could be called upon to lead the class with the rest of the class responding to them. This empowerment is about giving ownership to the students and the teacher now having to share control. The sharing will shape the classroom’s learning environment; it now belongs to everyone and “students are very much turned on when they are involved in making the decision that affects everyone” (Johnson, 2000). Vignettes 1.3.1 and 1.3.2 present examples of this practice.
Vignette 1.3.1 A Primary 4 music lesson
The lesson began with a call and response between the teacher and the class. The teacher tapped a rhythmic pattern (call) on a two-tone block and the class responded by repeating (response) what the teacher clapped. Each pattern was played twice, after which the class responded. This call and response was played out in three different rhythmic patterns.
Teacher:
Now, I would like one of you to come up and be the call. You will be leading the class in the call. The rest of you will respond by repeating what he had called. He will be your leader.
(There were several volunteers and each time, there was positive response from the students.)
Vignette 1.2 A Primary 3 music lesson
Students to make decisions in their groups
Vignette 1.3.2 A Primary 3 music lesson
The teacher had the students move to a piece of music which was in quadruple time. For Section A, students were to shake their partner’s hand four times, shake the left hand four times, hi-five right hand two times, followed by low-five left hand two times. For Section B, students created their own movements.
Teacher:
Now I want you to think of another step (movement) to add it in to make it more enjoyable. You can suggest to make the song more interesting, a variation to our movements (learnt earlier in the lesson). (A student demonstrate two actions.)
Teacher:
What do you call these actions?
Student 1: Fist, Fist, chest pump, chest pump.
Teacher:
Class listen, our friend has a suggestion.
(Class tried out the actions suggested by their classmate.)
Student 1: Fist, Fist, knife chop, knife chop (Class tried out all the new movements suggested by their classmates: Fist, Fist, Chest, Chest [2 times] Fist, Fist, Chop, Chop [2 times].)
Teacher:
This will be Section B.
(Class performed Section A, followed by Section B.)
By having sharing power, in a student-centred classroom, the teacher empowers students to make decisions and creates a ‘win-win’ learning environment for all.
With this kind of learning environment, it raises the questions of “how much power is enough and how much empowerment can the students handle”. Weimer (2002) suggested that the extent of decision making to be provided to students is determined by how much motivation is required to motivate the one student or to motivate the whole class. The teacher will also have to consider the students’ level of cognitive and meta-cognitive development and their ability to handle more empowerment and decision making. Knowing what the students’ zone of proximal development (Vygotsky, 1978) is, will mean that the teaching will need to take place somewhere between what the students can achieve by themselves and what more they can achieve with a more capable peer. The teacher will then need to decide the amount of choice and empowerment that the students can handle such that they achieve the desired results and they grow in their musical learning and thinking.
Empowerment to create, providing choices
Engaging the students to be creative in their response
Facilitating creativity in music-making
Howard Gardner (1993) explained that “musical thought is more than thinking about music, it is thinking in music”. One way is for the the teacher to engage the students to thinking musically in the creative process. Composing, for example, will engage the students to think musically. It will also involve “thinking in sound” (Wiggins, 1999) which implies hearing musical ideas of pitch, duration, timbre, dynamics, form, texture and so on. A good musical assignment will engage students using their musical thought(s) to act on these musical ideas. As the students create their musical work(s), they apply what they know about music – “what they have learned in the classroom and what they have learned living in the world” (Wiggins, 1999). Their works will exhibit the level and nature of their musical understanding. The teacher, as facilitator will help to determine how much assistance to give, what to teach, so as to help nurture their students’ musical independence.
When students engage in creative tasks, they often work “at the edge”. They will test their abilities and seek new knowledge in the process of creating (Marzano et al., 1988). Their motivation is most persistent as they see “the act of creating is itself of value” (Abeles et al., 1984). It also encourages them to be fluid, flexible, convergent and divergent thinkers, risk-takers and lateral thinkers; resulting in the creation of new schemas that will help deepen their musical understanding.
The creative thinking involved in this process is “not simply a matter of finding novel resolutions to old problems and questions, but also includes actively finding and formulating new problems and new questions” (Gretzels and Csikszentmihalyi, 1976). Students will create, think critically of their product/process, then recreate or reproduce to improved or new standards. It becomes implicit that this process is “integrally related to critical thinking” (Webster, 1988). Expressing “new musical ideas through composing, to find broad and specific musical ideas when listening, to interpret music when performing” (Blair, 2009) creatively, will shift the focus from the teacher to the students learning more independently and collaboratively. The teacher’s role is then to “design ways for students to be the centre of classroom activity, interacting with the music and with each other” (ibid.).
Vignette 1.4 A Primary 4 music lesson
Students worked in pairs to create two bars of gestures/ movements to represent four crochet beats per bar. Students presented their movements and the teacher asked the class whose movements they had liked and why. This is then followed with a creative performing task as the students work in their groups.
Teacher:
Would anyone like to come and demonstrate what their movements are? (Two students came forward.)
I
Student’s decision making
Student 1:
would like to use the woodblock
Teacher:
Do your movement first and then add in the woodblock.
Student 1: Can add in the woodblock now?
Teacher: have two types of woodblock.
(Students chose their wood blocks and they beat the pulse while moving to the music. One student ran on the spot while beating the woodblock. The other student started with just beating the pulse, and then he put the woodblock down and started miming some actions to the music. The teacher then asked the students what they thought about what was performed.)
Students: There is some sort of mime.
Student 1:
I am pretending to be in an invisible box.
Teacher:
That’s interesting. Now, we will listen to the music once more, and later you will get into your groups (teacher started dividing the students into groups). You would need to listen to the music again when you are in your groups. I will give you one bag of instruments. You will sit in your own group, discuss and decide who to play which instrument. When we play the music, you will play your instrument together with the music. You will also decide how you want your instrument to be played.
(With the bag of instruments, the students had to decide on the instruments each of them would handle. They explored the sounds they could make with the instrument. Some groups also explored how they could perform. Towards the end of the lesson, the teacher had one group to show what they had created.)
Teacher:
What did you notice about their performance? Has anyone anything to comment on their performance? thought it was very good. I like the way they organise themselves. What was the way they had organised themselves?
Student 2:
The group stood up to perform.
Teacher: Besides standing up, is there anything else?
Student 2: They took turns; they stood up one by one. (As the group were discussing and interacting with each other, they were able to build upon each other’s ideas, and collaboratively created a more interesting performance.)
Wiggins (1998) noted that in group composition settings, there was evidence of (a) shared understanding in the learning, (b) a vital connection between this shared understanding of the creative task, the process and the success of the group in creating the creative product, (c) the more experienced students (because of their prior experience) in leading the group to a higher level of musical understanding, and (d) each individual having to negotiate, explain, justify, evaluate and ‘campaign’ for their musical ideas. In such collaborative group structures, group understanding and agreement becomes more important than that of the individuals within the group.
Engaging students to create and think critically in their creative process
Facilitating the students to collaboratively construct and create new lyrics
It is in this social constructive setting that Perkins (1999) described having the students to be (a) an active learner - needing to create, to critique, to discuss, to compare and to contrast, (b) a social learner – working in large or small groups to create, listen, perform, and (c) a creative learner – creating their own music. The students built upon each other’s ideas, and from them, generate more ideas. They will move towards a shared understanding of their product and “of what they believe the solution should sound like, in terms of what they know […] and what they believe to be acceptable” (Wiggins, 1999/2000). Here, the students will feel safe to suggest, give feedback, justify, defend and change their ideas. Upon hearing or experiencing the ideas of others within or of other groups, it can motivate individuals to higher levels of musicality and complexity. These will promote and nurture independent musical thinking.
In a student-centric music lesson, the teacher will provide opportunities to empower the students to nurture creativity in music-making, i.e. creativity in listening, creativity in composing, creativity in performing. At the heart of the “creative action”, it will enable teachers to “break new ground, making it possible for us to reconstitute ideas, to see things differently” (Swanwick, 1999). The creative process and its creative thinkers gave “a new twist to an artistic tradition or convention” (Lipman, 1991). Engaging students in creative musical thinking will allow the knowledge and concepts learnt to be applied, challenged, reinforced and even expand from earlier learning. Vignette 2.2 provides an example of facilitating creativity.
1.5 A Primary 4 music lesson
At first part of the lesson, the class clapped the pulse and chanted the words ‘piano’, ‘drum’ and ukulele’ which was arranged in a four line stanza.
The teacher asked the students for suggestions to change some of these words in the stanza. The class then clapped and chanted these new patterns. The teacher was providing the experience for the students to fit the text in a beat. The teacher then asked the students to create their answer as a response to a question.
(Teacher wrote the lyrics ‘Hey Box, magic box? What is in the magic box?’ on the board.)
Teacher: Can we try to sing this song again? Just now (at the beginning of the lesson), we ask the question. Just now we ask the magic box… what is in the magic box. Let’s try again. Ready go.
(Class sang with the teacher.)
Engaging students to think musically and creatively
Teacher:
I would like you to compose an answer to our question. How do you think we can answer the question?
Maybe we can think which instrument we want to talk about?
Experiencing the ideas of others and develop new ideas through active, social and creative learning
Teacher:
Do you think we can fit in ‘piano’ here?
Vignette
Student 1: Piano.
Students: Hey piano.
Teacher: Hey piano sound a little long. May be it can be shorter.
Student 2: With the exclamation mark.
Student 3: Piano! You are too small!
Teacher:
Do you think it can fit in nicely? Try.
Student 3: Piano you’re too small.
Teacher:
Then we will shorten the ‘you are’, become ‘you’re’. Do you need another exclamation mark?
Students: No.
Teacher:
What about the last line?
Student 4: You’re wooden instrument.
Teacher:
Can we sing it together?
(Class sang the new lines: Hey Box, magic box?
What is in the magic box?
Piano! You’re too small!
You’re wooden instrument!)
(The teacher then facilitated the students to develop the rest of the lyrics. One of the students suggested the ukulele and another student said the lyrics to describe the ukulele.
The complete lyrics are :
Hey Box, magic box?
What is in the magic box?
Piano! You’re too small!
You’re wooden instrument!
Ukulele! You’re too big
The termites like to eat you!
(Class sang the song they had just created.)
The teacher’s role is to encourage, to model and to value their students’ creative efforts, so as to motivate their students in the creative and production process. The dilemma is created when the students have thoughts that are different from the teacher’s or when students are more skilled and knowledgeable in some areas than the teacher. Does the teachers’ role then change as they are no longer the ‘expert’, the ‘virtuoso’ or ‘the coach’? A
good teacher will recognise the students’ capabilities and creative thinking and understand that his/her role is one of being a good facilitator instead of an instructor.
Do we need to set parameters in the creative process? Wiggins (1999) asserted that setting restrictive and “game-like” parameters for the creative assignment can at times “cause students to focus on extra-musical, nonexpressive aspects of the project [...] hamper rather than enable or promote the creative processes”. This does not mean that there are no parameters but rather whether there are sufficient choices to allow the students to decide for themselves what they want and to show their potential creativity. Wiggins (1999) suggested that giving just one broad parameter, for example, metric or texture, and allowing the students to make their own decisions regarding the specifics or other remaining structural details, for example, four beats in a bar or two-part canon. The focus is on the process and the celebration of their creativity in music-making. The creative thinking that is being engaged will push the limits of the students’ knowledge and ability, and it will generate new ways of viewing situations that is outside the parameters of standard conventions (Marzano et al., 1992). This will also bring forth greater musical understanding and musical independence in the students.
Facilitating critical thinking, reflection-in-action and reflection-on-action
Swartz and Perkins (1990) asserted that in critical thinking, its goal is to evaluate and identify a position, analyse competing views or the clarity of ideas. What one will experience is higher-order thinking and greater awareness of one’s thought processes. Hudgins and Edelman (1986) defined good critical thinking as having “the disposition to provide evidence in supporting one’s conclusions and to request evidence from others before accepting their conclusions”. Hence, the critical thinker knows how to make an informed decision based on his/her musical evaluation and understanding of the conceptual musical evidence.
In this segment of lesson, the teacher was getting the students to explore how the melody and the harmony impacted each other. It was part of the creating process in the song-writing module. The teacher played an extract of the song “Way Back into Love” over the chords C-Am-C-Am, Dm-G-Dm-G, after which she asked ‘Why do the melody and chords sound like they belong to each other?” The class sat in groups which facilitated group discussions and sharing.
(Teacher played on the piano and sang an extract of the song “Way Back into Love” over the chord progressions C-Am-C-Am, Dm-G-Dm-G.)
Teacher: I want you, within your tables, to answer this question, ‘What do you think makes the chord (the harmony) and the melody was singing work? How come they sound like they belong to each other?’ Within your tables, shoulder-partners discuss.
(“Shoulder-partners” was the term the teacher used to refer to students seated side by side.)
(After several minutes, she asked the group to share their answers.)
Vignette 1.6 A Secondary 2 music lesson
Teacher facilitates the critical thinking involved in the discussion
Teacher: Can I have you to share? Can we listen to each other’s anwers please?
Student 1:
Without the harmony, there is no melody, without the melody, there is no harmony. (Student was self-conscious and commented that her own comments was nonsense.)
Teacher: Mm, that’s interesting... you know what, don’t think what you had suggested is nonsense, nothing is nonsense.
Teacher:
Can I have another table’s answer?
Student 2:
The chords used are primary chords. The C is a primary chord, the G is a primary chord, and the E is not a primary chord. But sometimes you need a mix of primary and secondary chords for it to sound nice.
Teacher: You are correct but it does not directly answer my question, even though your answer makes sense. Any inputs from the other tables?
Student 3: The melody uses the notes of the chord.
Teacher:
Can this table (referring to another table) paraphrase that?
Student 4: The notes used are part of the same triad.
Teacher: Wow, what’s a triad?
Student 5: It is the three notes stacked in a stave, like a chord.
Teacher: Can I hear from this table?
Student 6: When the melody and the harmony come together, it sounds nicer. (Teacher paraphrased and summarised the students’ answers.)
Teacher:
When the melody and the harmony comes from the same chord, it sounds nicer and the melody uses the notes of the same chord.
The vignette illustrates how the teacher provided opportunities for the students to be engaged in cooperative structures of discussion and sharing. The lesson allowed the students to exercise their critical thinking faculties and also to bring about learning through shared understanding within the groups. It also empowered the students to take ownership of their learning. The teacher, through effective questioning, enabled the students to construct their own meaning and new knowledge. Here, we see that the teacher’s role is one of facilitator rather than instructor in the lesson.
Facilitating discussions that involved critical thinking skills
Pogonowski (1987) described critical thinking as “the result of experiential learning that embraces the learner’s effective and cognitive domains”. Music is thereby “evaluated in cognitive and affective ways that are informed by experience” (Deturk, 2002) and in this experience, when there are opportunities to discuss and think critically, the learning becomes more meaningful and connected to their understanding of the music. When this type of learning is taking place in a social group learning context, their educational experiences become even more satisfying (Brookfield and Preskill, 2005).
Knowing how to facilitate effective discussions that generates critical thinking to enhance students’ learning is a key to student-centric teaching. These discussions will enable them to hear different views of their peers, clarify, organise and refine their thinking, and nurture their skills to handle disagreement, confrontation and affirmation; all these should be practised in the safe environment of the classroom. These are skills that the students will need when they are in the real world.
The objective of the lesson was to explore how music could be used to highlight/emphasise the action and drama on screen, tell the story that may not be seen on screen and reflect the emotion of the character(s) in the film.
The students viewed a video snippet from the movie ‘Poltergeist: Carol-Ann speaking to mother through TV scene’. The teacher asked the students to give their perspective(s) to the questions: The music of the first part is not in any particular key; what is the term used to describe music that is ‘not in a particular key’? What is the term that describes the opposite of this? How does the ‘Music box’ theme make you feel? What does this ‘Music box’ theme represent?
Teacher:
Watch the clip and then in pairs, use the guiding questions (referring to the worksheet) to discuss the clip.
(Students watched the clip.)
Teacher:
I will give you two minutes to discuss.
(Students started their discussion and teacher walked around to facilitate.)
Teacher:
What is the word that I have used last week
(Teacher was referring to Question 1 'what is the term used to describe music that is “not in a particular key”?')
Teacher:
When music is not in any particular key, it is atonal. And what is the opposite of atonal is?
Vignette 1.7 A Secondary 2 music lesson
Student 1: Atonal.
Student 2: Tonal.
Teacher:
How does it make you feel when the scene changes and also when the music changes too?
Student 3: Soothing.
Teacher:
Can I have more words from this table behind?
Student 4: Peaceful.
Teacher:
Table at the corner?
Student 4:
Something good has happened.
Teacher:
What does the ‘Music Box’ theme represent to you? (Students’ responses included ‘Child innocence, adult’s joy, no full relief but at least there is hope, hopefulness, concern’.)
Teacher:
It’s interesting that the music allowed so many varied interpretations. So far, everybody who have said something are all possible answers. This is the subjectivity of music. When you think the answer is either right or wrong, that is pretty bad; that means it’s limited. But the wonderful thing about film music is that it’s subjective and up to you to interpret. That’s wonderful.
Through effective questioning, the teacher was able to elicit responses from the students, which led to their understanding of how music could characterise and add a dramatic effect to what was happening in the film. By providing opportunities to allow the students to discuss and think critically, and to make their own cognitive and affective judgement(s), their learning becomes more meaningful and connected to their understanding of the music.
Reflective thinking involves a higher order of thinking. It is about “thinking about their thinking” and engaging one’s meta-cognition process. Dewy (1933/1991) discussed it as a process that occurs before an action or belief is adopted and as conclusions are reached. He articulated that it “involves responding to an experienced dissonance by examining and re-examining held assumptions, identifying relevant facts, [...] and generating solutions to bring closure to situations that are uncertain or controversial”. As there is “ongoing verification and evaluation, judgements based on reflective thinking are more likely to be valid and insightful than beliefs derived from authority” (Dewy, 1933). Having the learners question and challenge their own and others’ practices is therefore important in the development of reflective practices. This reflection in the form of conversation can also turn experience into meaningful learning when a person “actively construct and find personal meaning within a situation” (Falk et al., 2000).
According to Levy (1999), learning does not only take place from experience, but also from the reflection of the experience. The teacher’s role is to help the students become more meta-cognitive, taking them from the cognitive level and making them aware of how they go about their learning and thinking such as what and how they know, quality of their knowing, the feelings associated with the experience. Bruner (1996) noted that “the learner can be helped to achieve full mastery by reflecting as well upon how she is going about her job and how her approach can be improved”.
Schön (1983, 1987) cited that there are kinds of knowledge or skills that one holds inside one’s bodies, which enables one to perform the activities naturally, easily and skillfully. In this type of action, it is derived from tacit knowledge. It is often left unexplained, unmentioned or not reflected. Thus, Schön described it as knowing-in-action. What is crucial to one’s learning is the ability to “think what one is doing while one is doing it”, known as reflection-in-action. Schön described this as a kind of reflection that occurs while one is able to consciously evaluate and make changes while one is working. This is like an on-going experimentation that enables one to find solutions. The changes made are purposeful rather than by ‘trial-anderror’. The teacher’s role is crucial in guiding and facilitating these reflective conversations as it is a process that he/she can help to reshape what the students are working and thinking on it.
Students had created a one-bar rhythmic ostinato (based on four crochet beats in a bar). In groups, they explored how their patterns (using body percussion) would work with the melody line and they would decide how to perform both parts together. The following dialogue showed the facilitation on the part of the teacher to bring about some reflective thinking in the groups.
Facilitating reflection-in-action Teacher went to each group to hear what each group was doing and facilitated their discussions. These were some of the teacher’s questions:
It looks very good like this but what it would be like if half of you play harmonica, how are you going to do this action which require more partners? Maybe you could modify your rhythmic ostinato clapping actions? You could think about tapping on the floor or lap?
Do you think your action of tapping your face would produce an effective and audible sound?
(A group of three students asked the teacher for advice.)
Facilitating discussions that involved reflection
Student:
Can we do it like this? She plays one beat, I do another beat, then alternate the actions.
Teacher:
Does that mean that one student will be playing the harmonica alone?
Student 1: Yes, she wanted to.
Teacher:
Ok, if that is what you want.
(Another group demonstrated to the teacher their rhythmic ostinato.)
Vignette 1.8 A Secondary 1 music lesson
Teacher:
Are you doing 8 counts? (referring to 8 crochet beats)
Student 2: 4 counts.
Teacher:
How is that 4 counts? Ok, I will count for you. You do it.
(Some students in the group realised that their pattern could be in 8 counts instead of 4.)
Teacher: am OK if you do 8 counts. Then multiply by 4 (referring to repeating the pattern 4 times, to accompany the melody line). Or you do 4 counts, multiply by 8. Which one would you want?
(Students were not sure what decision they should make.)
Teacher:
You do it again, I can count for you.
(Students performed the pattern, with the teacher counting 1, 2, 3, 4. All now realised that their ostinato was a 2-bar pattern – of 8 counts in total.)
Teacher:
It’s still ok but is it complicated?
Student 3: No, it’s very nice.
Teacher: Ok, then won’t stop you.
Through the students’ own reflective responses which were facilitated by the teacher’s questions, they were able to construct their understanding, improve on their creative approach, and achieve insightful learning. The opportunity provided for the students to make their own creative decision(s) also led to greater student-directed learning and ownership.
Schön also described another level of reflective practice - ‘reflection-onaction’, whereby it involved thinking back on what had been done in order to discover how an action might have contributed to an unexpected outcome. The facilitation of this evaluation and reflection process would enable the students to make sense of their journey of knowledge construction and also understand the processes through which their conclusions are arrived at. Vignette 3.4 describes an example of reflection-on-action taking place in a music lesson.
Facilitating discussions that involved reflection
Vignette 1.9 A Secondary 2 music lesson
The students were given about 3 weeks to create (individually) a score for a 1:30 minute film excerpt (Pirates of the Caribbean) using existing loops on Ipad GarageBand. In this lesson, the students were to share what they have created to their peers.
Teacher:
It’s a good time to have some sharing. We would like to hear your work and also comment on it. Let’s start with that table (the students are seated in groups at tables). Can you pick one and let’s hear your music. After you pick one, the owner of the work does not present it or come up. Someone else in the group will present it.
(Student 1’s work is being played.)
Teacher: Can we ask her friend what she thinks about this composed clip?
Student 2:
think it’s very well done because there was use of a lot of different elements like different strings, drums, shakers. When a different scene comes up, she changes the melody part. The overall mood is fast paced and anxious.
Teacher: Can I invite the other students to comment?
Student 3:
There are many varied changes compare to the other clip (she was making a comparison to another friend’s sound clip).
Teacher: Can we hear from you?
Student 4:
There were some parts of ‘mickey-mousing’. Like the front part; there was a brief part of comical music. She can have more tension in some parts of the music. When the camera changes angle, she can change the type of music.
Student 5: She can vary the loudness of the different instruments. Now, all instruments are blasting at the same volume.
Student 6: We hear all the instruments throughout the extract, maybe she can pause some of the instruments, that is to take a rest.
Teacher: You mean vary the entrances of the instrument?
(Student 6 nodded her head. Teacher moved on to another student’s work. After listening, the teacher invited students to do peer reflection.)
Student 7:
The second part when she change to a faster pace music was appropriate, as it was the ‘ocean part’ of the movie clip.
Teacher: Why was it appropriate?
Student 7:
That part was building up the tension as there was going to be a fight.
Teacher:
What makes the second part more appropriate? Could you use terms from the elements of music to justify why it became more appropriate?
At the beginning, maybe she can add the lower strings – like cellos? In the middle, she can make the music more tense.
Teacher: How can she make the music more tense?
Student 8: She can add increase the pace of the music (to a faster pace).
Student 9:
In the middle of the sound clip, there was a bass sound in one of the loops, which blended quite well.
Teacher:
Yes, I agree. It added a different layer to the music, resulting in thicker layer of textures.
The reflection-on-action facilitated by the teacher allowed the students to be actively engaged in the learning process. The students became aware of why one does what one did. As learning is both an active and reflective process in a student-centric lesson, this meeting of action (experience of doing) and thinking (reflection) combine to create new knowledge, meaning and understanding.
Freire (1973) believed that reflection is a result of “critical consciousness”, in which learners become actors and authors of their own decisions. Having opportunities for students to have some formal or informal time to discuss ‘what, why and how’ will help them to “internalise and link thought to action, allowing us to problem-solve, create coherence and form patterns of understanding” (Vygotsky, 1978). The sharing of their reflections in dialogical spaces and hypermedia will assist them to make sense of theirs and others’ learning. This approach will ‘capture’ a greater amount of learning, and true learning is fully actualised.
Making learning relevant through contextual teaching and learning
Pogonowski (1989) described a context as “a determined place and time, either real, or simulated”. When contexts are included in the teaching of music in the classroom, it will engage students in music-making that describes, as close as possible, real-life situations. Furthermore, when musical concepts are presented in context, students will understand the relevancy of learning. It can connect music to their daily living and identity, make personal meaning of their music learning experiences, and nurture their social, cultural and historical awareness by relating to socio-culturalhistorical contexts.
Using the context of film excerpts to engage the students in their learning
Graue and Walsh (1998) asserted that “children cannot possibly remain untouched by their contexts”. Both children and context have a symbiotic relationship; their learning and sense making can be shaped by the context. Providing opportunities for them to engage in the meta-cognition of the context through music will heighten their awareness of their learning experiences. The process, by which they acquire this awareness, will also become a motivating factor for learning (Hook, 1994). Vignette 4.1 provides an example of contextual teaching and learning, in which a context of a film is used to engage the student(s) learning.
The objective of the lesson was for the students to explore how music gives a film a distinct overall identity. The music highlights the action and drama on screen, tells the story that may not be seen on screen and also reflects the emotion of the character(s). The teacher uses an excerpt from the film ‘Jaws’, opening scene, from which a discussion will focus on these questions: What effect does the music have on this scene? Did you see the shark? What do you think the music represents? What can you say about the music: is the music in major key/minor key/not in any particular key? Is the music/sound(s) low/high? Is there music throughout the excerpt? Is it effective to have music throughout this excerpt?
After watching the film clip, the teacher had the students discuss with their ‘shoulder partner’ (in pairs) the questions on the workshop. This lesson is to lead to the creative project of the students (individually) scoring for a 1:30 minute film excerpt (Pirates of the Caribbean) using existing loops on IPad GarageBand.
Teacher:
Can I hear the number 3’s from each table (the teacher name each student in each group table a number 1, 2, 3, 4) with their responses?
Can I hear from you the answer to the first question?
(What effect does the music have on this scene?)
1: Anxiety.
Teacher:
Good, how about this table?
Student 2: The music is very scary.
Teacher:
This table, can have a response to this question - Did you see the shark? What do you think of this?
3: No.
Teacher:
The answer is no. We never saw the shark. How do you know? Why did you cover your ears?
Vignette 1.10 A Secondary 2 music lesson
Student
Student
Student 4: It’s the sound, the music.
Student 5: It is like that there is something beneath in the water because the scene is shown from underneath the water.
Teacher:
Somebody said it is the music. What do you think the music represents?
Student 6: The shark, the fear.
Teacher:
Yes, the shark or the fear that the shark brings to the people. So, can I summarise what you said ‘so to you, the music is the shark because you heard the music that represents the shark but you never saw the shark.’ Now, that’s an interesting point. What about the next question?
(What can you say about the music: is the music in major key/minor key/not in any particular key?)
Student 7: Minor, yet not in any particular key.
Teacher:
What about your response? How about here (referring to the group at another table)? (The students gave similar responses to the student 7 as the teacher asked for responses from the different groups.)
Teacher: tend to agree with those who say ‘not in any particular key’. Yes, you can’t really say that there is no tonality. But how about this question? (Is the music/sound(s) low/high?)
Student 8: It’s both low and high.
Teacher: So when is the low part?
Student 9: When the shark is closing in.
Teacher: Good, I like that. Any other ways to interpret when the lower sounds were used?
Student 10: In the water scene; used to build up the tension.
Teacher: That something is lurking underneath and it is coming. How about the high sounds?
Student 11: It shows the Climax; the part when she is struggling in the water. (The teacher encouraged other responses from the students: when she grabbed the marker, when it’s scary.)
Teacher: Is there music throughout the excerpt?
Teacher: Would it be effective to have music throughout?
Teacher: Interesting, why?
Student 13: No.
Student 14:
When you have music throughout the music(or the whole thing), then you won’t really notice it when it’s the exciting part.
Teacher:
That is interesting. Did you catch her point? If the music is throughout, then it may not have enough contrast?
Student 15:
If there is no silence, there is no suspense. Sometimes the silence creates the suspense. It makes us think what is going to happen.
Student 15:
If there is music throughout, then the music will not serve its purpose as it does not build up the tension.
Teacher:
Now, from what you have said, it seems you are talking about contrast, even the silence in the music can create contrasts. These are very good points raised. The silence in the music is like the rests. Student 12: No.
By facilitating the discussion through questions, the students critically reflected and thought about what they had seen and heard in the excerpt of the film. As the context of film music was meaningful and relevant, it had motivated the students and allowed them to take ownership of their learning and learn from each other and together.
There is value in allowing the students’ responses to steer lessons and create instructional strategies (Brown, 2008). Brown (2008) commented that educators “recommend asking questions and leading students to solutions rather than simply giving answers, with the goal of nurturing students’ natural curiosity”. Hence, the students through active participating in the discussion decide how learning should take place and what new knowledge is gained. Pogonowski (1989) asserted that, “integrating real-life issues with music so that teaching and learning become contextual and relevant to our students’ lives... provide tools for ongoing lifelong learning”.
Epilogue
The move towards student-centricity is more than just a change in the teaching methods or instructional strategies. It is a shift in one’s philosophical paradigm; moving to thinking of not only “what we teach but also how and why we teach something” (Napoli, 2004), and “thinking about our performance
as teachers to thinking about the learning processes the student should go through in order to learn effectively” (ibid.). Hence, student-centric teaching is not just about moving away from direct instruction. In fact, Hmelo-Silver et al. (2007) pointed out that “student-centred learning actively utilizes direct instruction on a just-in-time basis”. The choice to exercise which approach will depend on the context and situation.
Does this mean that the role of the teacher changes in a student-centric lesson? The role of the teacher as an expert does not change when moving from a teller of knowledge to a facilitator of learning. “What changes is how this expertise is used” (Doyle, 2011). It is about how the teacher encourages full participation, promotes mutual understanding, and cultivates shared responsibility among the students It is about stepping aside at times and letting the students take the lead; it is about sharing power in the classroom and being aware that the teacher do less telling and the students do more discovering and experiencing (Weimar, 2002). Teachers will need to scaffold the lessons in more detail and also “sequence a set of related learning experiences, so that they build on each other” (Weimar, 2002). Moving the teaching from “always telling” to more of facilitation will no doubt take time, planning and effort to develop this skill. The big picture being that this can help optimise the students’ learning.
With a student-centred approach, lessons will enable our students to make metaphorical transformations, partake in ‘what if’ conversations and define what it is to be human (Swanwick, 1999). By putting students at the centre of learning, teachers “can encourage and inspire students to seek out knowledge and to strive for understanding at a deeper level” and students can “achieve independent minds and the capacity to make educational decision and value judgements” (Brown, 2008).
The inclusion of these four student-centred principles (providing choices and empowering students to make decisions, facilitating creativity in musicmaking, facilitating critical thinking, reflection-in-action and reflectionon-action, and making learning relevant through contextual teaching and learning) in the delivery of music teaching, can potentially develop the 21st century competencies in the students, and nurture them to becoming a confident person, self-directed learner, active contributor and concerned citizen.
“The aim of education should be to teach us rather how to think, than what to think — rather to improve our minds, so as to enable us to think for ourselves, than to load the memory with the thoughts of other men.”
(Dewey, 1910/1991)
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Suriati Suradi Programme Manager, STAR
Student-centred Pedagogies to Inculcate Self-identity: A Case Study with Primary School Students
Introduction
“There is a shared belief across Singapore society that education is crucial in building up individual and collective capacity, and in strengthening the cohesiveness of the nation beyond knowledge and skills.’ The education system has realized ‘the need to recognise diverse and complex needs, and allows all to progress in life – not by prescribing one path for all, but to have a diversity of pathways and opportunities, regardless of background.”
(Heng, 2011)
At the Ministry of Education (Singapore) Workplan Seminar in 2011, the Education Minister urged schools to focus on student-centric, values-driven education (Heng, 2011). He went on to share that there was a need to empower schools and teachers so that they could work towards improving the quality of teaching and learning in the classrooms. As schools were beginning to customise their programmes to meet the needs of their students, they were also giving more attention to providing students with authentic learning experiences which included the acquisition of desirable values and relevant skills. The Minister believed that in order to nurture personal values to enable students to have the confidence and self-awareness, it was important to also nurture self-identity. This can be achieved through pedagogies that are student-centric, pedagogies that take into account the students’ strengths and abilities, their interests and aspirations, and give space for creativity and personal expression.
