Sounding the Teaching VIII: Envisioning the Future of Teaching and Learning
sounding the teaching VIII
Envisioning the Future of Teaching and Learning
A Publication by the Singapore Teachers’ Academy for the aRts (STAR)
We would like to express our appreciation to the Principal, staff, and the students of Boon Lay Garden Primary School, Commonwealth Secondary School, Methodist Girls’ School (Primary), Nan Chiau High School, Pasir Ris Crest Secondary School, Paya Lebar Methodist Girls’ School, Queenstown Secondary School, Rivervale Primary School, Rosyth School, Temasek Junior College, and Yuhua Secondary School
EDITORS: Chua Siew Ling, Melissa Ong, and Leong Su Juen
All parts of this publication are protected by copyright. No part of it may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Singapore Teachers’ Academy for the aRts.
Envisioning the Future of Teaching and Learning
A Publication by the Singapore Teachers’ Academy for the aRts (STAR)
Chua Siew Ling Principal Master Teacher (Music)
Investigating How Students Can Develop Growth Mindset in Their Music Learning
Ng Eng Kee Paya Lebar Methodist Girls' School (Secondary)
Encouraging Self-Directed Learning of Philippines Kulintang Music through Learning Stations and Substitute Instruments
Tan Yi Han Rivervale Primary School
Fostering Learning through Social Diversity in a Music Classroom
Lee Yue Zhi and Yee Ziyun Noella Commonwealth Secondary School
Boosting Lower Secondary Music Students' Self-Esteem and Self-Awareness in a Ukulele Group Performance Module
Peng Boon Yen and Ng Kiat Ee Stella Queenstown Secondary School
Engaging a Student with ADHD During Music Lessons
Anna Chen Rosyth School
SECTION 3 Empowering Learner-Assessors
Technologies for Listening: Harnessing Digital Platforms to Enhance Assessment for Learning in O-Level Music Studies
Shawn Tan Yuhua Secondary School
Truman See Nan Chiau High School
Empowering Students in the Teaching and Learning of Music Arrangement Seah Cheng Tat Temasek
Foreword
Clifford
Chua Academy
Principal
Singapore Teachers’ Academy for the aRts
In the dynamic education landscape today, it is important to carve out moments to pause and reflect, and envision how our subject disciplinarity contributes to our students’ holistic development for the future.
German philosopher Friedrich Schiller, in his seminal work On the Aesthetic Education of Man, emphasises the transformative power of aesthetic experiences. He suggests that connecting emotional and cognitive growth through experiences of beauty in art contributes to the development of more compassionate and harmonious individuals and societies.
How then, can we leverage the uniqueness of music to empower our students to discover beauty in this age of new literacies and 21CC (21st Century Competencies) development? For example, we can encourage inventive and adaptive thinking as well as communication skills through innovative listening, composing and performing activities.
By integrating “old” and “new” technologies and combining the use of “traditional” instruments with virtual ones, students can grow collaboratively as empathetic, critical, adaptive, digitally-empowered, and technologically-adept learners.
As stewards of students’ learning, teachers have a powerful responsibility to serve as role models for our students. This includes seeing ourselves as the chief learners in the classroom. It is essential to continually develop our own digital literacies, data literacy, and embrace e-Pedagogy, while continuing to hone our musicianship, and seek beauty in music and in all that we do.
I would like to thank all contributors for their boldness in exploring and envisioning the future of music education in Singapore. I would also like to thank their school leaders for their unreserved support. May Sounding the Teaching VIII ignite in all readers a brave optimism for the future of music teaching and learning, and may we continue to celebrate this vibrant community of dedicated and passionate music educators.
Introduction
Chua Siew Ling Principal Master Teacher (Music)
Singapore Teachers’ Academy for the aRts
In envisioning the future of teaching and learning, the critical inquiry projects of the networked learning community (CI NLC) led to three themes that could take music teaching forward: embracing authenticity, nurturing learning attributes, and empowering learner-assessors.
Embracing Authenticity in music learning includes giving attention to the unique value that musical experiences bring, and making connections to real-life learning so that music learning is relevant to our students’ growing identities in our dynamic landscape. Strategies could involve the following:
| Working with community partners to empower students as active contributors to the community (Rachel Tham Chin Xin)
| Capitalising on social media trends to design students’ project-based learning (Neo Shiwei)
| Drawing parallels with industry processes to scaffold music creative tasks (Ronald Lim)
Nurturing learning attributes involves developing characteristics, soft skills, dispositions, and values that could enable learners to learn better. They could include:
| Developing a growth mindset (Ng Eng Kee)
| Developing self-directed learners (Tan Yi Han)
| Boosting self-esteem and social awareness in students (Peng Boon Yen and Ng Kiat Ee Stella)
| Promoting social integration within the class (Lee Yue Zhi and Yee Ziyun Noella)
| Developing social-emotional competencies though accommodations (Anna Chen)
Empowering learner-assessors is about developing students as critical assessors by empowering them with competencies to self-assess, involving them in the assessment process, and using assessment information to help them move their learning forward. Strategies could include:
| Harnessing technological applications innovatively to strengthen students’ assessment for learning, increasing their metacognition and agency in learning (Shawn Tan and Truman See) | Questioning techniques to develop reflective learners in music composing/arranging (Seah Cheng Tat)
This year, members not only developed innovative teaching and learning approaches through their critical inquiry projects but also embraced storytelling as a novel way to reflect on and analyse their data. By narrating the ‘stories’ of their ideas, methods, practices, strategies, and analyses, members organised their thoughts and thoughtfully considered the messages they wanted to communicate to their audiences. Although this aspect may not be explicitly detailed in the articles, we wish to acknowledge storytelling as a possible arts-based methodology that could be used in music critical inquiry projects.
We hope the 10 articles presented in this edition will inspire teachers to innovate new approaches for their teaching as they forge forward to lead, care, and inspire.
Embracing Authenticity
Social and Emotional Learning
Embracing Authenticity in music learning includes giving attention to the unique value that musical experiences bring, and making connections to real-life learning so that music learning is relevant to our students’ growing identities in our dynamic landscape.
08 Rachel Tham Chin Xin investigated the impact of her work with community partners to empower students as active contributors to the community.
16 Neo Shiwei investigated her innovative idea of capitalising on social media trends to design students’ project-based learning.
36 Ronald Lim proposed a concept where parallels could be drawn with industry processes, such as the diffusion model for AI textto-image generation, to scaffold music creative tasks.
Learning Experiences of Students Beyond the Music Classroom: A Perspective of Lifewide
Learning
Introduction
Students in Boon Lay Garden Primary School have been learning digital music composition with GarageBand on the iPad for a few years. I hoped to understand the students’ learning beyond what was taught in the classroom, and wanted to know if we could extend their learning to help benefit the community or people around them by working on a community-themed project, or on an artefact that the students’ digital music composition tracks could support. In collaboration with the Applied Learning Programme (ALP) team from my school, we started a community project which let students stretch their learning of digital music composition beyond the music classroom.
Inquiry Question
What lifewide learning experiences can students have beyond the music classroom?
Methodology
Target Audience
A student preference and participation survey was conducted over SLS (Student Learning Space). After sifting through their responses and the sample music digital compositions they submitted, I selected 34 Primary Four and Primary Five students based on their preferences for the community project. The students were from mixed ability classes and had different exposure to digital music composition or digital music making.
Data Collection
| Pre- and post-project reflections and student surveys were conducted via SLS.
| Mid-point project discussions conducted by the students were collected in hardcopy form.
| End-point reflections and feedback were collected via SLS. Hardcopy reflections, feedback, and face-to-face interviews were conducted for students who were unable to access the digital reflection forms.
Duration
The research was carried out face-to-face with students over four months:
| Six weeks of digital music composition work
| Eight weeks of digital making using micro:bits
| Two weeks to build artefacts for the showcase, collect reflections and interview students
Learning Principles
Lifewide learning
This project draws inspiration from Jasmin Tan’s master’s thesis, “A Pragmatist-Inspired Philosophy of Lifelong and Lifewide learning” (Tan, 2021). Lifewide learning:
| is a learner-centred approach where learning materials are relevant and there is a balance of work and play;
| involves constant two-way exchanges of conversation between teachers and students;
| involves students carrying out investigations into problems and searching
for answers through exploration and experimentation;
| is the everyday continuous learning process in adults which changes from formal to self-directed learning as they progress in life (Reischmann et al., 2014; Tan, 2021).
There are overlaps between lifewide learning and authentic learning as students relate to their real-world experiences and carry out investigations into problems and their search for answers.
Authentic Learning
Authentic learning (Donovan, Bransford, & Pellegrino, 1999) is a pedagogical approach that strives to create real-world, relevant, and meaningful learning experiences for students. It goes beyond traditional classroom settings, textbooks, and rote memorisation, aiming to connect academic content with real-world complexities. Authentic learning engages students in activities that mirror the challenges and problem-solving they may encounter in their future careers and daily lives. This research also explores the key principles and benefits of authentic learning and its significance in shaping well-rounded and competent individuals.
Principles of Authentic Learning (Blumenfeld et al., 1991):
1. Real-world Relevance: Authentic learning tasks are designed to mimic real-world scenarios, making the content and skills learned applicable beyond the classroom. By addressing genuine problems and challenges, students can see the direct relevance of their education to their lives and future careers.
2. Active Engagement: Authentic learning emphasises hands-on, experiential activities that require students to actively engage with the subject matter. This approach promotes a deeper understanding of concepts as students grapple with real problems and apply critical thinking skills.
3. Collaboration and Social Interaction: Many authentic learning experiences involve collaboration and social interaction, reflecting the interconnected nature of the world. Students learn to work effectively in teams, communicate ideas, and appreciate diverse perspectives – skills crucial in professional and personal settings.
4. Inquiry and Problem-solving: Authentic learning encourages students to inquire, investigate, and solve problems independently. This fosters a sense of curiosity and resilience as students learn to navigate challenges and seek solutions through research, analysis, and creativity.
Benefits of Authentic Learning (Blumenfeld et al., 1991):
1. Deep Understanding: Authentic learning promotes a deeper understanding of content as students connect theoretical knowledge with practical application. This depth of understanding enhances retention and the ability to transfer knowledge to new situations.
2. Motivation and Engagement: The realworld relevance of authentic learning tasks captures students’ interest and motivates them to actively participate in their education. The intrinsic motivation derived from meaningful experiences can lead to a lifelong love of learning.
3. Preparation for the Real World: Authentic learning prepares students for challenges they will face in the real world. Whether in the workforce or pursuing further education, students equipped with authentic learning experiences are better prepared to navigate complex, dynamic environments.
4. Soft Skills Development: Collaboration, communication, critical thinking, and problem-solving skills are integral components of authentic learning. These so-called “soft skills” are highly valued in the professional world and contribute to personal success and fulfilment.
The aim was for students to gain the necessary contextual knowledge to eventually create an artefact in the form of old appliances, or create music that would help seniors reminisce about the past.
Overview of Tools
GarageBand GarageBand is a free application which is available on iOS. Students are given a choice of three different traditional Singapore community song tracks to work on, and to compose their own digital music.
micro:bit
Students are then trained in programming using micro:bits. Here, students learn to write simple programmes and applications that will combine their codes and digital music composition. These are downloaded into a micro-SD card.
Process
Weeks 1–4
In Week 1, students were given the task of revisiting what they had learnt in the GarageBand music module in Primary Four. In the weeks that followed, they were given the choice of three different traditional Singapore community song tracks to work on, namely, “Chan Mali Chan”, “Munnaeru Vaalibaa”, and “Di Tanjong Katong”.
While students were guided in composing the first few drafts of their digital music
composition, they were also encouraged to take their learning beyond the music classroom. In collaboration with the ALP team’s community project, the students were encouraged to interact with seniors around them (i.e., their grandparents, aunties or uncles who could have experienced life in Singapore in the past) to find out if they had lived in traditional villages or a kampung (“village” in Malay) before. The aim was for students to gain the necessary contextual knowledge to eventually create an artefact in the form of old appliances, or create music that would help seniors reminisce about the past. There was an emphasis on whether students could build artefacts which would benefit the community around them.
After the interviews, the students returned to their digital music composition and refined it to better suit the tastes and preferences of the seniors whom they had interacted with. The remaining two weeks were spent refining their compositions to ensure that the chords and digital loops that they used did not clash with the music tracks that they had chosen. Effort was also put in to make their music more relevant to the seniors, albeit with a slight modern twist. Throughout the digital music-making processes, there were constant interactions with the teachers, where
feedback of their work was given. There were also discussions to guide students on how they could improve their work through their choice of loops and chords. Click here to watch a video clip of students’ initial work before the teacher’s facilitation.
Weeks 5–10
Students were taught the basics of micro:bits programming. During these weeks, students got to explore the different types of programming tools which could be used in their community project to build artefacts. They tried to change the variables in the programmes that they were learning, such as including an LED display of certain words or symbols, the flashing duration of the LED lights, and even motion and temperature sensors. The students spent some time discussing in groups. By drawing on data from their interactions and interviews with the seniors, they were able to get a rough inkling of what kind of artefacts they wanted to use, and how the micro:bits programming they did could benefit the seniors.
After discussions and evaluations of their own work, the students took ownership of their learning and decided to work on different segments of the project. Some groups would undertake the easier programming work of writing programs for a motion sensor attached to the micro:bits, while others would shoulder the task of programming the flashing LED lights. A last group of students decided to attempt to extract their digital music composition tracks and try to incorporate these into the SD cards of the micro:bits.
Data Collected
Pre-Survey
34 students responded to the survey. Students were asked to rate their skills in digital music composition using a scale of 1–5, where 1 referred to being very low in proficiency, and 5 referred to being very proficient.
On the first question which required students to rate their skills, 66.7% of the students who responded rated themselves as less than 5. Only 8.8% of students rated themselves as 5. This showed that there was a lack of confidence in some of the students based
STUDENTS’ PROFICIENCY IN GARAGEBAND
Student programming the LED light sensor
Students interacting and discussing to improve their digital programming
Student with a successfully-programmed LED light sensor
*Pseudonyms were used to protect students’ identities.
on their different exposure to digital music composition and digital maker skills. Even though most of the P4 and P5 students had prior knowledge of GarageBand from their music lessons, they were hesitant of their ability to manage the applications, or may not have retained their learning. Hence, the graph shows a number of students stating that they have forgotten or did not know about GarageBand.
an environment where students could enjoy learning, and improve their existing skills. Students who responded that they were more proficient in digital music composition and coding were given tasks to create more complicated pieces of music, such as creating music tracks with five to eight digital instruments and with more digital loops, compared to the students who had responded to having lower proficiency.
When asked what they enjoyed about the learning of digital music composition using GarageBand, 50 per cent of the students said they enjoyed making their own music and listening to their music in digital form. Most stated that they enjoyed the authentic learning experience of listening to their own music in digital form.
This pre-survey helped me determine the strengths of the different students and how I could break down the tasks to address the needs of the different students. I did not want to set a benchmark that was too high for students to meet. I also wanted to create
Case Studies
Disengaged students
*L is a P5 student in a mixed ability class. She had discipline issues during her P4 year and struggled with attendance and commitment to her CCA (Co-curricular Activity). Surprisingly, in a preference survey administered at the end of Term 1 this year, L indicated that she wanted to take part in the Digital Music Makers project. At first, she was unmotivated as the tasks involved a lot of concentration and self-directed learning. She also had low self-esteem and felt intimidated when the other students seemed to have a
Click here to listen to L’s music composition.
better head start than her in terms of music composition using GarageBand and coding.
When the teacher was going through the tasks required, L was often disengaged and surfing the internet with the devices allocated to her. However, her attitude underwent a 180-degree change when she was tasked to be the group leader, and was part of a group building an artefact for a larger exhibit in the upcoming showcase. L sprang into action, researching how to create lifelike crafts of farm animals to signify “Kampung Life”, and delegating tasks to her group mates. She also took her programming seriously, doing up her music tracks properly to make sure that they would be presentable.
Students with SEN
*TM is a student with SEN (Special Education Needs). He enjoys music but is unable to express himself properly. He is known to have selective mutism but he is able to follow instructions and class work. Throughout the duration of the project, TM struggled as he was unable to express himself properly and hold proper conversations with his peers.
When teachers walked around to view his iPad as he was doing his digital music composition, TM refused to let them see his work. He also refused to accept any form of feedback, covering his screen from everyone. He really struggled with self-esteem. As the project progressed, I observed that with simple words of encouragement and celebrating little successes, like praising him when he could edit his music tracks without clashing sounds and affirming his contribution to the group programming, TM gradually opened up to his project mates. He started to show the teachers his composition and the programming codes he had written.
Eventually, TM volunteered to present the project at the showcase during the PassionArts Festival @Toh Guan Park. He was proud of his work and wanted to show it to his mother, who was very supportive of him. Unfortunately, TM was overwhelmed by the loud noises and sounds at the carnival and unable to carry on his presentation after the first round. I am thankful that despite this small setback, TM managed to overcome his obstacles and even volunteer to present his work.
Click here to listen to TM’s music composition.
*Pseudonyms were used to protect students’ identities.
The teachers’ desire to help students fulfil their potential and complete the project was important in driving how they motivate students and facilitate their progress and learning, while keeping the end goal in mind.
Discussion
Through this project, students experienced lifewide learning as they acquired skills to deal with real and authentic situations such as navigating different opinions within the group, disconnected group members, and social interactions with others around them. Interactions between students and teachers and constant encouragement motivated students to improve. I found that celebrating little successes with the students also helped them in every step of the way.
The students also improved in connecting their skills to everyday living and in thinking critically about how to refine their projects and better their work for the benefit of the community. They gained from opportunities for open communication to talk about what they felt the style of digital music composition should be, and what kind of loops and effects they should apply. Educators, curriculum designers, and policymakers should continue to embrace and promote lifewide learning and authentic learning to ensure that the educational journey remains relevant, meaningful, and impactful for every student.
Challenges
One of the challenges I faced was getting authentic data from students who struggled to express themselves properly in English due to their lack of command of the language. Often, I felt that I may have unknowingly completed their sentences for them by giving them suggestions of what they might be feeling or going through.
Furthermore, I had wrongly assumed that my students would have grandparents in their 60s or 70s. I was surprised when I found that they had much younger grandparents. Instead of the songs I had anticipated they would listen to (from the times when people used to live in kampungs), the “seniors” the students had interviewed quoted more contemporary musicians such as Michael Jackson, Jacky Cheung, and Teresa Teng.
There were also many instances when I had to struggle with limited time to work on the project due to fixed timetables. Most of the sessions had to be conducted only after students had completed their curriculum lessons. I really had to race against time. Having different students join the sessions at different times each week due to different schedules also meant that I had to re-induct different groups of students to help them understand what we had covered, and help them catch up with the other students. There were also challenges in uniting the students as they were from various classes and had disparate schedules and abilities.
Conclusion
I have a better understanding of how our students learn through this project, largely through the provision of authentic learning experiences where they could explore making critical decisions and interacting with others. The teachers’ desire to help students fulfil their potential and complete the project was important in driving how they motivate students and facilitate their progress and
learning, while keeping the end goal in mind. Through consistent discussions and check-in sessions, students were encouraged to see their tasks to fruition.
Acknowledgements
| Mrs Chistine Low, my Principal who is supportive of my cause for critical inquiry, and for providing moral support.
| Mdm Chua Huay Wen, my HOD of PE and Aesthetics who helped endorse the critical
inquiry application and fine-tuned the target student participants.
| Mdm Cindy Chua Tsin Li, for providing me with valuable reading resources on Lifewide and Authentic learning, recommendations for students, and always being on the ground to help me conduct the running of the project work with the students.
| Mdm Sherrie Tan, for providing invaluable support, advice and resourcing the project using ALP funds.
References
• Blumenfeld, P. C., Soloway, E., Marx, R. W., Krajcik, J. S., Guzdial, M., & Palincsar, A. (1991). Motivating project-based learning: Sustaining the doing, supporting the learning. Educational Psychologist, 26 (3&4), 369–398. https://doi.org/10.1080/00461520.1991.96 53139
• Donovan, S., Bransford, J., & Pellegrino. (1999). How people learn: Bridging research and practice. National Academy of Sciences.
• Maina, F. W. (2004). Authentic learning: Perspectives from contemporary educators. Journal of Authentic Learning, 1 1–8. https://hdl.handle.net/1951/389
Newmann, F., Marks, H. M., & Gamoran, A. (1995). Authentic pedagogy: Standards that boost student performance. Issues in Restructuring Schools, 8 1–12. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED390906.pdf
Reischmann, Jost (2014). Lifelong and lifewide learning- a perspective. In S, Charungkaittikul (Ed). Lifelong education and lifelong learning in Thailand, Bangkok. (pp 286–309)
• Sawyer, K. (2006). The Cambridge handbook of the learning sciences. Cambridge University Press.
• Tan, J. J. (2021). A pragmatist-inspired philosophy of lifelong and lifewide learning (MT1 Tan) [Master’s thesis, National Institute of Education, Singapore]. https://hdl.handle.net/10497/23234
How is Project-Based Learning Effective in Music Lessons?
Introduction
My students often questioned the point of learning a particular musical instrument during music lessons. They asked if it was simply for grading purposes. This got me thinking about how I could make music learning more relevant for students. I came across Project-Based Learning (PBL) in the book Using Technology with Elementary Music Approaches (Burns, 2020), and read more about PBL from PBLWorks (What is PBL?, n.d.). These inspired the idea of getting students to be content creators like YouTubers, and apply what they had learnt from music lessons to create instructional videos.
Inquiry Question
How is Project-Based Learning effective in music lessons?
Methodology
Target Audience
| Primary Four students from three classes
| Each class comprises 40 girls
| Students are of mixed abilities
| Students work in friendship groups
Data Collection
This contemporary research methodology combines quantitative and qualitative approaches to provide additional perspectives, create a richer picture, and present multiple findings. The quantitative
methodology provides definitive facts and figures, while the qualitative one provides a human dimension. This mixed-methods methodology can produce interesting results as it presents exact data while also being exploratory (Indeed Editorial Team, 2023).
For this inquiry, quantitative data was collected through forced-choice questions in a post-survey, as well as teacher’s observations of students’ song choices and the number of chords and strumming patterns mastered. Qualitative data was obtained through open-ended questions in the post-survey, and the teacher’s observation of students’ engagement.
Duration
| Seven weeks
| One hour per week (two periods of music lessons weekly)
Pedagogical Principles
Project-Based Learning (PBL)
PBL is an educational approach that emphasises learning through the completion of a project or task that requires students to apply knowledge, skills, and concepts in a real-world context. In music education, PBL can be an effective way to engage students and help them develop a deep understanding of music.
The eight areas of Project-Based Learning (What is PBL?, n.d.) that I will explore are:
The purpose of implementing a PBL approach in the music classroom is to uphold the fundamental nature of music. When PBL is utilised in this manner, it fosters a stronger bond between students and music by establishing connections between music and their other academic subjects. Moreover, it instils a sense of ownership in students regarding their learning. Music should not be viewed as an isolated entity, confined to a one-hour music class. Instead, students should perceive music as an integral component of various subjects, allowing the connections they forge in their music class to resonate throughout the entire curriculum.
Curriculum Outline
The Little YouTuber Project
As part of The Little YouTuber Project, students are told that they are content creators. They
are to use the knowledge learnt from the eight weeks of teacher-led lessons and apply it to create ukulele instructional videos. This project is designed to provide them with a glimpse of, and the opportunity to emulate, what content creators are appreciated for –within a secure and controlled environment. In order to protect the privacy of young learners at this age, their videos were not uploaded onto YouTube. Instead they were shared in Google Classroom with their classmates.
Background
In the eight weeks of teacher-led lessons prior to the start of the project, students learnt:
| C, G, Am, and F chords
| Changing between chords
| Downward strumming
| Singing, and playing the ukulele
These are the instructions given to students for each week of one-hour lessons:
TIMELINE OF
‘THE
Week 1 | Choose a song.
LITTLE YOUTUBER PROJECT’
| The song has to be manageable for you and your group mates to play.
| You will have to sing the song while strumming the chords, so choose a song that you are comfortable singing.
| You may choose from the list of songs we covered in class. They are in the folder.
Learning Outcomes
Weeks 2–3
| Practise the piece with the ukulele.
| Play a verse and a chorus.
| Decide on a suitable strumming pattern.
| If you find the tablet (i.e., iPad or Tab) too small, you may want to print the ukulele scores.
Weeks 4–5
| Record the videos and save them in your Google Drive.
| Start to work on Google Slides (i.e., how do you intend to present your content?).
Possible Content:
1. Introduce the song (i.e., is there an interesting story behind the song?)
2. How to play the chords of the chosen piece?
3. How to play the strumming pattern?
4. How to play the song (i.e., are there any parts the viewer needs to take note of?)
5. What tricks can you use to change the chords well?
6. Final group performance video.
Weeks 6–7 | Finalise slides and content.
| Showcase to the class.
1) Understand Verse and Chorus 1) Able to be actively engaged 2) Understand Melody and Chord 2) Able to experience authentic learning
Discover various strumming patterns
Be able to read ukulele chord diagrams and chord sheets
Data Collected
Post-Survey
67 students responded to the post-survey.
Post-Survey Questions
1. Which part of the project did you enjoy doing? Please choose two.
a. Learning the song on the ukulele
b. Playing the song together with my group mates
c. Recording the various parts of the video
d. Doing up the slides on Google Slides/ Canva
2. Why did you enjoy doing those you mentioned above?
3. Which part of the project did you not enjoy doing? Please choose two.
a. Learning the song on the ukulele
b. Playing the song together with my group mates
c. Recording the various parts of the video
d. Doing up the slides on Google Slides/Canva
Able to collaborate and have good teamwork
Able to be creative and innovative
Able to be self-directed in learning
4. Why did you not enjoy doing those you mentioned above?
5. What were some difficulties you faced while doing the project?
6. If there was any part of the project you could improve on, what would it be?
7. What have you learnt from this project? You may choose more than one option.
a. I am able to play a song on the ukulele with C, G, Am, and F chords
b. I am able to strum a few strumming patterns on the ukulele
c. I am able to play chords other than C, G, Am, and F
d. I am able to sing and play the ukulele
e. I am able to differentiate between verse and chorus
f. I know the difference between melody and chords
g. I am able to read the ukulele chord chart and figure out the fingerings
h. I am able to read the ukulele scores
i. I am able to create slides/video with Google Slides or Canva
j. I am able to work well with my friends
Post-Survey Findings
Q1. WHICH PART OF THE PROJECT DID YOU ENJOY DOING? PLEASE CHOOSE TWO.
Learning the song on the ukulele
Playing the song together with my group mates
Recording the various parts of the video
The findings indicate that the students enjoy creating content by designing slides. It is also heartening to know that they enjoy playing the songs together with their friends. Being able to enjoy music with their friends is important to them. The low percentage of those who enjoyed recording the various
parts may be due to the lack of technical know-how, and the difficulty of recording content well in a conducive environment. Some of them shared that having to speak in front of the camera without a script was tough too. This resulted in them having to do many retakes.
Q2. WHY DID YOU ENJOY DOING THOSE YOU MENTIONED ABOVE?
The following themes were derived from the students’ responses:
Playing the ukulele
Doing up the slides on Google Slides/Canva I don’t have a second one
Having fun
Sharing our ideas as a team
| 67.2% of the students enjoyed doing up the slides on Google Slides/Canva.
| 40.3% of the students enjoyed learning the song on the ukulele.
| 64.2% of the students enjoyed playing the song together with their friends.
| 29.9% of the students enjoyed recording the various parts of the video.
Working together/ Cooperation/Teamwork
“I can learn a new song while practising teamwork and bond with my groupmates.”
Learning a new song and being able to play it on the ukulele
“Learning the song (“Counting Stars”) was a good lesson. It was one of my favourite songs and now I know how to play it!”
“I like to learn songs and sing along with an instrument. I like to play songs in a group.”
Playing the ukulele together with friends
“I enjoyed playing the song with my friends as they were very patient and kind.”
Creating content in a video
“I enjoyed recording the video and doing up the slides on canva. As it was a fun experience and to be able to do it with my friends was one of the best things about it.”
Placing effort
“I love it because we put in a lot of our effort into this little project.”
Q3. WHICH PART OF THE PROJECT DID YOU NOT ENJOY DOING? PLEASE CHOOSE TWO.
Learning the song on the ukulele
Playing the song together with my group mates
the various parts of the video
Doing up the slides on Google Slides/Canva
Finding a place for us to record the video
Downloading the video Finding a spot to play
Playing the D7 chord
Editing our recording
When everybody says they do not have time
Picking the song
Finding a place for us to record the video
Picking a song
Disagreeing with my group members
Carrying the chair from the music room to the concourse
When we are looking for a song to choose
When we were choosing the song
(3%)
(3%)
(1.5%)
(1.5%)
56.7% of the students did not like recording the video. Similar to the discussion above, this could be because being in front of the camera was new to them and needed getting used to. 32.8% of the students did not like
learning the song on the ukulele. Many of these students had attempted new songs that they had searched for on the internet. A few of them explained that they did not have enough time to learn a new song.
Q4. WHY DID YOU NOT ENJOY DOING THOSE YOU MENTIONED ABOVE?
The following themes were derived from the students’ responses:
Recording content
“I did not enjoy recording the various parts of the video because it takes time to do it right.”
“I did not particularly enjoy recording. It was just that it was difficult to angle the camera to allow all of us to be seen and it was rather messy to have so many videos due to mistakes and we may accidentally send the wrong video.”
Lack of cooperation within the group
“I found it hard to communicate with my group members.”
“I do not enjoy it because some of my group members were not cooperating.”
“My friends kept losing focus and gave many reasons not to do a certain song.”
Difficulty mastering a new song within the given time
“When learning the song, my group mates could not decide which song to do.”
“Learning how to play together and sing is very hard and difficult. It’s the first time playing together, so we were a bit out of tune. Learning the song is just as hard.”
Lack of technical know-how
“I need more training and guidance on how to use Google Slides and Canva, some of us are not familiar with it and the ones that were familiar kept being asked by many of us on how to do it. We also lost a few videos as a result of unfamiliarity.”
Q5. WHAT WERE SOME DIFFICULTIES YOU FACED WHILE DOING THE PROJECT?
The following themes were derived from the students’ responses:
Recording content
“We could not really record the video with us at a good angle so we had to ask people to help us.”
“Recording various parts of the video was a bit annoying as XX had to keep going back and forth to start and end the videos.”
“Finding a spot was the most annoying as we had to try out a lot of places, some were too noisy, some had so many ants and millipedes, but in the end, the spot we did at was fine.”
Singing and strumming
“We needed to play in harmony, and sing. Some of us didn’t really want to sing, which made problems for our group.”
“We could not decide the strumming pattern for the various parts of the song.”
Deciding on a suitable song
“Not knowing which song to chose”
“Agreeing on what song to play”
Lack of time
“We could not stop laughing and ended up wasting a lot of time and I keep on doing mistakes as I could not keep track of when is which chord.”
Q6. IF THERE WAS ANY PART OF THE PROJECT YOU COULD IMPROVE ON, WHAT WOULD IT BE?
The following themes were derived from the students’ responses:
Time management
“We could have not spend so much time deciding where to record the video.”
“We can try to finish most of our work before our deadline”
“More time to record”
Cooperation & communication
“Having the teamwork spirit in us and stop fighting.”
“Trying to be more serious about it, and not make a fool”
Singing
“We would sing louder as that makes up the main melody.”
“we could not really do stuff when someone is absent”
Uploading videos into Google Drive/Slides/Canva
“Downloading the video”
“My teammates did not go on Canva and I was often the only one updating and improving the slides.”
Playing better as a group
“I think I can improve on the part where I am playing on the ukulele so that I can play it together with my friends. So that there will not be people who are fast and people who are slower.”
“I would want to improve on our group performance we kept on playing the wrong chords.”
“Listen to what everyone wants and incorporate it in this project.”
“I would also have improved the recording. eg. the angle for the group performance.” Preparation
“Having a schedule for what to do every lesson.”
“I could have been more familiar with the song as it would be easier to play.”
“I think I can think of ways on how to make sure that we do not need to record the videos again and again by preparing a script to make sure that my group mates and I will know what to say or do.”
Perfecting the video content
“It would be good if we had more training on how to use Google Slides and Canva.”
“I would like to add in bloopers. I find that some may dislike ours or may be having a bad day, so having a funny blooper may cheer them up or make them change their minds.”
Q7. WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNT FROM THIS PROJECT? YOU MAY CHOOSE MORE THAN ONE CHOICE.
am able to play a song on the ukulele with C, G, Am and F chords
I am able to strum a few strumming patterns on the ukulele
I am able to play other chords other than C, G, Am and F
I am able to sing and play the ukulele
I am able to differentiate between verse and chorus
I know the difference between melody and chords
I am able to read the ukulele chord shart and figure out the fingerings
I am able to read the ukulele scores
am able to create slides/video with Google Slides or Canva
I am able to work well with my friends
The top three items were related to ukulele skills. 91% of the students felt that they were able to sing and play the ukulele. 85.1% felt that they were able to strum a few strumming patterns on the ukulele. 82% felt that they were able to play a song on the ukulele with C, G, Am, and F chords.
The lowest three items were related to skills and knowledge that had not been covered in the teacher-led lessons prior to the project. Only 46.3% felt that they were able to play other chords other than C, G, Am, and F. 52.2% knew the difference between melody and chords. 62.7% were able to differentiate between verse and chorus.
Observations
The compilation of students’ song choices served as a reflection of their comfort levels in attempting new songs within the limited time available. The teacher made this observation after the students had selected their songs. Through this observation, the teacher understood that a significant number of students preferred showcasing their technical expertise – teaching the audience how to play a song – rather than investing time in learning a new song for the purpose of imparting the same skill. This insight was gleaned through post-project questioning of the students.
Song Selection
Table 1
Songs Selected by Students
Chose a song they learnt during the teacher-led lessons 4 6
Note: The numbers in the table represent the number of groups.
The primary intent of this observation is to consolidate potential song choices for the upcoming year. The aim is to share this information with next year’s students who will
undertake a similar project, providing them with suggestions of possible song selections based on the current students’ preferences and choices.
Song Choices
Table 2
Chords Learned in the Project
TAUGHT DURING
“Faded” “I’m Yours”
“How Far I’ll Go” “Sunroof”
“Something Just Like This” “You Are My Sunshine”
“This Is Me” “Always Remember Us This Way”
“Titanium” “All Too Well”
“Wellerman” “Thunder”
“Counting Stars”
“I Knew You Were Trouble”
The majority of students successfully mastered fundamental chords such as C, G, Am, and F, while only two groups ventured into the more advanced Dm and D7 chords.
Despite this, students demonstrated versatility by attempting eight new songs using the basic set of chords they had learned.
Chords Mastered
Table 3
Students’ Proficiency in Strumming Patterns
Note: The numbers in the table represent the number of groups.
The majority of students demonstrated mastery of the basic “Down Down Down Down” strumming pattern. A more complex “Down Up Down Up” strumming pattern was attempted by only two groups.
Strumming Patterns
Table 4
Students’ Proficiency in Strumming Patterns
Additionally, two other groups explored creating content focused on plucking techniques, showcasing a diverse range of approaches to strumming and plucking within the project.
Students’ Works
Click on the links below to watch samples of students’ works. Please do not share these videos without permission.
Note: The numbers in the table represent the number of groups.
Discussion
Active Engagement and Skill Enhancement
PBL encourages students to be actively involved in their learning process. By working on music-related projects, students can explore and apply musical concepts in practical ways, leading to a deeper understanding and retention of knowledge.
The students were actively involved in the project. They were engaged in the content planning process and had conversations about what would make the best content for their videos. For example, students were creative in brainstorming how they could present their ukulele skills through the videos and slides, and explored a variety of content ideas. Although the main purpose was to create tutorials on playing different songs on the ukulele, some groups went on to discuss the proper way of holding the ukulele, as well as good fingering techniques. Some even shared their personal musical journeys through bloopers. They incorporated humour
and unique visuals to make their content stand out. This diversity of content was important to them as it could keep their audience engaged and attract a wider range of viewers. Student engagement was also evident in how they scripted and rehearsed segments of their videos to deliver their content more effectively, and reduce the need for re-recording.
Students were also engaged in their musical learning. For example, eight groups took the initiative to learn a new song on their own. From the questionnaire results and teacher observations, it is evident that students’ knowledge of chords and ability to sing and play the ukulele improved significantly after the implementation of this project. It is gratifying to observe that the project not only assisted students in overcoming initial challenges, such as difficulties in transitioning to the G chord, singing and playing the ukulele simultaneously, and plucking melodies on the instrument, but also facilitated a deeper development of their
ukulele-playing skills. The project served as a platform for growth in various aspects of their musical skills. By honing these skills, the students enjoyed a more integrated and meaningful musical experience, singing and playing together with confidence.
Authentic Learning Experiences
Projects in music can mirror real-life musicmaking experiences, such as composing, performing, or recording music. This project combines music lessons with the experience of being a content creator on platforms like YouTube. It mirrors the real-life experiences of many content creators, and serves as a practical application of what students are learning. This makes lessons more engaging and relevant, as students see how their musical skills can be applied in a real-world context.
This project also serves as an opportunity for career exploration. Students discover that being a content creator involves a lot of hard work. This realisation helps them appreciate the effort that goes into producing quality content and may even inspire them to pursue careers in media, entertainment, or the arts. Some students may find that they have a passion for content creation and decide to pursue it as a career, while others may gain a deeper appreciation for the music industry or its related fields.
Through creating and editing content for their ‘YouTube’ channel, students can develop a range of skills, including video editing, graphic design, audio production, and content planning. These skills can be valuable in various career paths in the future.
Collaboration and Teamwork
Music often involves group performances or collaborations, and PBL provides an excellent opportunity for students to develop teamwork and communication skills. They can learn to work together effectively, share ideas, and create a cohesive musical
outcome. From the survey conducted, students expressed their enjoyment of various aspects related to teamwork and togetherness during the project. This kind of feedback indicates a positive and collaborative work environment, which can be beneficial for productivity and team morale.
a. Collaboration and Teamwork
Students enjoyed the opportunity to collaborate and coordinate with their teammates through this project. This suggests that they value the synergy that comes from working together towards a common goal.
b. Learning Together
Students’ mentions of “learning together” highlight the educational aspect of the project. It is a positive sign when team members feel that they are not only accomplishing tasks, but also gaining knowledge and skills in the process.
c. Quality Time Together
The fact that students mention their enjoyment of spending quality time together is significant. It suggests that the project provided not only learning and development, but also social bonding opportunities.
d. Togetherness
A prevailing theme from the survey is “togetherness”. This underscores the sense of unity and camaraderie among the students. This feeling of togetherness can lead to increased motivation, mutual support and encouragement, and a stronger sense of belonging within the group. It also empowers the students to take ownership of their learning process, building their confidence and independence as musicians.
e. Enjoyable Atmosphere
Students’ mentions of fun, laughter, and playing the ukulele together indicate
that the project fostered a pleasant and enjoyable atmosphere. Such an environment can boost team morale and overall satisfaction, which aids learning. Overall, the project created a positive and enriching experience for the students, with a strong emphasis on collaboration, learning, and social interaction, eventually leading to a cohesive musical outcome.
Creativity
and Innovation
PBL can encourage students to think creatively and come up with innovative solutions to musical challenges. This
approach fosters artistic expression and originality in their musical endeavours.
Many groups chose to explain chord charts thoroughly, combining verbal explanations with visual aids in order to cater to different learning styles, and making the content more accessible and engaging. In order to enhance comprehension and retention, one group drew the chord chart on the board and stood next to it, employing an interactive visual method and providing a dynamic and hands-on way for their peers to understand the fingering of chords. Another group highlighted the importance of the
left thumb’s positioning, demonstrating a deeper understanding of playing technique. Sharing such nuances not only improved the audience’s skills but also revealed the students’ own grasp of the subject matter. Incorporating bloopers at the end of a presentation was also a clever method used by students to inject humour and create a more relaxed and enjoyable learning atmosphere. This personal and light-hearted touch made the content more memorable and engaging for the audience.
The students’ personal connection to the content likely played a role in inspiring their creativity. When students are invested in and passionate about a topic, it often shines through in their presentations, making the learning experience more meaningful for both the presenters and the audience. The students enjoyed using their creativity to decorate their slides and found software like Google Slides and Canva to be user-friendly for enhancing their content. The creative visuals helped to captivate audiences and make their content more appealling.