This paper presents the experiences of a primary school music teacher who translated the key observations from a learning journey, to develop music
pedagogies that are student-centric and that nurture self-identity in students. Beginning with the conceptualisation of ideas and a professional development plan, the teacher, Ms Yan, designed a 10-week music curriculum for her students. In her 10-week music lessons, Ms Yan applied the principles of student-centred arts learning to empower her students in decision-making and music-making, and providing opportunities for students’ self-discovery. Teaching and learning took on a constructivist approach. Students were nurtured to develop critical, reflective and creative thinking through musicmaking sessions. Throughout the period of research, the teacher went through frequent deep reflective discussions which enhanced the way she designed her lesson modules, and the outcomes of these decisions made.
Student-Centred Music Learning: TranslatingtotheClassroom
McCombs and Whisler (1997, p. 16; cited in McCombs & Miller, 2007) described student-centred learning to be “the perspective that combines a focus on individual learners – their heredity, experiences, perspectives, backgrounds, talents, interests, capacities and needs – with a focus on the best available knowledge about learning and how it occurs and about teaching practices that promote the highest levels of motivation, learning and achievement for all learners”. For this to take place in the music classroom, the teacher is required to develop strategies that support diverse learner needs and perspectives and provide time for students to reflect critically. The teacher too should be given the opportunity and time to re-create her practices and beliefs about students and instructions. Like the students she teaches, the teacher must be actively involved in her own learning processes in a collaborative process with other educators. This paradigm shift is essential for the success in any student-centred classroom as the teachers challenge the misconceptions about learners and learning and to create improved ways to prepare quality teachers and teaching.
In his book, Teaching Music Musically, Swanwick (1999/2012, p. 35) discussed how music educators could help students experience “actual quality of musical encounters”. For this to happen, he informed that there is a “need for radical re-thinking of how time and resources are used.”
Nurturing Identity Through Song Writing
In this research, the teacher involved and the school leader started by deciding to review the school’s music curriculum. They believed that the teaching of music, like any other subjects taught in the school, could and should be customised to meet the varied needs of their students. This decision to radically re-think and redesign the school’s curriculum led the teacher involved to think more about her students’ learning needs. The school decided to implement the change at the primary 3 level, with a total of 4 classes. While curriculum time remaining unchanged, there was a need to relook at the resources available as well as on how they could be used more effectively. The planning of the lessons did not just focus on what was to be taught and what activities would best support the teaching and learning. It also included focus on the time and space for the teacher to
reconstruct her beliefs and at the same time re-think about her instructions as she realised that all the above factors would affect her students’ learning.
In the early planning stage, Ms Yan identified a specific goal for her students’ learning – nurturing identity through song writing. This shift of planning differed from her norm where she used to typically teach music based on musical concepts without having an end in mind. Learning the music of one’s own culture, as well as that of others, allows students to understand themselves and their relationship to other cultures. Reimer (1970; cited in Mark and Madura, 2010), in his book A Philosophy of Music Education, stated that music should be taught to children in an authentic, comprehensive manner as opposed to devices like arranging music of various cultures to sound like Western music. He opined that this loses the authentic characteristics and meaning of the music and defeats the purpose of teaching the musics of other cultures. Elliot (1995), proposed praxialism, which originated from the Greek philosopher Aristotle’s idea of praxis, where action is based on practice rather than theory (cited in Mark & Madura, 2010). The paraxial philosophy describes music as action-based study of music which includes performing, listening, composing, arranging, conducting and creating. It focuses not only on the work of art itself but also in one’s experiences when engaged in music-making. Music-making helps students gain self-knowledge, growth and self-esteem. It emphasises the roles that music plays in a variety of societies and the ways that the people of those societies respond to their Musics (McCarthy & Goble, 2002; cited in ibid.). Jorgensen (1997, 2003, 2008; cited in ibid.) recommends guiding principles for music teachers to bring together philosophy and music education practice.
In her book, Student-Centred Coaching, Sweeney (2011) shared that in a student-centred model, the primary focus is identifying a target for student learning and teachers would need to emphasise on students’ outcomes rather than on the educators’ intents. She went on to discuss the need for teachers to also be given professional development in this area in order to better implement student-centred lessons. Before embarking on the research, Ms Yan was engaged in numerous conversations on what studentcentred classroom is as well as sessions with a research consultant on how she could carry out her research. Officers from STAR modeled examples of student-centred lessons in a workshop which she attended and eventually, Ms Yan trialed some of the lessons herself. Using the guiding principles of student-centred arts learning which STAR co-created with teacher-leaders, Ms Yan planned and designed a 10-week lesson module in song writing which aimed in nurturing identity among the students. The purpose of using the guiding principles was to, firstly, understand the principles of learnercentred pedagogies with a vision of the desired student dispositions and Music syllabus outcomes to achieve the 21st century competencies in the local context and secondly, be able to use common vocabulary for learnercentred pedagogic practices in her discussions with colleagues at STAR.
Discussion
The project focused primarily on developing students’ sense of identity through music with lessons planned based on the current general music syllabus for primary schools. Particular attention was given to ensure that there were equal opportunities for students to experience music through following the processes of creating, listening and performing, while conscientiously inculcating a sense of identity among them. Ms Yan provided opportunities for students to share about themselves, their family as well as their likes and dislikes. Some students from different nationalities were invited to share on their family activities.
Scaffolding of Music-Making
Swanwick (1999/2012, p. 35) wrote that it was essential that the music classroom is where “the major activities of composing-listening, performinglistening and audience-listening take place”. He proposed that smaller groups rather than whole-class or whole band or whole chorus were necessary for student interaction, musical decision-making and individual choice. He believed that when “people become musically engaged when they regard the activity as meaningful, as authentic” (ibid.). We saw this in Ms Yan’s lessons as she planned to provide opportunities for students to work in small groups to discuss and be involved in musical decision-making. She ensured that all her students’ voices were heard as the final project reflected the group’s collective decision in their composition.
Ample examples were introduced to scaffold the students’ learning during the music lesson. The teacher provided listening exercises for students to be introduced to local singer-songwriters, Dick Lee and Corrine May. She even composed a song, “I Like…” and performed it to the class to enthuse them about song writing. To her, the listening exercises provided the students “with relevant examples that would be the foundation of their song writing lessons”. She chose these local artists as examples not just to introduce them as personalities but also to inform the students on how the works of local composers impact the nation as these artists wrote and sang songs to promote National Education. These songs are widely sung by the nation during Singapore’s National Day celebration.
Flow of Lesson
In her planning, Ms Yan also paid very close attention to the flow of each lesson. Besides selecting materials to support her larger objective of helping students inculcate identity among themselves, these materials also supported the learning of the music concepts such as pulse, rhythm and ostinato. She ensured that there was a thread that ran through the lessons and strung the learning together. An example of how she created the flow while bearing in mind the intent of nurturing students’ self-identity, was through the introduction of singing games as a tuning-in activity. She then organised the class into smaller groups where as a group, they replaced the lyrics using words to describe what they liked and presented their work to the class. This became a building block for the students in song writing as well as developing their sense of identity. The experiences provided the
students with more examples to what and how they could create. With the teacher focused on song writing and inculcating identity, the students were given opportunities to explore new vocabulary and rhythmic patterns that could be potentially suitable for their song writing that they would embark on later in the series of lessons. These bite-size experiences and scaffolding were essential to allow students to learn in stages and to be provided with sufficient experiences to nurture identity.
Providing Feedback, Asking Questions
Providing feedback to her students for improvement in learning was important to the teacher. She believed that students should be given the opportunity to share their thoughts and comment aloud about another person’s work. To help the students in acquiring the skill of providing constructive feedback, Ms Yan role-modeled the way feedback was given. She demonstrated to the class by giving constructive comments to students for the class to take note of. She would then encourage the students to emulate her questioning and try asking new questions. In group performances, Ms Yan would provide students with opportunities to ask each performing group questions or provide comments. Here, she would take on the role of a facilitator where she would mediate the question or probe further to provide clarity to her students. In group discussions, Ms Yan would make her rounds to each group to observe their progress as well as to check on understanding. She would provide input to the discussion when deemed necessary.
Besides asking questions to check on students’ understanding, the teacher asked students questions to find out what they knew about song writing. She then taught the lesson based on what they know and further developed their understanding by giving them tasks to complete. Questions also helped to understand the reasons for the students’ choices and generated thinking among the group members. For example in a group song writing exercise, the students were supposed to add in 4-beat rhythmic patterns to their composition. A group was having difficulty with the 2nd phrase and was short of a beat. Teacher asked the group why they decided on using the rhythm for the second phrase in the song. She then got the group to clap the pattern as they chanted the verse to her. She too clapped the pattern as they chanted the verse. While watching the teacher, the students realised that the phrase was short of a beat and proceeded to make changes accordingly. Building on the responses given by the students, it was observed that teacher would sometimes prod and ask the students to explain further to clarify.
Sufficient wait time would be given for students to formulate their answers and respond to her. In such an interactive learning environment, the teacher usually endeavoured to ask open-ended questions that provided opportunities for the students to articulate their understanding and also provided her with her students’ insights. They also promoted higher-level thinking on the part of the students. Her responses to them were always positive and encouraging and this motivated the students to become an active participant in her class. Ms Yan shared that by asking her students questions, their responses informed her of her own teaching.
Such a learning environment provided a dialogue that went beyond teacher questions and student answers. In facilitating another group, she asked the group members to suggest ways to improve the quality of their composition. In response to her questioning, the group added layers to the original song. In their final performance, they had a percussion part and a rhythmic ostinato part to accompany the singing of the song. When asking questions, it was noted that the teacher would also ensure that the class listened to the speaker’s contribution or response. She frequently reminded the class of one of the school’s core value which was ‘respect’. The teacher was always mindful that the work must be the students’ and final decision would be agreed and made by the group. Such routine encouraged students to share their thinking aloud and with confidence.
Reflection
With the understanding that reflection is an important component in a student-centred music lesson, Ms Yan used various forms of reflection to help her students improve in their class performance. It was observed that there were two processes of reflection in the classroom – the students’ as well as the teacher’s – that ensured success in learning in the classroom. As a reflective practitioner, Ms Yan would make necessary changes to facilitate effective learning in her classroom. By monitoring her students’ progress on an ongoing process, the teacher also constantly provides opportunities for student input in an effort to assess the depth of their understanding. As a facilitator to the students’ learning, the teacher enables the students to figure things out for themselves by suggesting directions or information to those in need of assistance. To the teacher, reflection-in-action (Schön, 1983, 1987) allowed her to make changes in her lesson delivery as she taught the class. For the students, reflection-in-action and reflection-on-action allowed them to improve their quality of work and thinking that was generated through discussion in the group. She encouraged her students to make changes for improvement as they worked on their project.
In her music lessons, students were taught to contribute and share their ideas. They were seen performing their composition in their small groups and making changes as they worked on it. Students also acquired reflection-on-action skills as they went through Ms Yan’s lessons. Groups were also encouraged to peer evaluate. With the use of rubrics that were co-constructed as a class, the students were clear of the expectations in their work. Peer evaluation allowed students to work on the group dynamics that would eventually show improvement in the quality of work produced. Self evaluation provided each individual the time to reflect on their thinking and performance. The teacher frequently encouraged students to reflect on their work. She made time for students to reflect their learning at the end of each lesson. Believing that thinking should be made visible, the teacher encouraged all students to pen their thoughts in a journal that was given to them. The teacher shared that assessment for learning also allowed her to check on students’ understanding of the musical concepts taught.
Creating a Conducive Environment
As Ms Yan identified her music classroom to be the hub where students spend many hours learning music and making music together, she ensured that not only would she have to determine goals for their learning, she would also need to create a conducive environment for their learning. It was observed that when the teacher supports students in non-threatening environments that were reported as being warm and caring, students were highly self-motivated. Meaningful connections between subject matter and child, as related to personal goals, were identified as very important markers for future success. Wiggins (2001, pp. 3-4) shared that when the teacher is able to help students “make meaning out of musical experiences and to use music as a means of personal expression”, the student would feel empowered “to become musically proficient”. She went on to state that the role of the teacher is to make it possible for someone to learn and it “involves developing experiences designed to enable participants to develop particular understanding through their participation” (ibid.). To do so the teacher must begin thinking during her planning with the musical world of the children if they wish to positively influence the child’s musical development.
Campbell (2006, p. 433; cited in Lum and Whiteman, 2012, p. 3) stated that “Children learn the role of music within their society simply by living in their culture”. In her book, Methods for Teaching Music to Children, she also shared that, “children socialise through music” (Campbell, 2008, p. 127). Ms Yan demonstrated this belief when she introduced singing games and activities that required interaction among the students. She created a positive environment for her students to learn music where the tone of environment was inviting and non-threatening to her students. She wanted her lessons to be able to provide students the concept of musicality which she believed was essential for all children. She wanted all her students to have the opportunity to grow more musical as part of their lives. She shared that her music curriculum programme could help continue the natural development of her students’ capacity to listen, perform and create. The material selected for her lessons were age appropriate and engaging. They provided students with the necessary scaffolding required for the lesson objectives. The level of difficulty was not easy enough that the students felt unchallenged, resulting in off-task behavior. Neither was it too difficult that it hampered progress. Routine established in the classroom allowed the teacher to have better classroom management. For example, the teacher would use a series of rhythmic claps to get students’ attention. In response, students would ‘answer’ the claps with another series of ‘agreed’ rhythmic pattern. The ‘answer’ was discussed earlier in the year when the teacher was establishing rapport and routine with the class. She would play a short tune on the keyboard in the classroom as a cue for the students to assemble after group work. She also taught the class a song about ‘getting ready to return to class’. All these routines helped the teacher managed the class and set a conducive learning environment for the students.
Conclusion
The type of pedagogies that the teacher uses nurtures student identity. We have seen how the teacher started with building a class identity which was then further developed into smaller group identity, ensuring that the personal voice could still be heard. We have also seen how studentcentric lessons can help develop the personal voice. For example, giving opportunities for students to make musical decisions empowers them and increases ownership of the work they do. Also through teachers’ feedback and students’ reflections, students’ understanding deepen and work is improved.
If identity is developed through the inculcation of life-skills, we saw that there were opportunities for these skills to be nurtured through the teacher’s pedagogies. The teacher was able to develop students’ soft skills such as working in teams and the value of turn taking and respect for each other’s contribution through her guidance and careful planning. She was also able to help develop leadership quality among her students as she provided opportunities for them. Students become self-directed learner while receiving advice and feedback from all around. Students adopted and adapted the qualities they see in their friends and role models, in this case, their teacher.
Finally, we also saw that the musical identity of students is developed through authentic tasks and lessons that integrate listening, creating and performing. Throughout the process of learning to compose a song, students became musically inspired. With examples and careful scaffolding, students were able to complete task with little difficulty. The empowerment given to decide and contribute motivated students to want to achieve higher attainment level. They become more confident learners.
References
Campbell, P. S. (2008). Musician and teacher: An orientation to music education. W. W. Norton & Company
Heng, S. K. (2011). Ministry of Education Work Plan Seminar, 22 September 2011. Retrieved October 31, 2012, from: http://www.moe.gov.sg/media/speeches/2011/09/22/workplan-seminar-2011.php
Lum, C.H. & Whiteman, P. (2012). Musical childhoods of Asia and the Pacific. IAP: Information Age Publishing, Inc.
Mark, M. L. and Madura, P. (2010). Music education in your hands: An introduction for future teachers. New York and London: Routledge
McCombs, B.L and Miller, M (2007). Learner-centred classroom practices and assessments: Maximising student motivation, learning and achievement. California: Corwin Press
Schön, D. (1983). The reflective practitioner New York: Basic Books.
Schön, D. (1987). Teaching artistry through reflection-in-action: In educating the reflective practitioner San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Swanwick, K. (1999/2012). Teaching music musically. New York and London: Routledge
Sweeney, D. (2011). Student-centred coaching, California: Corwin Press
Wiggins, J. (2001). Teaching for musical understanding. Boston: McGraw-Hill.
Episodes
Reflective Snapshots
Connecting the stars has long been a human endeavour. Motivated by the desire to make meaning out of seemingly disparate placement in the sky. Moved by the need to create stories that make sense to and of one’s contexts.
That is the story of constellations. They are our own connections of moments, of movements.
They reflect our ways of contextualising our understanding of student-centricity, line by line, star by star, as we reflect upon them through the lenses of identity, songs and thoughts.
Stars can only be connected and constellations drawn, when we take a step back, to appreciate them within the enormity of the sky. And the shapes we draw, will depend on where we are, will depend on our lenses.
That is the beauty of connections. Different eyes. Different whys. Why so?
What does Brain Research Say about a Student-centred Approach to Music Learning
euroscience research and new discoveries about how the human brain learns have led us to new understandings about music and learning.
According to Ratey (2002), the dendrites of our brain cells only grow when the brain is actively engaged and the neuron-networks formed in our brains only stay connected when they are used repeatedly. What this means is that allowing active learner engagement where our students do more active and creative music making, collaborative learning, their own decision-making in the artistic processes and reflecting will optimise such development of the neuron-networks. Nurturing these ‘neuron-networks’ help our students to become successful learners in a student-centred music classroom.
The cerebral cortex is largely responsible for higher brain functions including thought, reasoning, and memory. It was found that there is more wiring in the brain leading from the amygdala (the part of the brain that is connected to one’s emotional/affective behaviours and feelings) to the cerebral cortex than the other way. What it means to us as educators is that facilitating pleasurable and positive musical experiences can positively influence the students’ meta-cognition. As Zull (2002) aptly puts it,
“Emotion
is the mortar that holds learning together”.
Creating a conducive arts learning environment enables the students to feel safe and confident, thus allowing learning to be increased greatly. A student-centred environment that provides choices and empowering students to make decisions in the arts processes, learning goals and criteria of success, signifies a radical change in the way we teach music in the classroom. The question is — “Are our students ready for it?” Even if they are not, as teachers, we ourselves must realise that “knowing has shifted from being able to remember and repeat information to being able to find and use it” (Nobel laureate Herbert Simon, 1978).
References
1. Ratey, J. (2001). A user‘s guide to the brain. New York, NY: Pantheon Books.
2. Zull, J. (2002). The art of changing the brain. Sterling, VA: Stylus
Li Yen See, Master Teacher, STAR
Eric Favaro, Visting Fellow with STAR in Apr 2011
Why Improvise?
id you know that great icons of classical music – Bach, Handel, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Brahms, Liszt, and others – were known as great improvisers in their day? Today, improvisation in music is usually a technique associated with jazz musicians, and garage bands. We know that classical musicians rarely improvise, seeking rather to rely totally on the printed page and focusing more on literal interpretations of musical works.
The art of improvisation is critical for the development of music literacy skills and a welltrained ear. From the early years of schooling, students should be given opportunities to improvise, and to create their own music. The foundation for successful composition in the classroom is improvisation.
If we consider how we learned to speak, we did not start with printed words. Rather, through a series of exploratory experiences, we learned language skills that were supported by positive reinforcement from those around us. Should this not be the way we learn music? Every lesson and every rehearsal should include time to improvise. A text that I highly recommend for short improvisation activities is Improvisation Games for Classical Musicians (Jeffrey Agrell), published by GIA Publications in Chicago, 2008. In it you will find practical suggestions for improvisation that are easy to implement as warm-ups and energisers in your music classes and rehearsals.
Children’s Singing: Natural and Nurtured by Teachers
hildren: how songfully musical they are! From birth forward, they sing as they also dance regularly and rhythmically. Especially when encouraged, the songs flow from them from infancy onward, and their tunefulness can astonish parents and teachers alike. Listen to the children, and we hear traditional songs of the generations, of recent mediated influences, and of their own creative expression.
Children sing because they must, because singing is a primal action, a human need. They go on singing when they are supported by teachers, family, and peers, when they are taught new tunes in school classes, when they work out how natural it is to “make a new song” of their own imagination, when they are led to find beauty in the sounding of a simple melody. And so we hear children singing songs like “Feng Yang Song” (Chinese), “Chan Mali Chan” (Malay), “Oru Kallu” Tamil-Indian), alongside widely known traditional songs of the English language such as “Skip to My Lou”, “Liza Jane”, “The Noble Duke of York”, and “This Land is Your Land”.
We who teach children know that singing is a key component in a sequential programme of musical study. We value the expressive activity of singing itself, and so we strive for the cultivation of children’s voices for greater resonance and range. We recognise that singing is a skill that requires practice, and so we build into our lessons directed listening, frequent live modelling (by us, as their “resident singers”), and plenty of repetition. We know that their melodic and rhythmic accuracy develops over time, and with practice. Because singing is a primary part of children’s physical, emotional, and social selves, we provide ample opportunities for children to sing their way to a more holistic development.
Singing is an important core musical experience. It is a very personal expression and yet one that is also beautiful in its shared and collective experience. As children attain their wholeness of being, developing as their singing capacity from a very young age all the way into their adolescence, the songful experiences are some of the brightest and most shining parts of their mosaic selves. It is children’s nature to sing, even as it is our responsibility of teachers to nurture their singing capacities.
For discussion of children’s musical ways, including their penchant for singing, see works like Chee Hoo Lum and Peter Whiteman’s Musical Childhoods of Asia and the Pacific, Kathryn Marsh’s The Musical Playground, Patricia Shehan Campbell’s Songs in Their Heads, and The Oxford Handbook of Children’s Musical Cultures, edited by Patricia Shehan Campbell and Trevor Wiggins and available by January 2013.
Patricia Shehan Campbell,
University of Washington, Visiting Fellow with STAR in September 2012
Gelang Sipaku Gelang : A Musical Reading
elang Sipaku Gelang is a beloved local folk song. With National Day around the corner, this is certainly one of the familiar tunes that we music teachers can fall back on for our National Day celebrations in school. According to National Library’s website, this folk song is about ‘the virtue of respect and tolerance in community living.’ Let’s have a quick look at the meaning of the lyrics and its musical structure.
The most common translation is that ‘Gelang’ means ‘bracelet’ / ‘ring’ and is related to the word ‘Geylang’, an area in Singapore (e.g. in forums and children’s website). But as is the case of folk songs, this translation is not entirely definitive. I’d like to offer another reading here: that ‘Gelang’ is a species of creepers and ‘sipaku’ is a non-flowering fern of the species.
If we place this song within the genre of Malay traditional music, the song’s lyrics conform to the format of a Malay pantun (a classic Malay poetic structure): strophic and with a rhyme pattern of abab. It usually begins by making references to nature or a local place. The opening lyrics are often not ‘logically’ connected to the rest of the song (Matusky & Chopyak, 2001, p. 435). Once the beauty of the pantun is appreciated, the musical meaning of the song is clearer too!
References
Stanza 1
Gelang si paku gelang
Gelang si rama-rama
Mari pulang, marilah pulang
Marilah pulang, Bersama-sama
Stanza 2
Gelang si paku gelang
Gelang di Singapura
Jangan suka mengata orang
Diri sendiri baik dijaga
Stanza 3
Gelang si paku Gelang
Gelang di Ulu Pandan
Jangan suka mengata orang
Akibat nanti binasa badan
Creepers and ferns
Creepers, the butterflies
Go home, let’s go home
Let’s go home, together
Creepers and ferns
Creepers and ferns of Singapore
Do not criticise others
Be mindful of your own behaviour
Creepers and ferns
Creepers and ferns of Ulu Pandan
Do not criticise others
Later results in destroying others
Ho, H.P. (2003). Singaporean identity through the music curriculum: A look at student perceptions and possible implications for music education in Singapore. (Unpublished Masters Dissertation) Institute of Education, London. Ungerground Square. (2009). Geylang sipaku Geylang, Geylang the nailer Geylang? Retrieved 12 February 13, from http:// undergroundsquare.com/topic.php?id=113
Yannucci, L. (2013). Mama Lisa’s World: Gelang sipaku gelang Retrieved 12 February 13, from http://www.mamalisa.com/?t=es&p=2785&c=73, accessed on 12 Feb 13
Matusky, P. & Chopyak, J. (1998). Peninsular Malaysia, in T.E. Miller and S. Williams (Eds), The Garland Encyclopaedia of World Music: Southeast Asia (pp. 401 – 443). New York: Garland.
National Library Board, Singapore. Gelang sipaku Gelang. Retrieved 12 February 13, from http://eservice.nlb.gov.sg/ opencmscontent.aspx?id=532a7d0b-e2f6-4079-8e08-341f3b049b39
Ho Hui Ping, Programme Manager, STAR
The Search for National Identity through Music
“…an individual begins to acquire a musical identity, or rather several musical identities, which are liable to develop and change over time.”
(Green, 2011, p. 1)
s August approaches, schools are busy preparing for National Day celebrations. Schools play a very prominent role in building and enhancing national identity among students. Schools around the world, from Cyprus to remote regions of Aboriginal Australia, take on the role of constructing the national identities through music. In Singapore, songs embodying national ideals and values seek to engender a stronger sense of belonging and community amongst Singaporeans. With this yearly practice, students’ musical identity may emerge alongside the national identity.
As our students spend most of their time in school environments, we as music teachers, play an impactful role in shaping our students’ national identity through music. In her book, Lucy Green shared that a person’s acquisition of identities is referred to any kind of learning that spans from mere interactions through enculturation by family, friendship group and mass media to conscious application and study or from “being taught”. As teachers, we are in the position to provide our students with all of the above! We can organise platforms and opportunities for students to interact and socialise through musical activities as well as engage them with music from the multicultural traditions that make up our Singaporean “DNA”. While we heighten their musical awareness and openness through the vast range of musical genres and styles, we can also teach them to appreciate their differences and distinctiveness. Such efforts would contribute profoundly to the formation of our students' musical identity.
While we prepare our students for the celebration, let’s take a moment to reflect on how else we can further impact them in shaping their musical identity while instilling love for the nation. Have you been serenaded by the 2012 National Theme Song yet? Here’s sending our love for Singapore from STAR to you: http://youtu.be/74YnPySuefY
References
Suriati Suradi, Programme Manager, STAR
How is Singaporean Identity Embodied through Music? A Reflection Inspired by Dick Lee
hat sparked off the question was an inspiring session by Dick Lee, who inaugurated the MOE-NAC Master Artist Series. These sessions, presented by Cultural Medallion recipients, aim to broaden our perspectives of Music education and practice, and serve as a source of inspiration for the musician in us.
And inspired us he did. Being a highly reflective musician, Dick journeyed into defining a Singaporean identity through his music. He fused Malay, Chinese, and Indian musical elements with pop (e.g. Mustapha, Lover’s Tears), pioneering a style of Asian pop much sought after by the Japanese music industry. He emphasised that it was not the instruments – “anyone could write that”. His ‘Singaporeaness’ came from how he weaved the spirit and soul of these sounds to make it his own. Now, in his words, Dick’s music embodies the “bittersweet quality of our local folklores”, and that instead of writing for the erhu, the “erhu now lives in me!”
How is Music powerful in identity building?
Simply put, identity is a sense of belonging. Constructing an identity is very much a process, an “active engagement” (Woodward, 2000, p. 6) – exactly like that of a musical journey. Music-making is special as it could only happen in and through time. It is lived like “an ongoing tuning process in which the self is experienced as an identity in the making” (Stubley, 1998, p. 98; as cited in Bowman, 2002, p. 76). Thus, it is arguable that identity-construction and music-making processes are very similar in nature. Therein lies the power of Music in engendering our students’ cultural and national identities.
How do we engage our students in developing our cultural and national identities?
When asked the above question, Dick Lee had this advice: let students begin with imitating music that they enjoy through listening and performing. He began by emulating the musical styles of his heroes, such as Joni Mitchell. The learning process helped him gain an understanding of a wide range of musical styles and genres, which became fertile grounds from which to develop his own identity.
Building students’ confidence to express their ideas are decisive first steps we could take as music teachers to create a student-centred music environment. A uniquely Singaporean identity through music evolves as we journey and work with our students to develop our collective cultural voices and identities musically.
References
Bowman, W. (2002). Educating musically. In R. Colwell & C. Richardson (Eds.), The new handbook of research on music teaching and learning (pp. 63 – 84). Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.
Woodward, K. (2000). Questioning identity: gender, class, nation London and New York: Routledge.
Ho Hui Ping, Programme Manager, STAR
Experimentation
Connections are insightful.
Embryonic ideas.
Exciting possibilities.
Emergent innovations.
They take shape by seeing new connections amongst stars. Through the telescope of research, we make new discoveries, of ourselves as educators, of our students as learners.
We see new possibilities in transforming teaching and learning in a student-centric music classroom. We create innovations that enrich and engage our students, musically and creatively.
It is also our hope that this compendium leads the way in connecting our stars – our fellow colleagues in the fraternity – supporting us all as we make meaning with our own constellations.
Last but not least, Connecting the Stars wants to be that gravitational force, bringing music educators in Singapore and beyond together, to collaborate and connect.
That’s why.
Expanding Horizon: Seeing New Connections in Music Learning and Teaching
Piloting Informal and Non-formal Approaches for Music Teaching in Five Secondary Schools in Singapore: An Introduction
Background
Music teaching and learning in Secondary classrooms have, in recent years, been revitalised by interests and discussions on pedagogic innovations relating to informal learning (Green, 2008) and non-formal teaching (D’Amore, n.d.; Mak et al., 2007). Prior to this, music education research on pedagogies had focussed on more formalised teaching and learning practices (Folkestad, 2005, 2006; Green, 2008; Jaffurs, 2004; Vitale, 2011), with most efforts devoted to the primary levels (Campbell, 1995). Through ethnographic perspectives on the learning processes1 of young musicians, Campbell (ibid., p. 20) urged for a closer look at the musical interests and music-making among secondary school students, calling it “long overdue”.
Engaging secondary students in music classrooms has always been considered a challenge for music educators. Music education research entered the 21st century echoing similar sentiments. Research suggested that, as a curriculum subject, music lacked relevance and interest (Harland et al., 2000, McPherson & O’Neill, 2010, Green, 2002; Lamont et al., 2003; Finney & Philpott, 2010; Jeanneret, 2010). A study across eight countries including the USA, Finland and Hong Kong2, found that Music as a subject was not valued by young people as highly as other subjects in school, particularly at secondary levels (McPherson & O’Neill, 2010). The landmark report on English music education by Harland et al. (2000) found that Music was unpopular with secondary students3. The subject was reported by OFSTED to be “unimaginatively taught, and out of touch with pupils’ interests” (Lamont et al., 2003, p. 229). These findings painted a stark contrast to the integral role that music played in young peoples' lives outside school (Finney & Philpott, 2010; Lamont et al., 2003; North et al., 2000; North & Hargreaves, 1999).
Green, in her seminal work on informal learning (2002, 2008), argued that
Ho Hui Ping, Programme Manager, STAR
Chua Siew Ling, Programme Director, STAR
1. In ethnographic studies, these teaching-learning processes are referred to as transmission and acquisition (Campbell, 2003, 1995).
2. The other countries were China, Korea, Brazil, Israel and Mexico.
3. This finding was contested by Lamont et al., 2003, whose sample of 1,479 8-14 year-old students were not found to have waned interest in music during their secondary school years.
within the last 50 years, while a wide variety of musical styles and genres (e.g. world and popular musics) were introduced into the school music curriculum, there was no corresponding diversity in the ways these musics were learnt in the classrooms (Green, 2008). Pedagogies for these musics in the classrooms tended toward formal teaching approaches though realworld practices might differ considerably. Thus, the gap in curriculum content and pedagogies alienated students’ musical lives within and outside schools (Hallam et al., 2008; Wright, 2008; Ericsson, 2002, cited in Folkestad, 2006).
In a move to redress this disconnect and re-engage youths in school music, a national initiative in England, Musical Futures (MF)4, was started in 2003. It aims to make secondary classroom music more relevant to young people by engaging them in more authentic musical practices of real world musicians MF is based on the belief that “music learning is most effective when young people are engaged in making music, and when their existing passions for music are acknowledged, reflected on and built-upon in the classroom” (D’Amore, n.d., p. 10). Two key pedagogies stood out: informal learning and non-formal teaching.
Music Pedagogic Practices: AContinuum Opposites? Really?
The research by Green and the subsequent music professional development driven by MF have created excitement and provided much fodder for intense discussions on music pedagogy. Informal learning and pedagogy has become a significant thread in music education discussion (Finney & Philpott, 2010; Folkestad, 2006; Rodriguez, 2009; Vitale, 2011; Jaffurs, 2006; Mok, 2011). It is also indicative of the broader shift of one’s focus “ from teaching to learning, and consequently from teacher to learner ” (Folkestad, 2006, p. 136, italics by writer), which Bernstein (2003, p. 63) termed as the “opposing modalities of pedagogic practice, usually referred to as conservative or traditional and progressive or child-centred.”
Folkestad (2006) proposed that rather than seeing formal and informal learning as dichotomous, to view them as part of a continuum. The notion of a continuum was helpful as it provides room for fluidity and movement within which these pedagogic practices could interact, because “in most learning situations, both these aspects of learning are in various degrees present and interacting in the learning process” (ibid., p. 135). There are three key nodes within this continuum: formal, non-formal and informal approaches to learning and teaching.
As pointed by Mak et al. (2007, p. 12), these pedagogic practices essentially “deal with the question of who controls the learning process – the teacher, the student or both”. This brings to mind “ownership”, one of the four dimensions proposed by Folkestad (2006, p. 138) with which one could examine the learning and teaching within that continuum:
• Learning situation: where does learning take place?
• Learning style: as a way of describing the character, the nature and quality of the learning process. E.g. does the learning start with written music or by ear?