The students had the freedom to choose their recording locations within the school, as long as they did not disturb others. This approach fostered artistic expression and originality in their content presentations as it encouraged them to think outside the box and find unique settings that would complement the message they wanted to convey through their musical performance. These diverse locations not only added visual interest to the presentations but also provided an opportunity for students to match their surroundings with the theme or content of their work, enhancing the overall impact of their performances. It was a great way to encourage students to think creatively and make their presentations more engaging and memorable.
Problem-solving Skills
Based on the survey, students indicated that doing this project allowed them to develop problem-solving skills such as:
| Identifying problems
| Thinking analytically and critically
| Making decisions
| Researching and gathering useful information
| Prioritising
| Communicating well with others
| Adapting well to uncertainty and challenges
| Being persistent
| Having good time management
The students took the initiative to improve their music practice experience when they encountered problems. Printing out the score was helpful when learning and practising a song, as using small screens (like those of iPads) could be challenging. Having physical copies of the score offered several benefits: better visibility, being able to annotate and mark out areas to take note of, no screen distractions, ease of page turning, and personalisation.
Overall, it was great to see the students taking their music practice seriously and finding ways to make their learning process more effective. For example, the group working on the instructional video for the song “Always Remember Us This Way” faced a challenging decision regarding a specific chord in the song. The end of the chorus initially had a B flat chord, but due to time constraints, the difficulty of that chord, and the need to ensure the overall success of their project, they decided to change it to a C chord, which also sounded fine. This demonstrated their problem-solving skills, as well as their ability to communicate effectively within the group, adapt to challenges, and make strategic choices to prioritise their project’s progress and success.
One of the challenges students faced when filming their content with an iPad was finding the right framing when recording group performances. It was commendable that the students were resourceful and sought help from teachers or friends from other groups to overcome this issue. They also used furniture or other objects around them to position the iPad. These point to their problem-solving skills and adaptability, both of which are valuable life skills.
Self-directed Learning
This project empowered students to take ownership of their learning process as they had the autonomy to make decisions about their projects, set goals, and manage their time effectively. For example, students took the initiative to decide on their preferred presentation tools (Google Slides or Canva) to create their ukulele instructional video. When some students encountered difficulties with certain functions, they asked their peers for help. This peer-to-peer collaboration is an excellent way for students to build problem-solving skills, and support one another’s learning.
Some groups also took the initiative to learn new songs independently and use the internet as a valuable resource. They mentioned that learning to play new songs, especially ones that involved chord progressions they had learnt, was enjoyable and rewarding as it allowed them to choose songs that resonated with their tastes and abilities. Learning and playing music independently was a fulfilling experience for the groups as it fostered a sense of accomplishment and encouraged continual learning and improvement. As students become more proficient in playing songs with C G Am F chords, they may expand their repertoire and attempt more complex songs in the future.
Assessment and Feedback
There was continuous assessment and feedback throughout the project. The teacher could provide guidance and support as students worked on their projects, helping them improve their musical skills and understanding. Constant and effective communication and feedback during the project were crucial for a productive and successful learning environment. The teacher’s regular check-ins throughout the project demonstrated ongoing support and guidance, ensuring that students could receive timely feedback and assistance to address challenges encountered.
The feedback process for this project was comprehensive and supportive, fostering a collaborative learning environment. Students provided input on their peers’ videos through Google Forms. In addition, verbal feedback during video reviews added a personal touch, encouraging direct communication and ideas to be exchanged among classmates.
The use of face-to-face feedback, along with comments on Google Slides and Canva, offered a diverse range of communication channels. This variety accommodated different preferences and enhanced the overall feedback experience for students. The combination of face-to-face interaction and digital comments allowed for real-time and reflective feedback. This ensured that students received immediate input while also providing an opportunity for them to review and consider feedback at their own pace.
Commencing each music lesson by celebrating progress and sharing good practices was also a motivating strategy. This approach not only recognised and reinforced positive behaviours, but also fostered a culture of learning from one another, promoting a sense of community and collaboration. The inclusion of peer, teacher, and self-reflection contributed to a well-rounded approach in assessment and skill development.
MULTIDISCIPLINARY LEARNING
weeks, which was longer than expected. This was due to the complexity of recording, especially for beginners, who encountered distractions and difficulties. Providing guidance and support during recording could enhance efficiency. Holidays were also used to refine content on Google Slides or Canva, contributing to the project’s extended duration.
The Little YouTuber Project
Multidisciplinary learning
Music projects can integrate other subjects such as history, culture or technology. This multidisciplinary approach enhances students’ overall learning experience and helps them see the connections between music and other fields. In this project, music functioned as a core subject, intricately woven into various disciplines such as Language, Design, and Technology. These multidisciplinary connections played a crucial role in shaping the content.
The multidisciplinarity of the project emphasised six key areas: Active Engagement, Collaboration and Teamwork, Problem-solving Skills, Self-directedness, Creativity and Innovation, and Authentic Learning within the framework of ProjectBased Learning. The integration of music with these diverse areas not only supported the creation of content, but also underscored the holistic nature of the learning experience.
This approach also highlighted that music is not an isolated subject, but intersects with numerous other domains. Consequently, the project gained significance and purpose for students, offering a meaningful context for learning that went beyond the boundaries of traditional subject silos. The emphasis on the six key areas facilitated a comprehensive and well-rounded approach to education, fostering skills and competencies that are valuable across various disciplines and in real-world contexts.
Challenges
Time Management
The project faced challenges with regard to timeline and schedule management. Originally planned for seven weeks, it was extended to 10 weeks due to various factors. Weekly one-hour music lessons limited the practice time for learning and mastering songs within a two-week timeframe. The recording process consumed nearly four
limitations of having just one teacher for numerous student groups, they appreciated having accessible materials that enabled self-directed learning. Offering a variety of resources and support mechanisms could cater to different learning styles and needs, help ease students’ apprehensiveness and empower them to take ownership of their learning in the project.
Balancing content quality and time efficiency through proper planning and time management is essential. Therefore, the following may be useful for future projects:
| Set goals even more clearly.
| Break the project down into smaller tasks, with a timeline and deadlines for each task.
| Identify and prioritise critical tasks.
| Set realistic quality standards and avoid getting stuck on small details that do not significantly impact the final product.
| Establish clear communication channels, roles, and responsibilities. Weekly checkins can help ensure that everyone is on the same page and working efficiently.
Scaffolding
Based on survey responses and discussions, many students expressed the need for more structured support to alleviate their anxiety when tackling the project. They often felt overwhelmed when attempting to navigate the project independently and would have preferred additional guidance. Recognising the
Conclusion
PBL can be effective in enabling students to apply their knowledge, skills, and concepts in a real-world context and learn through the completion of a project or task. PBL is also an instructional approach which focuses on helping them gain a deeper understanding of a subject. It can be highly effective in music education, as well as in other fields.
Based on this inquiry project, PBL can be effectively implemented in music education by facilitating students’ active engagement, authentic learning, collaboration and teamwork, creativity and innovation, problem-solving skills, self-directed learning, and assessment and feedback. To implement PBL effectively in music education, teachers should carefully plan and scaffold projects, provide guidance and resources, offer opportunities for reflection and feedback, and ensure that projects align with educational objectives. By doing so, students can develop a richer and more enduring connection to music, while acquiring valuable skills that extend beyond the music classroom.
References Burns, A. M. (2020). Project-Based Learning. In A. M. Burns and C. Herring (Eds.), Using Technology with Elementary Music Approaches (pp. 173–205). Oxford University Press.
• What is PBL? (n.d.). PBLWorks. https://www.pblworks.org/what-is-pbl
• Indeed Editorial Team. (2023, August 1). What Is Research Methodology? (Why It’s Important and Types) Indeed. Retrieved October 26, 2023, from https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/career-development/research-methodology
Applying Diffusion Model Principles in Music Coursework Facilitation
Introduction
Ronald Lim Pasir
This article proposes a concept for facilitating music creative tasks which emerged from critically considering the parallels between a technological process of a diffusion model used in the industry, and teaching processes such as deconstruction in our music classroom.
Deconstruction originated as a movement of critically reading texts and questioning the status of language, and is largely accorded to the classic texts written by Algerian-French philosopher Jacques Derrida in the 1970s (i.e., L’écriture et la différence). A postmodern culture of critically re-examining what makes up discourse across various disciplines followed, including in Arts and Music.
In our local music education context, students are given opportunities to develop and demonstrate their musical
understanding through the use of music arranging and production skills/ techniques, making creative decisions asynchronously to organise and shape sound into music. Deconstruction is an existing learning approach in which those processes are broken down into smaller, more manageable components, allowing learners to understand and master each element before integrating them into their own coursework (arrangement or composition). Apart from learning the genre-specific musical characteristics of the deconstructed piece and how musical ideas are realised, students also gain familiarity and confidence in the technological skills pertinent to the medium upon which the activities are carried out (i.e., Digital Audio Workstation – DAW), which may also be applied in other musical settings.
A deconstruction module may involve one or more of the following aspects (need not be in sequence):
ASPECT
Choose Song Choose a suitable song that matches the student(s)’ skill level that will serve as the basis for the module.
| Alignment of song choice to specific learning objectives of the module (i.e., skills or concepts can be highlighted).
| Balance between student preference and skill level/ song accessibility (overcomplexity could lead to frustration). The facilitator may alternatively present options or make the choice.
ASPECT DESCRIPTION PEDAGOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS
Analyse Structure Break down the song’s structure into its components (e.g., intro, verses, chorus) while referencing the established style. Have students visually map the structure on a document or within the DAW.
Explore Instruments and Timbre
Examine the song’s instruments and their roles/positions, focusing on key instruments and how they contribute to the overall sound (maps from structure analysis could extend here). Explore timbral possibilities, encouraging students to recreate or modify certain sounds.
Notes and Rhythm
Recording and Arranging
Deconstruct the melody, harmony, and rhythm. Isolate specific sections and experiment with variations.
| Diversifying across various musical genres/styles to broaden musical understanding, or comparing with other songs in the same genre/style for depth.
| Active listening templates/graphic organisers can help students map out the song’s structure effectively (especially if they are new to this process), make thinking visible and better facilitate discussion.
| Assess students’ readiness to further shape the sound of virtual instruments through parameter controls (i.e., articulation, synthesisers) and plug-in effects (e.g., amp modelling/pedalboard for guitars).
| Requiring students to spot and correct deliberate mistakes (e.g., bass in high register, improper patch choice) can accelerate learning, though it may risk inattentive students absorbing the wrong technique.
Mixing and Editing
Teach students how to record and edit audio/MIDI in the DAW. Discuss arrangement techniques such as layering, building tension, and shaping dynamics.
| Enactive listening activities where students jam with real instruments can supplement sequencing/ recording into the DAW; may include piano roll notation to accompany lead sheets/scores.
| Pre-empt common mistakes associated with copy-pasting or looping (e.g., displaced loop point, misconceptions of how chord progressions work).
| Understanding the differences between live and virtual instruments – both with advantages and limitations –helps inform students’ choices in their own projects.
| Possibly enlist student consultants to teach peers how to arrange for their primary instrument; if prerequisite skill is lacking, assign research groups to explore how to arrange a specified instrument (e.g., YouTube tutorials, past examples), followed by reciprocal teaching.
Practise basic mixing concepts such as EQ, panning, and volume control (including automation), and the moderate use of additional sound effects such as reverb and delay if it enhances the overall production.
| Overloading beginners with too many techniques at once can be counterproductive – prioritise fundamental concepts.
| While students should not be expected to mix professionally, just as instruments have their own idiosyncrasies, mixing aesthetically to produce polished music requires a nuanced understanding of real-world practice and desired outcomes. Access to professional project files and reverse engineering those mixes can be a valuable experience.
Click here for an example assignment involving aspects of notes and rhythms, and mixing and editing for Secondary Four Normal(Technical) Music students with one-year prior GarageBand experience.
Deconstruction allows for a structured approach to learning music arranging and production, enabling students to gradually build their musical understanding and proficiency with a DAW, eventually creating their own music with confidence and creativity.
Challenges in the Classroom
In practice, successful music coursework (or music creative task) requires the integration of many intertwined yet discrete aspects/skills – often with steep individual learning curves and collectively requiring significant bandwidth to acquire – applied simultaneously and in coordination with one another. A learning or teaching gap in even one aspect could easily cascade and result in coursework submissions that are not stylistic or demonstrate weak genrespecific musical understanding.
During coursework facilitation, students often require individual guidance as at any point in time, their needs would differ across the many aspects or skills. However, the reality is that the teacher may not be able to monitor every student within a given session. Coupled with students’ varied learning paces, absenteeism and motivation issues, these could lead to a disparity that widens across multiple sessions/iterations, which may then pose further pedagogical and/or other challenges for the teacher. The resulting unsatisfactory or incomplete attempts cause emotional disconnect or earned helplessness among some students, and in subsequent modules, the teacher may find himself/herself stuck reteaching old concepts or feeling like he/she has to start from scratch.
Advances in the Diffusion Model for Text-to-Image Generation
While not directly related, a similar parallel to the iterative coursework facilitation process can be found in the technological development of text-to-image generative machine learning over the past decade.
The mechanics of generating images from text can be traced to the use of Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) by Reed et al. (2016). Using an analogy, GANs function akin to creative rivals, where one side tries to make fake images that match a description (generator), while the other side tries to tell if the images are real or fake (discriminator). With practice, both entities progressively enhance their capabilities, and the network learns to generate convincing images from text.
However, GANs have limitations. They are capable of very fast image generation but tend to create a limited set of similar outcomes that closely resemble the examples they were trained on, and lack the ability to produce genuinely creative variations. GANs also exhibit reliability issues when producing more complex images from multifaceted prompts. These challenges are comparable to a music student who can copy music accurately but struggles to create an original arrangement that is coherent and demonstrates genre-specific musical understanding.
A breakthrough in text-to-image generation technology occurred when the diffusion model (abbreviated from “diffusion probabilistic model”) was proven by Ho et al. (2020) to be capable of generating high quality and diverse photorealistic images from text. Their approach involved training the network to denoise images that initially had slight noise, gradually progressing to denoise increasingly noisy images. In contrast with GANs that “throw the network into the deep end to learn through brute force”, the diffusion model enables scaffolded learning of the immeasurably complex image generation process.
4
1 Initialisation The process begins with a clean image that serves as the basis for the iterations.
2 Noise Injection Controlled noise is intentionally added to the clean image, creating a noisy version of the data. The amount of noise added is typically adjusted step by step (forward diffusion).
6
5
3
Sequential Denoising The noisy data is then processed in a series of steps by a neural network, with each timestep aiming to reduce the noise level and progressively increasing the image quality (backward/ reverse diffusion). This sequential denoising serves as training for the network and parameters are learned.
Progressive Noise Levels An integral aspect of this methodology is its deliberate orchestration of noise escalation. As the diffusion process progresses, noise levels systematically intensify with each step, necessitating the network to undertake more decisive actions to restore the noisy data.
Guided Refinement At each timestep, external guidance can be provided to the model. This guidance typically takes the form of additional information, such as textual descriptions or conditioning signals that specify desired characteristics for the final result. This aids the model in aligning its denoising efforts with predefined objectives.
Generation Upon completion of the diffusion process, the outcome is a dataset that is significantly cleaner and more aligned with the desired result: a high-quality image that faithfully corresponds to the provided guidance or text prompt.
Here is a simplified overview of how the diffusion model works in text-to-image generation:
Figure 1. Directed graphical model of denoising diffusion probabilistic models (Ho et al., 2020)
SEQUENTIAL DENOISING
The key advantage of this iterative approach is that it provides a more stable and controlled training process. By starting with less noisy data, the model has a better chance to learn meaningful representations and gradients during the initial training stages. As noise levels increase gradually, the model can adapt more effectively to denoise progressively noisier samples while maintaining the ability to generate high-quality data, as well as output variations based on user-provided text prompts. Figure 3 is an example where
a variant of the diffusion model can modify images based on a text prompt (e.g., expressions) with minimal effort and time.
Riding on this breakthrough, subsequent techniques such as stable diffusion and the latent diffusion model have since garnered significant commercial and public interest in the application of text-to-imagery technology. Midjourney and Stability AI are well-known models based on latent and stable diffusion models.
Adapting Principles for Proposed Solutions in the Classroom
The following parallels between the principles inherent in the diffusion model used in image generation and the deconstruction approach to music coursework facilitation may be drawn. These could help alleviate the challenges highlighted in the second section:
DIFFUSION MODEL FOR
PRINCIPLES
Initialisation
Noise Injection
The clean image at the start is set as a clear and viable end goal that the trained network has to emulate.
DECONSTRUCTION APPROACH FOR MUSIC COURSEWORK FACILITATION
The project file that students start on should be a complete arrangement that is attainable within the available resources, tools, and software (i.e., avoid audio stems or techniques that are beyond the DAW’s capabilities or course/syllabus requirements).
Controlled noise that the network will have to systematically solve is intentionally added to the clean image.
Sequential Denoising
Progressive Noise Levels
The sequential and controlled denoising process creates manageable steps for the network to progressively work towards generating high-quality images.
The facilitator intentionally designates parts of the arrangement to be edited or removed to create an assignment within the student’s zone of proximal development (ZPD). These can be planned beforehand and given out as a set of tasks, or the facilitator can make the edits directly at the student’s workstation.
Students gradually develop arrangement/production skills and musical understanding as they work on their assignment. The end point of each iterative task is designed to always result in a complete arrangement which does not necessarily have to be identical to the original project file, allowing for ownership, competence, and emotional connection.
Noise escalation is deliberately orchestrated. As the diffusion process progresses, noise levels systematically intensify with each step, necessitating the network to undertake more decisive actions to restore the noisy data.
After completing smaller and manageable tasks, the facilitator can designate tasks that cover new skills or concepts for the next iteration, or move on to more complex assignments that cover or practise multiple skills. During later iterations, the new or more challenging aspect or skill should be frontloaded where attention or engagement has not yet been spent, following which the student would practise and refine what had been learnt previously (i.e., the first step is new/challenging, and must be completed before they can move on to the second step that they are already comfortable or familiar with).
sleeping sad joyous
screaming
Note: From “DreamBooth: Fine tuning text-to-image diffusion models for subject-driven generation” by N. Ruiz, Y. Li, V. Jampani, Y. Pritch, M. Rubinstein, & K. Aberman, 2023, Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition 2023, Vancouver, Canada (https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2208.12242).
Figure 3: Expression manipulation of a dog instance
(Ruiz et al., 2022)
Figure 2:
Abstract illustration of sequential denoising with progressive noise levels
v
PRINCIPLES
Progressive Noise Levels (continued)
DIFFUSION MODEL FOR TEXT-TO-IMAGE GENERATION
DECONSTRUCTION APPROACH FOR MUSIC COURSEWORK FACILITATION
The gradual increase in complexity and deliberate sequencing of learning tasks ensures that students can navigate their learning journey effectively, incentivising them to cross the hurdle of the earlier challenging step(s) to advance to the next step(s) that is back in their comfort zone, where they can showcase the skills or concepts that they are familiar with.
Discovery of new need/tool/concept
Introduction of new tool/concept/skill
Guided Refinement Guidance can be provided through conditioning signals or textual descriptions to steer the image generation process at any step of the iterative process. Later versions of diffusion models have also stressed the importance of checkpoints in improving outcome quality.
Iterative tasks may be designated individually, by group or class, and should be tailored to their specific needs across different aspects of coursework. Subdividing tasks into clear steps lets them serve as checkpoints and avenues for guidance to ensure that students can progress effectively and receive support from the facilitator when required. The approach encourages students to revisit and refine their work over time, promoting iterative improvement and gradual understanding of music to enhance their coursework.
Mastery of new need/tool/concept #2
Mastery of new tool/concept/skill
Exploration of new tool/concept/skill
Discovery of new need/tool/concept
Introduction of new tool/concept/skill
Generation The outcome of the diffusion process is a dataset that is used to train the network to generate high-quality images that are cleaner and more aligned with the provided guidance or text prompt.
When ready, students embark on projects with less structured iterations and undefined steps, requiring more decisive action on their part to exercise their musical understanding and apply the aspects/skills/ masteries that they have practised so far.
To further differentiate learning, the facilitator varies the schedule by deciding the breadth and depth of iterative tasks (e.g., number of bars, choice of part, structure of tasks), as well as what skill/concept/mastery
the individual is ready for, according to Jay Dorfman’s Stacked Cycles of Mastery (2013). Click here to read more about scaffolding depth of learning with Dorfman’s (2013) Cycle of Mastery.
Exploration of new need/tool/concept #2
Sample Tasks
Mastery of new tool/concept/skill
Discovery of new need/tool/concept #2
Exploration of new tool/concept/skill
Introduction of new tool/concept/skill #2, or reinforcement of skill
For common understanding, the project file in which students work on is defined as Project. They would be assigned tasks or quests to develop or practise specific concepts or skills, which are defined as iterations. Each iteration would require steps to complete them (Fig. 6). At a suitable juncture, the facilitator will advance the class to the next project.
Figure 4: Dorfman’s Cycle of Mastery (2013)
Figure 5: Dorfman’s Stacked Cycle of Mastery (2013) facilitates multiple practitioners in a regular class setting
Note: From Theory and Practice of Technology-Based Music Instruction, by J. Dorfman, 2013, Oxford University Press.
Each project would consist of multiple iterations. To account for students with varied paces, iterations can vary in difficulty; they can be simply mono-structural and thus require only one step, whereas more advanced students would be assigned more complex iterative tasks, even for the same concept or skill, that require more steps (Fig. 6), drawing on Dorfman’s (2013) Stacked Cycles of Mastery.
Additional Principles | Project files must account for the capabilities and limitations of the medium.
| The end of each iteration must be a viable product that students will not feel embarrassed to share with others (regardless of how much of it was actually their input).
| On a strategic level, students would attempt multiple projects, which should explore greater breadth or depth of concepts/aspects/skills and require greater decisive action for each iteration or step.
| Ideally, the final project that marks the end of the course of study would comprise of only one iteration with limitless steps, and contain minimal to no existing elements within to assist the student.
The following are two example projects, as well as ideas of how iterations and steps can be crafted.
PROJECT 1A Orchestral arrangement
REMARKS
OTHER RESOURCES
Possible starting point for practitioners who are classically trained musicians but lack music technology/arrangement/production experience
Click here for the orchestral score
Facilitators: Consider learning how to download and install the free VST - BBC’s Symphony Orchestra for better realised orchestral arrangements
Iterative Concepts Some Variables Example Assignment(s)
Sequence MIDI Length of passage, number of parts, choice of part(s) based on complexity
Layering
Articulation Defined range of instrument smart/ parameter controls, MIDI events such as velocity, pedal, volume automation
Mixing/editing Extent of volume (automation), panning, tempo (automation)
| Create (record or key-in) the two-note anacrusis before bar 1 of the strings
| Sequence the harp (step 1) chords/(step 2) clarinet/ (step 3) woodwind accompaniment in concert pitch for bars 1–12
| Copy and paste bars 123–171 of the melody to the trumpet solo
| (1) Double the melody of bars 1–12 to the horns, (2) ensuring the register is correct
| Complete the countermelody in bars 13–16 of the bass (1) clarinet, (2) horns
| Double the melody of the (1) flute, oboe and cors anglais from bar 243 to the end, (2) taking note of octave displacements on the score
| (1) Complete the double bass track bars 1–14 by duplicating over the notes from an appropriate point, and (2) change the articulation into pizzicato
| Using velocity to control the dynamics, shape the melodic phrasing of bars 1–8
| (1) Create a master track. (2a) Using volume automation, shape the dynamics of the piece from bars 25 to the end. (2b) Follow the crescendo and decrescendo indicated on the score.
| Pan the individual instrument tracks according to typical seating arrangement of a concert stage
| (1) Create a tempo track. (2a) Automate the tempo from bars 24 to create a stylistic interpretation (e.g., allargando). (2b) Listen to this recording for ideas.
1. JUPITER THEME: ANDANTE MAESTOSO FROM GUSTAV HOLST’S THE PLANETS
PROJECT
1B Electronic Dance Music (Remix)
REMARKS
It is not a requirement for project 1A to be attempted before 1B (e.g., N(T) syllabus students could work solely on 1B)
OTHER RESOURCES Lead sheet (melody and chords)
Iterative Concepts Some Variables Example Assignment(s)
| Convert the melody from triple meter to quadruple meter. The first four bars have been given as an example.
| Select a project BPM that is indicative of the EDM genre
| (1) Access the EQ in the master track, (2) select a preset that gives the overall production slightly more presence/ brightness
Conclusion
In summary, the proposed adoption of diffusion model principles in the deconstruction approach seeks to offer a practical strategy for scaffolding individual and asynchronous creative music tasks in a whole class setting. This method focuses on calibrated challenges, ensuring that students engage with tasks that are both stimulating and manageable within their ZPD, which act as stepping stones to progressively build students’ musical skills in a way that fosters ownership and confidence. Incorporating guided refinement and personalised checkpoints throughout the iterations and steps allows differentiation according to each student’s unique pace and needs, even as the class works on the same project and tasks towards similar learning goals. As students gain mastery and iterative tasks become more open, the responsibility of making
creative decisions is gradually released to the students, shifting the project setting into a dynamic space where they can apply their acquired skill sets and find their musical voice.
Moreover, the emphasis on adaptive learning aligns seamlessly with the rise of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). In an era where adaptability is paramount, this approach of refining given drafts (i.e., remedy missing or inaccurate parts, reshape and realise musical ideas etc.) not only equips students with musical skills but also engages them in a strategic shift towards honing their ability to adapt and refine their work and that of others. Nurturing the capacity to correct mistakes and refine creative outputs becomes integral in preparing students for a future where constant refinement and agility are key, aligning with the evolving landscape and the upcoming demands it places on learning and problem-solving.
Instrument/Timbre
Structure, recording and arranging
Defined range within instrument/ loop library, instrument smart/parameter controls, plugin effects, arpeggiation
| Choose appropriate instrumental synthesiser/electronic timbres from the instrument library for (1) drum kit, (2) bass, (3) pads, (4) harmony(ies)
| Add boomers or other appropriate fx loops near the end of the (1) intro, (2) build-up, (3) drop, to highlight the transition to the next section
| Enable arpeggiation for harmony 1 and set the accompaniment pattern to one that does not overpower/ clash with harmony 2
Number of section(s), complexity of variations
| (1) Create four-on-the-floor kicks in bars 10–161 (2) Edit the snare in the last four bars of the build-up section for a more convincing lead-up section to the drop
| Bring the chords of the pads of the outro to a lower inversion by bringing all the top notes down an octave
| Create a synth lead line for the drop section. (Advanced: listen to a recording of the full movement from Holst’s Jupiter, extract a motif from there as a basis of your lead line)
References
• Derrida, J. (1967). Writing and Difference / L’écriture et la difference. Éditions du Seuil.
• Dorfman, J. (2013). Theory and practice of technology-based music instruction. Oxford University Press.
• Ho, J., Jain, A., & Abbeel, P. (2020, December 6–12). Denoising diffusion probabilistic models. 34th Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS 2020), Vancouver, Canada. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2006.11239
• Reed, S., Akata, Z., Yan, X., Logeswaran, L., Schiele, B., & Lee, H. (2016). Generative adversarial text to image synthesis. Proceedings of the 33rd International Conference on Machine Learning, USA, 48 1060–1069. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.1605.05396
Ruiz, N., Li, Y., Jampani, V., Pritch, Y., Rubinstein, M., & Aberman, K. (2023). DreamBooth: Fine tuning text-to-image diffusion models for subject-driven generation. Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition 2023 Vancouver, Canada. https://doi. org/10.48550/arXiv.2208.12242
Social and Emotional Learning
Nurturing learning attributes involves developing characteristics, soft skills, dispositions, and values that can enable learners to learn better.
50 Ng Eng Kee investigated how a growth mindset could be facilitated.
66 Tan Yi Han investigated how she could develop self-directed learners through strategies such as learning stations in the learning of Philippines Kulintang Music.
76 Peng Boon Yen and Ng Kiat Ee Stella investigated how they could boost students’ self-esteem and social awareness in ukulele group performance.
90 Lee Yue Zhi and Yee Ziyun Noella investigated how they could promote social integration within the class through intentional groupings of students.
98 Anna Chen investigated the impact of her design of accommodation strategies for a student with special needs, which included developing his social-emotional competencies.
Investigating How Students Can Develop Growth Mindset in Their Music Learning
Introduction
Ng Eng Kee
Paya Lebar Methodist Girls’ School (Secondary)
According to American psychologist Carol Dweck, students who understand that their abilities can be developed possess a growth mindset. She further clarifies that a growth mindset is different from effort or grit. In a growth mindset, effort is involved, but it is not just about effort. Far more than effort, mindset is about our access to support, and our repertoire of strategies to help us solve problems. Effort is our means to an end, not the end. The end goal is the awareness that learning is improving. When nurturing
growth mindsets, it is vital to acknowledge effort, but praise improvement (Dweck, 2007).
The following table gives a comparison between a growth mindset and a fixed mindset.
People with a fixed mindset believe that their basic qualities, such as intelligence or talent, are fixed traits. They spend their time recording their intelligence and talents instead of developing them. They also believe that only talent, without effort, creates success. In a growth mindset, people
| Belief: Abilities can change as people learn, practise, and put in effort.
| Challenges are normal and expected in the process of learning and trying new things.
| If a concept is not mastered right away, it is seen as an opportunity to provide feedback for improvement.
| Emphasises learning goals (“becoming smart”, “improving abilities”), appreciation of effort, and understanding of failures as learning opportunities.
| Has higher achievements during challenging school transitions, and better completion rates in demanding school courses.
| Belief: Ability is fixed.
| It is what people are born with, and it cannot change.
| If they fail, they believe it is because their abilities are limited.
| Emphasises performance goals (“looking smart”, “proving their abilities”).
| Tends to avoid challenges.
believe that the most basic skills can be developed through dedication and hard work. Brains and talent are just the starting point. This perspective creates a love of learning and resilience, both of which are essential for success (Dweck, 2007).
Inquiry Questions
Many young musicians believe that their musical success is possible because of their unique innate musical talent and skills (Sloboda & Howe, 1991). This research will investigate the following questions:
| Primary question: What is the extent of students’ growth mindset and their overall desire and motivation for music learning?
| Secondary question: What are the key factors that promote a growth mindset?
Research Design and Methodology
A heterogeneous class of 36 students with varying academic and musical abilities was involved in this research project. The participants were assessed at the beginning and the end of the study, and the results were analysed to understand whether students’ growth mindset had changed at the end of the research. A combination of quantitative data analysis and explanatory qualitative evaluation were examined.
The focus of the Secondary One curriculum is ‘Music Around the World’. Students learn four songs, and are introduced to the historical, social, and cultural contexts that shape these songs. The objectives of the lessons include:
| Understanding pulse, rhythm, and pitch (through the Kodály method)
| Developing score reading skills
| Ensemble playing (from unison to multi-part ensemble)
| Ostinatos, Call and Response, and Improvisation
At the implementation stage of the project, the following strategies were carried out to encourage students to believe in their ability to learn and improve:
1. Proactive Error Detection – The teacher modelled the identification of technical and musical errors and provided possible improvement steps. Acknowledging personal mistakes was encouraged, and always followed by praise for personal responsibility, and recommendations for next actions.
2. Praise Effort – The teacher identified and praised students who showed effortful improvement, especially when individuals took time to practice and improve outside of direct rehearsal instruction. Students were also encouraged to compliment their peers who showed evidence of hard work and progress.
3. Confidence and Acceptance of Mistakes – The teacher reminded students daily that confident mistakes were always better than timid accuracy. Students who were cautious about the task were encouraged to play the wrong notes and rhythms as if they were correct. These efforts demonstrated the commonality of failure and its importance to education and success.
4. Differentiated Instruction – The teacher allowed students to choose the same piece of music but at different levels of difficulty. The teacher also provided various strategies to help students learn the chosen piece of music. For example, the teacher used call and response to help students learn the tune, and develop their listening and musical memory skills. The teacher also encouraged students to work together as a team and support each other during practice.
5. Feedback and Questions – The teacher gave feedback to students during rehearsals. At the end of the lesson, students could approach the teacher to ask questions related to the lesson.
Data Collection
At the end of Term 1, a set of questionnaires was administered. The questionnaire consisted of 21 five-point Likert scale questions and seven open-ended questions which were adapted from a questionnaire on students’ musical self-theories and goals, designed by Mullensiefen et al. (2018). The focus of the questions was to find out the students’ thinking characteristics, motivation, and learning preferences. The same questionnaire was administered in Term 4 to measure changes in students’ perceptions. The questions were grouped into different categories for better understanding of the data. Some of the statements were used twice because they addressed different components of the survey. The questions were grouped according to the following attributes:
| Mindset attitudes:
• Fixed mindset
• Growth mindset
| Motivation and learning preferences:
• Desire for learning
• Extrinsic motivation
• Intrinsic motivation
Data Analysis
Fixed Mindset
The first set of data focuses on fixed mindset. The statements in the questionnaire suggest a belief in inherent, unchangeable abilities and a resistance to learning or growth. Surprisingly, there was a slight increase in the number of students who seemed to have adopted more of a fixed mindset after three terms of lessons. Upon reflecting on their feedback, it was observed that some students found the end-of-year assignment too challenging, even though they had a choice of four songs and differentiation of product. For example, the students could include different instruments in their ensemble, and choose to perform with a minus-one track or entirely on their own. It suggests that students would prefer not to risk their grades for increased learning when confronted with a higherstakes assessment. Nevertheless, they were slightly more aware that musical success does not depend on innate talents alone.
Growth Mindset
For questions gauging students’ perception of their growth mindset, the changes were minimal except for the last statement. There was an increase of 0.55 in the mean ratings for the statement “musical talent can be learned by anyone”.
Motivation and Learning Preferences
For questions measuring students’ desire to learn music, there were some positive outcomes for the questions which were negatively phrased. Students reported they were less frustrated and felt less useless. There was also a slight increase in their desire to learn music.
If I knew I was not going to do well at a musical activity, I probably would not do it even if I might learn a lot from it.
People are born with very different amounts of musical talent, and practice does little to change that.
Musical success depends more on my innate (inborn or natural) talents than on how much practice I do.
*Mean ratings
I believe that I can improve musically.
I believe that I can develop my musical and personal talents through hard work, productive strategies and help from other people (coaches, teachers, classmates etc).
Growth mindset is essential for me.
I learn from my mistakes, and my failures help me become a more developed and skilled musician.
talent can be learned by anyone.
I tend to give up when I am frustrated with learning a particular piece of music.
Knowing music is really an important goal in my life.
To be honest, I really have little desire to learn music.
When it comes to music, I certainly feel useless at times.
The items which measured students’ intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation also saw some improvements.
Qualitative Responses
I learn music because I enjoy learning new things about music.
If it were up to me, I would spend all my time learning music.
I make a point of trying to understand all the music I see and hear.
I take a positive attitude towards myself musically.
In general, I see myself steadily
my musical abilities.
I want to improve my musical abilities.
I learn music because I enjoy learning new things about music.
If it were up to me, I would spend all my time learning music.
I
I take a positive
In general, I see myself steadily improving in my musical abilities.
I want to improve my musical abilities.
The responses from students were coded according to themes. The question of the choice and difficulty level of music was designed to probe whether students would embrace opportunities for growth by taking on new challenges rather than sticking to what they already knew how to do. 39% of the respondents indicated that they would like to play more challenging music.
A few students elaborated on their responses to playing challenging music.
They said:
| “Because I am able to do it” (Desire for learning/Growth mindset)
| “To improve my skills and also it sounds fun” (Desire for learning)
| “As long as I have ample practice” (Desire for learning)
| “I can learn more things” (Intrinsic motivation)
| “I can look back and see how much I have improved” (Intrinsic motivation)
| “I may like that music very much, and I will do my best to learn it” (Intrinsic motivation)
“If I had to choose between learning easy music that I know I can do well or performing music that challenges me, I would…” (complete the sentence)
For the question “How will music learning help me to develop a growth mindset”, the objective was to discover students’ perceptions on the key ingredients required for success in music learning. The students’ responses were coded into the following themes.
43% of the respondents identified perseverance as a key factor that promotes
a growth mindset. Perseverance involves the willingness of students to submit themselves to practising music. These students recognise that perseverance is essential for promoting a growth mindset because it cultivates a positive attitude towards challenges, encourages continuous learning and improvement, and fosters resilience in the face of adversity.
Perseverance and resilience
| “I will learn to persevere.”
| “I will persevere to learn music even if I cannot play it at the start, until I can play it.”
| “Not to give up even when you get stuck at a certain part of the song/score.”
Creativity and exploration
Patience and learning from mistakes
Self-belief and goal setting
| “By learning new pieces and exploring different genres (learn new things).”
| “I find joy in doing and learning music, which allows me to push myself with the excuse of ‘you like music’.”
| “It will help me be more openminded because of the challenges I face while learning music.”
| “Think out of the box.”
| “I will keep trying even if I failed before.”
| “Learning from my mistakes.”
| “Being more patient.”
| “It will help me to have a mindset to never give up.”
| “Help me to learn and face challenges.”
| “I’ll be stepping out of my comfort zone.”
| “It will help me learn to strive to achieve my goals.”
The next question asks about the role teachers play in promoting a growth mindset in students. About 37% of the respondents wanted encouragement and support, followed by diversified teaching
methods (15%). Clearly, a teacher’s diversified teaching method, attitude and approach, and encouragement for students to explore play a crucial role in fostering positive attitudes towards learning.
Encouragement and support
| “He can encourage me.”
| “My Music teacher can go through the struggles faced by the students in class.”
| “He can be more encouraging.”
Diversified teaching methods
| “Show us videos of people performing wonderful pieces.”
| “Play music games.”
| “Make more Kahoot to check on things that we have learnt.”
Teacher approach and attitude 7%
Encouraging exploration 4%
| “Teach at a slightly slower pace.”
| “Not be too strict.”
| “Teach music with more humour.”
| “To teach us other different kinds of music.”
| “Let us play more musical instruments.”
| “Play more songs during music lesson.”
Unclear / irrelevant
No response
For the section that looked at how the students were helping themselves to improve musically, more than 55% of the respondents identified practice as the main contributing factor. They understood that they could not run away from putting in effort, or more specifically, productive and consistent effort, to improve. The relationship between growth mindset and practising music is closely
intertwined. Students with a growth mindset do not view challenges and failures as an indication of their abilities. They know that they can improve their abilities through productive and consistent practice. Having a positive attitude towards challenges, continuous learning and improvement, and resilience in the face of adversity are recurring themes in the qualitative responses.
THEME % OF RESPONDENTS
Practice and dedication 55%
Expanding musical knowledge 9%
EXAMPLES OF STUDENTS’ RESPONSE
| “Practice.”
| “Be more focus during Music.”
| “Practice hard.”
| “Learn what notes are do re mi fa so la ti do.”
| “Listening to more music and take note of different things in the song.”
| “I can be more exposed to music.”
Variety and exploration 9%
Persistence and growth
6%
| “Be able to play harder music.”
| “Listening to music (maybe some genres and etc. via Spotify and YouTube).”
| “I would want to learn to play more different musical instruments.”
| “I want to learn to not give up so easily when practicing gets hard or boring.”
| “I want to have more grit and practice more.”
| “I want to challenge myself to learn new notes.”
When the respondents were asked what they would do when they were met with musical challenges, 41% said persistence and determination were essential in handling challenges. When faced with difficulties or setbacks along the way, students should have a positive attitude towards challenges. They could seek help or think of ways to solve the musical issues
THEME % OF
RESPONDENTS
Persistence and determination
41%
Seeking help and support 31%
Utilising resources and guidance 7%
at hand, or be adaptive. They should view these as opportunities for growth rather than signs of failure or frustration. They can use this mindset to stay motivated and remain persistent to focus on continuous improvement through practice. Perseverance is a recurring theme in the qualitative responses, signifying its critical role in developing growth mindset.
EXAMPLES OF STUDENTS’
RESPONSE
| “I want to overcome the challenges and try again instead of giving up like I always do.”
| “I will try my best and face it head on.”
| “Try again and don’t give up.”
| “I will try my best to overcome it or ask my friends or teachers to help me.”
| “I try to overcome it by myself but if I really can’t I’ll ask my friends for help or advice.”.
| “I will seek help from my teachers and friends.”
| “I would ask people around me or my music teacher to clarify my questions.”
| “I would persevere, learn from my past mistakes, watch videos of people playing the piece and keep on practicing.”
| “I will try my best to remember the chords and which key to play.”
| “Watch YouTube videos.”