• Ownership: who ‘owns’ the decisions of the activity of what to do as well as how, where and when?
• Intentionality : towards what is the mind directed: towards learning how to play (pedagogical framing) or towards playing (musical framing) (Saar, 1999)
Finney & Philpott (2010, p. 9) took up the notion of “intentionality” and talked about “orientations” to musical learning, and the fluidity of flipping back and forth between formal and informal “moments”:
…the moment of informal learning is an orientation to playing and making music. The formal moment is an orientation to learning how to play music. In this sense all musicians are constantly engaging in a dialectic between these two moments (if indeed they can be separated). Theoretically we can ‘flip’ or ‘slide’ between them in a matter of seconds.
(ibid., italics by writers)
Informal and Formal Learning Practices
Scholars have weighed in on the exciting discussion; describing, comparing and contrasting these pedagogic practices using different lenses (Mak et al., 2007; Rodriguez, 2009; Folkestad, 2006; Vitale, 2011; Jaffurs, 2006).
A discussion in informal learning should really begin with Green (2008, 2002). Through five pedagogical principles of informal learning, she (2008) painted in vivid terms, how informal learning would look like in a music classroom. Students would be learning music chosen by themselves with friends that they had chosen to work with. They would likely to be aurally learning the music from recordings, copying them out by ear, and direct their own learning individually, with their peers and in groups. Teachers would be facilitating their learning from the side as opposed to providing them the answers. Within this student co-constructed curriculum, they would be integrating performing, listening and creating through their personalised and autonomous ways of learning, resulting in skills and knowledge acquired in “haphazard, idiosyncratic and holistic ways” (ibid., p. 10) “Incidental learning” (Strauss, 1984; cited in Jaffurs 2006, p. 6) was another term used.
Given the context of Green’s research – based on the learning practices of popular musicians – informal learning had, by and large, become associated with popular musics (Green, 2002 and 2008; Lebler, 2008; Rodriguez, 2004, Jaffurs, 2004, cited in Vitale, 2011, p. 2). This association, though accurate, should not define informal learning. The underpinning idea is really that of “enculturation”, which Green (2002, p. 22) defined as “acquisition of musical skills and knowledge by immersion in the everyday music and musical practices of one’s social context”. As Jaffurs (2006) rightly pointed out, the notion of enculturation is an important element in informal music practices. It taps on the musical experiences of students generally brought with them, and in them, into our music classrooms. Green’s research points a
way forward on harnessing these enculturated practices of our students as starting points of music learning.
In contrast, if informal learning is associated with popular music, formal learning approaches are “synonymous” with Western Classical music. Again, this relation perhaps sprang more from association rather than strong conceptual links between them. A main reason is likely because “most music teachers in schools…are trained in Classical music” (Regelski, 2009, p. 4; cited in Vitale, 2011, p. 1). Whilst this may be a common scenario, formality in learning approaches would likely be more dependent on the types of training undergone by the music teacher, rather than the genre in question.
Nevertheless, it is helpful to highlight some key characteristics of these three nodes within the continuum. Rodriguez (2009, p. 38) put forth that formal learning involves “hierarchically-organized levels of mastery, and is overseen by more experienced participants”, and “a pre-ordinate series of instructional steps allows teachers to control learning and efficiently identify problems in the process”. By contrast, it would seem that learning becomes “unstructured” and even chaotic with informality. Rodriguez (ibid.) brought to the discussion an important contextual issue of negotiating formal and informality in learning in school contexts:
…because informal learning is not algorithmic does not mean that it is not structured…in informal learning, the teacher relinquishes this control and enters into a more flexible and dynamic relationship with the learner, yet a plan for instruction must still be negotiated between teachers and students. (ibid.)
Such “plans for instructions” may be less tightly framed, but remain an important feature in light of the context in which music teachers are working, and their investment in the growth of the students under his/her charge.
Non-formal Approaches
Somewhere between the two nodes of informal and formal is the non-formal. Mak et al. (2007) and Mok (2011) provided good insights into how nonformal could be situated in the continuum. Mok (2011, p. 12) provided a brief account of how the term “non-formal education” came about in the 1970s, as used by Coombs and Ahmed (1974; cited in ibid.). In contrast to informal learning, which was “neither sequential nor orderly”, non-formal learning comprised relatively systematic educational activities but not necessarily pre-planned. In non-formal learning situations, there was usually an “explicit intention on the part of the learner and the mentor to accomplish a/some specific learning task(s)” (Mok, 2011, p. 13).
Mok (2011) highlighted that non-formal learning situations tend to take place in community contexts, but are not limited to that. Adapted for classroom use, non-formal learning activities are premised upon group-based, collaborative and creative music making led by an adult teacher / peer music leader. Similar to informal learning, non-formal learning approaches also integrate performing, listening, composing and improvising, characterised as “learning by doing” (Mak et al., 2007, p. 16). Music leaders may play a
lot and explain very little – much of the learning was “caught” rather than “taught” (D’Amore, n.d., p. 44).
The teacher / leader would draw improvisatory ideas from students and combine them to shape a group composition. Under his/her leadership, the whole group participates in shaping a satisfying music performance of their composition together, each contributing to it their own ideas and improvisation as the music progresses. This approach is sometimes referred to as classroom workshopping (ibid., p. 47). It utilises the skills within the group through peer learning, provides opportunities for differentiated learning as students bring with them different instruments and improvise according to their abilities. The music played is often non-notated, thus creating an inclusive approach to music making. Given the nature of non-formal teaching, there are opportunities to develop values such as responsibility, empathy, support for others and improvising to find solutions. The non-formal approach that is referred to as “non-formal teaching” (D’Amore, n.d.) or “non-formal learning” (Mok, 2011) thus sits somewhere in the middle of the continuum between formal and informal approaches.
Research Findings
Independent research in England by Hallam et al. (2008), of 1371 teachers and 1079 students, reported benefits of the pedagogies. Student motivation for, and enjoyment of, school music was enhanced by 47%, with students demonstrating better behaviour (27%) and widening participation (26%). It was noted that students became more confident with music making and that raised their self-esteem. The approaches also enabled students to develop a wide range of musical and leadership skills, enhanced their listening skills, instrumental and vocal skills, as well as develop independent learning skills (self-directed learning). Long-term and sustainable impact on teachers’ practice was also reported, in relation to how they delivered music learning in the classrooms.
The pedagogic innovations, through MF, are also well taken-up by teachers and schools across the UK (Hallam et al., 2008). MF led a successful teacher-led movement in incorporating informal music learning and nonformal music teaching in schools. The approaches have also travelled to at least seven other countries, including Australia, Brazil and Canada. Both Australian and Canadian pilots also reported benefits (Jeanneret et al., 2010; Wright et al., 2012).
Musicking in Pedagogical Practices
The practices that seem to underpin these two sets of pedagogies are the centrality of musicking (Small, 1998). Small, in his influential writing, shifted the focus from the musical object / work to put forth the importance of the musical act itself – to music. Musicking, or to music, ‘is to take part, in any capacity, in a musical performance, whether by performing, by listening, by rehearsing or practicing, by providing material for performance (what is called composing), or by dancing’ (ibid., p. 9). (To) Music, is fundamentally an action. The musical performance, music-making is the source from which musicking emanates. It is also crucial that (to) music is to be
actively participating around the performance. Though Green (2008, p. 60) discussed this with reference to informal learning, it was clear that in nonformal teaching approaches, the “learning by doing” (Mak, 2007, p. 16), with improvisatory creative inputs in the music-making, active musicking would be a part of the learning processes.
With musicking playing a central role in the teaching and learning of music, it drives the pedagogies in ways which reflect the authentic practices of real-world musicians and practitioners. Therein lie the affordances of the pedagogies in connecting with and engaging students.
Resonating with this, is a key principle of music education by Swanwick (2012, p. 49) – “fluency first and last” – before music literacy. Fluency is “aural ability to image music coupled with the skill of handling an instrument (or the voice)” (ibid.), or in other words, the ability to learn also by ear, which allows for extended musical memory and improvisation. These are inherent in musicking. It is the musical fluency achieved through such experiences, which provide the basis and rich reserve from which literacy could be built upon – through sound musical experiences.
Student-Centricity and 21st Century Competencies
These beliefs and ideas come to bear as key principles underpinning the exploration of a student-centred music education in Singapore.
Singapore’s General Music Programme (GMP) syllabus states that opportunities be offered for students to engage with diverse musical styles, traditions and genres, including folk, pop, jazz and art musics, from different cultures (MOE, 2008). While this aims to create a musically relevant curriculum, music educators here voice similar experiences concerning student engagement at the secondary level.5
In a move to improve the quality of Art and Music education in schools and enhance the professional expertise and practice of Art and Music teachers, the Singapore Teachers’ Academy of the aRts (STAR) was set up in 2011. Moving in tandem with the Ministry’s strategic direction of a student-centric and values-driven education, a tenet driving STAR’s work was to nurture in students 21st century outcomes of a “confident person, self-directed learner, active contributor and a concerned citizen” (MOE, 2010, p. 3).
A key approach to achieve this is for STAR to co-create with teachers and partners such as National Institute of Education (NIE6), student-centred music pedagogies that will engage our students in their music learning. As these pedagogies are relatively new to Singapore’s music classroom, the co-creation of pedagogies are also aligned with the mission of STAR to further broaden the pedagogical repertoire of our teachers. A rich diversity of teaching approaches will thus provide our teachers a wider selection of pedagogical tools and strategies from which to contextualise and tailor their
5. Pre-study questionnaire showed that while 98.9% of the 356 respondents indicated that they ‘enjoyed listening to music’, 86% liked music lessons. 75.8% liked the music styles that they learnt during lessons. 77.2% found the tasks they did in music lessons interesting. More details will be shared in Chapter 15.
6. National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University is Singapore's national teacher training institute.
From the positive outcomes reported of the piloting and adaptations of these pedagogic innovations (Jeanneret, 2010; Hallam et al., 2008) in the UK, Australia and Canada, one could see how informal learning and nonformal teaching put students at the centre of the learning, developing their personal creative voices and valuing their musical preferences and identities. Such student-centred music pedagogies have the affordances that could potentially contribute towards the development of 21st century student outcomes.
The Pilot Study
Aims
This study aims to provide an in-depth account of the teaching and learning processes of informal music learning and non-formal music teaching which was piloted in Singaporean classrooms. This report seeks to describe how five teachers contextualised informal music learning and non-formal music teaching pedagogies for their students; and the impact of the teaching and learning processes on students and teachers’ practices. It is hoped that these insights would further STAR’s work in developing 21st Century competencies in our music classrooms.
The three research questions are:
• How do teachers contextualise informal music learning and non-formal music teaching pedagogies?
• To what extent do these pedagogies impact on students’ music learning experiences?
• To what extent is there a perception and demonstration of 21st Century Competencies and behaviours amongst students (self-directed learning, collaborative learning and confidence building)
The study probes into the teacher delivery of the lessons using the informal learning and non-formal teaching approaches, and student outcomes. It also seeks to understand students’ musical involvement within and outside schools to gain an understanding of students’ perceptions of the boundaries between music within and outside schools. The pre- and postpilot questionnaires can be found in Appendix A.
Preparation and Process
In March 2012, STAR, together with partners at Arts Education Branch (AEB) of the Ministry, and NIE, embarked on a study trip to London to better understand the pedagogical innovations spearheaded by Musical Futures (MF) and their application and implementation in music classrooms.
During the trip, we attended a workshop and experienced “In at the Deep End” (Stage 1 of Informal Learning, Green 2008) at a MF Champion School, Steyning Grammar School, conducted by the Music teacher Jon Reeves. At Monk’s Walk School, the delegation had the opportunity to observe their music lessons and dialogued with their Music teacher, Anna Gower, MF’s National Coordinator. The delegation also met with Professor Lucy
Green, at Institute of Education, University of London, who generously shared her insights of teacher-training strategies and factors affecting the implementation of informal learning pedagogy. The delegation’s meeting with Philip Flood, Director of non-formal music organisation, Sound Connections, also provided a perspective of how formal, informal and nonformal teaching and learning practices could sit within the broad learning continuum of Music. The team also had the privilege to speak with Emeritus Professor Keith Swanwick to discuss curricular and pedagogical issues relating to music education.
Upon return from the study trip, STAR invited five teachers, with the blessings of their school leaders, to come on board the pilot study, which was carried out during the 2nd semester of 2012 (May – November 2012). The teachers were identified based on our perception of their openness to trial new pedagogies and having the support of their school leadership. The participating schools also represent a range of school and student profiles. A brief description of the profile of schools and students is summarised in Table 1.
The school has a lively performing arts culture and supportive school leaders.
School B Co-ed government-aided school in the Northeastern region of Singapore.
Offers an immersive learning environment that nurtures students to develop stronger understanding of Chinese values and culture.
Achieved awards in arts education and is focussed in nurturing cultural and national identities through the arts.
School C Co-ed government school in the Eastern region of Singapore.
Recognised for its niche in Chinese Orchestra.
Achieved awards in Arts Education.
School D Co-ed government school in the Northern region of Singapore.
Strong Performing Arts Programme with highly supportive school leadership.
School E Co-ed government school in the Northern region of Singapore.
Strengths in ICT Programme.
Music Programme incorporates use of electronic keyboard as part of instrumental learning.
Level: Secondary 2 Courses: Express No. of classes: 2
Level: Secondary 2 Courses: Express and Normal (Academic) No. of classes: 2 and 1 respectively
Level: Secondary 1 Courses: Express, Normal (Academic) No. of classes: 2
Level: Secondary 2 Courses: Normal (Technical) No. of classes: 1
7. See Green 2008, pp 194-195 for a summary of the different stages.
8. Depending on the results of their PSLE or Primary School Leaving Examination, secondary students in Singapore are placed in one of these curriculum strands: Special & Express, Normal (Academic), or Normal (Technical). The placement is meant to match the learning abilities of the students. Both Express and Normal courses are 4-year programmes with the former leading to the GCE ‘O’ levels and the latter to the GCE ‘N’ levels. Those who are in the Normal (Academic) course, depending on their class performance, can opt to take a fifth year and sit for the GCE ‘O’ levels. For more information on these types of examination, please refer to www.seab.gov.sg under National Examinations and MOE’s Corporate brochure on Educational Pathways (http://www.moe.gov.sg/about/files/moe-corporate-brochure.pdf ). The usual pathway of students under Express is a university degree while Normal is a technical college degree.
Table 1: Profile of Schools Involved in Pilot Study
With these teachers, the Community of Practice (CoP) (Wenger, 2009) was started to provide support to the teachers as the piloting process is posited as professional development for teachers. The teachers started with workshops on informal music learning and non-formal music teaching conducted by the founder of Musical Futures, David Price, OBE. Subsequently, they met to discuss how the pedagogies could be contextualised in their piloting classes, keeping to the curriculum outcomes that they had planned earlier. They tried out these lessons from the second semester (July -November 2012). They had more workshops on non-formal music teaching conducted by Paul Griffiths, from Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and met for mid-point conversations where they review their video recordings and lesson approaches, and shared their experiences. The final conversation was held in November where they shared their reflections.
Research Methodology
The study adopts a case study research method (Yin, 2009) which includes both qualitiatve and quantitative dimensions. The cases are five music teachers from five schools. The data include pre- and post-pilot questionnaire, lesson observations, post-lesson conferences, interviews and focus group discussions.
Student Data
Quantitative and qualitative data were collected through a pre- and postpilot questionnaire from 178 classes (N=492) in the 5 schools, but focused the detailed qualitative analysis from the 392 students from the 10 classes. There were 356 valid pre-pilot questionnaire responses, 345 valid post-pilot questionnaire responses. Responses from the 17 classes of 492 valid preand post-pilot questionnaire respondents were analysed using the SPSS.
Prior to the start of the pilot, classes were briefed about the project and formal parental/guardian permission was sought from students to be audio and video-recorded during the course of the pilot study. Permission was also sought for the publication of the data should they be found to be illustrative for future teacher professional development purposes. Consent for the participation in the pilot study was given by the parents and guardians of the students involved.
Other sources of qualitative data also included the following:
• unstructured participant observation of students working together in small groups within class music lessons
• observations and video recordings of 47 whole-class lessons and performances as participant-observers
• video recordings of 18 other whole-class activities and performances beyond the lessons observed
• audio recordings of 19 semi-structured group student-interviews (N=95) from 10 classes at the end of the pilot
from Schools D and E have participated in the quantitative questionnaire as the teachers applied the approaches in these classes as well.
Teacher Data
The lessons observed from the 10 classes provided data on the pedagogic adaptations the 5 teachers have made for the pilot. The data included:
• Written reflection notes and audio-recorded conversations from the CoP meetings and conversations
• Teachers’ prepared presentations for CoP meetings
• Audio recordings of post-lesson discussions with teachers at the end of every observed lesson
Observations
There could be up to five different observers for the lesson observations. However, it was more usual than not to have lesson observations attended by only one observer and a videographer. During observations, we attempted to retain the normal classroom environment as much as possible by staying at the peripheral of whole-class activities. The observer might move from group to group should there be small-group activities.
Where resources allowed, two video recordings were made of a lesson: one taken by a video camcorder placed on a tripod and fixed at a position in the classroom, taking in the long shot of the classroom; the other a roving video camera to capture close-up of small-group work and discussion. Given that there was usually only one observer holding the roving video camcorder, the observer would have made some form of a decision on the small group to follow as opposed to the (many) other groups around the music room. As observers, several observations piqued our curiosity. We found ourselves moving towards groups that seemed to be:
• deep in discussion / rehearsal
• having problems with their task
• facilitated by the teacher
Where appropriate, photographs were taken in addition to the video recording.
At the beginning, the students were very conscious of the cameras. Many deliberately turned their heads away from the lenses, or spoke more softly in the hope that their conversations could not be picked up. It took some time (about a month or so) for most students to warm up to the observers’ presence. By halfway through the study, most students were comfortable enough to ignore the camera (though some small number of students did not display ease throughout the whole study). On the other hand, there were students who became so accustomed to the researchers’ presence that they would ask for the researchers when they did not turn up.
Interviews and Meetings
In the 19 group interviews, the 95 students were interviewed in small groups, corresponding as much as possible with the friendship groups they had been working in during class time. All the interviews were audio-recorded
9. Two other classes from School A, three other classes from School C, and one other class each
with their added permission. Some other formal and informal discussions were recorded in field notes. The student interviews were semi-structured, each one involved around four clusters of questions which were put in nearly the same way to all respondents (it usually depended on the context of the preceding conversation). The first set of questions was about the trialling process, requesting students to share how they went about their tasks and how they felt the lessons conducted were different from their past music lessons. The second set of questions was about their trialling experiences – whether they found the project enjoyable, and whether there were challenging moments during the project. The third set of questions required them to reflect on their learning from the module. The last question required them to use one word to describe how they felt about the module.
The teachers were interviewed individually. The interview tone were informal and semi-structured, though at times, it could sound more like a conversation rather than an interview, reflecting the dual roles played by STAR in the professional development of teachers and as investigators of the research.
Chapters Preview
Each of the five teachers’ pedagogic adaptations are reported as case studies. It is hoped that each case brings to the discussion a diversity of perspectives that will interrogate and enrich our understanding of studentcentred music education in relation to teacher-education, teachers’ pedagogic practices and orientation to teaching as well as motivation of students.
Chapter 10 presents a case study of informal learning with the guitar. It examines Green’s (2008) informal learning pedagogical principles and their relations to human motivation. Students were found to experience greater engagement as they were given greater autonomy, a sense of accomplishment from pursuing challenges, and a sense of “relatedness” with others. By interfacing the pedagogical principles and theory on selfdetermination, it discovers that while informal learning was largely driven by the motivation of students, the autonomy supportive behaviours of the music teacher are still crucial in creating the necessary environment for the pedagogy to be effective and for students to be more deeply engaged. Hence, a conclusion is that the role of the teacher as a facilitator is instrumental for informal learning to be successful in the classroom.
Chapter 11 describes the teacher’s adapation of the informal learning approach in facilitating the students’ song writing project. It was discovered that although the informal learning principles were practised by the teacher, the “orientation” (Folkestad, 2005; cited in Finney & Philpott, 2010) of the teacher was more formal than informal. The study also found that despite the high level of stress experienced by the students, and despite the less successful performances of students, students’ perception of their music learning experiences were still positive as they appreciated the process and valued the opportunity to engage in an authentic music task.
Using Finney & Philpotts’ notions of “habitus” (2010), Chapter 12 gives an account of how a teacher negotiates the new informal learning principles (Green, 2008), giving greater autonomy to her students. Through reflective practice, the teacher starts to transform her “habitus” and live these principles as practice. The “productive dissonance” (Finney & Philpott, 2010) experienced by the teacher through the journey paid off as students developed “critical musicality” (Green, 2008), confidence, greater ownership, and greater engagement.
Chapter 13 situates the teacher’s practices within the continuum of formal and informal pedagogic practices. Using Folkestad’s (2006) dimensions to deconstruct the leanings of the teacher’s range of formal and nonformal teaching approaches, the chapter aims to highlight how pedagogic practices within the continuum could interact. In this case study, one sees how the music teacher connects the Music Curricular and the Co-curricular through a module of singing and instrumental playing, using an eclectic mix of formal and non-formal teaching approaches, which are also reflective of his belief as a music educator.
Chapter 14 examines how the teacher structured the informal and nonformal approaches with the formal as she implemented her STOMP-inspired General Music lesson module. She created a pedagogical model that integrated student-centric teacher moves, and brought about an authentic musical experience . With this, she succeeded in creating an engaging music learning experience that turned around the most disengaged students, and results that exceeded her expectations.
Finally, chapter 15 connects the findings, teacher reflections and insights gleaned from the case studies. Findings based on analyses of quantitative data from the survey questionnaire, and the various qualitative data from field observations, interviews and focus group discussions would be discussed. With that as backdrop, the chapter concludes by going back to the purpose of the study: the exploration of student-centricity in music education in musical and creative ways.
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Rollin’ in at the Deep End: Choice, Collaboration and Confidence through Informal Learning with the Guitar
Introduction
If there is any strength in the approach, I think it must lie in the fact that the strategies were developed by learners, through learning, rather than by teachers through teaching. They derive, not from a theory of learning drawn from an experimental or formal educational situation, or from an analysis of a musical outcome, but from observation and analysis of real-life learning practices by musicians in the world outside formal education.
(Green, 2008, p. 22)
Distilling from the real-life learning practices of popular musicians (2002), Green identified five pedagogical principles of informal learning (2008, p. 10) to anchor its application in the music classrooms. They involve:
i. always starting with music which the learners choose for themselves
ii. learning through copying recordings by ear (aural copying) as main method of skill-acquisition
iii. learning alone as well as alongside friends, through self-directed learning, peer directed learning and group learning
iv. learning skills and knowledge assimilated in “haphazard, idiosyncratic and holistic ways, starting with ‘whole’, ‘real-world’ pieces of music” v. “a deep integration of listening, performing, improvising and composing throughout the learning process, with an emphasis on personal creativity” (ibid.)
Mans (2009, p. 80) shared her view of the potential impact of the informal learning principles: “Green has ineluctably taken us to a place where potentially, students can really participate in an interactive pedagogy where student-centeredness is applied in its full sense.”
Informal Learning Pedagogical Principles and AutonomySupportive Teacher Behaviours
Results from a survey of Musical Futures1 of schools which adopted informal learning and non-formal teaching (see Chapter 9 for more details) reported
Ho Hui Ping, Programme Manager, STAR
students enjoying a greater sense of confidence and demonstrating enhanced motivation during their music lessons (Halam et al., 2008, p. 34). These findings suggested that the pedagogical approaches, which included informal learning, were effective in creating a stronger sense of student engagement and ownership in learning. These findings, including those from this pilot project seem to suggest that they also resonate with studies on human motivation (Deci & Ryan, 2000; Ryan & Deci, 2000b; cited in Niemiec & Ryan, 2009).
In the educational context, self-determination theory posits that when basic psychological needs of “autonomy, competence and relatedness” were met (Niemiec & Ryan, 2009; Reeve, 2006; Reeve et al., 2004), students experienced greater engagement 2 (Reeve et al., 2004; Turner et al., 1998, cited in Stefanou et al., 2004). “Autonomy” is about “self-rule”, when one experiences the self to be an agent, the “locus of causality” of one’s behaviour (Ryan & Connell, 1989; cited in Ryan & Powelson, 1991, p. 52). “Competence” concerns the sense of accomplishment derived from pursuing challenges that are “just beyond one’s current level of functioning” (ibid.), resulting in a sense of confidence and self-esteem (Harter, 1983; White, 1960; ibid.). “Relatedness” involves the contact, support and sense of community with others (ibid.).
Based on this theory, how a teacher motivates students can range from “highly controlling to highly autonomy supportive” (Deci et al., 1981; cited in Reeve et al., 2004, p. 148). While autonomy-supportive teachers facilitate, controlling teachers interfere with “the congruence between students’ selfdetermined inner motives and their classroom activity” (ibid.). This chapter thus endeavours to relate how Green’s pedagogical principles on informal learning articulate a musical take of these notions which increases student motivation in learning.
Stefanou et al. (2004) further delineated three types of autonomy-supportive teacher behaviours, namely organisational, procedural and cognitive autonomy support:
Organisational autonomy support encourages student ownership of environment and can include teacher behaviours that offer students opportunities for choice over environmental procedures, such as developing rules together. Procedural autonomy support encourages student ownership of form and can include teacher behviours such as offering students choice of media to present ideas. Cognitive autonomy support includes teacher behaviours such as asking students to generate their own solution path. (Stefanou et al., 2004, p. 101).
1. Musical Futures is a Paul Hamlyn Foundation special initiative. The non-profit organisation instigated an initiative to find new and imaginative ways of engaging all young people in meaningful music activities and supported the research and professional development of music teachers in non-formal teaching and informal learning (http://www.musicalfutures.org).
2. Engagement refers to the behavioural intensity and emotional quality of a person’s active involvement during a task (Connell, 1990; Connell & Wellborn, 1991; Fiedler, 1975; Koenigs, Fiedler, & deCharms, 1977; Wellborn, 1991; cited in Reeve et al., 2004, p. 147). It is a broad construct that is outside the scope of this report, but it suffice to say that it reflects a person’s enthusiastic participation in a task and subsumes many interrelated expressions of motivation (e.g. intrinsically motivated behaviour, mastery motivation (Fincham, Hokoda, & Sanders, 1989; Furrer & Skinner, 2003; Harter & Connell, 1984; Reeve, Jang, Hardre, & Omura, 2002; cited in ibid, p. 148).
These notions serve to add another pair of lenses to help draw out the roles of the music teacher in creating the necessary environment for engaged learning to take place using such learning approaches.
In terms of data collection 41 students participated in the pre-pilot questionnaire, and 37 responded to the post-pilot questionnaire. A total of four groups of students participated in the interviews, two from each class.
About the Musician-Teacher
A proficient guitarist, pianist, drummer and composer, Mr Lim (not his real name), the music teacher of a neighbourhood secondary school, was nevertheless an unusual case when it came to his early music training. He began his formal music training only at 13 years old. Driven by his passion for music, Mr Lim went on to offer Music at ‘O’ and ‘A’ Levels, and completed his Masters in Music, majoring in composition.
He strongly believed that the purpose of music education was to dispel the myth that music was an elitist subject, “mysterious” and “unreachable” to the general student population. He aimed to provide opportunities for students to learn music, especially if they did not have the chance to do so through private music lessons. Thus, he saw music education in schools as a means for music exposure, allowing students to pursue their dreams. That prompted him to teach in neighbourhood schools as he saw a greater need for music education in schools.
Dropped! In at the Deep End, with Guitars
Mr Lim decided to apply informal learning principles by Green (2008) in his instrumental guitar module. His Secondary 2 music curriculum offered his 40 students a choice between the acoustic guitar and the keyboard, of which each was opted by half the class. The lessons were led concurrently by two different teachers. Mr Lim would teach the guitar module. The curricular objectives of both the keyboard and guitar modules, based on the General Music Syllabus (MOE, 2008), outlined that students should be able to:
• sing a variety of songs with an independent accompaniment
• play tuned (acoustic guitar / keyboard) and untuned musical instruments in parts to accompany a melody line
• develop an understanding of the roles of the different musical parts (melody, chord, bass and un-tuned percussion) and to be able to identify the roles in music that they hear
• sing and play in mixed ensembles
In addition to the above musical outcomes, the teacher also aimed to develop students’ abilities to work and learn in teams, and nurture their confidence through a public performance. In fact, these “non-musical” objectives were deemed the “whole point” by the teacher:
Because I think for me, beyond just trialling it (the pedagogies), learning about music, the hope, the key goal is for them to be a confident person… that’s the 21cc3 outcome right? All these things (the pedagogies) are more to achieve this ultimate goal of being a confident people.
(Mr Lim, personal communication, 28 June 12)
The module took on similar processes as those in the famed first stage of Green’s (2008, p. 25) “In at the Deep End”, contextualised within the module objectives. Instead of a pop band set-up (with electronic instruments and drumkit), students primarily worked with acoustic guitars, and towards the later half of the project, a number of bass guitars were also introduced when students became more familiar with the songs and the instruments.
Choices: FriendsandSongs
During the first lesson, Mr Lim introduced the project to his guitar students, telling them that they could form their own groups of 5-6 members, and choose the songs that they would like to learn with their guitars. Students were visibly excited. Whispers and small-group exchanges sprang up immediately amongst them. In one class, a girl exclaimed enthusiastically, “So easy!”. Mr Lim had to get the class to contain their excitement.
Mr Lim decided to scaffold student choices by asking the groups to create a shortlist of six songs that the group would like to learn. The shortlist would serve as a means for all members to put in at least one song of their choice, and served as a basis from which the group could discuss to decide on one song. Mr Lim highlighted that “everyone had a say” on that list.
Most groups took one to two lessons to decide on their songs. The shortlist provided an avenue for students to record their discussion, and gave the teacher a sense of the repertoire of songs being considered. In keeping with Green’s informal learning principle (2008), Mr Lim did not intervene with the choices of the students:
‘21st CC’ is the abbreviation of 21st Century Competencies.
Fig. 10.1 Examples of students' choice of songs
Interviewer:
After you chose the guitar, what happens after that?
Student: We chose a song.
Interviewer:
How did you all choose the song?
Student:
Each of us gave suggestions and we choose the best.
Interviewer:
What did Mr Lim do? What did he ask you all to do?
Student:
He never choose <chose> for us. It’s our own free choice.
As reported in Green (2008), when given the choice to select with whom to work, friendship groups formed most naturally among most of his students. In anticipation of the realities of a classroom, Mr Lim knew that some students would be left out. He felt that it was his role as a teacher to ensure that this situation was looked into. Therefore, as he informed the class that they were free to select their group members, he also appealed to students’ sense of the greater good, reminding them of the school’s value of “care” and “responsibility”, and asked them to invite those who might be left out, to join their groups. This strategy seemed to have worked out well for many classes:
Okay, that (choosing their own groups) was a bit risky…and I have to be on my toes in case anybody was left out. But <in> 2E3, one person was left out and I had to deal with that situation so that is why 2E3 was a bit difficult. But this class (Sec 2E2) is fine, okay. So I must make sure nobody is left out.
(Mr Lim, personal communication, 19 July 12)
It was interesting how Mr Lim extended the notion of taking personal responsibility in learning to include students’ choice of group members: They’ve chosen to accept this person…They will not like everything about them (their invited group members) but they will choose to…accept the rest of them to a certain degree.
(Mr Lim, personal communication, 28 June 12)
By allowing his students to decide which instrument to learn (guitar or keyboard), and what songs to learn, Mr Lim provided procedural autonomy support (Stefanou et al., 2004) in his class. Organisational autonomy support (ibid.) was also provided when he let his students choose with whom to learn. By transferring these autonomies from teacher to students, the choices students made reflected their sense of “self-rule” (Ryan & Powelson, 1991), and instructional activities offered met with “students’ preferences,
interests, sense of enjoyment and choice-making” (Reeve, 2006, p. 229). This freedom to choose was immediately felt by students. 100% of students who responded to the questionnaire agreed that they get to choose some of the things they learnt during music lessons. When responding qualitatively, they highlighted it as a key difference between the way they learnt informally and before:
I get to choose my own songs and play the guitar myself.
In the past, we could not choose our own group mates but now I can so it makes our conversation more detailed [sic].
This semester, we get to choose our own songs.
This sense of “self-rule” was even extended by the teacher to encourage students to take on a whole-class perspective – students had to also think about those who might be left out. Thus, the teacher created an environment in ensuring all students were taken care of, without directly intervening in the choices that the students were given the space to make. This sense of selfregulation is arguably a basis for “Self-Management”4, a Social-Emotional Competency (MOE, 2010) within the 21st century competency framework.
Despite the excitement generated by the sudden freedom of choice, worry and some sense of uncertainty set in soon enough, especially when Mr Lim announced to the class that they would also be “teaching themselves” the new songs:
Yah I think…for this class (Sec 2E1) they were excited to choose their own songs…because there were songs they wanted to learn. They were excited to work with the people they wanted but I think for some of them those that really probably didn’t want that type of experience. They were a bit worried when I said they would teach themselves so that’s when they got a bit about like ah, I don’t quite know how…there were a few that asked me…err..?? (laughs)
(Mr Lim, personal communication, 19 July 12)
The sense of uncertainty quickly replaced the euphoria, since the students seemed to have never experienced such “freedom”. Mr Lim kept reassuring the class that while they would be learning the song by themselves, he would be around to help.