Problem-solving and adaptation 7%
| “I will write the notes out on the score and try to play one bar first until I get the hang of it.”
| “I would try out different chords and find out which one is the right one.”
| “Think of ways to solve.”
Broadening instrument skills
| “I would want to learn to play more and different instruments.”
3%
Unclear/irrelevant
| “I want to be able to play keyboard without mistakes.”
Positive attitude toward challenges 3%
| “I can always try one more until I get it.”
| “Continue trying my best.”
| “I will continue trying to learn the piece correctly till I get it right with no mistakes.”
| “I will motivate myself to overcome the challenges.”
19%
Unclear/ irrelevant 10%
Success looks different for everyone. However, it generally involves consistent progress over time towards achieving personal goals related to musical skills development. Students’ responses to the question “What does success look
like in a music lesson” were quite equally distributed into musical achievement and improvement, continuous learning and improvement, personal satisfaction and effort, understanding and connection, as well as students’ definition of success.
THEME
Musical achievement and improvement
% OF RESPONDENTS
EXAMPLES OF STUDENTS’ RESPONSE
| “When students learn something new every week.”
20%
Continuous learning and improvement
Personal satisfaction and effort
20%
| “Being able to read the music notes and count properly to play a song nicely.”
| “Being able to play new chords.”
| “Ability to improve on a piece from the previous lesson.”
| “Being able to learn from your mistakes and getting better every lesson.”
| “Ability to improve on a piece from the previous lessons.”
| “Finishing the task.”
| “Able to play without stopping.”
20%
| “Being able to play the piece well.”
| “Learning a new piece successfully.”
| “When I can play without stopping.”
The next question asked students what would motivate them to learn music. Their responses were evenly distributed into the following themes: social motivation,
interest in music, self-satisfaction, and learning experience. This shows that students can find motivation from various sources.
THEME % OF RESPONDENTS EXAMPLES OF STUDENTS’ RESPONSE
Social motivation
18%
Self-satisfaction and learning achievement 18%
| “Group projects as I think that it is more fun working together with friends and playing a musical piece together.”
| “My friends.”
| “Seating arrangements.”
| “Knowing that I will feel satisfied with myself after learning the music.”
| “Success in learning the piece.”
| “The fact that I can do better if I keep practicing.”
| “The result of learning a new song.”
| “Being able to play something.”
Learning experience and fun 15%
| “I will be more motivated if the music sounds nice to me.”
| “When my teammates and I are having fun learning and playing the musical instruments.”
| “Learn my favourite songs.”
Understanding and connection
| “Being able to understand and connect with the music.”
18%
| “When I understand the message the composer is trying to tell us through his/her music.”
| “When I can understand what my teacher is saying and play the instruments well.”
Varied definitions of success 10%
| “Being positive and getting to your goal.”
| “Doing our best.”
| “Knowing how to do whatever the teacher tells us to do.”
| “Getting good grades and understanding.” Unclear 12%
Interest in music 12%
| “When learning, we play other/new music.”
| “Learning my favourite songs.”
| “If the songs I learn and play on the instruments are not songs that I get bored of or have no personal connection with me.”
| “Music that I like.”
Other motivators 24%
| “Support from my friends and teachers and candy.”
| “Quizzes.”
| “Interesting lessons.”
Unclear 12%
Key Findings
According to the data presented, there were no significant changes in the average ratings. However, there were some hints in the students’ qualitative responses as to what was important to them. For example,
| “I know that more practice will ensure improved skills.”
| “I will try my best not to give up easily.”
| “I try to improve as there are always ways to improve in something.”
| “I will choose music that challenges me, as it is boring to play something too easy.”
Due to the rather short duration of the research project, the quantitative data did not show any definable and consistent change. In addition, students’ understanding of the term "growth mindset" may have changed as they gained increased awareness and understanding of the concept.
This study found little change in mindset and self-efficacy scores. Although there were many differences between the preand post-assessment data, the quantitative data did not show any definable changes that were a direct result of the study. Nevertheless, there were some positive shifts. For instance, the students acknowledged that musical skills could be learned by anyone, reported that they were less frustrated and felt less useless, and showed a slight increase in their desire to learn music, as well as their intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. A longer study period would be needed to reveal more meaningful and observable changes.
From the qualitative responses, most students reflected on their attitudes and behaviours towards practising, and the role of teachers in promoting positive attitudes towards improvement through practice sessions. Their perception of success and their sources of motivation are varied. However they have come to realise that the relationship between growth mindset, perseverance, and musical practice is mutually reinforcing. Having a growth mindset can help foster perseverance in practising music; perseverance is essential for consistent improvement through practice; and practising music itself helps develop skills that reinforce both a growth mindset and perseverance. It is this positive feedback loop that ultimately leads to a better musical outcome over time.
Discussion
Teachers play a key role in The Growth Mindset Pedagogy, which talks about cultivating a growth mindset in students (Rissanen et al, 2021). It is associated with the teacher’s growth mindset and process-focused pedagogical thinking which supports students’ learning processes, promoting mastery orientation, persistence, and fostering students’ process-focused thinking. To develop music growth mindset in students, I propose that enthusiasm, eagerness, endurance, and energy (4Es) are essential because they provide the necessary motivation and dedication required for consistent improvement through regular practice sessions.
4ES
EXAMPLES OF STUDENTS’ RESPONSE
Enthusiasm | “By learning new pieces and exploring different genres.”
| “Knowing that I will feel satisfied with myself after learning the music.”
| “I will not give up and try my best no matter the outcome and push myself to do things to the best version of myself.”
Eagerness | “I want to challenge myself to learn new things.”
| “Motivate, support me and in class, have activities that teach me new things.”
| “When the whole group is able to play a piece together, even if it’s just an improvement it’s also success.”
Endurance | “I will practice the parts I am not so good at over and over again until I get it right.”
| “I will keep trying.”
| “… the fact that I can do better if I keep practicing.”
| “… ability to improve on a piece from the previous lesson.”
Energy | “Being positive and getting to your goals.”
| “I feel a sense of pride that motivates me to do more.”
| “When you really know what you are achieving and when you achieve that goal of success.”
Limitations
There are limitations in this research and as with any research project, some degree of error and variation can be expected. The limitations include the following:
1. Limited Study Duration. The project took place over two terms. It was not long enough to reveal meaningful and observable change.
2. Small Sample Size, Limited Representation. Only one class of 36 students took part in this study.
3. Self-Reported Mindset and Self-Efficacy Data. This study was limited by the honesty and reliability of the self-report survey and previous misconceptions that might have existed. There is a potential for bias.
Conclusion
The purpose of this paper was to explore the extent of students’ growth mindset, their overall desire and motivation for music learning, and the key factors that promote growth mindset.
Several conclusions can be drawn from the findings. The quantitative data show that students are inclined towards a growth mindset, but that some may retain a fixed mindset when confronted with high-stakes assessments. Over time however, the students demonstrated positive shifts in their motivation, as shown by a slight increase in their desire to learn music extrinsically and intrinsically.
The qualitative comments from the students support the quantitative findings. They want to play more challenging music, and they identify perseverance as a critical factor that promotes a growth mindset. They also want encouragement and support and diversified teaching methods from their teachers. To improve, the students understand that practice is the main contributing factor, and they will persist or seek help if they encounter challenges. Students connecting with the music they are learning and continuously improving leads to a sense of achievement and personal satisfaction. The learning experience, interest in music, and the social aspects of music learning also motivate them to learn music. Through the qualitative responses, it is evident that there is a strong connection between perseverance, resilience, and practice. These factors are, in turn,closely tied to the motivation of learners.
Developing a growth mindset in students for music learning requires deliberate cultivation, teachers’ own growth mindset, and process-focused pedagogical thinking. Teachers help students understand that challenges are opportunities for growth rather than signs of failure or frustration. The findings show that students want more encouragement from their teachers. Hence teachers should be more conscious of their own perceptions about the causes of student behaviour, especially their implicit beliefs about intelligence, which could influence their actions and interactions with
their students. Teachers who praise students’ intelligence or natural abilities instead of their effort or progress can have a negative impact on students’ persistence and motivation. Lastly, teachers who place more emphasis on the role that students’ abilities play in their success will adopt a diminished responsibility towards students’ academic performance, and be less responsive to pedagogical approaches that encourage continual growth and resilience in students.
A growth mindset does not just come from hard work and praise. It must also include guiding students toward independence. If teachers want to develop self-sufficient and self-directed learners, they must first believe in a growth mindset. In the 21st century, if teachers want their students to become lifelong learners, it is not enough to just teach them facts and skills. Teachers are responsible for changing students’ attitudes through education interventions. Growth mindset is more than just an educational tool. It is intrinsic motivation that lasts a lifetime (Krieger, 2023).
The 4Es (Enthusiasm, Eagerness, Endurance, Energy) are proposed to help students persevere in practising music. This will in turn encourage positive attitudes towards learning and improvement. Students are more likely to stay motivated if they have specific targets that they are working towards. Teachers should help students set clear and achievable goals for each lesson. When teachers praise their students’ efforts and progress, it can boost enthusiasm and eagerness for future practice sessions or lessons. Teachers can encourage exploration and support the students through a diversified teaching method. A successful music lesson is determined by teachers and learners. Implemented successfully, the 4Es can help foster a growth mindset that emphasises hard work and determination as key components for success in music lessons or practice.
Considerations for Future Research
There is room to explore how the 4Es can be implemented in developing a musical growth mindset. With increased use of technology in music education, another possible area to explore could be how the planning and implementation of playful e-pedagogical interventions can help to promote a growth mindset and foster resilience. While this study has established that teachers play a critical role in cultivating musical growth mindset in learners, more studies could be conducted to find different ways in which growth mindset can be encouraged to empower self-directed and self-sufficient learners.
References
• Dweck, C. S. S. (2007). Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. Ballentine.
• Krieger, F. C. (2023). The effects of growth mindset strategies on the rhythmic notation comprehension and personal musical self-efficacy perceptions of high school instrumentalists [Master’s thesis, Liberty University]. Scholars Crossing. http s://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/ masters/1015/
• Mullensiefen, D., Harrison, P., & Fancourt, F. C. A. (2018). Mi ndset and music: Developing the ‘Musical Self-Theories and Goals’ questionnaire. Impact 2. https://my.chartered.college/impact_article/mindset-and-music-developing-the-musical-self-theories-andgoals-questionnaire/
• Rissanen, I., Laine, S., Puusepp, I., Kuusito, E., & Tirri, K. (2021). Implementing and evaluating growth mindset pedagogy – A study of Finnish elementary school teachers. Frontiers in Education, 6 (753698). https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2021.753698
• Sloboda, J. A., & Howe, M. J. (1991). Biographical precursors o f musical excellence: An interview study. Psychology of Music 19 (1), 3–21. https://doi.org/10.11770305735691191001
Encouraging Self-Directed Learning of Philippines Kulintang Music through Learning
Stations and Substitute Instruments
Tan Yi Han Rivervale Primary School
Introduction
This project aims to investigate if students can be encouraged to be self-directed learners of Philippines Kulintang music through the use of learning stations. In this strategy, there are six learning stations. In each learning station, students will complete a learning task and a checklist in their booklet.
Why Kulintang music? We live in a diverse world filled with a spectrum of wondrous music-cultural expressions to listen to, learn, and perform (Campbell & Lum, 2019). In the current music syllabus, students are exposed to music from global cultures. However, music cultures are studied separately with the goal of providing exposure (Onishi, 2018). To improve on the learning experiences of world music, a Student Learning Space (SLS) lesson package on Philippines Kulintang music was designed using Community Music-based Structures of Learning – CoMu-based SL (Onishi, 2018) and implemented in Primary Two music classrooms.
Literature Review
Self-directed learning is a learning approach where students are encouraged
to take ownership of and initiative for their own learning. Students will be able to select, manage, and assess their learning progress, while the teacher provides support and resources. Their peers will act as collaborators in the learning process (Bromer, 2012). According to the Singapore Teaching Practice (2023), there are three aspects of self-directed learning:
1. Ownership of Learning: Students take responsibility in the learning process, in setting goals, and staying committed to realising them.
2. Self-management and Self-monitoring: Students manage tasks and resources, and engage in thinking and reflecting to make refinements to the learning process.
3. Extension of learning: Students apply what they have learnt to new contexts.
Students develop 21st Century Competencies (21CC) by being learners who question, reflect, preserve, and take responsibility for their own learning.
When designing the SLS lesson package, CoMu-based SL was taken into consideration to improve the learning experiences of world music. This lesson focused on Aural/Oral learning and Patternbased learning.
learning Development of musicality (performing, responding) Students are able to perform the melodic and rhythmic patterns
learning - Students use substitute instruments as actual instruments are not present during the lesson
learning Experimentation Students are given the opportunity to explore and create new melodic and rhythmic patterns after acquiring the basic pattern
are engaged in hands-on learning
Collaborative learning Facilitating peer learning Teacher as facilitator engages students in music-making and provides feedback
Inquiry/Research Questions
1. How effective are learning stations in encouraging self-directed learning?
2. Are students able to achieve lesson outcomes when given autonomy in learning?
Methodology
Target Audience
| Two Primary Two classes (56 students in total)
Data Collection
| Qualitative
• Teacher’s observations and reflections
| Quantitative
• Pre- and post-survey, four-scale rating
• Checklist questions for students
1) I am able learn on my own using SLS.
2) I am resilient when learning.
3) I like to learn on my own.
4) I ask for help when I need it.
5) I know how to improve in my learning using feedback.
Duration
| Three lessons, 60 mins per lesson
| Lesson implementation and completion of task over three lessons
Overview of Curriculum Resources
SLS Lesson Package on Kulintang Music (with videos of learning goals)
Briefing Slides for Students
*W.A.L.T means “We Are Learning To”
Student Checklist
Green
Purple
I watched the Kulintang performance
I can identify the five instruments in the Kulintang ensemble
I know what Kulintang is
I can play the melodic pattern accurately
I can create a new pattern on the instrument
I know what Gandingan is
I can play the melodic pattern accurately
I can create a new pattern on the instrument
I know what Babandil is
Blue
I can play the rhythmic pattern accurately
I can create a new pattern on the instrument
I know what Dabakan is
I can play the rhythmic pattern accurately
I can create a new pattern on the instrument
I know what Agung is
I can play the melodic pattern accurately
I can create a new pattern on the instrument
Substitute instruments at each station
Substitute Kulintang Instruments
Learning Stations
| Audio splitter, three earpieces (students to share)
| iPad (one student to login to SLS)
| Substitute instruments at each station
| Task/learning goal and success criteria for each station
LEARNING
| Listen to a Kulintang performance and identify the five instruments in Kulintang
| I watched the Kulintang performance
| I can identify the five instruments in the Kulintang ensemble
1 (Green)
| Play the melodic pattern on the substitute Kulintang accurately
2 (Yellow)
| I know what Kulintang is
| I can play the melodic pattern accurately
| I can create a new pattern on the instrument
| Play the melodic pattern on the substitute Gandingan accurately
3 (Purple)
| I know what Gandingan is | I can play the melodic pattern accurately
| I can create a new pattern on the instrument
| Play the rhythmic pattern on the substitute Babandil accurately
4 (Blue)
| I know what Babandil is
| I can play the rhythmic pattern accurately
| I can create a new pattern on the instrument
| Play the rhythmic pattern on the substitute Dabakan accurately
5 (Red)
| I know what Dabakan is
| I can play the rhythmic pattern accurately
| I can create a new pattern on the instrument
| Play the rhythmic pattern on the substitute Agung accurately
6 (Pink)
| I know what Agung is
| I can play the melodic pattern accurately
| I can create a new pattern on the instrument
Kulintang Gandingan
Babandil Dabakan
Agung
Process/Curriculum Outline
| Checklist
Week 0
Week 1
Briefing for students (15 minutes)
Lesson 1 [Learning Stations]
| Pre-survey
| Lesson objectives (W.A.L.T.*)
| Layout and movement
| Reiterate learning outcomes
| Complete three learning stations
| Choose a student from each learning station to showcase
| Conclusion
Week 2
Week 3
Lesson 2 [Learning Stations]
| Discussion about Kulintang Music
| Recap on the musical patterns of the five instruments (SLS)
Discussion + Conclusion
| Introduction to the Philippines
| Post-survey
Data Collected
The mean ratings of students’ responses were computed on a four-point scale.
In the first question of the survey, students were asked if they were able to learn on their own using SLS. There was a slight increment in the mean rating for this question. This could be because the students were more familiar with the SLS platform and thus had a greater sense of confidence in their abilities to learn through it.
In the second and third questions, students were asked if they were resilient when learning and if they liked to learn on their own. Interestingly, there was a slight decrease in the mean rating. From my perspective, this might be because students were feeling positive when they were completing the pre-survey. However, after the learning experience, they became more aware of their learning styles and were more critical of themselves.
In the fourth and fifth questions, students were asked if they would seek help and if they were
able to improve using the feedback received. The mean rating for these two questions had a slight increase. This shows students were generally receptive to receiving help from peers or teachers.
From the data, it can be inferred that upon completion of the learning stations, students were able to self-monitor and reflect on their own learning styles. It can be observed that students gained a sense of awareness and were more critical of their learning.
Teacher’s Observations of Student Learning
| Most students took ownership of their learning by completing the checklist and activities required for the learning stations. | Most students were able to manage their learning and the resources provided.
| Most students were engaged and learning actively at the learning stations.
| As seen from the survey data, students became more aware of their learning capabilities and were able to reflect on their learning styles.
| Students displayed collaborative learning, supporting one another and checking on their peers’ performance in reference to the videos.
| Most students were able to perform the rhythmic and melodic patterns through their imitation of the videos. However, there were problems imitating the melodic patterns aurally. Thus, an additional scaffold was added for Lesson 2.
| Students showed more responsibility during Lesson 2, as they were able to assist in the set-up and keeping of the learning stations, and assisted their peers in solving ICT issues.
Table 1 Pre-Post Survey Findings
Teacher’s Observations of Challenges and Suggested Solutions
CHALLENGE SUGGESTED SOLUTION
| Challenging to set up the stations prior to lessons (e.g., room occupied for another lesson, iPads only available at the start of the lesson).
Learning Stations
| Issues with ICT (earphones not working, unable to login to SLS).
| Enlist and entrust student helpers to set up iPads, audio splitters, and earphones at the start of the lesson.
Conclusion
Learning stations are effective in encouraging self-directedness in learning, and students are able to achieve the lesson outcomes to a certain extent. However, having to work in groups is a challenge for some students, resulting in varying levels of engagement and completion of tasks. Nevertheless, students enjoyed learning and playing substitute Kulintang instruments at the
learning stations, and acquired new skills on their own through SLS.
In conclusion, the use of learning stations (supported by an SLS lesson package and videos) is a fun way to encourage students to be self-directed. However, sufficient scaffolds must be in place to ensure that learning outcomes are met. If similar lessons are conducted frequently across all subjects, students will benefit from the learning experiences and develop to be selfdirected learners.
| Varying levels of engagement: some students were unable to work in their allocated groups (e.g., arguing about who should be the first to play the instrument, unhappy with group’s decisions).
Student’s Engagement
| Students in the same group with varying levels of completion of activity.
| Allocate time for troubleshooting, especially during the first lesson.
Assessing Student’s Learning
| As students were engaged in six different activities, it was challenging to assess all students’ understanding and learning of the topic.
| Discuss with students ways to solve the problem and encourage development of social-emotional competencies (i.e., self-awareness, social awareness, self-management, relationship management, responsible decision-making).
| Assign a group leader to check group members’ progress. However, students’ progress might not be an accurate representation of their learning.
| Allocate time towards the end of the lesson for each group to share what they have learnt at their stations.
| View student’s checklist and identify students who require more assistance for Lesson 2.
| Video the lesson to assess their learning.
References
Burton, S. L. (2012). Engaging musical practices: A sourcebook for middle school general music . Rowman & Littlefield Publishers/National Association for Music Education.
• Campbell, P. S. & Lum, C. H. (2019). World Music Pedagogy, Volume VI: School-community intersections. Routledge.
• Onishi, P. (2018). Community music education: Towards the development of new pedagogies for the 21st century (NIE Research Brief Series No. 18-001). National Institute of Education.
• Onishi, P. (2019). Community music-based structures of learning (CoMu-Based SL): Pedagogical framework for the nurturance of future-ready habits of mind. International Journal of Music Education 37 (3), 346–369. https://doi.org/10.1177/0255761419842419 Singapore Teaching Practice (2023, October 18). Supporting self-directed learning Ministry of Education. https://www.opal2.moe.edu. sg/csl/s/singapore-teaching-practice/wiki/page/view?title=Suppo rting+Self-directed+Learning.
Boosting Lower Secondary Music Students’ Self-Esteem and Self-Awareness in a Ukulele
Group Performance
Module
Introduction
As music teachers in a secondary school, we should not only focus on students’ performance, but also their body language, as it contributes to showmanship. We have seen students showing signs of performance anxiety when asked to showcase their work alone in front of other students, with some of them shaking, stammering, or crying in front of the class. There are many reasons for this. Perhaps the students felt insecure about performing alone, or were afraid that they would be judged by their classmates. Hence we decided to make this ukulele module a group project, and allow the students to choose their own group mates in the hope of avoiding the above situation.
From our observations in recent years, low self-esteem and a lack of self-awareness seem to be the two main factors which contribute to lower secondary music students experiencing undesirable performance anxiety in their music performance assessment. Group performance serves well as a tool to assess students’ self-esteem. Students are required to discuss, practise, and interact with one another to complete the assessment. Due to the nature of the assessment, students must think of several strumming patterns as well as some percussion techniques to accompany the pop songs. They repeat the process: discussing, experimenting, and refining throughout the lessons, in particular
Lessons Five to Eight, in order to score well in the assessment. As a result, they are more aware of their emotions, social interaction, and behaviour towards their group mates during the process. More importantly, they learn how to embrace one another’s flaws and strengths. One of the criteria of the assessment is that they have to cover for their group mates during the assessment in the event of any undesirable stoppage. Thus, this process helps the students to increase their self-awareness and social awareness.
This research discusses how students’ self-esteem and social awareness in ukulele performance can be increased. Recognising their emotions and anxiety throughout the process has helped students conquer their performance anxiety by the end of the module.
Literature
Social emotional learning (SEL) is a crucial soft skill in students’ learning. We resonate with the view that “the music classroom is the perfect environment to help students learn about themselves and others, and gain, explore, and apply agency” (Edgar et al., 2022). Our ukulele module is conducted on a group project basis; students work in harmony with their group mates to give their best performance by the end of the module. Thus, through the learning process, students are able to boost their self-esteem and self-awareness in group performance.
Relationships between Self-Esteem, Emotions, and Self-Confidence
Self-esteem, emotions, and self-confidence are the three things which we focus on in this inquiry. They are not completely separate; in fact, they influence one another. Emotions affect a student’s confidence level (Pradeepa, 2023). For instance, a student is more likely to experience positive emotions such as happiness and satisfaction when he/she feels confident. On the other hand, negative emotions such as anxiety and anger can lead to a student's lack of confidence.
Likewise, self-esteem and self-confidence are different. However, “a healthy amount of self-esteem was necessary to have the self-confidence to meet life's challenges and participate in things you find enjoyable and rewarding” (The University of Queensland, 2019). This means self-esteem and self-confidence could overlap. On a separate note, one of the tangible characteristics of high self-esteem is assertiveness in expressing needs and opinions (Weber State University, n.d.). We observe this through students’ social interaction during their group practices and performances.
Since emotions, self-confidence, and self-esteem play an important role in students’ learning, we formulated this hypothesis: a good ukulele group performance in a safe environment can help students to boost their self-esteem.
Inquiry Questions
Our inquiry questions are as follows:
1. How does the ukulele group performance serve as a suitable tool to assess and boost students’ self-esteem?
2. How does the group project help students increase their self-awareness?
3. How can teachers create an environment that fosters positive emotions for students?
4. How can we minimise students’ anxiety levels during the group performance?
Methodology
Participants
There were 33 Secondary One students involved in this research. All of them were from the same class.
Strategies
Three major strategies were used in this module:
1. Start with pair work, end with group work.
2. Less reprimanding, and more encouragement.
3. One seating arrangement for lessons and assessment.
More details can be found in the curriculum outline.
Data Collection
Data was collected via:
1. Survey with the use of the Plickers app
2. Students’ music journal
3. Verbal Interview
Plickers
Plickers is an assessment app used by the teacher to check students’ understanding immediately before and after each lesson. Plickers Cards were printed beforehand and handed out to students during the survey in their music journal. When the survey questions were shown to students, students rotated the cards to their desired options
and the teacher scanned the cards with his/her mobile phone to collect the data quickly.
Music Journal
This music journal, which was modified from Scott Edgar’s workbook, served as a tool for students to understand the expectations of the ukulele module. Students were to pen down their reflections and thoughts in this journal by the end of selected lessons. It also served as an assessment tool for teachers to recognise students’ emotions before, during, and after the practice and assessment.
There were four emojis which depicted beaming, happy, apprehensive, and worried expressions for these multiple-choice questions. The students were to circle one emoji out of the four, and explain their emotions.
Students also completed a series of questions:
Forced-choice Questions
(Weeks 5 & 7)
1. What emotion did you feel at the start of the lesson? Beaming? Worried? (forced-choice)
2. What emotion did you feel while you were practising? Beaming? Worried? (forced-choice)
3. What emotion did you feel after practising? Beaming? Worried? (forced-choice)
4. How well did you meet that objective? (forced-choice)
5. Based on your practice session, what is your objective the next time you practice? (open-ended)
6. Please explain why you chose this emotion for Multiple-Choice Question 2. (open-ended)
7. Please explain why you chose this emotion for Multiple-Choice Question 3. (open-ended)
Questions (Week 9)
1. What emotion did you feel at the start of the assessment? Beaming? Worried? (forced-choice)
2. What emotion did you feel while you were having the assessment? Beaming? Worried? (forced-choice)
3. What emotion did you feel after the assessment? Beaming? Worried? (forced-choice)
Verbal Interviews
Students were randomly selected for interviews to further understand their thoughts and emotions. However, a few were also included for interviews because they:
1. Refused to pen down their thoughts in the music journal.
2. Were inattentive during the practice sessions.
3. Were not enthusiastic during the practice sessions.
These students may have had other emotions, thoughts, and issues that we did not include or anticipate, and the data from their interviews could be useful for the teachers’ reflection.
Note: The above data from students’ journals and interviews was also triangulated with teacher observations.
Curriculum Outline
The curriculum outline below shows how data was collected in the series of lessons.
NO. OF LESSONS
Preparation (Lesson 1)
OBJECTIVE(S) FOR TEACHER
1. To break the ice by starting with pair work.
OBJECTIVE(S) FOR STUDENTS
DETAILS
1. To identify students’ ukulele knowledge through a diagnosis test. The diagnosis test was conducted during the first lesson. It served as a crucial tool in the preparation stage because it helped to identify students’ ukulele knowledge.
Students chose a partner and had a ‘think-pair-share’ session regarding their ukulele experience during their primary school time.
Preparation (Lessons 2–3)
1. To build rapport among the students by combining the pairs during class activities.
1. To equip students with basic ukulele knowledge as follows:
| Open strings | Basic chords C, Am, F, G, and G7.
| Basic strumming patterns.
Students worked in groups of four or six.
Chord charts and tuned ukuleles were given to the groups. Students were taught mapping skills, which allow them to move their fingers from chord to chord without stopping. Teachers’ facilitation was important during the whole module as our objective was to improve students’ self-esteem through a safe and inviting environment. Apart from checking students’ progress, teachers needed to be mindful about being encouraging.
NO. OF LESSONS
Pre-Assessment
Briefing (Lesson 4)
OBJECTIVE(S) FOR TEACHER
1. To observe students’ selfesteem, selfawareness and performance anxiety within their groups.
2. To strengthen bonding among the group members.
OBJECTIVE(S) FOR STUDENTS DETAILS
1. To set expectations for the ukulele group assessment.
2. To regroup the groupings (optional).
3. To choose pop songs which the groups would like to perform for the assessment.
This lesson was meant to set expectations for the assessment that the students would be taking at the end of the module. Furthermore, with the use of the given case study, the teacher was to discuss with students:
1. How to solve conflicts among the groups.
2. How to cover each other during the performance.
Thereafter, students were given an opportunity to change their groupings if they wanted to.
NO. OF LESSONS
Group Assessment & PostAssessment Survey (Lessons 9–10)
OBJECTIVE(S) FOR TEACHER
1. To observe the self-esteem, self-awareness and performance anxiety of the students among the groups during assessment.
2. To build up students’ confidence by using encouraging words through class discussion.
OBJECTIVE(S) FOR STUDENTS DETAILS
1. Students were to complete the assessment as a group.
The students were given 10 minutes to tune their ukuleles and to warm up before the assessment.
Seating arrangement mattered: students did not perform in front of the class. Rather, they remained in their original seating. The teacher moved to each group to listen to their group performance (assessment).
Once the assessment was done, students spent 20 minutes to complete the pre- and postassessment survey and questionnaire using Plickers. Thereafter, the emotions students experienced were discussed as a class.
Practice Session & Group Consultation
(Lessons 5–8)
1. To observe the self-esteem, self-awareness, and performance anxiety of the students among the groups.
2. To discuss and solve conflicts among the group members (if any).
1. Students choose a pop song and practise as a group.
From this point onwards, the teacher would merely serve as a facilitator and solve conflicts (if any) among the group members.
Before the start and end of Lessons 5 and 7, 20 minutes were set aside for the students to complete their music journals using Plickers.
Duration
The module consisted of 10 weekly one-hour lessons in Term 2.
Issues Faced During Lessons
Attendance. Students’ attendance was one of the factors that challenged the accuracy of the survey data. Students were encouraged to attend every lesson for the ukulele module. However, there were some students with attendance issues. Thus, only 30 students with full attendance in this module were considered and analysed.
Plickers Card. Students’ Plickers Card numbers did not correspond with their index
numbers. As such, students took the wrong cards and this led to data inaccuracies during the scanning process. In order to overcome this issue, writing tools such as paper and pens should be prepared during the scanning process so that the teacher can jot down students’ names and data. Thereafter, the data would be rectified to maintain its accuracy.
Unmotivated Students. Students did not pen down their reflections and thoughts in the Music Journal. Each Music Journal was checked by the teacher after every lesson. If the students did not pen down their thoughts, a verbal interview would be conducted after the lesson.
Findings
Student Emotional Levels Across Practices
The mean ratings based on students’ responses to the forced-choice questions on their emotions were computed on a fourpoint Likert Scale. The table above shows a comparison of the mean ratings across different questions and across the weeks.
The below graph shows the mean ratings for students’ positive emotions from Week 5 to Week 9. It starts from 2.67, indicating that the students had mildly negative emotions towards their group practice sessions. The data fluctuated along the way. It went down to 2.07, almost reaching the apprehensive emotion level during the assessment
MEAN RATINGS OF POSITIVE EMOTIONS FOR WEEKS 5, 7 AND 9
in Week 9. Fortunately, it climbed to 2.87 after the group assessment, indicating that students had positive emotions after their assessments. This means that their levels of confidence and awareness increased.
Week 5
In Week 5, the mean rating dropped from 2.67 (before the start of the lesson) to 2.63 (during the practice session) as some of the students felt that the mapping skill was new for them and therefore quite challenging to learn. However, there was an increase in the mean rating – to 2.87 – after the practice session. Based on teachers’ observations, there were four factors that may have contributed to the increase:
1. Students were able to choose their group mates for this module.
2. The selected pop songs were the ones the students desired to play.
3. There was no reprimanding but only encouragement for the students (excluding the students who misbehaved during lesson time).
4. There was a sense of fulfilment as they were able to play the song after their consultation with the teacher.
Week 7
At the start of the lesson in Week 7, the mean rating was at a high of 3.07, higher than in Week 5. Through verbal interviews, students revealed that they were not feeling so worried as they had already selected the songs they wanted to perform for this module, and they felt assured of their ability to perform the chord progressions. Thus, they were confident about their performance and believed that they would be able to overcome the challenges they were about to face.
The mean rating dropped to 2.83 during and after the practice. Two things happened during our facilitation. In the first situation, we observed the influence of peer pressure. Some of the students were a little hesitant to put their new strumming patterns to the test because their group mates told them not to, and this might have affected their performance. In the second situation, some students were frustrated when they could not come to a consensus when selecting the pop songs and alternative fingering for certain chords. Therefore, the mean ratings of their emotions dropped. It could be that students were avoiding challenges for fear of failing (Healthdirect Australia, n.d.). It was also one of the indicators of students with low self-esteem.
Week 9
In Week 9, the mean ratings fell further, to 2.43 (before practice) and 2.07 (during practice). Even so, based on our observations and interviews with the students, a safe environment and inviting words seemed to have increased their self-awareness and self-esteem. They were aware of their weaknesses, but faced them with positive attitudes. Moreover, we observed students encouraging one another with words such as “Come on, we can do this!” during the facilitation. These words might show that students’ self-esteem had increased.
The mean rating increased to 2.87 after the practice. This could be an indication of delayed gratification as the teachers had been helping students build their capacity to delay gratification by making their achievement goals reasonable and attainable (Varner, 2020).
STUDENTS’ WORK IN MUSIC JOURNALS
The following are excerpts of the students' responses from their music journals:
Music Journals and Teacher Observation
GROUP PERFORMANCE: SELF-ESTEEM
GROUP PROJECT: SOCIAL-AWARENESS
There was a mini showcase session in which the groups were randomly selected by the teachers to perform for their peers. Some students’ reflections in their journals included “I felt pleased that I improved from the last lesson” and “Pleased, the group coordinated better than I expected”. The groups performed well and with confidence, despite undesirable stoppage. Therefore, it can be said that students’ self-esteem had increased through group discussions and practice sessions.
Some of the students’ self-awareness (including leadership) increased as they started to recognise their individual and group mates’ strengths. They were also able to identify group mates who were not contributing to the project. Moreover, some students had started to understand the idea of doing the right thing at the right time. Thus, they started to correct some of their group mates’ negative attitudes.
the Emotions Through Group Practise
ENVIRONMENT: POSITIVE EMOTIONS
A safe and positive environment was successfully established with teachers’ tactic of “we are here to encourage, not to reprimand”. Students understood that it was all right for them to make mistakes during the practice sessions. For example, some students’ reflections included, “I don’t know, I just enjoy the lesson” and “... I am glad that I am improving in my strumming, which makes me feel happier”. The safe and positive environment provided students with a space to reflect upon and refine their work.
Discussion
In general, the ukulele module did help students boost their self-esteem. Based on data collected from this module, the qualitative responses showed that most students felt happy and enjoyed collaborating with their group members. Some of the strategies used in this module included allowing students the freedom to choose their own group members, using encouraging words, and keeping to one seating arrangement for both lessons and assessment. The freedom to choose their own classmates was the most important
factor among the three, as friendship was an important factor in helping students learn social concepts and skills. In addition, playing the ukulele helps children acquire many social development skills such as helping, sharing, respecting others’ rights, obeying rules etc. (Güngör, 2003, in Küpana, 2015). Improvement in students’ self-esteem tended to occur in groups with stronger bonds as students maintained positive attitudes even though they disagreed with each other at times.
Students’ self-awareness and self-esteem also increased in the safe and positive learning environment created. One scenario illustrated
DISCUSSION 1
a class or groups)
this clearly: when both groups learnt that they had chosen the same repertoire. The phrase, “Teacher, they are doing the same song as us. What should we do? Will it affect our marks?” never failed to appear from lesson five onwards. The teacher’s advice was, “You can have the same song as another group. However, you can work on different strumming patterns or alternative fingering for the same chords”. Their teacher’s assurance helped develop self-confidence in the students. Both groups with the same song started to exchange ideas on how to personalise the song. Through this process, the groups widened their knowledge and started to view the same song in different ways.
Stage fright is associated with anxiety and it is experienced by most students during musical performances, no matter how well they perform during group practices. Such anxiety can lead to negative consequences such as self-consciousness or even a mental breakdown. A musical performance is
Summary
a good way for children to practise a wide range of social and emotional skills (Váradi, 2022), and acknowledge and overcome their stage fright. In the past, the groups were always asked to showcase their work at the front of the music room, with the rest of the students seated at the back to watch their performance. Such a setting created distance between the performers (the groups) and the audience (the teacher and the rest of the students). Due to such a distance, the groups suffered performance anxiety, and underperformed. This year, instead of instructing students to perform in front of the class, the teacher went to them. This meant that students remained in their original seating arrangements and the teacher walked to each of the groups to watch their performance, as shown in Figure 3 above. With this shortened distance between performers and audience, teachers observed through students’ body language that they seemed less tense. As a result, they performed well for their assessment.
It was important for the teacher to create a safe environment for students before embarking on any lessons or ukulele group performances. SEL is a soft skill which is important for the students to possess before lessons can take place. If they are not in the right frame of mind, they will not be able to learn effectively during their lessons. Based on our observations from this module, we discovered that students were receptive to their group mates as well as their teachers once they felt safe and secure in the environment we had created. From this point onwards, we were able to observe their actual emotions. Moreover, a safe environment provided opportunities for students to recognise their emotions better and learn how to deal with them, particularly negative emotions such as anxiety and fear. Eventually, students realised that they were not alone, and that every student had experienced similar emotions as well.
The outcome of this module was fruitful, and it was well-received by the students. Based on the data collected, most of the students maintained positive attitudes throughout. This proves our hypothesis that a successful performance can improve students’ SEL. In this module, students increased their selfesteem and self-awareness through intragroup practice and inter-group practice.
In addition, they were more aware of and able to recognise a variety of emotions, including negative ones such as performance anxiety. Most importantly, they were able to overcome the negative emotions with a positive attitude, and perform confidently during their assessments.
One limitation in this research is that data was only collected for one class. Perhaps, in the future, we could do this for all our lower secondary classes to broaden our data through observing a larger number of students from different classes. A larger population size would also allow for more dynamic analysis, and we would be able to further develop our strategies to help students boost their self-esteem and self-awareness. We believe that teachers should acknowledge students’ negative emotions, and help them to overcome their anxiety when performing in front of an audience.
To sum up, the group performance in music lessons certainly served as a suitable platform for teachers to observe students’ actual emotions in pre- and post-lessons. Moreover, it was an ideal tool for students to learn about SEL, which is in line with the statement mentioned in the beginning: “the music classroom is the perfect environment to help students learn about themselves and others, and gain, explore, and apply agency” (Edgar et al., 2022).
References
• Edgar, S. N., Lashley, Y., Morrison, R., & Rizzuto, K. (2022, June 15). Student empowerment through SEL in music education: Many voices, common mission. Save the Music Foundation. https://www.savethemusic.org/blog/many-voices-common-mission/
• Healthdirect Austalia. Self-esteem and mental health. (n.d.). Australian Government Department of Health and Aged Care. https://www. healthdirect.gov.au/self-esteem
• Küpana, N. (2015). Social emotional learning and music education. SED Journal of Art Education , 3 (2), 75–88. https://doi.org/10.7816/ sed-03-01-05
• Pradeepa, S. (2023, May 26). Is confidence an emotion?: If not then what is it. Believe in Mind. https://www.believeinmind.com/selfgrowth/is-confidence-an-emotion/?expand_article=1
The University of Queensland. Self-esteem and self-confidence. (2019, November 25). The University Of Queensland. https://my.uq.edu. au/information-and-services/student-support/health-and-wellbeing/self-help-resources/self-esteem-and-self-confidence
• Varner, E. (2020). General music learning is also social and emotional learning. Journal of General Music Education, 33 (2), 74–78. https:// doi.org/10.1177/1048371319891421
• Váradi, J. (2022). A review of the literature on the relationship of music education to the development of socio-emotional learning. SAGE Open, 12 (1). https://doi.org/10.1177/21582440211068501
• Weber State University. (n.d.). Self-Esteem. Weber State University. https://www.weber.edu/CounselingCenter/self-esteem.html
Figure 3: Assessment Setting in Music Room
Fostering Learning through Social Diversity in a Music Classroom
Introduction
Commonwealth Secondary School started Full Subject-Based Banding (Full SBB) in 2022. In 2023, both of us were deployed as Secondary One Form Teachers, which means that our classes were the second Full SBB batch within the school. When tasked to group our students for their Secondary One orientation, we were especially reminded to be mindful of ensuring a mix of race, gender, and streams to promote social integration within the class.