Collaboration: SinkorSwim
Self-Directed Learning
A strong indicator of student engagement in learning was the extent to which they took on learning in a self-directed manner. Students who were interviewed noted that they were a lot more independent than before:
4. Self-management refers to the ability to manage oneself effectively, to manage one’s own emotions, be self-motivated, exercise discipline and display strong goal-setting and organisational skills. (MOE, 2008)
Interviewer:
So how is the way you learn different from your music lessons last time?
Student:
Mr Lim lets us do the learning, he doesn’t really tell us what to do. Let us learn on our own.
Interviewer:
He lets you learn on your own. In what way?
Student:
In previous music lessons, the teacher tells us what to do and then we’ll just do it. But then now, we get to explore everything on our own, “figure out yourselves.”
Interviewer:
How was it (learning) different?
Student 1:
For the last term, there’s this teacher teaching us. And there was a very big group and when she talked, some of us cannot listen and we don’t understand. Now since it’s (grouping) smaller, we can use the internet or ask teacher to teach us as a smaller group lah. So it’s easier and better.
Student 2:
We like to search on our own, not depending on teachers and instructors. We learn to search for the chords and the lyrics. Make us learn better. Find out ourselves instead of just taking what the teacher says.
Students tapped on online resources instinctively and extensively to “explore everything on our own” (interview with Sec 2E1 students, 18 October 12), figure things out by themselves, and in short, self-direct their learning. Procedural autonomy was clearly supported during their weekly lessons, where students typically met in their own groups, with print-out of guitar tabs and chords of their selected songs, and worked them out, with their smartphones in hand. They were observed to rehearse, individually, in pairs or in the full group, sometimes pausing to listen to the music on their smartphones.
Interviewer:
How did you all go about learning the song?
Student:
Like we don’t copy the exact way of singing, like in the original tune. We modify it a bit in our own version. Coz the original version is very…like a guy. We cannot reach (the low notes).
Student:
We searched it on YouTube, we looked for covers of people...
Interviewer:
I see. So you all looked for YouTube. So how did you learn from the YouTube?
Interviewer:
What is it you were looking at (on the internet)? Pictures?
We look for video
Interviewer: What kind of videos are they?
Interviewer: Guitar tutorials and guitar. To learn what? To learn the song?
To learn the
Interviewer:
To learn the chords. Do you all do that during lesson time?
Student: No. We do it at home.
Interviewer: Do it at home!
Student: And we’ll discuss in “Whatsapp”.
As illustrated above, while individual self-directed learning was prominent in the learning process, it was important to recognise that the group setting in which the self-directed learning took place provided that “relatedness” to motivate student learning. The need to “connect with others in ways that conduce towards well-being and self-cohesion in all individuals involved” was powerful (Ryan & Powelson, 1991, p. 53). After searching for materials online, the students used the “Whatsapp” messenger application to connect with their friends and discuss their learning. Thus, through technology, students participated in “group learning”, where “learning that occurs more or less unconsciously or even accidentally, simply through taking part in the collective actions of the group” (Green, 2008, p. 120).
Interview with Sec 2E1
Interview with Sec 2E2 students, 18 October 12
Interview with Sec 2E1 students, 18 October 12
Interview with Sec 2E2 students, 18 October 12
Student:
on YouTube
Student: Tutorials. Guitar tutorials and guitar covers.
Student:
chords.
Collaborative Learning and Peer-Directed Learning
Peer-directed learning was strongly encouraged by the teacher, who regularly reminded students to help one another. Students were observed to emerge and take on a peer-leading role in terms of organising the rehearsals of their groups. Usually, one of the students would lead by keeping the pulse, counting the group in, troubleshooting and taking the initiative to stop the rehearsal based on his/her judgement of whether the run-through was going well. The vignette below described how a singer-guitarist in this group took the lead:
A group of five girls were sitting around on the floor with pieces of chord charts scattered around in front of them. Two girls were strumming the chords, with one of them singing the chorus of “Pumped Up Kids” (barely audibly) by Foster The People. Two girls immediately to the singer’s left were plucking along what seemed like a bass line. One girl was not playing, but seemed to be observing and listening in. After running through the chorus the playing gradually slowed down.
The singer looked at the bassist, who plucked a couple of low notes, and took a look at the singer. As if understanding what she meant, the singer went, “ok, I’ll show… <inaudible>,” and proceeded to count the group in on four. She started strumming and singing from the verse of the song. The bassist plucked the bass line tentatively, looking at the singer all the time while doing so. The singer nodded her head in time with the pulse, and strummed at the same time.
Realising that the bassist could not really follow, the singer stopped to explain and demonstrate, pointing to the chord chart, “So it’s like…<inaudible>.” The bassist leaned over her guitar to take a closer look at the chord chart, and said, “oh…ok”. The singer led the group to start again on a count of four, started rehearsing from the opening verse. The remaining three bassists were looking at the chord chart, and plucking the bass line.
The group progressed a little further into the song and the singer stopped playing, and said in Malay to the bassist on her left, “ini…macam slow down” (translation: “when you see it like this, you’ll need to slow down”), and proceeded to demonstrate how the slow-down should sound like, singing and beating a slower pulse using her left hand, while balancing her guitar on her laps. After singing the phrase, she went, “something like that…it’s just like macam…trying to slow down here more…”
Another bassist asked her a question, “what kind of strum again?”, to which the singer answered, “Ah, it’s like that kind of a slow strum”, to which the bassist nodded. The singer proceeded to demonstrate the strumming.
The first bassist started plucking a low G several times, looking at the singer and smiling. The singer laughed. The first bassist looked rather quizzically at the singer, and the latter immediately moved her guitar to face her, and
demonstrated a short segment of plucking to her again. The first bassist imitated.
The singer then moved her attention back to the whole group, and said, “You all know your lines right…I label down all your names already, then like…” <inaudible, and she seemed to be reading down a list of names, to which the girls giggled>. Then, looking at the second bassist and said, “You do your bass…you do your bass…you know your bass…try ah…”
The above vignette illustrates how students worked collaboratively, and many learn from a more knowledgeable peer. This was observed by Swanwick to be reminiscent of Vygotsky’s ‘zone of proximal development’, the space between independent level and the next level of achievement, brought about by adult guidance and / or from interacting with more knowledgeable peers (Vygotsky, 1978; cited in Swanwick, 2008).
The groups were also observed to solve musical problems collaboratively. One group in Sec 2E2 figured out a solution to chord changes on their guitars. As beginners to the instruments, they were not able to do chord changes fast enough, therefore, they split the chords amongst them and each took turns to play their chords, in time, so that there would be one student playing the chords at any one time. Mr Lim was so surprised (personal communication, 19 July 12) in their ability to solve a common guitar problem creatively, that he picked it up during the end of the lesson’s debrief and highlighted to the class how the group worked collaboratively to solve their problems.
Playing according to one another’s strengths and weaknesses was also another observation made:
Student: After we divide our parts and then we decide which part is the bass and then we just…
Interviewer:
I see. Who’s playing the bass? Sharifah? You’re the only one playing the bass? Ok. Who’s playing the chords? Boon Ying and Deborah?
Interviewer: What do you mean?
Student: play the easy one (laughs). Student: Like easier strumming.
Interviewer:
I see. So was that in the verse or in the chorus?
Interviewer:
I see. And Tammy?
Students: I don’t know what it is called. It’s like harmonisation.
Vignette 10.1
Peer-directed Learning of “Pumped Up Kids” (Field Observation by HP Ho, 19 July 12)
Interview with Sec 2E1 students, 18 October 12
Two groups, an all-boys and all-girls group, decided to merge into one group. Upon raising the issue with Mr Lim, they agreed to his condition of singing two songs together. Interview with students revealed that they were aware of the benefits of collaborating together:
(Interview with Sec 2E1 students, 18 October 12)
Student:
Because Matthew has good guitar skills, and Nicholas has good drum skills. Then the girls don’t dare to…make the sound louder [sic]. So (we) ask them to join us.
Interviewer:
You ask them (the girls’ group) to join you or they wanted to join you?
Student: We ask them.
Interviewer:
Ah.
Student:
Because they don’t have a vocal then we can help them. We help each other.
The organisational and procedural autonomy was treasured by the students, as indicated in the questionnaire. 83.8% were assured enough to know where to get help if they needed. A similar percentage of students surveyed also felt that they had the skills to make music with their friends, without needing the teacher’s help all the time. The following are students’ freeresponses in the questionnaire to what they liked about the module:
We get to learn music ourselves, we have more freedom during this lesson and it’s really fun and interesting.
I like the part where we come together to perform our piece of song we choose.
And I also like that we get to explore <by> ourselves and stuff.
Most of the things. Because I got to choose what I want to learn.
The sense of “relatedness” was important. Responses from questionnaire clearly showed how they enjoyed working collaboratively. 97.3% enjoyed learning with their friends, and 94.6% of them knew how to contribute to their groups during music lessons.
To work as a team. The music will only be nice if we play it together in sync
I learnt to work as a team with my classmates.
We get to learn from group mates which help us to work together.
We learn better in our mini groups and manage to help each other in times of trouble.
I enjoy being able to learn from friends and play together. As we learnt from each other mistakes and it is fun to play together.
I like teamwork. The times where my friends and me work together to solve problems in the song. We are able to cooperate, benefit and learn.
I enjoy how I get to learn with my friends.
My friends made it enjoyable.
Mr Lim was very conscious that he had to also nurture a conducive collaborative learning environment to encourage his students to help one another:
I try to encourage them….for this person to help the group members. Don’t just play and show off but help the group members to grow as an individual musician, right? And to grow as a group.
(Mr Lim, personal communication, 26 July 12)
But he had struggled initially and had concerns of this approach to the morale and the progress of his students. This anxiety in taking on the informal learning approaches was also echoed by teachers in Green’s (2008) account:
They are some, if really I let them sink, they can sink very far, they are going to sink so far behind that I am just afraid that they will lose heart and give up…That is why for some of the groups who are really like struggling, the temptation is very great.. to be more explicit rather than to let them do it themselves.
(Mr Lim, personal communication, 19 July 12)
Thus, he set milestones to pace the classes’ progress, and was constantly monitoring the progress of his students to make sure no group sank “so far behind” that they became discouraged (Mr Lim, personal communication, 19 July 12). Out of a total of 19 groups across the level, Mr Lim shared that three of them (within a class which was not part of this study) did not seem
to respond well to this autonomy, and as the teacher, he decided that he had to go back to a “more prescriptive approach”:
Orignally, choosing a song was meant to address motivation issue, but it did not work with the class. The students just did not find the motivation to learn the song at first.
(Mr Lim, personal communication, 27 September 12)
So he “gave them a choice”, asking them if they would like to let him play the role of the ‘Music director’ instead. He helped them learn a song of their choice, and scaffolded their learning in a more structured manner. However, he still provided autonomy for students to learn the chords by themselves first. Given the responses, it would be instructive for future studies to investigate how and why the procedural and organisational autonomy did not quite work out for them.
Lifelines: UsingQuestionsandRole-Modelling
Mr Lim was aware that in order to ensure that learning was kept primarily self-directed, and collaborative, he had to be mindful of the way he interacted with his students. Instead of ‘spoonfeeding’ them answers, he became highly sensitive to his role as a facilitator of learning and it was not the easiest:
Okay my focus is that I don’t want to help them more than necessary. So again the temptation is just to be…very explicit in what they need to do. So I was trying to extract answers from them, from within the group, and to use it back.
So even when I’m personally facilitating the group, I’m doing my metacognition…I’m thinking about my thinking. I’m thinking about my process. I’m kinda trying to be aware whether I’m spoonfeeding too much, I’m giving too much away, you know? That’s why all the time I am facilitating…am I telling them too much? Am I giving too many answers? Can I give less?
So now instead of telling them what to do, I need to draw it out. I need to draw it out from you…how do I ask the question to draw it out from you? ....It is really a conscious effort to hold back ..yah ...which is hard…actually (Mr Lim, personal communication, 26 July 12)
Mr Lim facilitated students’ reflection to deepen their thinking through questioning and steering them towards solving their musical problems. When facilitating, like what Green (2008, p. 34) suggested, Mr Lim took time to first listen in at the practice / rehearsal, observe what the group was trying to achieve, and how the groups were carrying out their learning, before deciding how to help them solve the problems or draw the learning points out from the students themselves. This was different from the usual instructional role, “partly because it was based on the diagnosis of and response to learner-perceived, immediate need, rather than on pre-established teacherset aims or objectives with long-term trajectories in mind” (ibid.).
Vignette 10.2 Mr Lim Facilitating Group Learning of ‘Rollin’ in the Deep’
In another group behind the curtains at the far end of the room, the teacher was listening to a group working on “Rollin’ in the Deep” by Adele.
One student started strumming the guitar continuously while the others were singing. They were not in tune with the guitar, but they were fluent. After the first verse and chorus, the teacher stopped them and asked them what they thought. “What do you think of your performance?...Any feelings? Any observations?”
After a long pause, one student replied, “we should sing in different time”. The teacher tried to paraphrase, “what you are saying is that you should sing in different times. That’s possible.”
The student continued, “the tune is different”. The teacher quickly added “Ah! Exactly! Your tune is different”. He probed them further and asked if they meant that they were not singing together. The student identified that one of them was singing a higher tune, and the other student, a lower tune.
The teacher suggested that the guitarists remove the capo and asked, “why don’t you all try again, and sing in different times?” At this point, one student suggested that they should change a song. The teacher asked why and he said he thought this was fine. The group tried again and this time he sang with them at the start (probably to help them sing in tune) but quickly stopped while the students carried on. As they sang, he commented “better”, smiled, and then started snapping his fingers to add a beat. Another student joined in and tapped on the guitar to further emphasise the beat.
After a while, as the students sang, he pointed to the two singers and asked them to listen to each other (without stopping the students). When the students reached the end of the chorus, he stopped them.
He turned to the guitarist and asked, “what do you think?” She gave a blank look. He turned to the others; “I think it’s better, right?” he turned to the singers and asked them if they felt any different. The guitarist said they (the singers) sounded better. He asked them why. The guitarist replied “the pitching”. He exclaimed and repeated that it was the pitching. The guitarist then added that she thought one of the singers should sing the main tune, and the other should harmonise. The teacher agreed that it could be an idea. He encouraged them to listen to each other, to help each other and teach each other. He told them that they should keep this song. He sorted out the two guitar parts and asked the other guitarist who wasn’t yet strumming the chords, to play the bass. He took the guitar and demonstrated the bass line once for the student. He asked the student who would be playing the bass part to play one note while each chord was being strummed.
At this point, the teacher left for another group. The group continued to discuss their individual roles, and was figuring out the bass for the chord. The guitarist who was playing the chords earlier, began to give suggestions to the other guitarist who was going to play the bass part.
Like the scene described in the vignette above, instead of telling them that their pitches were out, Mr Lim asked open-ended questions to find out from students their understanding of their performance, allowed them wait-time to think about their responses, and paraphrased their responses to further probe their thinking. As Stefanou et al. (2004, pp 99 - 100) pointed out, “teachers high in autonomy support listened to the students more often” and “were less likely to give solutions or use directives”. He thus provided cognitive autonomy support by helping students to reflect, and probed them to analyse the problems and encouraged them to find solutions.
To help them move on, Mr Lim suggested removing the guitar capo to try another key, and sang along with the group at the beginning to help stablise their pitching. He guided them by providing the right amount of scaffolding for students to move from one level of “competence” to the next. This cognitive autonomy support is likely the most challenging aspect of a teacher’s role in informal learning, but one which Stefanou et al. (2004, p. 101) suggested is most crucial of all the three types of autonomy support, to foster a more enduring motivation and engagement. The implication for this was that this required the teacher to be very competent musically and pedagogically, someone who is able to understand the cause of what the students were struggling with, and then to provide just the right amount of scaffolding for them to progress to their next level of “competence”. This is, at the very core of differentiation in learning, personalised learning:
In an informal music lesson, differentiation happens on the spot as teachers work with individuals and groups, standing back, diagnosing, modelling and facilitating the learning as appropriate
(Gower, 2012, p. 14)
Mr Lim shared his thoughts about the effectiveness of drawing learning from students:
For our type of students, you can tell them what to do and they will forget….you tell them 5 times, they will still forget. But if it comes from them, they will remember…so if I can draw out from them, the chances are I will not need to revisit the same thing again, you know? I mean, if they, they can be doing this, erm, trouble-shooting <by> themselves…learning themselves…I can walk away from the group... I can have a greater sense of confidence that when I am away, they are doing something. They are not… you stare at me, I stare at you. They are not, you know?...And I find that it’s…definitely better than the more teacher-centred approach.
(Mr Lim, personal communication, 26 July 12)
Despite his new approach to teaching, his students were never hesitant in asking Mr Lim for help, as surfaced in the student interviews. And help they received, but were never the full answers:
Interviewer:
What did he tell you?
Student:
He taught us how to strum and then we learn the chords and notes by ourselves.
Interviewer: Sorry?
Student: The right note.
Interviewer:
Your all learn the right notes by yourselves? Or with Mr Lim?
Student:
He tells us a bit and then after that we go back and learn.
Interviewer:
Oh. He showed you a little bit. The chords and the strumming patterns or just the chords?
Student: The strumming patterns.
As Mr Lim shared, he wanted students to learn how to solve their own problems, and the role of teacher was to “show them how to fish than to give them the fish” (personal communication, 27 September 12). At the beginning, students learnt the chords to their songs by themselves, with the guitar tabs resources he provided.
Role modeling was an important way in which Mr Lim demonstrated and facilitated his students’ learning. As Swanwick (2012, p. 47) reminded educators of the need to be aware of what Bruner called “the natural energies that sustain spontaneous learning” and that included the need to emulate others. Green also pointed out that while students in informal learning relied on the music CD as authority, and it was clear that despite the “freedom” students felt, they still looked towards Mr Lim as a role model, a musician from whom they could learn.
Interview with Sec 2E2 students, 18 October 12
Interviewer:
So, then you all each choose and then how you all come out with one? How do you all decide that Won’t Give Up is the song we are going to learn?
Student 2:
The one that we think is easier to learn. And we were like very amazed when Mr Lim teach us. Yah.
It’s like very nice.
Interviewer: Oh is it?
Student: Can fall in love [sic].
Interviewer:
I see. So you all heard Mr Lim perform like Won’t Give Up. When was that?
Student:
We printed out the record sheet thing and then he played a little bit for us.
Interviewer:
Not the music that you hear on the CD that was nice. It was Mr Lim’s playing that prompted you to learn?
Student: Yah. Inspired us.
Confidence: ToPerform,ToAskQuestions
Slowly, but steadily, students started to get used to the new modus-operandi during music lessons. They enjoyed this new-found autonomy – ‘freedom’ in their learning:
(Interview with Sec 2E1 students, 18 October 12)
Interviewer:
Do you enjoy that?
Student: Yes.
Interviewer:
You prefer to do it on your own? As opposed to having a teacher tell you what to do?
Student: Yah.
Interviewer: Yah, why?
Student:
It’s more fun and it’s not really that stressful. Like more freedom that way. You just ask for help when you need help. More challenging.
Interviewer: More challenging. Would you prefer this way of learning?
Student:
Yah. Because he will be teaching the whole class and all of us will follow. But now we do <a> different style. Yah.
Mr Lim noted the musical improvements by the students – their ability to sustain a song performance in an ensemble and to listen more sensitively to one another:
The good thing is that they are playing more together. They are playing as an ensemble, small group. Definitely, I think the improvement from Day 1 to now, is tremendous. When they first started off, they don’t even listen to themselves, let alone listen to other people. At least now, They’re more… I mean, they actually stopped playing… (referring to when the students stopped halfway through a rehearsal)! It's bad but it's good, because they realised that something is wrong (sounded excited)...the good thing is that they're aware now.
(Mr Lim, personal communication, 27 September 12)
When they first started out, (they were the) only group which had students who were able to play (the guitar). The rest were, more or less, started from zero. Actually the most fulfilling thing was, now…they are committed.
(Mr Lim, personal communication, 27 September 12)
He was impressed by some students’ performing skills:
Performing skills – probably more by memory, rather than by notation. They’re actually reading the chords, some are relying on chord chart. Vicki – she’s never played the guitar before, but she figured out the melody part by herself.
(Mr Lim, personal communication, 27 September 12)
Mr Lim also noted that his students slowly gained confidence, not only in performing, but also in asking questions and sharing their opinions:
At least they responded…and slowly once they get used to it, they feel more comfortable, about expressing their opinions. They feel more comfortable about telling you what they think, you know?
(Mr Lim, personal communication, 26 July 12)
At the end of the module, students put up a public evening ticketed performance for their parents as part of the school’s post-examination programme. Students expressed a difference in their confidence level.
Fig 10.2 A typical set of learning resource materials – lyrics, guitar positions, and students’ smart phones
Students:
We can perform in front of the <audience>… Because before this we don’t even know like how to play the guitar. Now we can learn, then we can show our parents. Like we have our own part to play. Like four of us…… Like we can do it more confidently now.
Conclusion
In light of the module objectives, Mr Lim shared that he felt “a sense of accomplishment” that most of his classes had progressed (personal communication, 27 September 12) and that his module objectives were achieved. He highlighted that the students picked up aural skills, and the ability to play in an ensemble over a sustained performance. He was pleased to have encouraged student singers amongst his classes (ibid.). 97.3% (postpilot) of students responded that they enjoyed their music lessons in schools, up from 92.7% (pre-pilot). He hoped that from this module, students would spark interests to form their own amateur groups outside school, and even had plans to set up jamming studios in the school to facilitate that (ibid.).
The new interfaces afforded by layering informal learning pedagogical principles with autonomy supportive teaching were instructive. Stefanou et al. (2004) delineated three types of autonomy supportive behaviours –organisational, procedural and cognitive ones. Of the three, they suggested that cognitive autonomy supportive behaviours would be most crucial in creating a deeper engagement of learning. Purely organisational and procedural autonomy may only be “embellishments” which produce “shortlived” engagement, and would be insufficient for deep learning to take place (ibid., pp. 100-101).
Perhaps unlike learning an academic subject where autonomy supportive teaching research were usually framed, this case study suggests a different configuration to the confluence of dynamics between these three types of autonomy support in informal music learning. While having the students to choose the music that they would like to learn, and the friends to learn it with, and how to go about learning meant a great deal of organisational and procedural autonomy, and may be deemed “surface types of strategies” (ibid., p. 101), this paper argues that they are in fact highly integral aspect in informal learning realm, rather than being embellishment, because this was how informal music learning would take place, authentically. Therefore, it was not just about the types of autonomy given to the students, but the meaningfulness and relevance of those choices vis-à-vis the learning activity that would determine the types of autonomy that were crucial in engaging students. In the case of informal music learning, providing students with autonomy in the organisational and procedural dimensions also allowed them to express their personal goals, preferences and needs. Perhaps that was why there was a significant increase in positive responses to the questionnaire item ‘I like the music styles I learn during music lessons’ – from 77.5% to 91.9%. This jump was similarly mirrored in the item ‘My teacher
values the music I like’. And students found the tasks they did during
lessons interesting, with a 11.9% increase.
Informal music learning principles focussed on the learning processes. At first glance, one may wonder where the role of the teacher stood. Layering informal learning with autonomy supportive teaching behaviours, this study suggests that the role of the teacher was never more crucial in such a learning realm. It was clear that cognitive autonomy provided by Mr Lim made a difference in the level of student engagement. Green (2008) also pointed out that teachers’ facilitation of learning maintained momentum of the learning, and Sexton (2012, p. 9) agreed it helped students “stay motivated towards their chosen goal whilst still maintaining the sense of ownership they have over their work”. Therefore, the music teacher, though not at the centre of the class, was still central to student learning. The cognitive autonomy support here had a direct impact on students’ sense of “competence”, and thus related to their confidence. The sense of accomplishment was mentioned by students as they traced how they were able to progress from not being able to play the guitar to being able to perform it in front of an audience. Perhaps because of that, informal music learning was fun and engaging.
References
Gower, A. (2012). Integrating informal learning approaches into the formal learning environment of mainstream secondary schools in England. British Journal of Music Education, 29(1), 13-18.
Green, L. (2002). How popular musicians learn Hampshire and Burlington: Ashgate.
Green, L. (2008). Music, informal learning and the school: A new classroom pedagogy. Hampshire and Burlington: Ashgate.
Hallam, S., Creech, A., Sandford, C., Rinta, T. & Shave, K. (2008). Survey of Musical Futures: A report from Institute of Education, University of London for the Paul Hamlyn Foundation. Retrieved December 17, 2012, from http://www.musicalfutures.org.uk/c/ reports+and+articles
Niemiec, C. P., & Ryan, R. M. (2009). Autonomy, competence, and relatedness in the classroom: Applying self-determination theory to educational practice. Theory and Research in Education, 7(2), 133 – 144
Reeve, J., Jang, H., Carrell, D., Jeon, S., & Barch, J. (2004). Enhancing students’ engagement by increasing teachers’ autonomy support. Motivation and Emotion, 28(2), 147 – 169. Reeve, J. (2006). Teachers as facilitators: what autonomy-supportive teachers do and why their students benefit. The Elementary School Journal, 106(3), 225 – 236.
Ryan, R. M., & Powelson, C. L. (1991). Autonomy and relatedness as fundamental to motivation and education. Journal of Experimental Education, 60(1), 49 – 66.
Mans, M. (2009). Informal Learning and Values. Action, Criticism & Theory for Music Education, 8(2), 80 – 93.
Ministry of Education, Singapore (2010). Nurturing our young for the future: Competences for the 21st century. Retrieved February 12, 2013, from http://www.moe.gov.sg/committeeof-supply-debate/files/nurturing-our-young.pdf
Sexton, F. (2012). Practitioner challenges working with informal learning pedagogies. British Journal of Music Education, 29(1), 7 – 11.
Stefanou, C. R., Perencevich, K. C., DiCintio, M., & Turner, J. C. (2004). Supporting autonomy in the classroom: Ways teachers encourage student decision making and ownership. Educational Psychologist, 39, 97–110.
Swanwick, K. (2008). The ‘good-enough’ music teacher. British Journal of Music Education, 25(1), 9-22.
Swanwick, K. (1999/2012). Teaching music musically. London and New York: Routledge.
Chua
Siew Ling, Programme Director, STAR
Informal Learning for Song Writing
Introduction
The insights Green (2002) gleaned from her research on how popular musicians learn have opened up exciting possibilities for how informal learning practices could be used in formal music learning contexts. Her later research articulated five pedagogical principles that guide the informal music learning approaches (Green, 2008). First, the process typically starts with students having to make a choice of music and instrument they wished to learn. The second and third principles are about students working in their friendship groups to attempt to copy a piece of music by ear, directing their own learning through individual, peer-directed and group learning, as well as being facilitated by the teacher. Fourth, learning is personalised through students’ musical preferences, with skills and knowledge being assimilated in “haphazard, idiosyncratic and holistic ways” (ibid., p. 10). The fifth principle is the close integration of listening, performing, improvising and composing throughout the learning process.
A further insight was provided by Folkestad (2005) who introduced the idea of orientations and distinguished the informal and formal orientations as the former being “an orientation to playing and making music” and the latter as “an orientation to learning how to play music” (cited in Finney & Philpott, 2010, p. 4). He pointed out that “the issue is not what the music is nor where learning takes place that makes the learning informal or formal but our orientation at any one time” (ibid.). Hence musicians could weave in between these orientations as they engage in music learning and musicmaking.
This chapter presents a case study on a secondary music teacher’s adaptation of the informal learning approach for the group song composition in music lessons. It opens with an introduction of the teacher Ms Yeo (not her real name) and her General Music module. The ensuing discussions on the teacher’s pedagogy and students’ responses will be accompanied with vignettes taken from field observations to add greater clarity to the discourse. The chapter will close with some thoughts about the use of informal learning to facilitate song writing.
Background
About the Teacher
Ms Yeo’s interest in informal learning stems from her interest in studentcentred learning. She taught in one of the top schools in Singapore which
excelled in both academic and co-curricular domains and her students were generally highly motivated. She had been engaging students in music composition and what was new to her about informal learning was the autonomy given to students. She felt that she tended “to step in too quickly when they were composing”, and that she could “step back a little” (personal communication, 12 May 2012). In facilitating group composition activities, she used to place the high ability students with those who were not, in the hope that they would help one another. This was to change and in this module, she allowed students to choose their own groups.
About the Module
The module Ms Yeo planned was a six-week song-writing module for the Secondary Two General Music Programme in which students had to work in groups to create a national song about Singapore consisting of three verses and one chorus. Music lessons were carried out for an hour each week. Song-writing was not a new experience as students had completed a song-writing project when they were in Secondary One. What was different in the approach this time was that students were given more autonomy. For example, they were given the choice to be in friendship groups and the choice in the instruments to use for their accompaniment.
In the first week, she introduced the idea of national songs with examples, explained the difference between national songs and national anthem, got students to form groups, and for each group, to choose three favourite national songs and share them with the class. She introduced concepts about lyric-writing as well as a group reflection log, also known as the “yellow book”, which each group had to update in the course of the module. In the second week, the groups started to write their own group song, and were required to pay attention to the different types of lyrics (narrative, assertive and reflective). From the third to fifth weeks, students worked on developing the melodies, adding the chords and instrumental accompaniment to the song. In the sixth week, they performed for one another.
Over the weeks, Ms Yeo would start each lesson by reminding students what they needed to accomplish at the end of the day. She also shared with them examples of work from other classes and described how those ideas were interesting. As students began their independent work in groups, she would provide “consultation time” to each group of students for a few minutes in class. At the end of the lesson, she would gather the students as a class and she would address them and give them some general feedback on their progress. Outside music lessons, Ms Yeo would avail herself to provide students with additional help. She often reminded students that the instruments in the classroom were available for practice use and students could seek her help during recess or after school. She also often talked about teamwork to her students, and how they could work better together. There were many occasions where she encouraged them to help one another as she facilitated the group compositions.
Although Ms Yeo implemented the module for all her classes, only two classes (Sec 2A and Sec 2C) were observed for the purpose of this study.
Post-lesson conferences were conducted with the teacher to seek her views and clarifications about the lesson. The lesson observations were videorecorded and the interviews with the teacher were audio-recorded for further analysis. In addition, a questionnaire was administered to 81 students before the trial, and 80 students after the trial. The questions were intended to find out if students found the music lessons engaging and relevant, if they were able to make decisions about their learning, what they liked or disliked about the approach, and if they felt that they made progress in their music learning. Details of the questions are in Appendix A. At the end of the module, focus group discussions were conducted with students to find out about their level of engagement and learning experiences in the module. Key observations about Ms Yeo’s adaptation of the informal learning approach are discussed below. The field observations have also been quoted to give insights into the classroom situation.
Facilitating Informal Learning
Getting Started
It was not Ms Yeo’s first time teaching song composition and getting students to work in groups. But for this pilot, Ms Yeo got students to choose their own groups. She observed that because students were in friendship groups, they were more willing to sing compared to their previous songwriting exercise. Students were also more comfortable to continue to work with one another in each other’s homes after school.
It became part of the routine when students gathered at the teacher’s desk to discuss their work with the teacher during “consultation time”. We also observed how Ms Yeo would coach students at the individual level.
In one group, one boy was fingering on a guitar. The teacher caught a glimpse of his playing, decided that he needed help, and so pulled him out of the group, and began to show him how to play the chords. She returned the guitar to him and sang along the chords as he strummed on the guitar. She went through the chord progression with the boy. The whole episode lasted about two minutes.
(Sec 2C, 19 July 2012)
Overcoming Challenges
Given the autonomy to work in their own friendship groups to create a song, constrained only by the requirement of producing a structure of three verses and one chorus, and with only occasional guidance by the teacher, most students found the task challanging. With groups who were very quiet, Ms Yeo asked them to perform for her. Students could be almost inaudible as they tried to sing their song. Ms Yeo would try to piece together what the group presented to her aurally, and reproduced their melodies by playing them on the keyboard as she added her own accompaniment. It made what the students created sound good, and often, this encouraged the group.
Students were generally unconfident about their work and were yearning for their teacher’s approval. We observed that her affirmation of the group played a large part in motivating the groups.
Fig 11.1 The “yellow book” where students recorded their lyrics, musical workings, and weekly reflections.
Ms Yeo went over to a group of five girls. She asked them to sing their verse, but they could not be heard. She got them to the keyboard and they hovered over their group’s notebook. One girl sang the tune very softly to the teacher. The teacher encouraged them, “not too bad”. The group began to sing as the teacher accompanied them on the keyboard. They stopped half way through and one girl commented that it was “very difficult”. Ms Yeo asked them what the idea was. The girl started again. The students sang while she accompanied them. She asked them at the end of the performance if the passage they were singing should be longer (since it seemed to end in an imperfect cadence). There was only silence. She asked them to sing again as she played. “Do you think it should go on?” she asked again and suggested another part to it by improvising a short passage. Through this, she guided them to think that the chorus was too short. She commented “good” and one girl sighed with relief as the group went back to their corner.