After the Secondary One orientation camp, we started wondering about the purpose behind this structured grouping. This seemed to differ from some of the common ways that teachers have devised to group their students, such as:
1. Friendship Groups (students are allowed to form their own groups)
2. Gender Diversity (students are allowed to form their own groups as long as they have both genders in each group)
3. Random grouping (groups are decided randomly by the teacher, and hence can vary widely from group to group)
Our research thus explores the practice of teachers assigning students to socially diverse (by race, gender and stream) groups, and if such grouping has positive effects on the learning experience of the students.
Inquiry Question
| How important are race, gender, and stream to students when forming groups?
| Does grouping to ensure a social diversity of race, gender, and stream versus friendship grouping result in a difference in learning experiences?
Methodology
Target Audience
Our research questions were explored across eight Secondary Two Full SBB classes, with 30 to 32 students in each class. Of these eight classes,
| Four classes were asked to form friendship groups, with the only criterion being four students to a group (friendship groups)
| Four classes were grouped by the teachers, with each group of four having a mix of race, gender, and stream (socially diverse groups).
Data Collection
| Pre-survey: One forced-choice question to find out what students find important when they form groups.
| Post-survey: Forced-choice and open-ended questions to elicit students’ reflections on how they felt the project went, as well as how they interacted with their groupmates.
Duration
This project took place over six lessons (one hour each)
| Lesson 1: Pre-survey + planning the film project.
| Lessons 2–5: Groups were tasked to film a 30-second action clip, and using Mixcraft, select and edit appropriate sounds to create the accompanying audio track.
| Lesson 6: Submission of video + post-survey.
Data Collected
Pre-Survey
Pre-Survey Question
Before the students started work on the project, they did a pre-survey where we uncovered the factors that were important to them when they were selecting their group members.
196 Secondary Two students responded to the following question using a five-point Likert scale, from “Most Important” to “Not Important At All”:
When choosing my groupmates, I look for classmates who are… (11 possible options)
Well-versed/Skilled in music
Pleasant and respectful
Asks relevant questions
Takes initiative
Positive learning attitude
Active contributor to overall project
Same gender
Same race
Same stream
My social group (friends)
Listens in class Most Important
Not Very Important Not Important At All
Figure 1: Students’ responses to the pre-survey question.
Lee Yue Zhi and Yee
Ziyun Noella
Well-versed/Skilled in music
Pleasant and respectful
Asks relevant questions
Pre-survey results
It is evident that most of the options are orange and red, which means that they fall in the “Very Important” to “Most Important” categories for many of these students. Yet we have a bunch of options in the middle that are mostly blue, which are “Not Very Important” to “Not Important At All”.
The three options that were least important to students were gender, race, and stream, which, interestingly enough, were the three factors that we had wanted to examine. It was clear that for the majority of the students – 50% to 80% of them in fact – these were either “Not Very Important”, or “Not Important At All”. The highest statistic was for the same race, which 65% of students indicated was “Not Important At All”.
Post-Survey
There were 213 responses for the post-survey, which is slightly higher than the pre-survey as some students were absent from school during the pre-survey.
In the post-survey, we wanted to find out more about the students’ learning experience. The questions included:
| How much did you enjoy doing the action music group project? Please elaborate on your choice.
| What were some challenges that you faced while working with your group mates?
| On a scale of 1–5, with 1 being not important at all, and 5 being most important, think back to the pre-survey when you filled in this same question. When choosing my groupmates, I look for classmates who: are well-versed/skilled in music, are pleasant and respectful, ask relevant questions, take initiative, have a positive learning attitude, are active contributors to the overall project, are the same gender, are in the same stream, are in my social group (friends), and who listen in class.
| To what extent have my groupmates matched my ‘ideal’?
| Would you prefer to choose your own group or to be assigned to a group?
| If I have an opportunity to do another project, would I prefer to be assigned to a group or form my own group?
Positive Impacts from Socially Diverse Groups
These are the positive impacts that students experienced from socially diverse groupings, as derived from the open-ended responses in the post-survey via thematic coding:
| Less grouping stress
| Improve communication skills
| Expanding social circle
| Open to new experiences
| Full SBB class bonding
“This minimises the stress in choosing a group.” Less grouping stress
“Less stress if I do not choose some people that want to be with me.”
“I can work with people I dun talk to to make my communication better.” Improve commmunication skills
“As it exposes me to work with people that I am not familiar with.” Expand social circle
Full SBB class bonding
“I think by being assigned to a group helps the class to know each other like the people who they do not usually talk to better. As such, the class bond will grow stronger together that way.”
Open to new experiences
“We get to meet more people and experience whether they’re great to work with or not.”
One thing we found very interesting while looking at the results of the post-survey was that all students experienced less grouping stress. We had assumed that the less popular students or those with fewer friends would experience stress when asked to form friendship groups, but it was interesting that they were not the only students who faced grouping stress.
In one of the quotes, a particular student said that he/she experienced less stress because the choice of which classmates to group with was taken out of his/her hands. Previously, the student felt stressed when having to make decisions which had the potential to disappoint or upset those who were not selected to be group mates.
“There were a few fights here and there but we pulled through and stopped the fighting and built teamwork during this project.”
“My teammates and I spent a lot of time together for this project. I liked our teamwork and cooperation while composing the music video filming the action video.”
Impact on Project Enjoyment
Throughout the post-survey responses, students mentioned that they enjoyed the project, especially those in friendship groups, as the project allowed them to interact with their friends during lesson time. Students were asked to rate their enjoyment of the project from one to five, with one being that they did not enjoy the project at all, and five being that they enjoyed the project immensely.
“I felt that my teammates had a lot of chemistry but at certain moments we were going off track. Therefore the sessions weren’t as productive as I hoped.”
Positive Impacts from Friendship Groups
These are the positive impacts that friendship groupings have, as derived from the post-survey via thematic coding.
| Enhanced communication | Managing relationships with friends (conflict resolution) | Enjoyment of project
An overwhelming number of student responses focused on difficulties in communication, managing relationships and how they tried to resolve issues that came up. Another frequently mentioned feedback was that they really enjoyed the project because they got to be friends.
There were also clear disagreements between the students, as revealed by quotes such as “pull through and stop the fighting”, and “the teamwork and cooperation going off track”, where students had to learn about managing conflicts, even with friends. While this may not seem like a positive impact, it was an opportunity for students to learn how to work together with their friends/ peers, and learn how to manage conflicts and have more productive discussions.
The average across 213 responses was 4.07, which is a very good result across all eight classes, and which suggests that most of the students enjoyed doing the project.
We also wanted to examine whether there was a difference in project enjoyment between the classes that were grouped according to friendship groups and the classes that were grouped in socially diverse groups. The means for both are in the chart on the next page.
There is a clear difference between whether the classes were grouped according to friendship groups or whether they were socially diverse. The mean for classes with friendship grouping was 4.2, with a standard deviation of 0.86 and a t-value of 1.66,
while the mean of classes with socially diverse grouping was 4.0 with a standard deviation of 0.98 and a t-value of 1.49. With a higher mean and smaller standard deviation, there is a clear difference in project enjoyment between students in friendship groups and students in socially diverse groups. In addition, comparing the two sets of data yields a p-value of about 0.02, which shows that this difference is statistically significant.
Another metric to compare the two groups would be to look at the SA/A percentages.
The overall SA/A percentage for the project was 77%, while the breakdown of the results by grouping is as shown above. In comparison to the overall average of 77%, the percentage of students in socially diverse groups indicating 4 or 5 for the specific question was only 71.4%, while 82.4% of the students in friendship groups indicated 4 or 5. This shows that student enjoyment is impacted when forming socially diverse groups versus being in friendship groups. Regardless, the majority of students still enjoyed the project regardless of grouping.
Impact on Project Results
We examined the impact of socially diverse grouping or friendship grouping on the final project results. Interestingly, the difference across 64 groups (eight classes split into four classes of friendship groups and four classes of socially diverse groups, with eight groups per class) was very minimal – at only about 1%. This shows that grouping did not significantly impact the overall project result.
Impact on Future Grouping Choices
Finally, we asked the students in the post-survey whether they would prefer to be assigned to a group or choose their own group in future.
own group
The majority of about 78% preferred to choose their own group for future projects, and only about 22% preferred to be assigned. Similar to the earlier question on project enjoyment, we also investigated how responses to this may differ according to students grouped in friendship groups or assigned to socially diverse groups.
DIVERSE GROUPS
FRIENDSHIP GROUPS
they did not communicate with previously, bonding with their class, and less grouping stress.
In contrast, there were less obvious positive impacts for students who were allowed to form their friendship groups. Many of them were just focused on their friends and their own enjoyment. There was less reflection, less thought, and less growth observed.
The final point was that students who were assigned to socially diverse groups were twice as likely as those in friendship groups to prefer being grouped for future projects. This indicates that the students are twice as likely to be open to new experiences and working with unfamiliar people.
Conclusion
When we compare the responses of students in friendship groups with students in socially diverse groups, the differences now seem more pronounced. Of those who were in friendship groups, 86% would still want to continue choosing their own group, with only about 14% wanting to be assigned.
Final Observations
We have some final observations based on the data collected. Firstly, in general, students enjoyed the project, whether they were in friendship groups or socially diverse ones.
There were positive impacts for the ones who were grouped into socially diverse groups. This is particularly important for Full SBB, where the intent is to foster inclusion and respect for diversity. Some of the positive impacts on students include expanding their social circle, communicating with people that
With regard to our inquiry questions of “How important are race, gender and stream to students when forming groups?” and “Does grouping to ensure a social diversity of race, gender and stream versus friendship grouping result in significant differences in their learning experiences?”, our conclusion is that race, gender and stream are less important factors for students in choosing their group mates in a Full SBB classroom. However, for greater positive impact on students’ learning experience in a Full SBB classroom, teachers could consider assigning students to groups. This may lessen overall enjoyment, but the students will also have more opportunities to learn to work with others while meeting lesson objectives, which can result in an increase in positive learning experiences.
Engaging a Student with ADHD During Music Lessons
Introduction
One of the many things we do as teachers is try to innovate better ways of helping our students learn. We do that by looking for patterns of needs and adjusting our teaching and learning routines to address these needs. This proactive response helps to maximise the learning opportunities for every student in our classrooms. Hence, my inquiry is, how effective is the use of accommodation strategies in engaging a student with ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) during music lessons?
What is accommodation?
An accommodation simply changes HOW students learn the material (The Understood Team, n.d.). The content of our lesson stays the same and the intended learning objectives remain the same for everyone. However, since everyone takes a different route to get to their goals, accommodation helps connect our learners and their learning in ways that make sense to them.
Context
Eleven-year-old AJ is in my Primary Five music class. I see him for two periods once a fortnight. AJ was diagnosed with ADHD in late 2022, and attends fortnightly 30-minute counselling sessions with his assigned Special Educational Needs Officer (SENO). During these sessions, he learns calming strategies, and how to empathise with others. In the pre-observation survey, he mentions having to learn how to play the piano, but giving up after one year. When working with others, he prefers to collaborate in pairs rather than alone or in large groups.
Students with ADHD find it difficult to stay focused and exercise self-control. During lessons, it can look like they are inattentive, easily distracted, fidgety, hyperactive, and impulsive – all of which get in the way of learning. Below is a table to illustrate how I cope with certain behaviours before applying any accommodation strategies.
In a typical lesson, I may experience the above disruptions in isolation or as a combination of several misbehaviours.
AJ struggles to stay focused and will expend his energies by walking about and starting conversations with his classmates. He will also answer questions not addressed to him, and this often gives rise to unhappiness from his classmates.
To cope with AJ’s disruptions, I provide verbal reminders. Sometimes I choose to ignore the minor interruptions in order to minimise tension between us. When disruptions become more frequent, and consequences must be meted out, the final option is to call for an intervention by the special education needs officer.
Understanding AJ’s social-emotional needs
This helps to lay the foundation for the successful implementation of accommodation strategies. AJ is often misunderstood by his classmates as being disruptive, impulsive, and disengaged in lessons. Helping AJ change his classmates’ opinions of him could lead to an improved social-emotional outcome for him. This will in turn have a positive impact on his willingness to participate in lesson activities.
In an ideal situation, the grouping arrangements for AJ will change from activity to activity and from time to time, depending on his readiness, the nature of the activities, as well as the learning profiles of AJ and his peers. He may need to work alone at times, and with a larger group on other occasions. The groupings should enable AJ to learn from different peers, synergise with different peers, be a learning resource for others, and experience making decisions as a group.
Lesson sharing 1: Dynamics in Soundscape
One of the musical elements that students learn to apply in their soundscape performance is dynamics. The location setting of this soundscape performance is an MRT station. Students discuss the dynamic changes that occur when an MRT train arrives at the station. When we hear a train arriving, the dynamics grow from soft to loud, with distance playing a major role in determining the volume of the sound heard. As the train slowly comes to a stop, there will be a decrescendo before there is silence.
The whole class practised and performed these changes in dynamics by vocalising a vowel before breaking into small groups to discuss and perform their own versions of the dynamic changes.
Instead of vocalising a vowel like other groups, AJ’s group decided to make use of a chair with a real ‘passenger’ on it, moving it across the room to create a change in dynamics by varying the speed of the chair’s movement.
AJ was able to articulate the rationale behind using a chair as a prop for the group performance. Hence, I provided accommodations by making space for his group to practise and perform. While the other groups were seated around the perimeter of the music room, AJ’s group could use the space in the centre of the room.
This process of explanation and negotiation is co-regulation at work. This process requires the teacher to provide the environment and scaffolds to help students regulate their emotions and understand the rationale behind decisions made. AJ needed to make his ideas work, and we worked together to make that happen, within safe boundaries.
Anna Chen Rosyth School
Lesson sharing 2: Formative Assessment on Syncopated Rhythms
In a follow-up lesson on syncopated rhythms, I needed to know if my students could tell a syncopated rhythm apart from one that is not, first aurally, then visually. Formative assessment was carried out in the form of
echo clapping if the rhythm they heard was a syncopated one.
AJ was able to identify the syncopated rhythms perfectly. Although he struggled with identifying the syncopated rhythm visually as he was weak in reading rhythmic notation,
having gone through the process of coregulation, AJ could control the anxieties that arose from his fear of not identifying the correct answers. AJ was also guided to share his thoughts and ask for help politely when he needed it. As he was aware of the kinds of scaffolds he would need in order to achieve his learning goals, he approached me with a request. He needed to ‘hear’ the rhythms before he could tell whether they were syncopated or not. After proceeding with the accommodation of clapping the rhythmic options for him, AJ was able to answer all the questions correctly.
When interacting with friends, AJ occasionally mistook a friend’s offer of hints as offensive. He was counselled to appreciate his friend’s gesture as an extension of friendship. With the practice of co-regulation, AJ was better able to understand others’ actions.
Lesson sharing 3: Application of Syncopated Rhythm in GarageBand
In this lesson, students apply their knowledge of syncopated rhythms by composing two different two-bar syncopated rhythms and inputting them into an iPad GarageBand project using the Chinese Kit. They then loop their composition to form eight bars (Fig. 4).
The challenge when using digital devices for lessons is that students can get engrossed in navigating the applications and fail to adhere to the instructions given. To counter that, a class management rule of ‘ask three before me’ was introduced. This means that when students have doubts about the activities, they are encouraged to ask three of their classmates before approaching the teacher.
This allows students to get the answers they need from classmates who could have paid attention when the instructions were given. The aim is to help students come to the realisation that they may need to listen more attentively.
In this lesson, AJ was observed to be moving from one friend to another when the students were supposed to be working individually. He was also working while standing, kneeling next to a friend, and right next to the teacher’s table after seeking reassurance that he was on the right track. AJ was not conforming to classroom expectations of sitting crosslegged, but since he was engaged in working on his task, I did not mind that he was out of his seat.
Figure 2: This is a slide extracted from a deck of PowerPoint slides used during lessons. Students refer to two different rhythms shown on the screen, determine which is a syncopated rhythm, and show the indicated hand sign. This allows me to check at one glance the students who can identify the correct rhythm.
Figure 3: The correct answer is revealed after students have made their choices. They will then be able to check on their own understanding.
Figure 4: Track view of AJ’s composition on GarageBand
Conclusion
To answer my inquiry question, “how effective is the use of accommodation strategies in engaging a student with ADHD during music lessons?”, I would conclude that in AJ’s case, it worked well for us.
Firstly, varied musical experiences were created to allow students plenty of opportunities to work in different groups, on different activities, and with stimuli. AJ understood that within reasonable boundaries, he could work and learn while standing up or pacing around, without being constantly corrected.
Secondly, ignoring occasional interruptions from AJ helped us maintain a cordial relationship. This tied in with how I capitalised on these opportunities to demonstrate to AJ better ways to respond instead of reacting impulsively. This explicit form of modelling helped prevent crossfires between him and his classmates, thus protecting our lesson time.
Thirdly, providing multiple ways of engagement helped students make choices for their learning. This motivates students and enhances their independence in learning (Sapan & Mede, 2022).
AJ could demonstrate his learning through various means, and I could check on his understanding in a way that he was comfortable sharing. Motivation and engagement go hand in hand.
Lastly, as with the chair-pushing example, the accommodation for AJ went beyond
providing physical space to meet his learning needs. As AJ was at the forefront of his group’s decision-making, he felt a sense of ownership over the responsibility of making his ideas work. I played the role of an enabler for his ideas to happen, thus giving him the gratitude and motivation to stay engaged for subsequent lessons.
While the focus of my research was based on a single student, the accommodation strategies I employed were inspired by Tomlinson’s model of Differentiated Instruction. Designing interesting activities and pitching them with a slight challenge helps pique and sustain students’ interest in participating in those activities. The types of activities are also crafted to suit the learners’ profiles to improve engagement.
Applying continual (formative) assessment on my students’ progress helped me to adjust teaching and learning activities to better meet students’ needs. The information I gathered helped me become more effective as a teacher, and helped students locate where they were at the learning phase as well as discern what other steps they would need to take in order to reach their goals.
Lastly, with considerations of the element of affect, which is the effect of students’ emotions and feelings on their learning, effort was put in to build a trusting teacherstudent relationship with AJ. By meeting AJ’s emotional needs, effective learning could take place as he would associate positive feelings towards his friends and teachers with cooperation (Tomlinson, 2017). He was willing to put in effort to share his thoughts,
and compromise when a new rule was set in response to his misbehaviour. He felt safe enough to share his concerns and did not hesitate to inform me of his needs. AJ was aware that his actions were understood by
me and agreed that the consequences of his actions were reasonable. We enjoyed a better teacher-student relationship, which led us to have more successful teaching and learning experiences.
References
• Sapan, M., & Mede, E. (2022). The effects of Differentiated Instruction (DI) on achievement, motivation, and autonomy among English Learners. Iranian Journal of Language Teaching Research, 10 (1), 127–144. https://doi.org/10.30466/ijltr.2022.121125
The Understood Team. (n.d.). The difference between accommodations and modifications. Understood. https://www.understood.org/ en/articles/the-difference-between-accommodations-and-modifications
• Tomlinson, C. A. (2017). How to differentiate instruction in academically diverse classrooms. ASCD.
Empowering Learner-Assessors
Social and Emotional Learning
Empowering learner-assessors is about developing students as critical assessors by empowering them with competencies to self-assess, involving them in the assessment process, and using assessment information to help them move their learning forward.
Shawn Tan and Truman See investigated their innovative practice of harnessing applications to strengthen students’ assessment for learning, increasing their metacognition and agency in learning in the O-Level music programme.
Cheng Tat investigated his questioning techniques to develop reflective learners in music composing/arranging.
Technologies for Listening: Harnessing Digital Platforms to Enhance Assessment for Learning in O-Level Music Studies
Shawn Tan
Introduction
We are O-Level Music (OLM) teachers who saw that our students struggle with the necessary skills to tackle questions confidently in the Music Listening component. Particularly, they grapple with questions that require detailed observations and higher-level aural perception of stylistic and compositional features made in the context of genre, period, and/or style.
Our challenges include:
1. Knowing how students listen to music
2. Efficiency of Assessment for Learning (AfL) for Music Studies (due to turnaround time needed to conduct, mark, and return students’ works)
3. Effectiveness of AfL (concerns on developing student’s metacognition, ability to self-assess and improve)
Inquiry Question
This became our starting point for our research on how we can better assess our students for the Music Studies component of the OLM syllabus. We asked ourselves if we could leverage technology as an enabler in the AfL process, and whether it would improve the AfL process in our OLM classroom. We then sought to evaluate the implementation of a technological tool against the criteria of its impact on efficiency (whether the use of technology can help to shorten assessment turnaround time) and effectiveness (whether the technological tool can assist in providing a richer learning experience for our students).