(Sec 2C, 26 July 2012)
It seemed that students’ lack of listening acuity tended to be the stumbling block to the progress of their work. Given that there were only a few weeks to accomplish what seemed to be an ambitious project, Ms Yeo adopted approaches that could help her negotiate students’ musical difficulties in a shorter time. For example, she chose to provide the chords for many of the groups instead of allowing them to figure it out for themselves.
A group of girls, who have worked out the tune, started to sing their work for Ms Yeo. They sang without the keyboard accompaniment. She asked the group to repeat their song and she played the chords as they sang. It was clear that the group was very excited to hear their song realised with the teacher’s keyboard accompaniment. Ms Yeo told the group that there was “no need to play a lot”, but just to sound the block chords on the keyboard. One of the students took out her mobile phone to record the music. Ms Yeo repeated her chords, and called out the names of the chords she used. She told the students that they could “google” to check out these chords. Another student started to write the chords into the notebook. At the end of the session, the teacher said that the chords would be always C, G, F and A minor, and they could figure out how to play them. After the teacher left, one of the girls tried out the chords on the keyboard.
(Sec 2C, 26 July 2012)
Ms Yeo felt that she needed to tell students what chords they should play because she felt that they were not ready to figure out chord progressions on their own. It was true that students already had difficulties figuring out the melodies for themselves.
Another problem that students sometimes faced was the inability to sing in tune with the accompaniment. Again, Ms Yeo found a short-term solution for this. In one of the group practices where students were not able to sing in tune with their accompanists, she addressed the issue by teaching the accompanist new chords, thereby altering the key so that the singers would not have to change the key in which they sang. It was a temporary solution but it did help the group get on with their task.
Teacher requested one of the groups to sing the song. They were able to sing in unison (without accompaniment) and remembered what they had done the previous week, as they gathered around their book which recorded the lyrics they wrote. They stopped after the first verse and admitted that not all of them could sing. The teacher asked them to sing to the strumming of the guitar. When they sang, they were not in tune with the guitar. She asked them if the song fitted with the chords on the guitar. The boy playing the guitar replied “not really”. She asked the group to sing as she accompanied them on the keyboard. But the students were not able to sing to her accompaniment as it was in a different key. The teacher then transposed her accompaniment to fit the key the students were singing in. Then she told the boy playing the guitar to use the chords that she had used, and began to guide him on the specific chords to use.
(Sec 2C, 26 July 2012)
Another challenge with group work and peer learning was the need for members to be present to contribute to the group work. When stronger members or members who played critical roles were absent, it stalled the group’s progress. For example, one group was stuck during a music lesson as the lyrics they had written were kept with a group member who was absent during the session. The rest of them didn’t know what they could do. The teacher had to encourage them to get on with their task.
Adapting the informal learning approach for the song-writing process, Ms Yeo pointed out that students needed to listen to other songs to get ideas for their melodies. Students also had to figure out how to play the instruments of their choice by watching YouTube tutorials. Ms Yeo’s instituting of a journal in which each group kept records of their research and reflections, and the difficulties they encountered, helped give her insights into the groups’ working, and how much work they did.
Responding to Informal Learning
The Third Week
From the observer’s perspective, Ms Yeo’s two classes responded rather differently to the pedagogy although the same scheme of work was applied and carried out by the same teacher. Students in Sec 2A were noticeably less engaged compared to Sec 2C.
On the third week of the module, Sec 2A student groups were still relatively quiet. In many groups, it seemed that only one or two students were actively working out the lyrics or melodies on their instruments as the rest of the group members sat quietly. On the other hand, Sec 2C was bustling with energy. The class seemed to be encouraged by a particular group that was taking the lead and clearly enjoying the song-writing process.
A group of seven girls had the lyrics ready, and one of the girls was improvising with both hands playing the chords with a descending bassline while singing the song. The group suggested to her to start with an introduction. She played a few chords while the others sang to “O”. They were very excited about the introduction and asked her to repeat it.
Then they started to sing together. One girl took out her mobile phone to record the group. Various members contributed to the melody, as they went through the song line by line, accompanied by the keyboardist. They ran through the song again, and at one stage, they were so excited that they clapped and cheered. They got louder and louder with the melody as they practised. After a while, they experimented with two-part singing, having an imitative part for a short segment of the song, and harmonising towards the end of the song. They laughed at their own attempt. They were heard saying “try this one”, “try this end”, and were very willing to explore variations of what they had done. They were seated very closely and tightly together.
(Sec 2C, 19 July 2012)
Perhaps what made the above group in Sec 2C succeed was the strong working relationship between the group members, and having a group member who was proficient with the keyboard to keep the group motivated through music-making. Many of them were willing to sing to try out their song. One member even helped the others make sense of the different variations in the melodic line. The enthusiasm and attitude of this group was infectious, and given the competitive nature of these students, probably led to the other groups wanting to succeed in this project too.
The Fourth Week
By the fourth week, a few groups in Sec 2A became restless and noisy. They took a long time to settle down and there wasn’t much discussion observed within the groups. Perhaps the students were very unsure about themselves and their ability to do the task. They needed to be affirmed. Whether or not they had musically stronger members in the group seemed to make a difference to the overall dynamics and progress of the group.
A group with mixed boys and girls was a little more on task. They were figuring out the accompaniment. One boy played something, and the group liked it. They asked him what he played but he didn’t know what he did. They asked him to write it down, and he began to figure out the melody on the keyboard note by note, and started to write it down. The girl, who sat next to him, read out the letter names for him. When the teacher got over to the group, she picked up their log, and moved them to the keyboard at the front of the class. She improvised something from the melody they created on the keyboard, and the group laughed and said they liked what she played. The group was visibly relieved, as if they were getting somewhere for the first time, and what they created was acceptable. The teacher said she would give them some chords. She then left the keyboard to the students. The students seemed shy and were not confident to try, always looking towards the slightly stronger members in the group who might have had some music background to help.
(Sec 2A, 26 July 2012)
Uncertainty also led to groups changing their minds about what they created, instead of persisting to build on what they had created. It helped when the teacher affirmed the groups on their melodies and guided the groups on aspects that they could continue to work on, for example, considering
the arrangement for the song, or how they could make their music more interesting.
In contrast, the self-motivation and self-directed behaviours of Sec 2C groups were visible by the fourth week when students entered the class and were already seated in groups and discussing their songs even before the teacher got them to do so. Students generally made more progress when there were musically stronger members who were able to inspire the others in the group. In general, the groups in Sec 2C worked with both the lyrics and melody while Sec 2A started with the lyrics first, perhaps because they were less confident with the music.
The difference in attitudes between the classes was also observed by Ms Yeo who expressed that Sec 2C was “more willing to try (different instruments)” (Ms Yeo, personal communication, 26 July 2012). She said that Sec 2C students had been going to her for help during the week. She also felt that peer pressure was motivating the students in Sec 2C since one group was ahead of the rest.
The Fifth and Sixth Weeks
In the fifth week, Ms Yeo had to give Sec 2A a pep talk as the class was late for lessons. She spent at least 10 minutes speaking to students about working with one another and about their attitudes.
In the sixth week, on the day of the performance, all students brought their own instruments and a variety of instruments were seen from both classes. Students were given a few minutes to prepare for the performance. Ironically, during the preparation in Sec 2A, more instrumental playing was heard rather than voices although it was a song composition exercise. Unfortunately, all the groups in Sec 2A were not able to successfully pull off their performances; they had false starts or broke down in the middle of the performance. Ensemble work was weak. The following observations described some of the performances:
In the first group performance, two singers sang despite the accompaniment. After a while, the students realised they were not singing together with the accompaniment, and asked if they could start again. The teacher asked them to continue where they stopped. The performance continued but the singers got weaker and more hesitant. The keyboardist tried to play two chords. The students on the xylophone were not able to play together with the rest of the ensemble.
The second group had a false start. There was one lead singer who sang looking at the lyrics on his mobile phone. One accompanist was playing an alberti bass on the keyboard, and others played the melody. They stopped again halfway through the song, and then got into a discussion. They seemed unused to performing and were not very prepared. Overall, the melody was not very clear and the performance was hardly fluent although the boy did try to sing.
The last group began with a melodic introduction by the keyboardist. The guitarist struggled to strum the chords but the chords were not clear and did not seem to fit with the song. Another student on the harmonica was
struggling to play the melody along with the singers. At one point, only the singers kept going and the rest seemed lost. Only the singers were able to sing through without stopping.
(Sec 2A, 30 August 2012)
In contrast, excitement was in the air as the students of Sec 2C entered the music room on the day of their performance. Students cheered for one another. Although half the class was unable to perform their piece without breaking down, their performances showed that there was more thought put into the creation of the song as seen in the instrumentation and structure that was created. Below are some of the observations of the performances:
The first group introduced their members, their song title and a brief description of their song confidently. The keyboardist started, followed by some punctuation on cymbals, and the vocals entered, accompanied by violin, drum and keyboard. They performed fluently and sang through their song. Their song had an interlude and a coda, and was sung with a clear structure in mind. They drew cheers and applause from their classmates.
The class cheered and clapped when the second group announced their title. One boy played an alberti bass accompaniment and some chords on the keyboard. The other four boys sang in unison. Halfway through the song, the class started to clap along. This seemed to have distracted the performers. The soloist broke down, and seemed to have forgotten his lyrics and the song. The teacher asked the class if they should give the group another chance. The class responded encouragingly. The group started again. However, the soloist broke down again. The teacher offered that they could sing with the recording. The group played the recording on their mobile phone. When they completed their performance, there was a loud round of applause from their classmates.
(Sec 2C, 30 August 2012)
Besides the palpable confidence, enthusiasm and exuberance from students of Sec 2C, their performances also showed greater variety in their work. As such, Ms Yeo was able to discuss the strengths and suggestions for improvement for the performances as well as the musical features that were created.
Examining Student Learning and Outcomes
The stark contrast between the performances of Sec 2A and Sec 2C raised questions on the diverse outcomes that can take place with the same pedagogy and the same teacher. Ms Yeo reasoned that Sec 2C had a “good class spirit”. Besides, she was also the form teacher for the class and she felt they had been “spontaneous” since they were from Secondary One (personal communication, 30 August 2012).
Did informal learning add value to students’ experiences in music learning? We triangulated our observations with students’ responses in their questionnaire. Comparing the students’ questionnaire responses for
the two classes before and after the trial (Table 1), we were surprised that the mean rating index of Sec 2C after the trial was 3.6 on a 5 point likert scale, which was only slightly higher than Sec 2A which registered 3.5. We were even more surprised that Sec 2A students’ responses to the pre- and post-trial questionnaire suggested that the module made a greater positive difference to their music learning experiences compared to Sec 2C students.
Note: The same set of questions was administered before and after the trial.
Additional questions were asked in the questionnaire after the trial to find out about the students’ perceived music learning for the module and if they were inspired to continue with music outside of school. Students’ responses from both classes were comparable and generally positive as indicated in Table 2.
For a school that “did not have a singing culture” according to Ms Yeo, it was remarkable for her that many students enjoyed the song composition tasks. Based on students’ responses, students indicated that the key difference they felt with the song-writing module compared with previous music lessons was the opportunity to create songs. What was interesting about their responses is that many students felt that they learned instruments in this project although it was not the key objective of the module.
In this semester, I learnt to compose National Day songs with the accompaniment of various musical instruments whereas the past music lessons were just composing songs.
It is very different from last year’s music lesson. In secondary one, we only learn more about music through textbooks, while this year, we get to compose our national day song. It allows me to learn how to play a piano.
I have not been so active in participating in music lessons before this. This time, I feel that it is more interesting as we are able to try out different instruments.
The teacher also observed that on the whole, the project did provide an impetus for a few students to want to learn the instruments. Ms Yeo described how one student came back every recess break to practice the piano. He had pasted stickers on the keyboard to facilitate his own learning but had worked towards performing without these stickers. Many other students came back during recess although there were only limited keyboards. A happy problem was the difficulty in managing the large number of consultations with these students due to her limited time. She also felt that there were more consultations for this project compared to her past projects.
Ms Yeo said that through the project, her students in Sec 2C were “gelling better and helping each other” and there were students helping students of other groups. It was not a phenomenon unique to Sec 2C as she also observed that in other classes, the stronger students were helping other groups. She would have expected them to “just take care of their own group” and it came as a “big surprise” to her (personal communication, 30 August 2012). From the students’ responses in their questionnaire, many cited the social aspects of the project as reasons for the enjoyable experience. Students interviewed pointed out the importance of team work, and friends helping one another so that they learned to play instruments.
Of the aspects that students did not enjoy, insufficient time to work on their tasks was the most often cited reason in the questionnaire responses.
There was a shortage of time due to exams, therefore the presentation was not good at all.
There was time constraint. Our group did not have members with music background, so it was difficult for us as there was not enough time to perfect the piece with an instrument.
Students interviewed mentioned that the project was a “stressful” and “gruelling process”. Nevertheless, they felt engaged although not all students felt they contributed as much as their group members to the song. They were stressed as some of them had to “to pick up the instruments … in a short period of time…and it is very difficult”, and it was “very hard to figure out the chords” even though they had the teacher’s help. Another group of students felt that providing the accompaniment was the most difficult aspect of the project. Yet, despite the high stress level, students interviewed were very keen to do the project again.
Perhaps, 6 weeks is too short a time for students to work towards successful performance outcomes. Or perhaps, the design of the task or the facilitation approach could be enhanced to lead to greater success of the module.
Conclusion
In terms of the informal learning principles, these have generally been observed in Ms Yeo’s facilitation of group song composition. Students could choose to work in friendship groups, they had more opportunities for self-directed learning as they worked on their composition tasks, and more opportunities to learn through oral-aural means. Their learning was personalised as they could pick different instruments to accompany their song. And there was a close integration of listening, creating and performing throughout the learning process. However, the informal learning orientation was observed to be in a lesser degree in Ms Yeo’s facilitation of the process. She was more concerned about the ‘how’ of playing music when she instructed her students, giving them a song structure of three verses and one chorus, providing chord names to her students to hasten their composition process, and guiding them on how they could play their instruments.
The teacher played a critical role as facilitator in the informal learning approach. In the context of the school culture where students were constantly too conscious about themselves to experiment and make music freely, the friendship groups provided peer support. But it was the teacher’s constant encouragement and presence that helped pace the students. It rests upon the teacher to know her students well, to create opportunities for students to taste success and develop confidence in the creative work they were producing. Hence, as students worked independently, the “consultations” provided by the teacher helped motivate and affirm the students.
Although many of the groups did not manage to put on a fluent and convincing performance, the process was deemed enjoyable and valuable by many students as reflected in their responses. Perhaps, the task itself provided an opportunity for students to engage in authentic music practices – song writing and performance. And although Ms Yeo adopted the informal learning principles with a more formal orientation, the process was sufficient enough to motivate many students to go to the teacher for additional consultations beyond music lessons, resulting in incidental learning such as instrumental playing and community bonding.
References
Green, L. (2002). How popular musicians learn: A way ahead for music education. Hampshire and Burlingon: Ashgate.
Green, L. (2008). Music, informal learning and the school: A new classroom pedagogy. Hampshire and Burlington: Ashgate.
Finney, J. & Philpott, C. (2010). Informal learning and metapedagogy in initial teacher education in England. British Journal of Music Education, 27(1), 7-19.
Negotiating the Boundaries of Formal and Informal Learning
Pamela Costes-Onishi, Research Scientist, UNESCO-NIE CARE, Nanyang Technological University
Introduction
Green’s (2008, 2002) contribution to the incorporation of informal learning in the music classrooms cannot be overemphasised. Her seminal study on how popular musicians learn music and the myriad of ways these learning strategies could be adopted into the formal setting of a classroom is a driving force in the Musical Futures movement project in the UK.1 The new approaches to learning and pedagogy have been well written about in music education literature during the past decade, introducing what are called informal learning (Finney & Philpott, 2010; Rodriguez, 2009; Folkestad, 2006) and non-formal teaching (Mok, 2011; Mak, Kors, & Renshaw, 2007). 2
This report pertains to Ms Sim (not her real name), an experienced Secondary Music educator at School E, who participated in the trial3 of informal learning over two terms towards the end of 2012. The classes observed were under the Secondary 2 Normal Technical (NT) Course.4 The observation took place during the periods July-October 2012 and traced the developments of an existing keyboard programme as its objectives were consciously approached using informal learning strategies.
1. Musical Futures is an approach to new ways of thinking about music-making in schools, which advocates informal learning and non-formal teaching. It started as a research initiative in 2003 in England targeted to find more inventive ways to address the disengagement of students aged 11-18 in their music classes. For more information please visit www.musicalfutures.org.uk/c/pamphlets
2. Below is a table comparing informal and formal learning strategies as summarised in Green (2008, p.10): Informal Formal
Music is choice of the performers; music they already know or like Introduce students to music they do not already know; usually selected by the teacher
Skill-acquisition is through copying recordings by ear Written notation, verbal instructions
Skills and knowledge assimilated in haphazard, idiosyncratic and holistic ways Planned progression – simple to complex
Emphasis on personal creativity; integration of performing, listening, improvising, and composing Emphasis on reproduction
The following are characteristics of Non-formal teaching based on the Musical Futures Resource Pack (2nd edition, p. 44):
• An inclusive approach to music making, lowering entry barriers
• A belief in group-based activities in performing, listening, composing, and improvising
• A sense of immediacy and exploration
• An opportunity for tacit learning – music being ‘caught’ not ‘taught’
• A more democratic view of learning
• Opportunities to develop non-cognitive skills
Negotiating Teaching Principles and Adapting to Informal Learning
The new approach of informal learning places ownership of music education in the hands of the students. Greater autonomy is evident in the choice of music, on how to play the music, and where to draw resources to learn the music. The main sources of learning are usually peers whom the students also chose to work with. The main shift is the focus on the process of making music rather than on learning how to play the music.
The approach is not easy to adopt and adapt to, especially by experienced music teachers or even student learners who had training and background in the more formal environment. Rodriguez (2009, p. 36) noted this problem with informal learning and the implications to teachers and students. He mentioned two things should be considered in its implementation: (1) new roles for teachers in informal learning; and (2) providing informal learning experiences to students with formal skills as musicians. What came forth prominently in the discussion were the intersections between formal and informal learning and how exploring these could actually enhance the informal process more effectively. It is therefore important to locate this balance between formal and informal in one’s pedagogy. In this context, formal and informal are therefore not elements of duality but rather complementary.
However, because informal learning is not algorithmic does not mean that it is not structured. While use of the term “formal” implies that the learning contains hierarchically-organized levels of mastery, and is overseen by more experienced participants, these two features may be present in informal learning as well. In formal instructional settings, a pre-ordinate series of instructional steps allows teachers to control learning and efficiently identify problems in the process. In informal learning, the teacher relinquishes this control and enters into a more flexible and dynamic relationship with the learner, yet a plan for instruction must still be negotiated between teachers and students. The activities of copying recordings, improvising, composing, and performing on an instrument (or singing) each invoke steps, even if they happen to be material-, context-, and learner-specific, and even if they are mostly hidden. Experienced teachers naturally desire to bring these steps to the fore.
(Rodriguez, 2009, p. 38)
The new implication to experienced teachers wishing to adapt their practices to informal learning is a shift in expertise and that is from teaching how to play music to helping students learn the music on their own (Rodriguez, 2009, p.
3. During the pilot, participants underwent training and workshops from established practitioners and trainers of the Musical Futures project and participated in the pilot research by STAR and UNESCO NIE-CARE. It is the objective of the pilot study to uncover the different responses and adaptations of the teachers to informal learning and non-formal teaching and observe the characteristics of the resulting pedagogies in the Singapore context.
4. Depending on the results of their PSLE or Primary School Leaving Examination, secondary students in Singapore are placed in one of these curriculum strands: Special & Express, Normal (Academic), or Normal (Technical). The placement is meant to match the learning abilities of the students. Both Express and Normal courses are 4-year programmes with the former leading to the GCE ‘O’ levels and the latter to the GCE ‘N’ levels. Those who are in the Normal (Academic) course, depending on their class performance, can opt to take a fifth year and sit for the GCE ‘O’ levels. For more information on these types of examination, please refer to www.seab.gov.sg under National Examinations. The usual pathway of students under Express is a university degree while Normal is a technical college degree.
39). This can, however, be frustrating if the teacher is unable to incorporate the new approach to their already tested teaching schema (Ibid.).
The incorporation of formal and informal strategies is something other music educators acknowledge; it is only a matter of privileging one over another (Finney & Philpott, 2010; Folkestad, 2006). Finney & Philpott (2010) identified 3 factors that affect a teacher’s development: (1) ITE or Initial Training Education, (2) planned development (courses taken), and (3) encultured development (acquired through experience in culture) (p. 5). Both formal and informal learning developed as habitus, which is an unconscious, sociallyconstructed preference in thinking and acting about music learning. It is possible that informal learning could just be buried in this habituated thinking. It is, therefore, crucial for the music educator to excavate and live these informal principles. Student teachers need to excavate their lived informal learning by constant reflection between theory and experience. The aim is to achieve a “productive dissonance” where habitus and ”living” informal learning come into tension in one’s teaching practice with the end result of gradually adapting their habitus to informal strategies. As stated by Finney & Philpott (2010):
We take excavation to mean facilitating student teachers to use theoretical tools to interrogate their ‘lived’ experience; to theorise themselves as a result of experience and to encourage the mutual interrogation of theory and experience (p. 6).
This tension in the habitus between the formal and informal is evident in the case study to be discussed for the rest of this report. Ms Sim, a very talented and accomplished musician in popular styles and aural learning, struggled initially to let go of the more teacher-controlled classroom learning environment. Ms Sim has always been a reflective teacher and constantly observing her students’ interests outside of the classroom. She would observe the students during lunch breaks and would take note of instrument and music preferences. These observations combined with her and colleagues’ strength in keyboard and guitar playing resulted into the current music programmes of her school. However, despite these reflective and student-sensitive qualities, implementing the informal learning approach proved challenging to Ms Sim. The following is an account of how within the period of four months, Ms Sim negotiated the boundaries of the formal and the informal and how she arrived at what Finney & Philpott (2010) call “productive dissonance” between the habitus and the new informal pedagogical approach. This report is an account of how a practitioner slowly learned to excavate informal learning with the future hope of transforming it into a lived practice and to eventually become the dominant habitus.
Starting the Excavation Process
17 July 2012. Just fresh out of the workshop on informal learning and nonformal teaching, and a focus group reflection session, Ms Sim had to figure out how the new pedagogical approaches could potentially be applied to her normal keyboard class for Secondary 2 that meets for an hour once a week. It should be noted that Ms Sim was very receptive to the idea of “trialling”
for the reason that she and her colleagues were used to experimenting approaches especially when it comes to their NT classes. Ms Sim has a keen awareness that it is important to constantly find the right approach in order to keep her NT students engaged in the lessons.
There were about 20 students in the music classroom equipped with keyboards and computers, one for each student. The objective for that lesson was to learn to play chords with the left hand on the keyboard. The class started with the distribution of handouts with graphics of a keyboard and the corresponding location of notes. They were to learn the simple chords of the popular song “Count On Me” by Bruno Mars. Ms Sim started out by reviewing the location of notes to be used for the chords namely C, A, F, E, G. She then asked the students to build the root chords by skipping notes from the first note thus forming the C chord, Am chord, etc. She used an online tutorial software showing how the chords are supposed to be played on the keyboard. The students, however, had difficulty following the instructions and by the end of the lesson most only managed to locate the root notes. Ms Sim experimented by pairing the students and having one play a bass line and another play the full chord. She ended the class by playing the root notes to the verse and chorus phrase by phrase, asking the students to listen and count how many times she played each note before moving to the next one. Ms Sim sang and played for the students and instructed them to write down the number of counts per note on their handouts.
The class was heavy on teacher instruction that day. Ms Sim seemed to be very concerned that the students were grasping the knowledge she was trying to pass on to them. The only time she allowed students to explore on their own was after she had given them the explicit directions. Students were reliant on the handouts and whenever they encountered problems there was the tendency for Ms Sim to supply the solutions immediately by illustrating on the white board, playing the software tutorial, or playing the chords herself. It was very clear that the day’s lesson was still very much formal in orientation in the following ways: (1) students were introduced to a music they may be familiar with but selected by the teacher; (2) the use of written notational keyboard guide and lots of verbal instructions; (3) the teacher was the dominant figure in directing the class; (4) clear plan of progressive keyboard learning; and (5) emphasis on students’ ability to reproduce what the teacher taught them.
During the post-lesson reflection, Ms Sim shared that she wanted to start the class with formal instructions first to provide a strong foundation for the students. She mentioned most of them did not have any knowledge about the keyboard. She believed that giving them a clear orientation on the keyboard through a more directed lesson would equip the students with the necessary tools to explore on their own later in the course. She believed that in her understanding, the plan was still in alignment with informal learning in such a way that she let the students try out the chords for themselves before giving the instructions. However, this was not the case during the observation as noted above. At this time, Ms Sim said that her teaching style
was based on how she was taught as a pre-service teacher.
At the beginning they don’t [have freedom to choose] because they don’t know the keyboard… they don’t know the chords. But at the end [of] the 20 classes what they [can] do is bring in the song [they like] and say ‘I want to play this’, ok you play lah. Then [they] play, sit down, [and] they figure out the chords themselves. Only when they need help then you go in and [ask] ‘now can you tweak from verse to chorus?’, ‘can you do something different?’ so they try to find something different. Would that be informal learning? Teaching? How informal must I put it?
(Ms Sim, personal communication, 17 July 2012)
There were some adjustments already made in the lesson, however. An example of this adjustment was the way she taught chord changes: she asked the students to listen first to the chords while she played and then count the repetitions based on what they have heard. Prior to being introduced to informal learning, Ms Sim would dictate the repetitions to the students and have them write down before they would even have a chance to hear them played. Ms Sim also discovered during the class that placing students in pairs worked better in giving the experience of playing the full chords on their own. This resulted in teamwork of a student playing the bass line while another playing the full chords.
At this early stage in the transition it was evident that Ms Sim was still confused about what constituted informal learning. The important point here was that she was already beginning to reflect on her teaching practice and training background. She was already beginning to excavate those informal principles that could potentially be applied in the ensuing lessons.
14 August 2012. Three weeks after, the class was still working on the chords for the song “Count On Me”. Ms Sim explored the idea of having students work in pairs and by this time the distribution of parts was chords and melodic riffs. The goal of today’s lesson was to finish the song using both hands in playing the chords.
It was obvious that Ms Sim was not satisfied with the way the students were progressing and so to make them focus she announced a short assessment for the next meeting. This day showed students playing with the different sounds on the keyboards and simply fooling around. Ms Sim had to distribute new copies of the keyboard guide handout because students forgot to bring theirs.
There was one particular disruptive student seated at the back of the room and Ms Sim strategically taught from this student’s keyboard. She reviewed the chord changes of the verse, chorus, and bridge. The students seemed to be confused about when to make the chord change and to rectify the situation Ms Sim started drawing box notations on the white board (see Fig 12.1).
The notation was meant to guide the students in remembering the patterns and when to change the chords. It showed when the right (RH) and left (LH) hands should play and each box represented a beat. An ‘X’ meant a chord should be played on that beat.
At this point, the students were asked to work individually with their headphones on. Ms Sim went around the classroom helping students. The kind of help constituted the following: (1) listening to them play the chords; (2) playing the chords for them; and (3) explaining how the notation works.
The students seemed to go off task whenever Ms Sim was not attending to them. Despite this there was an indication that they liked working and interacting with each other; they tend to naturally ask instructions from their peers even though directed to work individually with their headphones on.
When asked why she resorted to the box notation, Ms Sim admitted that she was aware that was not informal learning but it was necessary because the students were very distracted and not really comprehending the pattern changes. She believed the notation would help them understand and keep them on task. Seeing how Ms Sim was still hesitant to let go of her formal orientation because of concerns regarding reproducing music as instructed and being on task, the observer was prompted to provide ideas on how to apply a more informal learning approach to the class.
The suggestions consisted of the following: (1) switching to more aural replication rather than visual patterns; (2) breaking the music into parts besides chords and recording these in advance for students to learn on their own aurally; (3) allowing students to practise on their own; and (4) giving room for students to work in groups and solve musical problems together.
It was believed that the suggestions would still attend to Ms Sim’s concerns and would even lessen the energy spent on individual instruction. It was emphasised that it would be easier to monitor if students were on task by observing if they were playing repeatedly to learn a part. This appealed greatly to Ms Sim who seemed to value keeping students focused.
However, there seemed to be hesitation on Ms Sim’s part to the idea of breaking the song into parts. She still maintained the keyboard band idea should come later when the students have already grasped the foundation, which was playing the chords. She also insisted the box notation should be used for the benefit of the slow learners and was reluctant to accept the suggestion of early peer learning. The principle seemed to be formal learning first for a firm foundation then informal learning later. To achieve at a compromise, Ms Sim came up with a plan of having the parts broken but practised as a class. She also wanted to mix the slow learners with those who are quicker instead of having students choose their own groups. The
Fig 12.1: Box notation of chord changes
session ended with Ms Sim contemplating whether to adopt the suggestions or not. The interview closed with Ms Sim wondering aloud about the idea of allowing students to choose their own groups.
Would it be fair if we numbered them off? Or is it more preferable that they choose their own?
(Ms Sim, personal communication, 14 August 2012)
This was another indication of how she was starting to allow room for the informal learning to potentially become more prominent in her pedagogy.
The Turning Point
11 September 2012. After the term break, Ms Sim welcomed the class back by announcing that the goal for that day would be to learn different parts of the song “Count On Me” by ear. She also instructed the students to choose their own groups and to choose the part they wanted to learn to play. She pre-recorded several instrumental parts of the song and uploaded in software called “Sonar” in each of the students’ computers. Each part would be played in the keyboards and it would be the students’ tasks to locate the correct sound. The ultimate goal was for each group to play together as a keyboard band.
The class started out with the students forming friendship groups and turning on their computers to locate the file to copy aurally. Ms Sim handed out a plan sheet for each group and instructed them to write down their chosen group name and the instruments the group members chose to copy. They were then instructed to work individually on their chosen parts with headphones plugged in the computer and keyboard. Ms Sim went around the room to provide more detailed instructions to the students. It should be noted that students in this NT class tend to intentionally be off task to get the teacher’s attention. However, the new task of discovering things for themselves seemed to lessen this dependency and for the most part students were very focused on learning and choosing their parts.
There was a noted difference in the way Ms Sim assisted the students as well. Whereas in the previous lessons she would normally provide solutions to the students’ problems or her own questions, in this lesson she would model possibilities and give clues but would leave the student to figure things out. Ms Sim was also observant to those who appeared to be distractive. She sat down with this boy who was not doing his work for some time when she was sure the others were already focused. It turned out the boy was just frustrated because he could not figure out what to do. The student was delighted to explore on his own after being guided to match his first sound with the recording.
All throughout the class the students were on task. Ms Sim seemed to have thought about the informal principles during the break and showed remarkable difference in the way she approached this day’s lesson. There was order in the classroom and the students seemed to enjoy the new way of learning.
5.
18 September 2012. This day’s task was to move on to group playing. The class seemed chaotic but everyone was working on recalling the parts they learned the previous week. Ms Sim checked on the students and demonstrated to those who were ready the possibilities of varying the sounds on the keyboard. She did this by playing harmony with a student who already learned the melodic part. The excitement in the students’ faces was undeniable as they discovered how playing as a group sounded like. This motivated them to really work on their parts quicker so they could play together.
The day was also spent with individual assessment. Ms Sim followed what she was used to doing by sitting with students individually and writing comments on feedback grade sheet. While doing so she was able to catch the weakness of the students and provide alternatives to the parts they were learning. She announced at the end of the class the names of students who needed remedial classes to learn their parts.
This type of assessment is still very formal. This is another aspect that Ms Sim would have to re-evaluate in her process of excavating informal principles.5
Developing Critical Musicality
25 September 2012. Ms Sim brought additional instruments to the class this day. She introduced the boom whacker, bells, sound shapes, and xylophones. She demonstrated how these instruments could be used as alternatives to the keyboard parts they were learning such as percussion and bass line. The students showed enthusiasm in using the instruments to play their parts. This perhaps was another discovery on Ms Sim’s part on how the informal learning principle could be applied to extend their keyboard program’s objectives.
This meeting showed how the students naturally learned to peer-teach and figure out the concept of ensemble playing. Playing in groups made them realise individually how their parts should match the others. In the process they learned to apply what Green (2008) called “critical musicality”, which allows students to express themselves musically through the mediation of music itself. As with “critical pedagogy”, this is the process wherein the concepts and skills are allowed to surface through the engagement with the materials; in short, the necessary rules emerge out of the process of doing and not taught sequentially as in formal learning (as cited in Rodriguez, 2009, p. 38). This would allow exploration of the intersection between formal and informal learning, seeing that both involve mastery of materials, allow for rules to emerge, and require the guidance of an experienced participant.
During the student interviews, it was evident that terminologies such as chords, riffs, beats and melodies were learned by engaging in the music directly. Students expressed that they learned to “count” with the group and became aware they needed more practice in order to play better. The
importance of counting was discovered during the process especially the first time they tried to play as a class. No one provided the cue or established the tempo and so everything turned chaotic. This necessitated for the group to appoint a leader to give the cue before they started playing.
Student Interview, 2 October 2012
Student 1: We combine together to make it nicer.
Interviewer:
Ah, so that is what you learnt? You learnt about playing in groups? Okay, did you (But…) hmm, but?
Student 1:
But sometimes like… like not good, but now we practice a bit, okay good lah.
Interviewer: Okay, how come how was it not good?
Student 1: Because everything go haywire.
Interviewer: Go haywire… Latif you were saying?
Student 2: Not communicate together.
Interviewer:
How do you not communicate together?
Student 2: Because first round we never say 1,2,3,4…
Student 1: And everybody was not sure what was we doing. So they was a bit blur.
Interviewer: Who was blur?
Student 1: Xiuqing, Bryan… they was [sic] blur when is their time to play the …
Student 2: …when to come in their part.
Interviewer: When to come in their part… do you think that was important?
Student 2: Yes of course.
Interviewer: Why?
Student 2:
Because if they don’t know then they anyhow go in then the song will not be nice already what.
Interviewer:
So how do you all solve the problem?
Student 2:
Like now people see you go into the stage, you sing not nice already right?
Interviewer:
So how do you solve the problem?
Student 1:
We need a leader who can tell us what to do and control the … think we have Zahid, the one who can control us by saying 1,2,3,4.
Interviewer: So was that helpful?
Student 1: Of course.
Besides developing “critical musicality” the students also expressed how they acquired more confidence in their playing as they practised as a group and learned the importance of communication and team work. Therefore, in adapting informal learning principles, extra-musical qualities were also honed in the process. These qualities are in alignment with the Singapore Ministry of Education’s (MOE) goal of enhancing 21st century competencies such as developing a student who is confident and a self-directed learner. In a bigger picture, the other two competencies of concerned citizen and active contributor could also be enhanced as the students learn the importance of team work and perfecting their individual parts to contribute positively to the whole.6
Summary and Conclusions
This pilot case study tried to locate patterns of unresolvable dissonance and adaptation in the pedagogical practices of an experienced Secondary Music teacher who is consciously reflecting on the applicability of informal learning in her keyboard class. The unfolding of the lessons in two terms showed how a practitioner with solid perspectives on engaging underachieving students negotiated the tensions between the formal and informal. The end result is the beginning of the process of excavating informal principles and learning to live them as practice. The reflective thinking resulted into a more productive dissonance between the formal and informal approaches (Finney & Philpott, 2010) and the engagement of the students in critical musicality (Rodriguez, 2009; Green, 2008).
Most of the concerns of Ms Sim in this study are shared by other experienced teachers, namely: (1) individual comprehension of the lessons by students,
6. To learn more about the MOE and 21st century competencies please visit http://www.moe.gov.sg/media/press/2010/03/moe-to-enhance-learning-of-21s.php
(2) classroom management, and (3) keeping students on task. It is very challenging to manage a classroom if most of the students exhibit needy attitudes and would intentionally misbehave to seek attention. It is evident that having control of the class is important for Ms Sim to make sure that her students learn. Standing back and relinquishing control to the students are something that Ms Sim struggled with the most. This manifested in her belief that a more directed foundation is necessary before any of the informal approaches are applied. She believes that “Modeling Aural Learning” should come first before dropping the students “In at the Deep End”.7
At the end of the successful implementation of the informal learning, Ms Sim expressed in an interview that she was happy with the results but that she also felt the success was due to the fact that the activity was new. For her type of students, she thought new activities must be constantly introduced to keep the level of engagement high. Although this could be possible in informal learning, which is an approach to thinking about music learning regardless of the activity8, Ms Sim maintained that the pedagogical approach should be flexible at any one time depending on the cohort of students. She thought the informal approach might not be suitable for her other NT students with more challenging behavioural problems.
Despite the comments above, Ms Sim also admitted that she was surprised to see that the informal approach worked positively for her NT students. Her compromises in what she would normally do such as having them choose a part to learn and leaving students to figure out how to play them actually yielded the end results she was hoping for: the students being able to finish the song. She was also surprised that the students were able to work collaboratively without much fooling around. In the end, Ms Sim found that students were more musical, that is, they have reached the musical goal of translation and interpretation. She also noted that in having students try out the sounds, they became more engaged and that they developed a greater sense of ownership. Ms Sim concluded that implementing the informal learning approach accomplished the objectives of her class and even going beyond.
When asked to reflect on how informal learning could help NT students, Ms Sim mentioned the following: first, teachers should learn to be facilitators, meaning, they should teach students to be more independent instead of constantly seeking attention and help from them. Second, teachers should guide students in solving their musical problems, that is, ask them what they think went wrong instead of telling them what went wrong. Third, informal learning can help students engage in critical thinking, that is, they learn to experiment and learn how to make things work for them based on their
7. In the Musical Futures Resource Pack (2nd edition),it was suggested that lessons be structured in the following manner: In at the Deep End, Modeling Aural Learning, Informal Composing, Informal Learning with Other Musics. For some teachers, ‘Modeling Aural Learning’ seems more logical as a starting point because of its more structured design and the way it resembles a normal lesson; in contrast, students are literally thrown in the deep end at the first suggested lesson opener. ‘In at the Deep End’ “encourages students to experiment, and to explore music and learning in their own way” and is believed to increase the motivation of students to learn more (p.142).
8. Informal learning has been successfully applied to a number of musical activities such as songwriting, individual and group performance, individual instrument learning, and immersion in different genres such as pop, classical, and non-western musics (Sexton, 2012; Jeanneret, 2010; Wright & Kanellopoulus, 2010; Jaffurs, 2004).
own learning styles. In sum, instructing makes the students more reliant; facilitating works better for a NT class.
Reviewing these statements clearly shows the “productive dissonance” at work and is definitely a healthy way of reflective practice on the part of Ms Sim. She is clearly broadening her horizons and acknowledging that the informal learning approach actually works, as evident in the “Trialling”. The results challenge her preconceived beliefs regarding music pedagogy and by allowing these tensions to surface, she is able to engage reflectively in her practice as a teacher.
In the end, Ms Sim advised that teachers test out different pedagogical approaches as she believes pedagogies are just that because someone made them work. It is the teacher’s responsibility to find out what works best for their students. However, considering the positive results of the “trialling”, Ms Sim personally would like to continue experimenting with the informal approach in her other music classes. She is now thinking of the possible ways she can incorporate informal learning and non-formal teaching approaches for a long-term application in their music programme and also finding ways on how to make it fit to meet the examination requirements of the Ministry of Education. Her story of “living” informal learning and transforming her habitus now begins.
References
D’Amore, A. ed. (n.d.) Musical Futures: An approach to teaching and learning (Resource Pack, 2nd edition). London: Paul Hamlyn Foundation.
Finney, J. & Philpott, C. (2010). Informal learning and meta-pedagogy in initial teacher education in England. British Journal of Music Education, 27 (1), 7-19.
Folkestad, G. (2006). Formal and informal learning situations or practices vs formal and informal ways of learning. British Journal of Music Education, 23(2), 135-145.
Green, L. (2008). Music, informal learning and the school: A new classroom pedagogy. Hampshire and Burlington: Ashgate.
Green, L. (2002). How popular musicians learn: A way ahead for music education. Hampshire and Burlington: Ashgate.
Jaffurs, S. E. (2004). The impact of informal music learning practices in the classroom, or how I learned how to teach from a garage band. International Journal of Music Education 22 (3), 189-200.
Mak, P., Kors, N. & Renshaw, P. (2007). Formal, non-formal andinformal learning in music. Hague: Lectorate Lifelong Learning in Music, Prince Claus Conservatoire, Groningen & Royal Conservatoire.
Mok, O.N.A. (2011). Non-formal learning: clarification of the concept and its application in music learning. Australian Journal of Music Education, 1, 11-15.
Rodriguez, C.X. (2009). Informal learning in music: Emerging roles of teachers and students. Action, Criticism & Theory for Music Education, 8 (2), 36-45.
Connecting the Curricular and Co-curricular through Formal and Non-formal Teaching
Ho Hui Ping, Programme Manager, STAR
About the Musician-Teacher
Mr Mark (not his real name) was invited to participate in STAR’s pilot study about 10 months after he arrived in Singapore. A jazz trombonist and a band conductor, he had worked in Australia for 19 years, and taken on roles as a classroom music teacher and a peripatetic teacher. He has conducted music ensembles and has written a curriculum aimed at developing talented Years 11 – 12 students.
An active practitioner, Mr Mark also plays other wind instruments. He currently plays with local jazz bands, performing at local jazz performing venues and participating at Jazz festivals in Singapore.
Context: StructuresandtheCurricula
D Secondary School, where Mr Mark was posted, offers a performing arts niche1. As a structural support for the niche, students in the performing arts Co-curricular Activities (CCAs)2 such as the school’s Band and Choir receive additional training during the formal curriculum hour. Students not in performing arts CCAs would take part in other elective modules. These classes are in addition to General Music lessons. Therefore, there was a structural porosity between the General Music Curriculum (which is attended by all students) and the Music CCAs (which is attended only by interested students) with regard to the use of curriculum time.
This arrangement would be deemed unusual in the secondary school setting in Singapore. General Music curriculum and Music CCAs are usually spoken of in different breaths. While Music teachers usually conduct General Music lessons during the curriculum time, Music CCAs programmes are usually
1. Niche Programmes in Singapore Secondary schools were introduced in 2005 to help schools diversify their range of programme offerings, and to develop their strengths, so as “to provide students with more opportunities to grow in different areas of excellence, and enrich their educational experience.” (MOE, 2012)
2. CCAs are co-curricular activities conducted outside the formal curriculum. They are attended only by interested students who have chosen to attend these activities. The range of activities include performing arts ensembles (e.g. Chinese Orchestra, Military Band) and Uniformed Groups (e.g. National Cadet Corps, Boys’ Brigade).
conducted by musicians from outside the schools, outside the curriculum time. General Music is attended by all students, and Music CCAs are attended only by interested students who have chosen to attend these activities. These two programmes usually tap on separate sets of resources, thus there are clear boundaries within the school structure.
Teacher Belief
Mr Mark belongs to a growing group of music teachers, who are not only the school’s General Music curriculum teacher, but also a Music CCA instructor. As a music teacher and Band conductor in this unique position, Mr Mark saw his goal to create and enable a self-sustaining musical culture that involved the whole school, and catered to students from the very talented to those with little or no musical background (personal communication, 9 May 12). He aimed to cultivate groups of student performers and build a vibrant musical community in the school, where students are ready to participate in musical performances, and organise such performances themselves (personal communication, 22 August 12).
His approach to shaping his music curriculum would be to make his classrooms “as relevant to real-world experiences as possible” (personal communication, 9 May 12), especially to students with little or no prior musical training. One of the ways in which he set out to achieve that was to introduce an ICT-based music curriculum in the first semester of the year, where students created their own loop-based compositions, remixes and mash-ups. While he liked the versatility offered by ICT, Mr Mark felt that there was still value in developing instrumental skills in the music curriculum. For students who were already engaged through learning an instrument, he believed in giving them the freedom and opportunities to follow their own musical paths (personal communication, 9 May 12).
Pedagogic Practices: AContinuum
In the recent years, Folkestad noted that music education has shifted its focus towards student-centricity, “from teaching to learning, and consequently from teacher to learner” (2006, p. 136, italics by writer). He was referring to formal and informal learning in light of Green’s (2008) thesis, and proposed that these two sets of pedagogic practices be seen as “the two ends of a continuum” (Folkestad, 2006, p. 135), rather than as opposites. As pointed by Mak et al. (2007, p. 12), the pedagogic practices “deal with the question of who controls the learning process – the teacher, the student or both”. Folkestad (2006, p. 135) puts forth that “in most learning situations, both these aspects of learning are in various degrees present and interacting in the learning process”. He presented four dimensions within the spectrum:
• Learning situation: where does learning take place?
• Learning style: as a way of describing the character, the nature and quality of the learning process. E.g. does the learning start with written music or by ear?
• Ownership: who ‘owns’ the decisions of the activity of what to do as well as how, where and when?
• Intentionality : towards what is the mind directed: towards learning how to play (pedagogical framing) or towards playing (musical framing) (Saar, 1999)?
(Folkestad, 2006, p. 138)
While he was referring to two seemingly polar ends of formal teaching and informal learning, the dimensions he has delineated are useful for understanding the interplay of formal and non-formal teaching. Before going further, it may be useful to see the differences between these three nodes within the spectrum of pedagogic practices in view of the four dimensions:
Formal Non-formal Informal
Learning situation Usually in school settings In community contexts Outside schools
Learning Style Generally wellstructured and sequenced, and usually involved written music
Flexible, with the structure being “nonlinear and bottom-up” (Mak et al., 2007, p.15)
Learning tended to be assimilated in “haphazard, idiosyncratic and holistic ways” (Green, 2002, p.10), usually starts with learning by ear
Ownership Primarily teacher-led, and the instruction is given by qualified teachers or mentors
Intentionality Strong pedagogical framing. Learning is intentional: “the aims (what to learn), the learning tactics (how to learn) and the performance levels (when is it sufficient) are specified.” (Mak et al., 2007, p. 13)
Led by adult leaders / community / peer leaders
A mix of musical and pedagogical framing. Learning is embedded in planned activities that are not explicitly designated as learning but that contain an important learning element, what is sometimes described as semi-structured learning (Collardyn, 2002; cited in Mak et al., 2007)
Control of learning by learners themselves, working without constant supervision of adults, i.e. self-directed
Strong musical framing. The focus was to make and play music (Finney & Philpott, 2010)
This chapter examines how the formal and non-formal teaching interact in Mr Mark’s pedagogic practices, using qualitative data from two classes, Sec 1E1 and Sec 1A1. It also aims to suggest how a teacher’s “philosophic beliefs and educational practice are interconnected” (Knight 1989, cited in Belousa et al., 2006, p. 39):
A teacher who believes that a music education programme should be ‘performance based’, or another who affirms that composing is the gateway to musical understanding, or someone who emphasises the importance of bringing young people into contact with a particular heritage of music through listening to recordings and attending professional performances;
all are participating in shared networks of beliefs and assumptions.
(Swanwick, 2008, p. 226)
Professional Development and Pedagogic Practices
The professional development workshops Mr Mark attended helped shaped his pedagogic adaptation for the pilot study. In addition to the workshop on informal learning and non-formal teaching, he also attended a 10-day workshop on Kodály approaches. It was interesting to see how he connected the pedagogies, weaving processes and materials together for the pilot. He had originally planned to have students aurally copy a song using ICT, building up from the work he had done in the earlier semester. He also planned to incorporate hand-held percussion instruments to accompany the “reconstructed” song.
But the Kodály’s made me change my mind…so they’re (the students) going to learn all the parts aurally and sing all the parts now….they’ll sing all the instrumental parts, and including the percussion parts as well, like in the drums…it’s good to vocalise.
(Mr Mark, personal communication, 26 June 12)
The “parts” Mr Mark was referring to belonged to the song, “The Passenger”, the 1977 hit by Iggy Pop and Ricky Gardiner. This was one of the songs he was introduced to during the training for this pilot study. Through his own research, Mr Mark found a vocal version of the song used in a TV commercial. Inspired by it, he decided to focus students on learning this song, using nonformal teaching approaches, and incorporating Kodály-based strategies and its solfège system to develop students’ singing voices. He was convinced that music learning should be approached from a repertoire, and this would give authenticity to students’ music learning. The module would thus begin with vocal work, inter-woven with the signature body percussion and rhythmic warm-ups of non-formal teaching approaches. The module then moved towards introducing instrumental parts, and performance of the song in an ensemble setting.
Vocal Beginnings: KodAlywiththePassenger
Vocal and Body Warm-ups
Teacher had students in an approximate circular formation around him in the computer lab. “Copy me”, he started, and clapped a 4-beat rhythmic pattern ‘ta ta ti-ti ta’, in a fast and lively tempo. The students copied neatly. A series of rhythmic patterns then ensued, including dotted and syncopated ones, and then gradually extending to two-bars of patterns comprising triplets and syncopation. Students were engaged. They were more successful with the non-syncopated rhythmic patterns than the syncopated ones. After several two-bar rhythmic patterns, the teacher stopped the activity. Students were seen grinning with excitement, even though most of them had problems replicating the rhythmic patterns accurately.
Table 13.1 Three Nodes of the Continuum of Pedagogic Practices
Vignette 13.1 “The Passenger” with Sec 1A1 (Field Observation by HP Ho, 16 July 12)
Teacher then checked the number of Band and Choir students in the class. He reminded the Music CCA students that he, as a conductor, would use hand cues to communicate musically. He demonstrated to students that the action of closed fists would mean to stop singing/playing. “Those of you who aren’t in the Band / Choir, you need to pay particular attention (to the cues).”
After the explanation, he started to hum the pitches ‘Mi-So-Mi-Do’, followed by two sets of two-bar pitches in quavers, which he sang in solfège: ‘Mi-SoSo-Mi Mi-Do-Do-Mi Mi-So-So-Mi Mi-Do-Do’ and ‘Do-Mi-Mi-Do Do-La-LaDo Do-Mi-Mi-Do Do-La-La’. Students followed his conducting cues to learn these two sets of pitches, and he set them into two groups for imitative entries, progressing towards a canonic performance. Every time he repeated, he increased the tempo. Students initially had problems copying his pitches but they managed to pitch themselves and most of them were able to copy him pretty accurately.
Pulse of Song
Teacher asked students to copy him, and he began with a four-beat pulse with patschen, clap, Right-click, Left-click. He continued till students’ rhythmic patterns were stable. Teacher introduced a set of dotted rhythmic vocables ‘Bom Chick-a Bom Chick-a’ while maintaining the body percussion. Students giggled and laughed while they did the body percussion. As they were focussed on learning the four-beat body percussion, most of them were not copying the rhythmic vocables.
Bass Line
Teacher went on to introduce the bass ostinato of “The Passenger” in solfège: Mi-Mi-Doh-Doh-Soh-Soh-Fi-Soh-Fi. He continued to sing, role-modelled with handsigns (but did not require the students to copy the handsigns). Students slowly picked up the phrases as they repeated it again and again.
He then combined the body percussion with the bass ostinato. Students were able to follow. Then, he modified the clicks to cross-body hand claps with a partner. He demonstrated that with another student. Strains of the bass ostinato were heard as he did his demonstration. Students thus got into pairs and tried out the actions, but many had initial problems with coordination. Sounds of students’ laughter were heard as they tried. Soon more got the hang of it, though the singing was not very clear. Teacher got students to sing the phrases as a class. Some strains of singing were heard, but most were concentrated on the actions.
“Gavina” Riff
He demonstrated, with a student, on how to sing the syncopated “Gavina” riff together with the clapping. Again, students laughed as they watched the demonstration. Teacher then asked students in their pairs to sing “Gavina” with the actions. Teacher reminded the class to listen to one another. He got the class to go through the riff, but the class broke down again. He tried again. Slowly, strains of “Gavina” could be heard. Teacher stopped the activity, and showed the students the mash-up of the song in the TV commercial, which they had seen the week before. The students were engaged in watching the
video.
Putting All Together
Teacher got the students into three groups. He started the first group on the bass ostinato and the pulse using body percussion. He reminded the “Choir people to sing out please”. He then cued for the bass ostinato to stop. He then moved on to the 2nd group for the body percussion with beatboxing (‘Bom Chick-a Bom Chick-a’). After he conducted in the beatboxing, he asked them to continue, and brought back the bass ostinato again, before cueing the 3rd group with the “Gavina” riff to enter. Students sustained a performance that lasted for about a minute. While it was not all entirely accurate, students seemed to enjoy themselves.
The above lesson took place after the students had learnt the chorus to the song the week before. The students also heard the vocal remix on the TV commercial on YouTube. Deconstructing it with Folkestad’s four dimensions, one could say that the learning situation was formal as it took place in the music classroom. Even though the learning style began with aural listening rather than the written music, the learning was very much owned by the teacher – he led and sequenced the activities throughout the lesson and conducted the class performances.
With a very brisk pace of lesson, the students were seen to be struggling with primarily coordination issues between maintaining a steady body percussion part and singing the respective parts. The singing was at times over-taken by the actions. They slowly managed to coordinate upon more repetition. Mr Mark continued without pausing, letting the students find their own footing, instead of stopping the flow and correcting them directly. Mr Mark prepared the class for a performance of the three parts at the end of the lesson. While the earlier vocal exercises had a stronger pedagogical framing, the framing slowly moved towards a musical one as he prepared the class for a performance of the three parts the students learnt.
Over the next few weeks, Mr Mark would begin his lessons with rhythmic and solfège warm-ups with body percussion. That slowly built up students’ voices and their comfort in singing. It improved their movement coordination while attending to singing as well. He would begin his classes by getting students into a circle, keeping the pulse going and building up layer by layer – first with body percussion, and then the vocal lines, and sometimes with movement as well. This vocal approach was taken to scaffold the learning of the instrumental parts of the song, using non-formal teaching as the main pedagogical processes.
As for the actual vocal lines, Mr Mark did not, interestingly, continue with the Kodály approach. He used a backing track to accompany the learning. In keeping with his musical framing, he always concluded his class with a short performance of what the class had learnt. As Folkestad (2006, p. 138) pointed out, that performing in front of an audience (and in this case the sound recorder), was an important part of the learning process, “often neglected in formal music tuition”. Thus one could see how he mixes both
pedagogical and musical framing in his lessons.
In subsequent lessons, he would also play back the recording, highlighting the areas to improve, such as pitch and rhythm accuracy. He also shared other classes’ performances with one another. After recording the classes’ singing with the backing track, he progressively moved towards developing them to sing without the backing track. By the time the group progressed to this stage, their pitching was more accurate, the singing was a lot more robust and confident. They were also louder.
It was also important to note that throughout his lessons with students, Mr Mark was conscious of the experiences of his Band / Choir students and would often make references to what they learnt during the band / choir sessions within General music lessons.
Moving on to Instrumental Work: BandRoomMagic
By early August, Sec 1E1 and 1A1 had learnt the song and made their own recordings, with and without the backing track. He continued to begin every lesson with some body percussion rhythms, to focus students on playing together. Once the recordings were done, he decided to build on the song by inviting students to bring their instruments for lessons.
Snapshot 13.2.1 Mallet Percussion
“Who are our mallet players?”, Mr Mark asked, standing beside the xylophone. A student stepped forward. “Excellent”, he said. The rest of the class was sitting around the room. Strains of ukuleles chords drifted from across the Band Room.
“Who else is playing with you?”, he asked the xylophonist. The student motioned his classmate forward. The first xylophonist started going through the riff that he learnt last week. The two boys started rehearsing at the xylophone. The first xylophonist at the higher register of the xylophone, began teaching the second xylophonist as both of them went through a dotted rhythmic riff, improvised from “Gavina”.
At the same time, Mark went over to the vibraphone, opened its cover. A girl from the chairs stood up and went to his side, and Mr Mark showed her the part. “Any other volunteers?”, he asked. Another girl came forward to vibraphone. The teacher left the pair to coach the first xylophonist again.
In the meantime, three students were stationed at the marimba at the front of the room, going through the bass ostinato of the song. Mr Mark went back to the vibraphonists and went through the part with them. The drummer, on hihat, was playing his rhythmic patterns, and occasionally improvising.
Another group of girls were stationed near the xylophone, and one of them was setting up her clarinet, and the clarinetist was explaining and answering questions about the clarinet from her classmates.
Snapshot
13.2.2
Coaching the Clarinetist
Mr Mark was coaching the clarinetist together with a group of vocalists, a simplified version of the ‘Gavina’ riff in smooth lyrical phrases. He was conducting the clarinetist, with the Marimba bass line and hi-hat playing as a form of musical support for the clarinetist. After the short rehearsal, Mr Mark left the group of students.
Snapshot 13.2.3 Back to the Mallets
This time, the teacher rehearsed the glockenspiel part together with the clarinetist as they were playing the same part, again, with the bass ostinato and the high hat in the background. The teacher conducted the students, and slowly said “rest”, and counted them in. After a few repetitions, the teacher said, “keep going”. The glockenspiel player looked up and smiled.
The teacher went back to the xylophonists again, who were trying to master the highly dotted improvised riff at the Allegro tempo that the marimbas and high hat were playing. They fell behind in the tempo. But the students were very intent and engaged in playing the riff.
Snapshot 13.2.4 Putting it Together
“So what I like to do, is to go from the last <sang a phrase of the chorus "lah"> Once that happens, I would like the ukuleles and the marimba to keep playing, like we did last time. Like we did last time too, what I would like to be the last sound using ukuleles. So I get the marimba to stop, and the ukuleles would play another bar or so. So don’t be surprised this time – you were surprised the last time.
“Can I have the girls singing “lah lah” and the ‘Gavinas’”, Mr Mark said. The girls came to the front of the band room. The xylophonists and the vibraphonists were going through their riffs as the girls moved over towards the teacherconductor. Teacher asked the students to come closer, and he arranged the students’ positions.
“So what would happen now is this. We’d start off with the marimba and ukuleles, when everyone is playing, I’ll turn around to the boys here, and you’ll sing it, “lah lah” – it will be the last time. Then ukulele and marimba keep playing, everyone stops. If you’re not sure, I’ll do this (lifted his hand up with a fist).
Teacher counted “1 – 2 – 3 – 4” to start the rehearsal. The marimba came in, and then the hi-hat, then the tambourines at the backbeat. Then the mallet instruments entered with improvised riff and simplified riffs, juxtaposed by the more lyrical riffs by the clarinets and the glockenspiel. The teacher cued in the boys’ singing of the chorus. At the end of the section, he stopped all the instruments till only the ukuleles were playing. Then he stopped the rehearsal, and worked on the chords with the students on the ukuleles.
Vignette 13.2 Segment of Instrumental Work in Band Room with Sec 1E1 (Field observation by HP Ho, 10 September 12)
The ukuleles were brought in by a group of girls who decided to buy the instruments after Mr Mark told them that they could bring their own instruments to class. He also wanted to give the band students the opportunity to play on their instruments (personal communication, 16 July 12). The room for decision-making gave students greater ownership of their learning. Other than the choice of instruments, the decision making belonged mostly to the teacher.
Even though it was in the school still, the learning situation was changed. Rather than the computer lab, the move to work in the Band Room excited the students. They felt privileged (interview with Sec 1E1 students) to have access to a special room privy only to Band members. The Band seemed to be highly regarded in the school.
The learning style was less structured throughout the lesson as compared to the vocal sessions. Learning aurally and through role-modelling was key. For students from Music CCAs, he provided additional musical experiences with a different learning style – having the aural listening as the starting point to the parts they were playing as opposed starting with the written music, which was usually the case for Music CCAs. One could see how Mr Mark made connections between the curricular and the co-curricular, reaching his Band / Choir students through his General Music curriculum.
The teacher worked with different groups of students to rehearse and put up the class performance. He had to respond to the groups that needed his assistance. In general, students seemed to enjoy these lessons. However, it was observed that in view of the time the teacher had to go around the class to coach the individual parts of the song before putting them together, students experienced slow-down of momentum and pacing, causing some of them to become disengaged. Mr Mark recorded their performances and had the class listen to them and talked through areas of improvement.
The intentionality of the activity became more musically framed where students were orientated (Finney & Philpott, 2010) to play the parts so that they could put up a performance later.
During one lesson, Mr Mark decided to vary the activities and got the class to create their own rhythmic patterns, and putting them together as a class. A group of student interviewees recounted the activity:
Students:
There is a time where we all can interact with each other, you know, to make some music among ourselves. (When?) Erm, during the Band Room, one of the lessons we had a chance to create music on the floor with our hands.
Students:
So we had to do it in a group of 5 or 4 people. In the Band Room. So we decided to do it as 5 people. And then we did use the floor and hands to make a sound, different kind of sounds. Like something like a tune.
With this lesson, the ownership of the activity was partially handed over to the students and the intentionality of the activity had a stronger musical framing – an orientation to play and make music. Students interviewed reflected that they enjoyed the lesson.
The Music Curriculum from Students' Perspectives
The questionnaire and interviews provided insights into the students’ views about their semester’s lessons. When asked what they remembered learning from their music lessons, instrumental playing came up top, and the next one mentioned by many students, when probed further, was the use of the ICT software.
‘Hands-on’ Music-Making
Instrumental playing was one of the highlights for the students in this trialling. Four out of the five groups interviewed mentioned in vivid terms how they enjoyed instrumental playing during their music lessons. Many noted that was distinctively different from their other music lessons. The hands-on aspect, active music-making was recognised in relation to instrumental playing as well as body percussion-based music making. Singing was mentioned in relation to the activities pursued, rather than an activity they enjoyed:
Interviewer: What was most enjoyable part of the music lessons for you?
Hands-on.
Interviewer: How different or how similar are they to your earlier lessons in January this year?
Students: Erm... we get to use the instruments.
Interviewer: How do you all find your music lessons this term?
Students: Very fun! Awesome! Very Interesting!
Interviewer: Oh Wow!
Students: We can sing, we can use instruments.
It was interesting to note that even though it was just one lesson, students pointed out that they enjoyed creative music-making:
Interview with Sec 1E1 students, 8 October 12
Interview with Sec 1A1 Students, 8 October 12
Students:
Interviewer: What was the most enjoyable part of the whole project from beginning?
Students: Most of us like playing instruments. Hmmm. Try out things, try new instruments. We get to learn what note is it like on different instruments.
Students:
Performing the claps. You can make like different clapping ways…is like you think about something new on your own…create something new…yah…
In terms of responses from the questionnaire, students enjoyed:
Learning to play some new instruments.
Playing the percussion instruments! Because it’s fun. We are able to use instruments. It gives us a pleasant experience.
The opportunity to perform was also enjoyed, and the student interview also suggested how performance could build their sense of confidence:
Student: Well, maybe we all learn to be more confident.
Interviewer: In what?
Students: (A few): In performing, playing. Have to feel that you should not make a mistake. So you feel more confident. Once you try it again and again, you feel more confident that you can make it correct, not thinking that you can make it wrong.
Collaboration / Teamwork
Students highlighted how they felt that teamwork, collaborative learning was their reflection upon working in an ensemble setting and through the music making activities they experienced. Many felt that the music making “bonded” the class:
Interviewer: Was this different from previously your music lesson?
Student: Yup. It is very different.
Interviewer: How? How is it different?
Students:
It began, the rest of the class began to talk to us, approach us if they have any problems, in playing an instrument and we will try to help. Ya, and er the previous music lesson we used computers to make the sound different, to make different sound. But now we are like using different instruments to make the sound. think it is much better.
Interviewer: Why is it much better?
Student: It has hands-on activities, rather than... It is much more interesting. Boost self confidence.
Interviewer: Ok. So, so you all get to play instruments. What else did you all do during music lessons?
Students: And also I think when we were spilt into different groups to play the different instrument, think, we learn from each other, like we teach each other. And also we were spilt up. So it was like she teach other, I mean other of our classmate which we are not so close. So we are…bonded.
Student: Ah like making the class tight ya, get along. Team work. Team work.
Interviewer: Ah.
Student: It bonds the class. Bonds the class together. Because when we bond the class we can do more things.
The musical value of collaboration was also felt by the students:
Interviewer: What about music did you learn?
Students: To be more patient. We definitely learn to work together. Because there were sometimes where, that there were some times where we actually had to see where you have to play certain instruments. And you can’t just anyhow play. So you have to see the correct timing and be patient also, to know when you have to play. Instead of just hastily doing and stuff.
Students: How to be on rhythm…
Interviewer: Share a little bit more!
Interview with Sec 1A1 Students, 8 October 12
Interview with Sec 1E1 Students, 8 October 12
Interview with Sec 1E1 Students, 8 October 12
Students:
Like when you clap right, everybody must be together so it is like the same. We are on the same like tempo but different rhythm, so a mix of both. Song is like you can hear everything but you can only hear one thing. Like we can be on time with each other.
Peer Directed Learning
Some students were very motivated by the call to bring their own instruments from outside school into their General Music classrooms. This group of girls shared their experiences:
Interviewer: Why have you decided to bring in your own instrument?
Student 1:
Mm.... at first I listen to the song, The Passenger…and then Mr Mark introduced it to us. So I went home to do a bit of research. I searched for a tutorial to learn. Then I learnt it, brought the instrument, and told Mr Mark.
Interviewer:
Do you already have the instrument before you learn this song?
Students 1: Yup.
Student 2: Erm, for me, (between) my dad and my sister, we have a collection of music instruments at home. So yah, so we went to the music shop one day and then we saw this ukulele. So then we decided to buy it.
Interviewer: Then you went online after you learn the song?
Student 2: Ya, we self-study the instruments.
Interviewer: Self-study the instruments? How?
Student 2: We research online.
Interviewer:
Then how did your other friend like Sherrine...
Student 3: I got inspired by her.
Interviewer:
Oh, both of you inspired by her? Ok. So what did you all do?
Student 3: I bought a ukulele as well. My mom bought it online. Then learn most of the things from her
Interviewer: And what about you?
Yes. Same as Student 3. I bought the ukulele with my grandmother and then after I learn from Student 2. My mom bought it online. Then I learn most of the things from her (Student 2).
Discussion
The students surveyed were clear that they learnt to play at least one musical instrument through this module, and perhaps more significantly, that their lessons trained them to be musicians. This could be seen in the table below, with Sec 1A1 having more positive responses than Sec 1E1 students. This was discussed with the teacher. Mr Mark noted that Sec 1E1 had significantly less time for active music-making compared to Sec 1A1. They had, due to circumstances, missed three music lessons at the beginning of the Semester. This could have affected their responses in Collaboration category as well, because, as pointed out through the student interviews, music making in an ensemble / group setting almost always happen for collaboration to be experienced and felt. This set of results were perhaps instructive of the opportunities active music-making offered.
Interview with Sec 1E1 Students, 8 October 12
(Student 2). Student 3:
It was interesting, using Folkestad’s dimensions to see how these formal and non-formal threads in his lessons connect. In terms of teaching processes, the intentionality had a mix of pedagogical and musical framing. He began the module with a stronger pedagogical framing with Kodály approaches and during the later part of the module, he was more focused on perparing performances, hence moved to more musical framing.
While he acknowledged and harnessed the differing musical experiences and instrumental expertise of his students during his lessons, the ownership of the lessons belonged to the teacher, who conducted the class in their activities, and created parts for the various instruments to fit in. The space for student decision making could have been broadened. That might have affected students’ sense of ownership in the lessons.
Connecting the Curricula
General Music and Music CCAs
Teacher belief and vision for his school’s music programme drove the way Mr Mark shaped his pedagogic adaptations. In terms of his beliefs, it was clear that he saw porosity in the music curricular and the CCAs. He connected the curricular in the co-curricular by differentiating the tasks in his lessons for his Music CCA students. He was always on the lookout for good singers and instrumentalists. By encouraging students to play their band instruments during General music classes, he has created that mindset-connection between these usually two discrete pieces within the school curriculum. He blurred the boundary between the curricular and co-curricular, most significantly in the minds of the students. He started by focusing on singing, developing the students’ singing voices, and constantly, during the lessons, reminded and encouraged the Choir students to sing out more and lead their groups. Later on in the module, he moved on to instrumental work, where he allowed students to bring their own instruments and / or play the band instruments that they were trained in. This further reinforced the students’ sense of confidence in their music lessons. As a result, he has, through his curriculum, facilitated that connection between the Curricular and Co-curricular. This was reflected in Mr Mark’s view: “Music CCAs are integrated as a part of a larger music department with a variety of performing ensembles”. (personal communication, 22 August 13). Upon reflection, “I’d much rather be having the students performing and playing instruments live as opposed to doing more IT. I think I get a lot more enjoyment doing performing work” (personal communication, 8 October 12).
ICT and Instrumental Work
Though he was not directly teaching music using ICT, technology was still very much meaningfully harnessed in his lessons. He used the smartboard effectively to capture student decisions and class discussion, and he made the recording of his students’ performances an integral part of his lessons. They would record various versions of “The Passenger” – both voice and instrumental ones – and used the playbacks for critique and improve on the performances. He also encouraged students to explore other versions of “The Passenger” on NUMU (http://www.musicalfutures.org). Towards the
end of the module, he also had the students to apply the ICT skills that they had learnt earlier, to create a mash-up of their own recorded version of “The Passenger” with another song. Therefore, technology was interwoven in his pedagogic practices. There is a connection indeed between his belief of the importance of ICT and instrumental work.
Conclusion
Within the continuum of formal and informal learning articulated by Folkestad (2006), it would seem that non-formal teaching would lie somewhere between these two poles. The dimensions of learning style, ownership and intentionality seem to be more crucial ones. Mr Mark’s adaptations of the formal and non-formal was much shaped by his belief and vision of his school’s programme and strength as a band conductor. He made an eclectic choice of pedagogies. His learning style leaned towards informal realm as his starting point was always the sound. He did not use any of the scores except to print lyrics for his students to learn the song.
He adopted broadly non-formal teaching processes in his lessons, and infused formal strategies (e.g. Kodály voice exercises) within the broader non-formal processes. His music making was always group-based, and differentiated with different parts, just like how an ensemble would work towards. But he would infuse Kodály-based strategies within this broader framework, and introduced solfège (without too much explanations).
While the intentionality of non-formal teaching would focus on a mix of musical and pedagogical framing, based on the results of the study, it would seem that ownership of students could make that crucial difference to the extent to which non-formal teaching would lean towards student-centricity.
Perhaps one could end the chapter with the following reflective burst from students on what they had learnt from the module, where formal and nonformal teaching interplayed:
Music can be more interesting.
If we just see it from a different view.
If you see it from a student’s view, it will just say, it is just music, something to listen.
But if you see it from musician’s way, you will see that music has something in it that only you can understand.
Each other people has a different story behind a song. (Silence followed an awkward laugh.)
I think it is good that everyone got to learn an instrument. Everyone did something. So I think that is good.
References
Belousa, I. VanaÏele, E., Jurne, A. (2006). Educational aim in the view of students, mentors, and teacher trainers. Journal of Teacher Education and Training, 6, 33-40.
Folkestad, G. (2006). Formal and informal learning situations or practices vs formal and informal ways of learning. British Journal of Music Education, 23(2), 135-145.
Finney, J. & Philpott, C. (2010). Informal learning and metapedagogy in initial teacher education in England. British Journal of Music Education, 27(1), 7-19.
Ministry of Education, (2012). 190 schools now offer Niches of Excellence to enrich students’ educational experience. Retrieved March 4, 2013, from http://www.moe.gov.sg/media/ press/2012/04/190-schools-now-offer-niches-o.php
Mak, P., Kors, N. & Renshaw, P. (2007). Formal, non-formal and informal learning in music Hague: Lectorate Lifelong Learning in Music, Prince Claus Conservatoire, Groningen & Royal Conservatoire.
Swanwick, K. (2008). Reflection, theory and practice. British Journal of Music Education, 25(3), 223–232.
Chua Siew Ling, Programme Director, STAR
STOMPing up Musical Engagement the Nonformal and Informal Ways
Introduction
Music lessons can be engaging, but are they musically engaging?
Keith Swanwick, in his book Teaching Music Musically (1999/2012), describes music as a “discourse” which he refers to as a musical conversation and the expression of musical ideas. He proposes three working principles so that music can be taught musically. First, “care for music as discourse” describes how music knowledge can be accessed through “windows of particular musical encounters” (p. 39). Second, “care for musical discourse of students” is to provide students with choice, decision-making, personal exploration and for students to “own” the music for themselves (p. 48). The teacher should be a model of sensitive musical behaviour. Third, “fluency first and last” requires us to understand music as “a form of discourse” and that “musical fluency takes precedence over musical literacy” (p. 49). When we met Swanwick in early 2012 during our study trip to examine pedagogical innovations, he explained how the richness of musical encounters and experience would feed the levels of music understanding of children. Like building relationships, a relationship with music needed repeated encounters to add depth to the experience (Swanwick, personal communication, 16 March 2012). These ideas underpin this study of non-formal and informal teaching-learning approaches.
Formal, non-formal and informal teaching-learning approaches have been discussed by various scholars (Folkestad, 2006; D’Amore, n.d.; Green, 2008; Mak, 2007). The differences in these approaches are:
• Formal approaches are generally framed by learning goals, strategies, methods and outcomes. Lesson activities are structured and sequenced to achieve specific learning objectives. They tend to be teacher-led. • Informal learning approaches are generally framed by activities and practices that closely resembles “real life” contexts, and tend to have broader goals. They are characterised by learning experiences through enculturation and interactions with more knowledgeable others1. They tend to be student-led.
1. More knowledgeable others could refer to adults, peers or electronic tutors who have a better understanding or a higher musical ability level than the learner, with respect to a particular task, process, or concept. It is central to the understanding of Vygotsky’s theories on cognitive development.
• Non-formal approaches are also generally framed by activities and practices. However, there is a greater focus on learning through apprenticeship or community music making facilitated by an expert. Hence, they tend to be teacher-led.
Informal and non-formal approaches in music lessons also tend to be distinguished by their greater focus on aural-oral learning compared to formal approaches.
This study examines the integration of formal, non-formal and informal approaches by a secondary music teacher for her STOMP2-inspired General Music lesson module. In her module, the non-formal music teaching primarily uses classroom workshopping (D’Amore, n.d.) which is group-based, collaborative and creative music making led by the teacher or a peer music leader. It typicaly integrates performing, listening, creating and improvising. It requires the teacher to facilitate music making in a class setting, getting students to improvise, and then drawing out these individual improvisations to develop a composition.
Lesson observations and post-lesson conferences with the teacher were made for three different classes of students at different points of the semester long module. The teacher was also interviewed before the start of the module and at the end of the module. These observations and interviews were video or audio-recorded to provide data for analysis. In addition, a questionnaire was administered to the classes that were observed for the study. This was participated by 115 students before the start of the module and 110 students at the end of the module. The questions were intended to find out if students found the music lessons engaging and relevant, if they were able to make decisions about their learning, what they liked or disliked about the approach, and if they felt that they made progress in their music learning. Details of the questions are in Appendix A. At the end of the module, focus group discussions were conducted separately with four groups of students from two different classes to find out about their level of engagement and learning experiences in the module.
The chapter will open with a brief introduction of the teacher and the music module, followed by a series of vignettes which are essentially snapshots of lessons from three different classes, conducted by the same teacher, across the music module, in chronological order. These vignettes serve to tell a story of how the teacher delivered and facilitated her lessons. It is followed by a discussion of the impact of these approaches on the students as we examine the students’ responses to the questionnaire and focus group discussions, as well as the teacher’s observations. From these, we reflect on the effectiveness and potential of the pedagogy and its role in studentcentric music lessons in enhancing musical engagement of students.
Background
“Anyone can make music”. This is Ms J’s personal philosophy and it resonates with Small’s position that everyone is born capable of making 2. STOMP is a percussion group originating in UK in
music in his seminar book Musicking (Small, 1998). Small theorises that the meaning of music lies not in musical works but in the totality of a musical performance, and hence the understanding of music is drawn from the experience of music. Here is the philosophical basis from which Ms J designed and delivered her music lessons.
Ms J is a beginning teacher who had one year of teaching experience when she decided to trial the informal and non-formal teaching approaches. She took over classes from an experienced teacher who left the school. The previous teacher had developed a tradition of STOMP-inspired music lessons which the school was proud of. The school had expected her to continue teaching the module for General Music.
Previously, STOMP was taught to students with the first lessons beginning with the learning of rhythmic patterns through an alternative notation system before students reproduced these rhythms through clapping (Ms J, personal communication, 12 May 2013). Ms J was interested to look for pedagogical alternatives to enhance student engagement.
Actually because I have been only in service for a year you know, so all the time, I have been doing somebody else’s SOW (Scheme of Work), somebody else’s lesson and at the point of time, I felt it is not relevant enough….I think the students want something that is more upbeat, more fun, which is what I learn from this trialling.
(Ms J, personal communication, 12 May 2013)
Ms J began to develop a different pedagogy that encouraged students to experience the music making first through non-formal music teaching and collaborative group improvisations, from which musical understandings were drawn. For Ms J, what was also different about this pedagogy was that the teacher needed to “let go (of control) a lot more” and to give students “responsibility over their own decision.” She also felt the need for music lessons to be made relevant to her students, “something which they (the students) want to associate themselves with” recognising that “it is a mixture of what they want and what I want them to learn” (Ms J, personal communication, 12 May 2013).
For the lesson module, Ms J began by showing students video recordings of STOMP performances and getting students to discuss what they liked about these performances guided by worksheets. She then used classroom workshopping and involved students in clapping and body percussion with rhythmic exercises. Mid-way through the module, students began to work in groups to create their STOMP performances. Students were also required to record their learning in the reflection log at every lesson. These reflection logs were designed to pace the group for their rehearsals towards the performance. Before the students started on their performance task, they were shown video footages of STOMP performances by students of previous cohorts. From these videos, Ms J highlighted and explained how the different performances were put together. Students had a few weeks to work towards their performance, and had to put up “trial runs” of their creations at the end of each lesson. This was where they received feedback
from their peers and Ms J. At the end of the module, students performed their final work for the class and were assessed based on the assessment criteria which the class had created.
Ms J’s school timetable worked on a two-week cycle. As a result, there were alternate weeks of 45-minute lessons and alternate weeks of 90-minute lessons. The trial was conducted for Secondary Two students over a semester (11 to 12 weeks) module in the General Music Programme.
Vignettes of Music Lessons
Third lesson with Sec 2E4: Beginnings of Musical Engagement
It was the third lesson with Sec 2E4. By this lesson, Ms J was more fluent in facilitating the non-formal approach after two weeks of lessons.
With the class standing in a circle, Ms J got students to take turns to lead in creating rhythms where other students would copy spontaneously. She then introduced call-and-response with body percussion, starting with simple rhythms, progressing to more complex body percussion rhythms, and worked through six sets of call-and-response rhythms successively with the class uninterrupted. This was followed by yet another six sets of rhythms. Then, she got students to take turns improvising a short rhythm with body percussion which they did so continuously without breaking the flow. In a class of 40, only about five students were unable to keep the pulse as they struggled to improvise a rhythm. Nevertheless, the entire class was intensely engaged; every student was either improvising a rhythm, or imitating a rhythm.
Ms J split the class into four different groups. They were to pick three numbers from one to eight, and articulate these beats from the eight-beat cycle with body percussion. As students worked in groups, she went to each group, rehearsed with them and gave them feedback. The students then got back in a circle and performed their respective rhythms as the teacher tapped the pulse on the cow bell. Not all groups were able to perform properly. She encouraged them to listen to one another as “making music is not just about playing your part correctly.”
After they performed, the teacher asked the students questions about what the different groups were playing. She then explained by notating what the different groups were playing, demonstrating the relationship between rhythms.
In the next task, students were required to hold their rhythms individually as they worked with their groups. Students wrote out their notation and two examples are shown in Fig 14.1. Students were mostly on task. Ms J went around observing the different groups rehearse and gave them feedback on how they coordinated with one another, and the way they produced their sounds. She encouraged them to listen to one another.
It came to group performance. One group was confident, but other groups were hesitant, unsteady and performed mechanically. However, I was surprised by the rhythms created by two of the groups which incorporated
triplets and in-between beats since they could not have produced these rhythms had they followed the instructions strictly. Their musical responses speak of their inherent musicianship and creativity which went beyond the scope of this rather technical exercise.
Finally, students stood in a large circle once again. Ms J got the groups to perform their own rhythms simultaneously. At this point, she directed different groups to stop and start, attempting to create different textures, which developed into a class composition. The performance was sustained for more than three minutes and students erupted into cheers, clearly excited and exhilarated. This was another moment in the lesson where students were engaged as they experienced a fluent musical discourse.
At the post lesson conference, Ms J shared that if students were surprised by the good music going on, they would listen intently. She reasoned that classes that were unmotivated were as such as they had not experienced good music making (personal communication, 20 July 2012). We also observed how Ms J tried to draw concepts from students’ music creations. She used music terms in her feedback to students' performances. We are reminded of Swanwick and Small’s propositions of how music knowledge and musical understandings can be accessed through genuine and authentic music experiences.
Third lesson with Sec 2E3: Developing Musical Engagement
Compared with Sec 2E4, the group work in the later part of the lesson with Sec2E3 saw some inconsistent levels of student accomplishment as seen in their group performances at the end of the lesson. This was despite the teacher encouraging students to rehearse to polish their work.
The first group performed confidently only for the first rhythm cycle and messed up in the repeated cycles. They had to start again. The second group also had a false start. The third and fourth group counted their eight beats very loudly as they performed their rhythm. The fifth group was obviously not very serious and was clapping randomly, hardly performing their notation accurately. The sixth group seemed to study the notation like a map, and broke down after one cycle. They started again but could not maintain fluency. The last group was slightly better but were showing
Fig 14.1: Examples of students’ notations
boredom and reluctance as they performed. The students’ performances came across as a rather mechanical exercise, perhaps because the students had not internalised the rhythms and were struggling with reading the notation as they performed. They certainly didn’t experience music making in the aesthetics sense. Perhaps this was why the students were not engaged. Perhaps, it was due to the fact that students had not experienced good music making sufficiently, unlike students in Sec 2E4.
Fifth lesson for Sec 2E4: Listening-Analysis
After the warm-ups which involved the non-formal approach of rhythmic musicking, a listening and analytical activity was introduced. Students had to work in groups to assess a shared portal through the laptops that were provided. They were required to listen to a sound clip and draw out the development of the music in the form of a flow chart. They spent about 45 minutes on this activity.
At the end of the lesson, the teacher discussed their work and students’ responses reflected that they were able to apply the terms they have learned to analyse the music they heard. Ms J tried to do an aural analysis of the percussion music that was played but students became restless and it was not clear if they understood the analysis she was trying to deliver. It seemed a dry and tedious process.
The listening and analysis exercise did not seem to work well with all students. Perhaps if students remained as passive listeners only, rather than engaging as active music-makers involving “purposive listening”3 (Green, 2008, p.73), they become less engaged as the analysis became an intellectual exercise, rather than an in-depth musical appreciation and experience.
Eighth Lesson with Sec 2A1: Persisting the Challenge
Students stood in a circle and began their usual warm-up routines. Of the routines, what worked with the students was the call-and-response activity. As Ms J “called” with a rhythmic phrase using body percussion, and students had to “respond” immediately with the same body percussion. She managed to go through about 11 sets of rhythms continuously with the students. Here, students were more engaged as they needed to engage in purposive listening since they needed to reproduce the rhythms. There was also a variety of rhythm patterns that kept them on their toes. In contrast, Ms J had more difficulty getting students to learn some body percussion patterns in the next activity. The rhythms proved to be challenging for some. Students did not show much interest to want to learn these patterns, but most of them obliged anyway when she got them to do it together. At this point, it seemed rather teacher-directed as it was the teacher who decided on the rhythm and drilled the students to get it right.
The following activity involved hand-held instruments and students had to transfer the body percussion rhythm to their instruments. If they were holding a higher pitched instrument, they had to play the higher tones in
3. Green distinguishes between purposive listening and attentive listening. Purposive listening is listening in order to copy music. Attentive listening is listening to answer questions.
the earlier body percussion rhythm. Likewise, if they were holding a lower pitched instrument, they were required to play the lower tones in the same body percussion rhythm. Again, this was challenging. It was difficult for students to extract and play only certain parts of the rhythm which they had began to think of as a whole. Students, especially those who had to play only the middle part of the rhythm pattern, were confused. But the teacher pressed on, and practised with the class until she was satisfied that the students were able to reproduce what she wanted. Some students were restless and uninterested. Eventually she managed to get students to play the lower pitches sounding somewhat accurately. (It was easier to play the lower pitch as it started on the first beat of the rhythm pattern). She went on to try the second rhythm and it was much less successful. After several practices however, most students eventually were able to play the rhythms, and they gradually became more engaged. She did about six successive rehearsals on the entire sequence and when the students finally did it accurately as a class, they cheered.
She introduced a third rhythm which required students to do a tremolo. She then started from the top of the sequence which led to the third rhythm. Finally, she created a three-section rhythmic composition where students started with the first two rhythms, going into the third rhythm, and finishing with the first two rhythms. Most of the students were seen to be trying and working hard with her.
In general, this lesson was very teacher-directed as the teacher was dictating the rhythm. But the intense persistence on the part of the teacher to achieve a desirable level of presentation by her students, and the repeated rehearsals did manage to get students to arrive at experiencing success in overcoming a challenging task. Perhaps, having led the students to arrive at a satisfying musical experience helped instill a positive attitude towards repeated practice in music. This became ingrained into students and the behaviour was manifested in their own independent work later.
Tenth lesson with Sec 2E4: Working on Group Improvisations with Assessment Rubrics
The lesson started with warm-ups with students standing and forming a large circle. Ms J appointed one student who seemed restless to lead the warm up. The student started to clap rhythms and the rest of the students followed. He went into different rhythmic patterns and then incorporated stamping. He tried a complex rhythm which broke the flow as the rest of his classmates were not able to follow him. Ms J encouraged him to continue and repeat his rhythm until the rest of the students were able to pick it up. Once again, we observed the teacher’s habit to persist with a musical challenge.
Ms J divided the circle into three sectors, passed a cow bell to a student whom she appointed as the time keeper, and got each group to suggest a rhythm, adding layers of rhythm one after another as they performed the body percussion. She directed different groups to start and stop playing
their rhythms, hence changing the texture of the music. Both the teacher and students were by now fluent with the activity and were able to enjoy the session. Ms J then explained to students the musical intent of the exercise, Sometimes it is not just about how many rhythms you have or how interesting your rhythms are. It is also about how you combine them and put them together with your friends’ rhythms.
(19 September 2012)
These warm-ups became lessons for students to take back to their groups and to prepare them for their performance task.
Students got into groups to work on their projects, and were required to work towards a trial run of their performance at the end of the lesson. They were also guided by a set of assessment rubrics (Fig 14.2) which they had created as a class in the previous week. Students were mostly experimenting with layering of their rhythms. But, usually, after three layers of different rhythms, it became more challenging for the fourth and fifth member of the group to add something different to what their group members had created.
Ms J sat down next to a group and observed their discussion. The students were discussing how they could add their layers of rhythm; they tried it and were stuck. After about three minutes, having observed the students and understanding what the problem might be, Ms J suggested to students that they might not be able hear each other as they were making the same kind of sound. She suggested that they have different sounds such as metal sounds, or sounds made from pens and rulers or stamping and clapping. The group later tried creating sounds using chairs.
One group of students were in the hall practising. This group of students was trying out different speeds of the same rhythm and attempting to put them together, over a distinct rhythm sounded on a lower pitch. They were also developing a story line and tried different dynamic ranges with their rhythms. They tried choreographing their movements, and created a calland-response exchange between two members of the group. When the
students practised the fast rhythms, Ms J stepped in at this point to help them with their technique, suggesting to them how they need not lift their hands up very high to create the fast rhythms with their pens.
Finally, students congregated back in the music room, and they did a trial run of their performances. Using the assessment rubrics which were created by the students previously, Ms J discussed each group’s performance.
At the post-lesson conversation, Ms J shared with us her facilitation approach, describing that she “very much wanted to leave them (students) alone because they will raise their own problems and they will solve their own problems.”
Once in a while, I will hear or observe some groups getting disruptive… so I will go and see what’s going on….Sometimes my presence there will remind them to be engaged….They will remind each other to be on task too….My help will come in if they cannot coordinate to a certain extent…. When I see that a group is very engaged, I would rather not say anything because sometimes I realised that I wanted to praise them, I do say that, and I realised that that I shouldn’t have done that as they lose their train of thoughts …
(interviewed by Ho, 19 September 2012).
The energies and engagement we observed during the group work in this class had been astounding. We also observed a similar lesson that was carried out with Sec 2E3 the day after. And the groups were also as engaged and intense in developing their music creations. We noticed now the students were listening to one another intently in music making and had developed good listening skills. During the warm-ups for Sec2E3 for example, the timekeeper went slightly out of phase with the rest of the class, but the whole class started to listen to one another to keep time, and that put the timekeeper back on track!
Eleventh and Last lesson with Sec 2E3:Final Presentations
Students entered the class and were straight away seated in their groups with hand-held makeshift instruments such as plastic tubs and bottles, metal cans, glass bottles and bowls of varying shapes and sizes. They were given time to rehearse before their presentations.
The groups were as engaged as they were in the previous lessons. They kept rehearsing, adding fresh ideas as they rehearsed, and building their compositions into longer pieces each time. They would stop after each cycle to exchange ideas and make comments. They also experimented with new sounds and then rehearse the entire sequence from the top, repeating the process. They went through cycles and cycles of rehearsals, and did not seem to tire of them. One group of boys, who used to misbehave in class, were still rehearsing even after 30 minutes.
It was finally time to perform. Ms J took a while to calm them down. When the groups performed, they were generally well-coordinated, creative, musical and sophisticated. The pieces created were generally long and complex.
Fig 14.2: Student-created Assessment Rubrics
Many were guided by a storyline but the compositions were not just sound effects. Here are descriptions of some of the more interesting performances.
The second group started with one boy calling out “action”. This seemed to be the group’s way of ‘framing’ their composition. The story unfolded with different creative passages that described the story. Some of these were more rhythmic; some were spontaneous sound effects using sounds from their daily lives; and, some of these sounds were treated and stylised.
The third group was a group of boys whose composition was inspired by their training they had in their uniformed group practices. The first section started with layering of rhythms and this polyrhythmic passage alternated with another passage which featured two boys counting the push ups they were doing. The second section explored the sounds of coins, and the striking of porcelain bowls, which created another musical texture and timbre. The third section described a tournament. Here, the sounds of the percussion ensemble alternated with solo percussion crashes. This work is a manifestation of students’ understanding of texture and structure.
The sixth group performed. Here, the boys layered their rhythm, and built the rhythms to a climax when the boy, who pretended to be sleeping, got up and uttered a sound as part of the act. The interlocking rhythms in the first section were quite deliberate, and one of the boys came in with a very nice anacrusis as he joined in with the rhythms. At this point, a boy from the audience could be heard commenting “good one”, showing his appreciation.
Ms J commended the groups for their spontaneity and for taking their performances seriously. She said that the groups had a sense of structure although this was not required in the assessment rubrics which they created. She told them that it did not matter if they weren’t trained musicians, but wanted them to understand that they could still make great music. It was a nice reiteration of the teacher’s values and this was communicated to the class. She asked students if they had any comments. One of the boys announced to the class and said, “music is actually very fun”. This was the boy who used to be very disengaged.
Impact of Lessons on Students
A questionnaire was administered to students before the module started, and at the end of the module. Questionnaire responses revealed that the lesson module made a positive impact on students’ perceived experiences in music lessons and abilities in music as seen in the leap of mean ratings of students’ responses before the start of the module and at the end of the module in Table 14.1. This was consistent with all classes.
Many students expressed that they felt that the experience was more interesting and fun compared to their past music lessons. They also enjoyed the autonomy and the choices that they were given. Here were some of their written responses about their learning.
The lessons this semester are basically working with my friends in a group, creating our own music, instead of teacher teaching music skills.
We are able to create our own music. Learn to use different materials to make sounds.
We learnt to better coordinate with each other. We can create our own rhythms without the teacher’s help.
We learn a lot more music in terms to be able to “converse” using these terms during music lessons. We are given more freedom to express our creativity (for example, the teacher calls upon students to lead warm-ups, allow us to come up with our own STOMP performances and asks the students for opinions when deciding on the marking rubrics).
We get to choose our own ways of playing the rhythm and the instruments we use are also chosen by us.
We made our masterpiece!
Most of them also cited that they enjoyed the social aspects of working with friends in music making, and the active music making. They were, however, divided on their opinions on whether they enjoyed the warm-ups. While some enjoyed warm-ups because it was challenging, a few felt that it was “boring” and “awkward”.
I enjoy this semester’s music lessons as we can create our own music with a group of friends and teacher helping us beside.
I enjoyed that the class bonded during music lessons while doing activities such as the warm ups.
I enjoy the warm ups because it sometimes gives me a challenge with my hand-eye coordination.
Music lessons were the reason I came to school!
This positive reception by students was also reflected in their responses in focus group discussions. Sec 2E3 students felt that they learned to cooperate and to make music, to make different sounds and try different instruments. They enjoyed the experience of exploring, the warm-ups, and the opportunity to take turns to lead, and to work in teams. One group described that they had arguments when they were working. But they had a leader to hold the group together as they respected him for his intelligence and logic. One boy described this to be a very “genuine experience”, and another said that he had developed confidence.
Table 14.1: Comparing Mean Rating Index of Students’ Questionnaire Responses
Sec 2E4 students felt a feeling of satisfaction and accomplishment that they completed their composition, and were proud of their work. One of the groups revealed that they put in time during recess and after school to work on their compositions. Perhaps not all students felt good about their performance. One student commented, “I feel I am too slow.… So I feel damned left out.” Sec 2A1 students cited that the opportunity to bond, make their own music and perform it with others, were the most enjoyable process, and they wanted to try it again. They also thought that music lessons were too short. They felt that making their own music was more enjoyable than last year’s lessons which focused on learning to play keyboards. One group of students from the class said that they went on to look for STOMP performances on YouTube, was inspired by a performance, and used some of the ideas and made them their own. These students also cited that they learnt about discipline, cooperation, motivation and how to support one another.
Observers also noticed a change of attitude and behaviour amongst the most disruptive and disengaged students in the classes observed. For example, two students, John and Albert (not their real names), were poorly behaved at the beginning of the module. Albert used to be very talkative but towards the later part of the music module, he was playing the leading role, directing the group.
They have shifted 180 degrees to pay attention. Not only paying attention, but also to focus other people’s attention on the task. And also to play a leading role within their group.
(Ho, interview with Ms J, 20 September 2012)
Students’ enthusiasm also surprised Ms J. For example, on 21 September 2012, she was pleasantly surprised that her Sec 2A1 students came straight to the music class and were keen to present their compositions. She had thought that they would have forgotten about the presentation as she did not have a chance to remind the groups.
When I told them to get in their groups, the first person who came in to ask for logistics is Sandy (not his real name). Sandy is one of the naughtiest boy in the class….I find that his behaviour has improved in class. We (the teachers) were just discussing about him a few days back during the conduct grade meeting….All the teachers had the same comment…when he is engaged he is enthusiastic, when he is not, he really really can’t be bothered no matter how hard you try to engage him. In this case, he has been very very engaged. …He was the first one who came up to me and said, “’Cher [sic] (Teacher), can I borrow an instrument?”
(interviewed by Ho, 21 September 2012)
Besides student motivation, Ms J also had “a lot of suprises” with the quality of students’ presentations. We observed evidence of sustained and prolonged attention even from disengaged students in the final rehearsals. There was also evidence of high demands students made on themselves. Ms J felt that students were listening more to one another in their music
making, and had developed a sense of structure in their musical creations (Ms J, personal communication, 4 October 2012).
With Sec 2E4, she commented that there were things that she had not taught the students but these were displayed in their presentations. They choreographed their own movements and their ensemble work was strong. Some of the students in the class were involved in other music activities such as band and choir, and these students helped shaped the music for their groups.
To a certain extent I find that they can achieve 100% (for their performance)…when I saw their performance and their rubrics…they have already gone above and beyond.
(Ms J, personal communication, 3 October 2012)
Sec 2E3 students carry with them an attitude of valuing music, which Ms J has rubbed off them. They shared that “anyone can be … a musician” and that “music is also part of our daily life ‘cos we hear sounds everyday.” (Interview, 4 October 2012).
Overall, it was clear that students enjoyed the process and felt that they had learnt from the process. There had been unexpectedly positive results and in this regard, the module has been very successful.
Reflections on the Pedagogy
Ms J had used the formal, non-formal and informal approaches in her lesson module. Rather than integrating non-formal and informal approaches into her formal approaches, she dived in with non-formal and informal approaches, and framed them by other more formal teacher moves. From the beginning of the module, she quickly realised the need for formal routines to focus students’ discussion and learning. As her lessons developed, she began to get students into the routine of starting lessons with warm-ups through the non-formal approach, progressing into group work through the informal approach, and closing with group performances through a formal approach, thus creating a structure to her lessons. In other words, she seemed to have created a new pedagogic model (Fig 14.3), thus formalising the non-formal and informal approaches as the module progressed.Although the nonformal music teaching is teacher-led, there are student-centric elements. Besides the drills which Ms J used to help students acquire a repertoire of rhythms, she also required students to improvise rhythms on their feet, and engage in group music making. There were also several occasions where she invited individual students to lead the class in the music making.
Warm-Ups (Non-Formal)
Teacher-led drills and improvisation in collaborative music making through aural-oral means.
Group Compositions (Informal)
Student-led collaborative work that focuses on creating STOMP-inspired compositions
Trial Runs / Presentations (Formal)
Students take turns to perform followed by feedback from teacher and peers. The process is led by the teacher.
Fig 14.3: Ms J’s pedagogic model towards the end of the module
She introduced the reflection log which helped pace the students’ learning. Each lesson, students had to record what they had done and what they would wish to work on in the following lesson. It was intended to help students remember what they had done the previous week, to help them get on with their group compositions. At the same time, it served to help her understand her students and to adapt her teaching accordingly. For example, she realised that Sec 2A1 students did not record their reflections, unlike their Sec 2E3 and 2E4 counterparts. This led her to consider changing her approach.
These people (Sec 2A1 students) are learning, but their output is very different….I think I need to think about a different way of capturing their learning, for example, … to audio record the final run through of their performance that week.
(interview with Ho, 21 September 2012)
Another student-centric move made by Ms J was getting her students to set their assessment criteria. The process involved students first examining what they liked about STOMP performances through the video recordings. Their responses were categorised, for example into “coordination” and “stage presence”, and the class decided on the categories they wished to focus on. They also discussed the three tiers of attainment for each category by first examining the traits of the best performance, and working down to the lower levels. This resulted in different classes producing different assessment rubrics. But as the rubrics were created by the students, Ms J observed that students were more motivated to achieve them and also, fewer students had come to her to ask her what they were supposed to do (interview with Ho, 3 October 2012).
There was one group…there were some troubles. The leader of the group was one of the more naughty ones, more playful. One of the members actually took out the rubrics and said, “hey, this one we do better”. So, they were more motivated to work towards the rubrics whereas last time, it wasn’t the case. Last time, I just show the rubrics, and …they do it.
(Ms J, interviewed by Ho, 19 September 2012)
With the combination of approaches and interventions, Ms J reflected that there was more student exploration, more independent work on the part of students, more learning, and generally, more effort from students. She also observed that students’ compositions had more structure and form compared to the year before.
Conclusion
The spectrum of teaching approaches seen in this module ranged from drills and improvisations through the non-formal approach, to independent group work through the informal approach. Ms J’s pedagogic model of the nonformal and informal approaches framed by more formal teacher moves, has a unique blend of teacher-directed and student-directed elements.
Her discipline and disposition as a musician played out in her teaching as
she persisted with repetitions of difficult and challenging rhythms, even at moments where students were at the brink of disengagement. These were the moments that were rather teacher-directed. But as students worked towards overcoming these challenges as seen in the eighth lesson with Sec 2A1 class, they began to feel a sense of satisfaction and emotional fulfilment. When they experienced the musical flow and the excitement of birthing an aesthetics experience, they began to appreciate the labour they had gone through. The drills might have also contributed to the latter success of the students in creating and performing their rhythms. Yet, if only drills were used, it would be uncertain as to whether students would have arrived at a state where they become fully immersed in their work and were intrinsically motivated.
Extending the non-formal approach to provide opportunities for students’ improvisations, allowing them to take turns to lead their peers in warm-ups, as well as applying the informal approach where students chose their own groups and organised themselves in developing their composition, Ms J empowered her students to make musical choices. She took this further and facilitated her students to construct their own assessment rubrics and criteria for success. These added an invaluable dimension to students’ music experiences and developed in students, a sense of ownership and pride in their work.
We also saw that not all compositional tasks that gave students autonomy could be engaging. The initial activities that required students to plan their rhythms by selecting and circling three numbers from numbers one to eight were not as musically engaging as the ones that required students to improvise on their feet and collaborate in group improvisation. The key difference seems to lie in the authenticity of the musical experience. The former had been perceived as a classroom exercise and the latter seemed closer to authentic music making. This brings to mind Ms J’s comment that when students were surprised by “good music-making”, they began to develop an intrinsic motivation towards making music. Hence, the provision of authentic music tasks and experiences create opportunities for students to be musically engaged and to be touched by the aesthetic experience.
In conclusion, the informal and non-formal approaches opened up new possibilities and strategies for the music classroom to enhance students’ music learning. However, the incorporation of these approaches might not necessarily result in a more student-centric lesson. Ms J could have used more drills or allowed for more student improvisations through the nonformal approach. She could have facilitated the informal learning in a more teacher-centred way by intervening with more authoritarian teacher ideas, but she had chosen the more student-centred facilitation style. Hence, it is the teacher’s beliefs and values about music learning that will drive the way formal, non-formal and informal approaches are used.
What these approaches offer are the possibilities for music to be taught musically – caring for music as discourse, for students to “own” the music for themselves, for the teacher to model musical behaviours, and for musical
fluency to be experienced. Overall, Ms J’s pedagogy has led students to experience authentic music-making, and a sense of accomplishment in overcoming these challenges and producing sophisticated compositions. This gave students greater confidence in themselves, greater self-concept in music, a positive musical experience which turned around even the most disengaged students, and which led to a quality of work that far exceeded the teacher’s expectations.
References
D’Amore, A. (Ed). (n.d.) Musical futures: An approach to teaching and learning (Resource Pack, 2nd edition). London: Paul Hamlyn Foundation.
Folkestad, G. (2006). Formal and informal learning situations or practices vs formal and informal ways of learning. In British Journal of Music Education, 23( 2), 135 – 145.
Green, L. (2008). Music, informal learning and the school: A new classroom pedagogy. Hampshire and Burlington: Ashgate.
Mak, P., Kors, N. & Renshaw, P. (2007). Formal, non-formal and informal learning in music Hague: Lectorate Lifelong Learning in Music, Prince Claus Conservatoire, Groningen & Royal Conservatoire.
Small, C. (1998). Musicking: The meanings of performing and listening. Hanover and London: Wesleyan University Press.
Swanwick, K. (1999/2012). Teaching music musically. London and New York: Routledge.
Chua Siew Ling, Programme Director, STAR
Ho Hui Ping, Programme Manager, STAR
Connecting Findings, Reflections and Insights: Student-centricity Musically, Creatively
Introduction
The piloting of the informal and non-formal approaches to music learning and teaching in Singapore secondary schools has been to find out how the pedagogic innovations by Green (2008) and Musical Futures (D’Amore, n.d.) can add value to music education in Singapore. The study has been designed to address the following three questions:
• How do teachers contextualise informal music learning and non-formal music teaching pedagogies?
• To what extent do these pedagogies impact on students’ music learning experiences?
• To what extent is there a perception and demonstration of 21st century competencies and behaviours amongst students (self-directed learning, collaborative learning and confidence building)
Chapter 9 has presented the background and rationale for the project, the literature review, the research design and method for the study. Chapters 10 to 14 have presented case studies of teachers and their classes to illustrate how the informal and non-formal approaches were adapted in the context of Singapore schools. The vignettes and discussions in these chapters have served to provide an in-depth account of how five teachers contextualised these approaches for their students and the impact of these approaches on students’ learning. Findings have been drawn from lesson observations, interviews with the teachers, focus group discussions with students and pre- and post-trial questionnaires administered to students.
This chapter examines the data across the cases. It will compare evidence from the pre-and post-pilot questionnaire responses across schools, the teachers’ reflections at the end of the trial, and the key findings discussed in each of the case studies. These will be discussed in three sections: a) impact on students; b) reflections on pedagogic adaptations; and c) insights from the pilot. Finally, we draw conclusions on how the informal and nonformal approaches can add value to music education in Singapore.
Findings: ImpactonStudents
A total of 492 students from five different schools responded to a 23-item survey questionnaire which was designed to find out about their enjoyment of music lessons, music self-efficacy, music autonomy and motivation in music. An additional set of questions were given to students at the end of the pilot to find out more about their post-pilot experiences.
The responses from the 492 valid pre- and post-pilot questionnaires were analysed using the SPSS to measure the reliability of the instrument, to compare the means and predict variables for student engagement. The reliability of the student questionnaire surveys was measured with Cronbach’s alpha, taking into account both the pre- and post-pilot questionnaire responses (N=984). The results indicated a reliability greater than .70 for all categories: enjoyment of music lessons (four items; α = .84); music self-efficacy (five items; α = .77); music autonomy (four items; α = .72); motivation in music (six items; α = .75); post-pilot experiences (six items; α = .84). The overall reliability of the survey instrument is .94 for all 29 items.
The intraclass correlation was measured to determine how much of the variation of students’ post-pilot perception of their music experiences (based on students’ responses to the additional set of questions at the end of the trial) is between and within schools. Using HLM, with Level 1 consisting of 488 students (after excluding missing data) and Level 2 consisting of five schools, the outcome variables selected are the additional questions in the second set of survey:
• Students learning to work better in a group during music lessons during semester
• Students listening to music differently now
• Music lessons in the semester had inspired students to continue with music outside of school
• The activities students did in the semester have helped students become better musicians
• Students can talk about music using music terms
• Students have achieved a lot in their music lessons in the semester
The final estimation of fixed effects and variance components are given in Appendix B. The intraclass correlation coefficient result ( ρ = .03, p = .002) indicated that 3% of variance in students’ post-pilot perception of their music experiences is between schools, and 97% of variance in students’ post-pilot perception of their music experiences is within school. This means that the school the students belong to has very little effect on their post-pilot perception of their music experiences.
Comparing Students’ Experiences Pre- and Post-Pilot
To what extent do students’ enjoyment of music lessons, music self-efficacy, music autonomy and motivation in music differ before and after the project?
From the questionnaire data, the homogeneity of variance was tested using Levene's test. Using one-way ANOVA, the means for pre- and post-
pedagogic interventions for each variable were compared. The results indicated that there was a statistically significant positive effect of the pedagogic intervention on the items below. The other variables either did not yield statistically significant results, or did not meet the assumption for homogeneity of variance to be used in the one-way ANOVA.
• Students’ enjoyment of music lessons in schools, F (1, 981) = 7.52, p = .006, r = .09
• Students’ perception of their ability to create their own music, F (1, 977) = 65.88, p = .000, r = .25
• Students knowing how to contribute to the group, F (1, 978) = 22.90, p = .000, r = .15
• Students wanting to do well in music lessons, F (1, 979) = 4.79, p = .03, r = .07
• Students’ perception that music lessons in school help with music activities outside of school, F (1, 972) = 15.55, p = .000, r = .13
• Students’ perception that music activities outside of school helping in music lessons in school, F (1, 978) = 9.71, p = .002, r = .10
• Students’ intent to take music as an examination subject at Upper Secondary level, F (1, 980) = 5.39, p .02, r = .07
In what ways do students perceive lessons they went through in the Semester different from their past music lessons?
Students’ free responses to the question was coded and examined. Out of 335 students’ who responded with qualitative comments, 324 (96.7%) responses were positive. Only 10 of them (3.0%) felt that there was no difference in their experiences with music lessons, and only 1 of them (0.3%) did not enjoy the experience. The main areas students perceived that were different from past music lessons were the opportunity to create music (27.2%), to play an instrument (19.4%), and the social-collaborative learning with friends (14.9%). Other responses included that they were able to learn independently, and there were opportunities to perform and to make music.
Investigating Student Engagement
Factors predicting students’ enjoyment of music in school
Using Linear Regression, students’ enjoyment of music lessons in school is selected as the dependent variable. All other items in the first set of questionnaire survey were selected as independent variables. Results are statistically significant, F (22, 895) = 42.02, p =.000 and there is no multicollinearity. The details are in Appendix C.
Results indicate that the following variables are statistically significantly positively associated with students’ enjoyment of music lessons:
• Students finding the tasks in music lessons interesting ( β = .29, p = .000)
• Students’ choice of things to learn during music lessons
( β = .15, p = .000)
• Students’ feeling confident in music lessons ( β = .11, p = .001)
• Students’ wanting to do well in music lessons ( β = .06, p = .032)
• Students’ enjoyment of listening to music ( β = .13, p = .000)
• Students liking the music styles they learn during music lessons ( β = .20, ρ = .000)
• Students’ friends and themselves helping one another ( β = .07, p = .027)
However, students knowing where to get help with music making is statistically significantly negatively associated with their enjoyment of music lessons ( β = - .06, p = .035). Other variables do not yield statistically significant results.
In other words, students tend to enjoy music lessons in schools if they found their tasks interesting, liked the musical styles they were learning and that they were given a choice over what they learnt. Their confidence level and the social support afforded through peer collaboration was also important factors predicting their enjoyment of music lessons in schools.
What aspects of the semester’s music lessons did students enjoy and not enjoy?
Students’ free responses to the question were coded and examined. Out of 320 student responses, 314 (98.1%) responses were positive. Only 2 of them (0.6%) indicated that they did not enjoy any aspects of the semester’s music lessons. Only 4 of them (1.3%) responded that they did not know. Of the aspects that students’ enjoyed, the four areas – collaborative learning with friends (23.8%), instrumental playing (20.6%), creating (14.7%) and performing (10.3%) stood out most prominently. These were congruent with teachers’ observations and the case studies we observed in the previous chapters.
When students were asked what aspects of the lessons they did not enjoy, out of 214 student responses, 55 students (25.7%) indicated that there was nothing they did not enjoy. 35 students gave feedback that it was the lack of time (35 students, 10.9%), especially for students in Schools A, B, and C. These were the schools which experimented with the informal learning approaches. The other areas that were raised were problems with group work (8.4%) and inability to follow the activities (7.9%).
As a round-up to the student-interviews, they were asked to use one word to describe how they felt about the module. “Awesome”, “fun”, “enjoyable” and “interesting” came up most often. Appendix D shows a collection of their experiences, expressed in a wordsplash.
Impact of pedagogies on students’ engagement
In the post-pilot final conversation, four of the teachers (Mr Lim, Ms J, Ms Yeo and Ms Sim) cited that giving students autonomy to make their own decisions stepped up their engagement significantly. This was also a key finding in many of the cases described in Chapters 10 to 14. For example, with Mr Lim’s informal learning, students experienced greater engagement as they experienced greater autonomy and a sense of accomplishment from pursuing these challenges. Ms J’s STOMP-inspired music lessons conducted through the informal and non-formal approaches were able to turn around even the most disengaged students. Ms Yeo was “very surprised
by the motivation that students show” when the difference she made to the song-writing task in this module was the choices given to students to select their own friendship groups, and to select their own instrumental accompaniment. “I thought my kids were motivated last year, this year is even more!”
The project also motivated students with disabilities and special needs. Ms Yeo cited that her students who had certain disabilities were “very very motivated” and “really tried” in the project. Ms Sim also shared that one of her students who had thyroid syndrome was able to suppress the involuntary hiccups and high pitch sounds due to his engagement with his work. She said, “during the music trial, he will (be) engrossed with whatever he was doing. And he did not make much sounds (hiccups), which is quite an improvement …. When he is engaged, he actually stops.”
All five teachers experienced having students voluntarily staying back after lessons to meet with them for more music practice. And for some of these students, they decided to pursue more music learning experiences beyond their school music lessons. Ms Yeo shared that many parents came to see her during her school’s “meet-parents session”, and they expressed appreciation for her work and told stories of their children requesting for instruments and music lessons.
Reflections: TeachersontheirPedagogicAdaptations
The five teachers were brought back for a closing conversation to reflect on their trials. This section details some of the key reflections on their pedagogic adaptations.
Scaffolding and Structuring Informal Learning
It seems an oxymoron that informal learning needs to be “scaffolded” or “structured”. But this was seen in all three teachers who were conducting informal learning. Mr Lim, for example, had started with informal learning where he got students to learn songs through aural copying in their friendship groups. After a few lessons, he noticed that most students had problems with strumming patterns on the guitar, and he decided to address this issue at the class level. He “scaffolded” their learning by injecting moments of non-formal teaching so that students could learn chords on the guitar by copying him aurally as a class. Ms Yeo provided “consultation” to her students where she would help them by providing the chords as they engaged in song-writing so that the task was less daunting for the students. Ms J structured her teachings such that her classes began with non-formal teaching routines before students began their informal learning in groups. They then got back to perform their “trial runs” to the rest of the class for a peer feedback session. Ms J highlighted the importance of routines in her final reflections as it made her lessons more efficient. This echoed what Rodriguez (2009, p. 12) pointed out that although in informal learning, the teacher relinquishes this control of learning and enters into a more flexible and dynamic relationship with the learner, “a plan for instruction must still be negotiated between teachers and students”.
It was interesting that teachers did not think of the “stages” in Green’s informal learning pedagogy as these did not come out in any of their reflections, but it was the undergirding principles such as oral-aural copying and student autonomy that mattered to teachers by the end of the pilot. These choices to use the undergirding principles suggest that there can be many possibilities of adaptation with the informal approach.
Teachers also prefered the flexibility to weave between informal, non-formal and formal approaches to respond to students’ needs. For example, Ms Sim had started with stage 2 (Green, 2008) where students had to figure out the different parts through an aural package. She said,
I think the hierarchy of stages is not important. I wouldn’t adopt the whole entire approach. I would adapt approaches based on whatever that is given at the point in time. I will not be sticky about “am I an informal learner”’ or “am I going to do non-formal teaching”. I am going to do it as it fits. Because if I plan for a lesson in the day, and the class is not in the mood to do that, I would have to change it. I will not insist that “Oh, you must do informal learning today”’. If they are so disorientated on that day, nonformal teaching might come into play in a better way. Then, I will adapt and adopt that approach…
(focus group discussion, 2 November 2012).
Deeper Grasp of Student-Centricity
For the teachers who participated in the trial, we saw a transformation in their teaching practices: moving towards student centricity. They also developed a certain respect for their students and learned to believe in their capabilities. Their thoughts clearly reflect that students are at the heart of teaching-learning, and they recognised that teachers were no longer knowledge providers as students had access to information elsewhere such as YouTube and CDs. Here are some strands that surfaced and their reflections at the final conversations on 2 November 2012 with the group.
Motivating students, personalising learning and differentiating instruction ...motivation and engagement are the most important aspects. If students don’t have motivation, nothing gets done.… I was observing how certain people are able to be self-motivated, and certain people need a little bit of hand-holding and encouragement. Certain people need a bit of structure in place, to help them to reach a level of being able to be motivated. Some of them, they like music. So, you just put them in a group, they just fly even if they have no experience before, they really love the song, they really love the people they are with, they just go. That is the biggest advantage of this informal process.
(Mr Lim)
Learning is always deeper when it is experienced personally by the students themselves rather than being taught by the teacher. So, when the student is able to articulate, express what were the AFIs (Areas for Improvement) of their group performances. I tried to use probing questions to draw it out of them. So, I won’t tell them what’s wrong. I will just ask them more and
more questions until they expressed it themselves. I realised that really helps you know your student whether they understand it or not. And when they express it, you feel so happy even though you were so tempted to spoon feed them and to make it easy for them, and just give them the answer.
(Mr Lim)
Believing in students, giving autonomy
My biggest learning is (about) myself as a teacher, about my personal beliefs. I always think that students should be able to get it just there and then when you teach them. Halfway through the trialling, I was questioning myself whether I was on the right track or not … but towards the end, I found the results really really very surprising and is of much higher quality I will say than what I will expect… Students take a longer time to reach the eureka moment but whatever they do, the experience they have, they actually have much much deeper learning than what formal teaching actually can offer.
(Ms J)
I also strongly believe that student autonomy is very important and this belief will affect me for the rest of the curriculum that I will plan.
(Ms J)
Giving them (the students) the autonomy to make their own decisions really makes a difference. For me to not hand-hold them so much, to take a back seat in teaching, takes a lot from me. Many a times, I really jump in and want to tell them, want to help them. Really have to leave them there, providing them space for discussion and time for exploration. I just have to leave them alone for them to explore on their own and they come back to me just for reference. They have to learn to make their own decisions as a group, handle the different issues that surface….I also learn to adapt to students’ ideas. Coz [sic] I have my idea of what a composition should be- the chord progressions. But students come in with different different chord progressions, may be so much better than my own. So, students are my teachers in this entire process.
(Ms Yeo)
Attending to learning orientation, facilitate
I have been teaching pop music in a more formal way….It’s very much like a – this is a historical background, a little bit of aural, a little bit of practical, it’s just more traditional…. “are you teaching the way you actually learn?”… so, that is opening my eyes as well because I have been teaching quite formally.
(Mr Mark)
I have to very consciously tell myself, “I cannot teach, I have to facilitate”. So, when they (students) ask me questions, I have to tell myself “don’t teach”… I introduced the instruments to them. I said “pick your own instruments, listen…, go and follow, find your own group”…. One interesting thing was that when someone was out of beat, out of rhythm, we didn’t have to say anything, we didn’t have to say much, they managed to find it (the rhythm) back themselves. Students began to rise to the occasion and they
were starting to take lead. They were coming up with ideas …In the past, I would probably have scolded them because they were wasting my time. But allowing them that freedom to find their own musical meaning, even after the post-exam…when they came in, they wanted to play their song. Even during the exam period, they wanted to play their song.
(Ms Sim)
Learning alongside students
These two approaches are actually very humbling for the teacher because it breaks the norm where the teacher is greater than the students – where we are information and knowledge providers…. it is very humbling for me because it is really putting aside my own comfort zone and saying, “now I am willing to learn from you”….because of the way we have taught music, we have certain model in our head. They (the students) break the mental models we are already believing in, we were trained in, which is very humbling for me.
(Ms Sim)
Stronger Conviction of the Unique Position of Music Education
“I am a much happier music teacher now...more sold to the music religion”, declared Mr Lim in the final conversations. More than before, teachers appreciated the unique position of music education in developing the holistic child.
Because our (music) grades don’t count (towards students’ promotion), we have the flexibility to tailor our programme so that we don’t just drilland-practice our students. We don’t just use the same old formal teaching approach and just train the students to pass the test, or pass the exam or pass the assessment. So, the point now is no longer passing the assessment. The point is, are we preparing our students for life. I think that’s where music…I think we are in the unique position of having a very big ability to impact the students.
(Mr Lim)
Mr Lim recounted how by providing an authentic assessment, which he required students to put up their items for a ticketed performance for their parents, it engaged students physically, cognitively and emotionally. “This whole journey had been a roller coaster for me, for the students….” He felt that the process of students overcoming their emotions as they worked towards a performance for their parents was an important aspect of their holistic development.
Similar sentiments were expressed by Ms Yeo. She recounted how one group of students was in tears when one of their members was not cooperative and she had to play the role of a counsellor. Through the music lessons, she related that students also learnt “life skills” such as relationship management, self-awareness, social-awareness and communication skills.
Insights: ValueandImplications
From these findings, we are able to formulate insights into the critical and
distinctive value these informal and non-formal approaches provide for music education, as well as the implications for the teacher.
Critical and Distinctive Value of Informal and Non-formal Approaches
Authenticity
First, the informal and non-formal approaches are able to provide authentic musical experiences to engage students. They lend themselves well to providing “musical encounters” (Swanwick, 1999/2012) as students typically engage in direct experiences with music. And the affordances of these approaches sit well with the subject nature of music, where learning could be specified in terms of “expressive objectives” (Popham, 1969, p. 33) which identify the type of encounter the student is to have, as opposed to “instructional objectives” which specify a particular knowledge or skill that the student is to acquire. Expressive objectives are evocative rather than prescriptive, and invite both teacher and students to explore and focus on areas that are of peculiar interest, hence providing a meaningful studentcentric musical experience. In this respect, these approaches provide the means for the teacher to achieve expressive objectives and create musical encounters to enrich the learning of students.
Music Learning Socially
Second, informal and non-formal approaches are social in nature, typically involving collaborative learning in the music classroom, and are characterised by modeling and observational learning. As Green (2008) aptly pointed out, these are based on real-life practices of musicians and, much of music transmissions across many cultures, have music caught and taught in social settings that provide the much needed enculturation.
Statistical analysis revealed that students’ learning with their peers is a predicting factor for their enjoyment of music lessons. We have also found through the free responses in the questionnaire that students learning with their peers became the main reason why students enjoyed the experience Our field observations have also shown students tapping on their peers for learning. In the case of informal learning, peer-directed learning naturally emerged. In non-formal teaching, music making with peers became an exciting and enjoyable experience once the group arrived at their “eureka” moment.
These approaches are able to provide a social environment for learning to take place and this is supported by social learning theories and social perspectives of learning (Wenger, 2009).
Student Voice and Motivation
Third, the informal and non-formal approaches allow the students greater control of their learning. Students make decisions about their learning goals - who to work with, how to work, and even the success criteria. At this level of decision making, students are allowed to exercise the sense of "self-rule" (Ryan & Connell, 1989; cited in Ryan and Powelson, 1991, p.52) and hence the opportunity to develop "self-management" skills and the ability to selfdirect their learning - competencies of the 21st century student (MOE, 2008).
At another level of decision making, students made choices with respect to the musical ideas scoped within a creative task (e.g. STOMP-inspired composition, songs). That increased a stronger sense of ownership in the tasks at hand, and created stronger motivation to work on the tasks.
As a result of adapting these approaches, there have been positive cases of increased motivation of students as seen in the evidence of prolonged attention by students as they worked on their tasks, and students were also able to sustain their performances. As these approaches provide for student autonomy, a sense of accomplishment derived from pursuing challenges, and a sense of community with others, they are able to better engage students. This resonates with self-determination theory and studies on human motivation (Niemiec & Ryan, 2009; Reeve, 2006; Reeve et al., 2004).
Implications for the Teacher
Pedagogy
Fourth, the role of the teacher as a facilitator is critical. As illustrated in the various cases, although informal learning appears to be largely studentdirected, the teacher needs to be acutely aware of his/her students’ profile and levels of attainment to motivate them in their learning This includes providing sufficient challenges pegged at the right level, guiding students to experience small successes throughout their work, asking probing questions to help them reflect, and providing encouragement and affirmation so as to give students confidence. These cognitive autonomy support teaching behaviours are crucial to help bring students from one level of competence to the next, and thus instrumental in building up their confidence. Although non-formal learning tends to be teacher-led, the teacher still needs to also play the role of a facilitator, to draw out ideas from students. This empowers them to make musical decisions, so that the music making experience is more meaningful.
This study highlighted the importance of understanding pedagogies as situated within a broad continuum of repertoire. In achieving curricular outcomes, the teachers need to have a set of pedagogies to engage and motivate students in their music learning, and bring about music learning in a more authentic and meaningful way. Therefore, non-formal and informal approaches helped broaden that repertoire for the teachers. As shown especially in the cases of Mr Mark and Ms J, the interweaving and negotiation of moves from one node of the continuum to another requires skills and an understanding of the affordances of what each pedagogy has to offer.
Perspective
Fifth, a distinction has to be made between pedagogical principles and pedagogical orientations. We came to a better understanding that principles refer to propositions or rules that shape the characteristics of the pedagogy. Orientations refer to the outlook, the directions and positioning of the person implementing the principles. We have seen that the teachers’ belief and understanding of student-centricity will determine the way the approaches are used. For example, we saw how Ms J negotiated between teacher- and
student-centricity. In the case of Ms Sim, she experienced dissonances between the boundaries within the pedagogic continuum, and had to undergo the “excavation” process to make it a “‘lived” experience for her.
In addition, teachers might have different formal/informal orientations even as they implemented the formal/informal approaches. While the pedagogical repertoire of the teacher could be expanded through practising the principles, an understanding of the different pedagogical orientations would emancipate the teacher and empower the teacher to adapt pedagogies for his/her contexts. This was seen in Ms Yeo’s case where her orientation impacted how she “lived out” those principles.
Practice
Sixth, these approaches were used in music teaching on the assumption that teachers are musicians as well as pedagogues. Not only do the teacher require sufficient music skills as a musician to guide their students to think in music and respond musically, they need the pedagogic skills, repertoire and fluency to skillfully weave between informal, formal and non-formal approaches and orientations. The teacher has to model musical behaviours and the music learning process as a musician to encourage and inspire students. For example, Ms Yeo is a pianist, but as her students learn other instruments to accompany their song-writing task, she learned these instruments alongside with her students, implicitly modeling how music learning is a life-long learning process. Mr Mark and Mr Lim all took on musicking roles while they taught and facilitated their student learning.
In conclusion, we found that the affordances of the informal and non-formal approaches fostered a learning environment that engaged students musically and developed their musical behaviours and musical understandings. At the end of the day, if students had personal encounters with music and developed a positive relationship with music, these experiences would stay with them for a very long time, and they would develop a life-long love for music, which is the aim of our General Music programme.
Student-centricity is the heart of the music learning process. Such a focus does not lose sight on nurturing the holistic child, the development of skills, knowledge and values. Framed by expressive objectives and characterised by authentic learning experiences, informal and non-formal approaches have much to offer for a creative, student-centric curriculum. They develop students holistically, and nurture them to become self-directed and confident individuals who work collaboratively. Indeed, these approaches will complement formal approaches to develop in our students, the 21st century competencies to prepare them for their life’s journey.
References
D’Amore, A. ed. (n.d.) Musical Futures: An approach to teaching and learning (Resource Pack, 2nd edition). London: Paul Hamlyn Foundation.
Green, L. (2008). Music, informal learning and the school: A new classroom pedagogy. Hampshire and Burlington: Ashgate.
Niemiec, C. P., & Ryan, R. M. (2009). Autonomy, competence, and relatedness in the classroom: applying self-determination theory to educational practice. Theory and Research in Education, 7(2), 133 – 144.
Popham, W. J., Eisner, E., Sullivan, H. and Bruneau. W. (1969). Instructional and expressive educational objectives. In E. W. Eisner (Ed). Reimagining schools: The selected works of Elliot W. Eisner (pp. 24-36). New York and London: Routledge.
Reeve, J. (2006). Teachers as facilitators: what autonomy-supportive teachers do and why their students benefit. The Elementary School Journal, 106(3), 225 – 236.
Reeve, J., Jang, H., Carrell, D., Jeon, S., & Barch, J. (2004). Enhancing students’ engagement by increasing teachers’ autonomy support. Motivation and emotion, 28(2), 147 – 169.
Rodriguez, C.X. (2009). Informal learning in music: Emerging roles of teachers and students. Action, Criticism & Theory for Music Education, 8 (2), 36-45.
Swanwick, K. (1999/ 2012). Teaching music musically. London and New York: Routledge.
Wenger, E. (2009). A social theory of learning. In K. Illeris (Ed). Contemporary Theories of Learning (pp. 209-218). London and New York: Routledge
Appendices
You and Music (I)
This questionnaire is to get an idea of how you feel about music and learning music. Your responses will be treated in confidence.
Thank you for taking time and effort to answer these questions carefully.
Are you: Male Female *please tick your response.
1. Do you take part in music activities outside your school music lessons? (e.g. music CCAs or any other outside school music activities)
If you answer ‘Yes’ to Q1, what is/are the music activities you are involved in?
If you answer ‘No’, please continue with Q3.
Yes No *please tick your response.
2. Do you play a musical instrument?
Yes No *please tick your response.
3 If you answer ‘Yes’ to Q3,
a. What is your instrument?
b. For how long have you learnt it? (e.g. 2 years)
If you answer ‘No’, please continue with Q5.
Please answer the following by ticking the boxes:
5 I enjoy listening to music.
6 I enjoy music lessons in school.
7 I can express myself through music.
8 I like the music styles I learn during music lessons.
9 My teacher values the music I like.
10 I find the tasks I do during music lessons interesting.
11 I get to choose some of things I learn during music lessons.
12 What I do during music lessons can differ from my classmates’ as we may choose to learn / do different tasks.
13 I am able to play at least one musical instrument.
14 I am able to create my own music.
15 My music lessons in school trains me to be a musician.
16 If I needed help with music making, I would know where to get it.
17 I work best when I am with my friends.
18 My friends and I often help one another during music lessons.
19 I enjoy learning with my friends.
20 I have the skills to make music with my friends, without needing the teacher’s help all the time.
21 I know how to contribute to my groups during music lessons.
22 I feel confident in music lessons.
23 I want to do well in music lessons.
24 The music lessons I do in school help me with music activities I do outside of school.
25 The music activities I do outside of school help me in music lessons in school.
26 I take part in music activities outside of music lessons (e.g. produce music on computers, bands, orchestras, choir, etc)
27 I am intending to take music as an examination subject at Upper Secondary level.
28.Are there particular music and/or songs that you would like to learn how to sing or play? What are they?
You and Music (II)
This questionnaire is to get an idea of how you feel about music and learning music. Your responses will be treated in confidence.
Thank you for taking time and effort to answer these questions carefully.
29. What aspects of music lessons do you not enjoy? Please explain why.
30. What aspects of your music lessons do you enjoy? Please explain why.
Are you: Male Female *please tick your response.
1. Do you take part in music activities outside your school music lessons? (e.g. music CCAs or any other outside school music activities) Yes No *please tick your response.
2. If you answer ‘Yes’ to Q1, what is/are the music activities you are involved in?
If you answer ‘No’, please continue with Q3.
3. Do you play a musical instrument?
Thank you for your help!
Yes No *please tick your response.
4 If you answer ‘Yes’ to Q3, a. What is your instrument? b. For how long have you learnt it? (e.g. 2 years)
If you answer ‘No’, please continue with Q5.
Please answer the following by ticking the boxes:
5 I have learnt to work better in a group in my music lessons this Semester.
6 I listen to music differently now.
7 My music lessons this Semester has inspired me to continue with music outside of school.
8 The activities we do during this Semester have helped me to become a better musician.
9 I can talk about music using music terms.
10 I have achieved a lot in my music lessons this Semester.
11 I enjoy listening to music.
12 I enjoy music lessons in school.
13 I can express myself through music.
14 I like the music styles I learn during music lessons.
15 My teacher values the music I like.
16 I find the tasks I do during music lessons interesting.
17 I get to choose some of things I learn during music lessons.
18 What I do during music lessons can differ from my classmates’ as we may choose to learn / do our tasks differently.
19 I am able to play at least one musical instrument.
20 I am able to create my own music.
21 My music lessons in school trains me to be a musician.
22 If I needed help with music making, I would know where to get it.
23 I work best when I am with my friends.
24 My friends and I often help one another during music lessons.
25 I enjoy learning with my friends.
26 I have the skills to make music with my friends, without needing the teacher’s help all the time.
27 I know how to contribute to my group during music lessons.
28 I feel confident in music lessons.
29 I want to do well in music lessons.
30 The music lessons I do in school help me with music activities I do outside of school.
31 The music activities I do outside of school help me in music lessons in school.
32 I take part in music activities outside of music lessons (e.g. produce music on computers, bands, orchestras, choir, etc)
33 I am intending to take music as an examination subject at Upper Secondary level.
34.In what way are the lessons you go through this Semester different from your past music lessons?
Thank you for your help! :)
35. What aspects of this Semester’s music lessons do you not enjoy? Please share your reasons why.
36. What aspects of this Semester’s music lessons do you enjoy? Please share your reasons why.
Factors Predicting Students’ Enjoyment of Music in School (Linear Regression)