In short, the thrust of our research is to answer the following question: “How can we use digital technology to improve Assessment for Learning (AfL) in the OLM, Music Studies component?” In our research, we measure ‘improvement’ through the metrics of efficiency and effectiveness.
Methodology
Target Audience/Duration
Both of us piloted and integrated the use of a technological platform in our classrooms:
| Truman used a platform called Parlay for his Secondary Four OLM class in Nan Chiau High School for two lessons on the topic of Nationalism in music.
| Shawn used a platform called EdPuzzle for Secondary Three and Four OLM classes in Yuhua Secondary School during Terms 1 and 2.
Data Collection
To assess the impact of the technological platform, we collected data from the analytics offered through the platforms themselves, qualitative student feedback (Google Forms), and student grades in weighted assessments.
Pedagogical Principles
Our study also hopes to contribute to wider research on the following pedagogical principles:
a. Explore a blend of pedagogical approaches and music curriculum designs involving the use of digital technology,
b. Develop strategies to promote self-directed learning,
c. Inquire into strategies for AfL, especially in involving learners in the assessment process.
App 1: Parlay
Overview of App
Parlay is an AI-powered instructional platform that enables meaningful and measurable class discussions. A core feature of Parlay is the Written RoundTable, an organised conversation where students share their perspectives on a subject, build new ideas, and learn to give and receive constructive feedback.
Parlay also offers a host of useful features for AfL:
| Anonymity: Throughout the discussion, students are assigned names of famous historical persons (e.g., Assia Djebar). This allows them to be anonymous to everyone except their teachers. Their secret identities may encourage them to share more openly.
| Customised assessment criteria: While attempting the discussion questions,
students will see custom assessment criteria that the teacher can tailor to the task. This encourages the formation of good habits of mind that guide students toward effective answering. The assessment criteria was crafted based on the different musical parameters.
| Customised feedback stems: While attempting the peer review, students will see customised feedback stems to guide their feedback, scaffolding for a more constructive conversation.
| Rich data analytics: At the end of the discussion, teachers can use the rich data analytics provided by the platform to reflect on the discussion. The keyword cloud, for instance, tells the teacher which terms students are using (and not using). The comment chord maps the interactions of each student with their peers and may be used to assess individual student engagement.
Process
Each RoundTable begins with a Prompt, which the teacher customises for the class discussion. In this roundtable, students discuss the music of 20th-Century Spain, which is part of their
Click above to watch a video providing an overview of the
process (see 0:57–5:15).
VIDEO 1 Parlay
VIDEO 2 RoundTable process
Click above to watch a video explaining features of Parlay (see 5:16–7:16).
RoundTable
studies on nationalism in music. Students are first brought through a guided listening to a Spanish-associated dance, the Habanera. Next, they listen to the main extract to be discussed, Extract 1. This extract is a solo guitar piece by Manuel de Falla, who composed a tribute to the impressionist composer Claude Debussy.
Inspired by recent trends in the OLM Music Studies paper, I set questions requiring higher-level aural perception. Based on experience, these questions tend to be left blank, or filled with responses containing vague, non-relevant details:
| Extract 1 is from Falla, a 20th-Century nationalist composer. Describe three ways in which the composer captures nationalistic feelings in the music of bars 1 to 15 (0:00 to 0:51).
| Extract 1 is from a set of works dedicated to the memory of Debussy. Suggest how the composer pays homage to the deceased Impressionist composer in bars 61 to 66 (3:15 to 3:28).
At this point, students will craft and post their answers to the two questions. After that, students proceed to the Peer Review segment. Here, each student will need to respond to their peers’ answers by providing substantive feedback, simulating the peer review process characteristic of wider scholarship and research.
The Peer Review feature brings us to the heart of what Parlay offers for more effective AfL. Effective AfL feeds forward. That means that the assessment serves not only as an
indicator of current abilities, but also as a tool that brings students to a more assured understanding of how they can do better next time.
Peer review instructions were provided to students: “After submitting your response, read at least two of your classmates’ responses and post a reply. Did they change your perspective in any way? Do you disagree with their answers? Why or why not? Can you improve their ideas?” Guided by these questions, students post their evaluations of their classmates’ answers.
Responding in Real-Time:
How did it go?
Parlay’s written RoundTable brings us through three stages: 1) Prompt, 2) Discussion Questions, and 3) Peer Review. Let’s see how the RoundTable went in real-time.
For students, answering the discussion questions was straightforward. We received a variety of answers.
The peer review segment, however, was more challenging. Even with the guided feedback stems, we found that students needed more guidance to provide substantive peer evaluation. This was something we did not anticipate, but it also gave us broader insight into our students’ current metacognitive abilities – that is, their limited ability to perform effective self-assessment and peer assessment.
In this initial round of peer review, we found that students were generally not attuned
to what made an answer good or poor. Students provided feedback that lapsed into blanket affirmations, or what could be called ‘echo-chamber’ evaluation, where faults are affirmed and remain uncorrected.
This, of course, required the teacher to respond in real-time. In the following lesson, we went over some materials that scaffolded the peer review process even further. I reminded students that their feedback needed to be ‘evaluative’. This meant they had to ask for any answer: ‘Is this a valid answer’? Following that, they were encouraged to think along two central guiding points:
1. validity of ideas, and 2. quality of expression
The second point concerned instances where an answer may gesture toward valid ideas and aural observations, but could be better expressed, perhaps through more precise terminology.
After this intervention, we embarked on a second round of peer review. This time around, students demonstrated noticeable improvement.
Take Assia Djebar for instance. Before (Picture 1), he had nothing to say of Maria Mitchell’s answer. But in the second round of peer review (Picture 2), he managed to provide some substantive evaluation of Mitchell’s answer, pointing out that for Mitchell’s second point to be fully valid, Mitchell needed to link the musical detail of a stepwise melodic line to nationalism. This led Mitchell to reformulate his answer, which now connects the stepwise melodic line heard to the evocation of cante jondo, or Spanish chant.
This next example is Dionysios Solomos’s initial peer review (Picture 3) of Harriet Tubman’s answer. After the intervention (Picture 4), Solomos was able to question the validity of ideas in Tubman’s answer to the second question. Solomos pointed out that dynamic contrasts is not a distinctly Impressionist
Picture 1: Djebar’s initial peer review
Picture 3: Solomos’s initial peer
Picture 2: Djebar’s
musical feature, and so cannot be a valid answer to the second question.
App 2 (EdPuzzle)
Overview of Tool
EdPuzzle is a video hosting platform that allows teachers to post video lessons for their students. A core feature of EdPuzzle is that it integrates both the delivery of lesson content and assessment onto one platform where teachers are able to upload video lessons and include time-stamped questions at appropriate segments of the video to facilitate AfL.
Process
For my project, I took advantage of the video hosting feature of the platform to host score-video listening assignments. In my case, EdPuzzle is used solely as a platform for assessment where I am able to place the score-video and questions on one page.
Some features of the platform which worked well are: first, the time-stamping of the questions; this makes it clearer to the students what portion of the music they need to listen to in order to answer the questions. Second, students can choose to re-listen to
To see an example of an assignment that I designed for my students, scan the QR code.
a particular segment of the music if they are facing difficulties in answering a question. This helps to increase time on focused listening as the students will not be aimlessly replaying the whole extract just to answer a question.
The caveat here is that it might be difficult to upload more complex scores as the size and resolution of these may pose difficulties for the students to follow along.
For teachers, the overview panel offers the ability to organise materials according to classes, and alerts the teacher to new answers submitted by the students. It also shows the overall completion rate for all the assignments. Some limitations are that the
platform allows only a maximum upload of 23 video-assignments. In addition, students who do not click on the “submit” button at the end will not be registered as having completed the assignment.
In the panel for an individual assignment, the teacher is able to see all the students’ progress (how far along in the video they have watched) and their grades (after marking). The teacher can also set a start/end date, and the option to prevent students from fast-forwarding the videos (prevent skipping). When the teacher clicks onto an individual student’s submission, the teacher can mark and provide personalised feedback for each question, and students can respond if they have questions about the teacher’s comments. One limitation is that
the base mark cannot be changed (i.e., fixed at 100 marks), and comments cannot be deleted.
There are also some powerful analytics on this page. Teachers can see how many times the student needed to listen to a particular section of music to answer the question, and how much time they spent doing the assignment. This provides insight into the questions that students found particularly challenging to answer and which required multiple relistening. Another powerful feature on the platform allows the teacher to bunch all of the students’ answers to a particular question in one screen. This has helped
teachers facilitate feedback in class as we are able to show answers categorised as ‘wrong’, ‘average’ and ‘right’. With this feature, we can work on explaining common misconceptions and look at the variety of expressions that the ‘right’ answer can take. The answers, however, cannot be anonymised, so we need to exercise wisdom and discretion if we decide to flash the answers on the screen, or consider manually masking students’ names.
Data Collected & Discussion
Parlay
I relied on two main sources of data: 1) the native data analytics offered by Parlay, and 2)
qualitative feedback from students on their Parlay experience, collected through a Google Form survey.
Parlay offers a variety of data analytics, including participation figures, as well as the average comment length. Beyond this, there is also a keyword cloud, which I found interesting. Similar to Mentimeter, the wordcloud provides a map of words based on their frequency of use in the students’ answers. Here, I can see vague terms like ‘music’, ‘sense’, and ‘mode’ predominate the wordcloud, while more precise terms like
‘Phrygian’ and ‘chant’ sit at the margins. This tells me that students are not using musically precise terms as often as they should.
The comment chord – another interesting feature – maps the interactions of each student with their peers. This provides a visual representation of student engagement levels, and the teacher can assess if some students are dominating the conversation at the expense of others. In this case, the interactions seem quite even across students.
Next, based on the Google Form survey, all students found the Parlay AfL more helpful
Figure 1: Wordcloud in Parlay
Figure 2: Comment Cloud in Parlay
than regular pen-and-paper sessions. Students provided the following reasons, and here I quote:
| “it is engaging” + “more productive cos more hands on” (higher engagement levels)
| “enjoyed using it as I am able to maintain my animosity [sic] while answering so I have more freedom to answer without fear of being criticised” (safe learning environment)
| “Parlay is more organised. Also I can see my classmates’ mistakes” (greater learner autonomy)
| “can comment on comments and posts” (interactive learning + developing metacognitive competencies)
Students also indicated what they would like to see in future iterations of Parlay:
| More platform features: “mindmap, notetaking for concluding discussions”
| Greater guidance: provide “an example for answering? Maybe also devise an answering format (which we kinda have)”. Here the line between guidance and overprescription is a fine one, but perhaps the RoundTable could have benefitted from further tailoring of its assessment criteria
| Greater efficiency: “we could do it at home to save time”
It is true that the whole process took quite a long time, in part because of the teacher intervention required after the first round of peer review. Yet the time taken was crucial, in order to inculcate in students the skill of metacognition that is key to effective AfL. As applied to AfL, we define metacognition as the learner’s ability to enter the virtuous loop of effective self-assessment and improvement. In other words, students possessing metacognitive skills have in them a kind of self-regulating mechanism that actively monitors and corrects faults.
Metacognition is a complex cognitive skill that takes time to build. The process could
have been more efficient if we had considered asynchronous blended learning possibilities. Students could complete the discussion questions and peer review at home, and then meet faceto-face in the classroom for follow-up, where the teacher, as moderator, would highlight ideas, draw attention to different threads, and, more generally, review the peer review.
EdPuzzle
The four main data points that were collected are: 1) the data provided by the EdPuzzle platform, 2) self-reported Turnaround marking time, 3) qualitative feedback from the students via Google Form, and 4) students’ performance in their weighted assessments.
Accessibility and Convenience
A survey was given at the end of Term 3 to check in with the students on their experience and feedback on using EdPuzzle. First, we sought to uncover their difficulties in doing listening homework questions. Beyond responses such as their inadequate knowledge or ability, a number of students mentioned the convenience or difficulty of doing the homework. Some students attributed it to the amount of ‘paperwork’ they needed to prepare before they could start doing the questions, or their inability to identify the specific segment of the music extract in order to answer the questions.
Surprisingly, the survey results showed a slim majority of students who still preferred pen and paper over the use of EdPuzzle. Some of the reasons given were the ability to make notes on the score as they listened to the music, or that hardcopy worksheets were more accessible during revision. There were a few who mentioned familiarity with pen and paper as opposed to working through a new and unfamiliar platform where they faced technical difficulties.
It is interesting to investigate the reasons for the significant percentage of students who preferred EdPuzzle. Many students reported that it was easy to access the platform to do their homework, and that the time-stamping of the questions was an
essential part of scaffolding the listening experience as they were clearer on the timestamped segment they needed to listen to in order to answer the questions. They could have a more targeted replay of the music if they found a particular question difficult. Some students also wrote about the convenience of having the score and the music at their fingertips when answering questions.
Responses to Teacher-Imposed Technical Limitations
When I asked students about the features they found inconvenient or unhelpful, a few responses focused on technical issues, which was something that I had to troubleshoot as they appeared. The issues faced included lagging, and forgotten usernames and passwords. One student mentioned not being able to fast forward the recording. As a teacher you control this function. Although it was inconvenient for the student, our intention was to prevent the students from skipping the questions and fast-forwarding through the assignment. Another bit of feedback given was on how it did not prepare them
to tackle listening questions in the mode and format of exams. This is very perceptive, and needs to be taken into consideration when planning assignments, so as to include relevant experience and skills for the exams.
Students' Results
We compared 2022 and 2023 results (Table 1). What makes this a relatively meaningful comparison is that the assignments given in 2022 were directly imported into EdPuzzle (meaning that the extracts and questions are exactly the same). Therefore, we were able to assess the effectiveness of AfL by comparing students’ performance in their weighted assessments. For our Secondary Three and Four students, we were heartened to see a clear improvement in the results for their Music Studies paper (see Table 1).
Efficiency
There is a clear improvement in turnaround time for marking and returning assignments. Previously with pen and paper, there was a three-week turnaround time:
Comparison of students’ weighted assessment (WA) results between 2022 and 2023
COMPARISON OF STUDENTS’ WEIGHTED ASSESSMENT (WA) RESULTS BETWEEN 2022 AND 2023
With EdPuzzle, it is significantly reduced to a one-week turnaround time:
| Week 1 – Assign on EdPuzzle
| Throughout the week – Submission and return of assignment and feedback
| Week 2 – Feedback shared in class
It may be time consuming to prepare the assignment in EdPuzzle (preparing the score video, time-stamping the questions etc.). As with any use of technology, we encountered sporadic technical issues such as students forgetting usernames or passwords or lagging due to poor internet connectivity, which impeded assignment completion.
Effectiveness
In terms of effectiveness, first, the convenience of doing assignments resulted in higher assignment completion rate (as compared to previous years). The platform afforded the ease of access on students’ Personal Learning Devices (PLD), and students could complete their assignments “just by typing”, and with easy references to audio, score, and questions all in one place. Furthermore, the timestamping feature allowed students to immediately know which questions referred to which portion of the extract, letting students do more focused listening. With the affordance of technology, students were able to work on their mistakes during the week through personalised feedback, and benefit from learning from other students. The teacher was freed up to be able to address larger misconceptions during class time by showing common wrong answers.
Quantitatively, there was a noticeable improvement in the average mark for the Music Studies component, which supports the qualitative experience and feedback that the students have reported. However, students are not trained in the skill of annotating musical scores when using this platform since exams are still in pen and paper formats, and the questions and listening extracts will not be scaffolded to this extent.
Summary of Discussion and Conclusion
Finally, we return to our opening question: “How can we use digital technology to improve Assessment for Learning (AfL) in the O-Level Music Studies component?”
Through our classroom experiments and reflections, we realise that there is significant potential in harnessing existing free digital platforms to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of AfL in the OLM classroom.
Effective AfL in Music Studies requires the assessment to ‘feed-forward’. This means that students emerge from the assessment not only with an indication of their current abilities, but also with a more assured grasp of what they can do better. Effective AfL thus provides concrete answers to students’ deep-seated questions, such as “What can I do better?”, or “How can I answer better?”, or “How can I listen better?” The native affordance of Parlay helps students answer these questions. By providing customisable assessment criteria, Parlay guides students to answer higher-order thinking questions more effectively, inculcating good thinking routines and habits of mind. Meanwhile, the opportunities it provides for peer evaluation, together with the guided feedback stems, helps develop metacognitive evaluation.
Efficient AfL is just as crucial when preparing for the Music Studies paper, given the limited and infrequent contact time that many of us have with our students. EdPuzzle has unveiled possibilities in reimagining how Music Studies homework can be reformulated to allow greater efficiency in turnaround time for marking and feedback, as well as enhanced effectiveness in providing 1) more focused aural engagement in the completion of the assignment and 2) more targeted and timely feedback using data provided by the platform.
Table 2
Summary of the features of Parlay and EdPuzzle that Enable AfL to be More Effective and Efficient
PARLAY EDPUZZLE
Efficiency | Allows for asynchronous blended learning possibilities
Effectiveness | Written RoundTable facilitates higher engagement levels, interactive learning, and metacognition
| Anonymity encourages safe learning environment
| Customised feedback stems help to guide peer assessment, and scaffold the development of metacognition
| Customised assessment criteria encourage good habits of mind that guide students toward effective answering
| Rich data analytics provide information on students’ engagement levels and effectiveness of their answers
To encapsulate our findings, here is Table 2, which summarises the features each platform offers, that enable Music Studies AfL to be more efficient and effective.
Reflections and Future Possibilities
While our focus was on fostering more effective and efficient AfL, through this process, we also realised that these digital platforms encourage the development of other aspects of human learning. For instance, the interactive learning inherent in Parlay’s Written RoundTable might offer opportunities to develop socio-emotional learning and other values and dispositions in the music classroom.
| Allows for submission and feedback to be given within the week
| Ease of access (one-stop portal for score, music, and questions; can be accessed on PLD) facilitates perceived lower barrier and cumbersomeness of the assignment, and therefore encourages a higher completion rate of assignments
| Time-stamped questions allow for ‘scaffolded listening‘ where students can focus on clearly marked segments of the music when answering questions
| Assessment analytics provide teachers with greater clarity on how students are ‘listening’ and thus enrich the teacher’s ability to provide more detailed and holistic feedback for the students
We also found that the digital platform does not replace the pedagogical actions needed by the teacher to enable student agency and learning. For example, the guided feedback stems alone could not help students provide effective peer evaluation as they were not yet accustomed to effective self-assessment or peer assessment. To overcome that challenge, the teacher’s guidance was needed.
Future inquiry could explore how digital technologies in AfL can lead new approaches to e-assessment that could be integrated with e-pedagogy to enhance music teaching and learning for the future.
Empowering Students in the Teaching and Learning of Music Arrangement
Introduction
Over the years of teaching music composition and music arrangement for A-Level Music, I have come to realise that a number of our Junior College (JC) students do not seem to know about the various possible musical processes when approaching a music creating task – even after a year of scaffolded teaching. As such, I feel that there is a need to reflect on and relook my curriculum and strategies to ensure that future students will not feel baffled when approaching a music creating task. In this inquiry, I focus on investigating students’ creating processes in music arrangement, and offer suggestions on how they can be better prepared when it comes to approaching music creating tasks.
Inquiry Questions
How do I empower students to understand their music creating process in music arrangement?
What do we (educators) need to infuse into our creating curriculum to empower our students?
Methodology
Eight JC1 Music Elective Programme (MEP) students
| Mixed levels of readiness in creating | Mixed levels of readiness in the usage of Digital Audio Workstations (DAWs)
Case studies of three of the eight students
| Chloe (pseudonym)
• Plays the violin
• Has tried music arrangement using BandLab in the previous year
• Has learned about the Psychedelic Rock music genre in the previous year as part of Pop Music knowledge as required in the IP (Integrated Programme) MEP syllabus
• Chose to arrange a C-Pop song in the genre of Psychedelic Rock
| Leon (pseudonym)
• Plays the piano
• Has no experience in using DAWs
• Chose to arrange an English pop song in the genre of Trance music
| Mary (pseudonym)
• Plays the piano
• Has tried music arrangement using BandLab in the previous year
• Has learned about Synth-Pop in the previous year as part of Pop Music knowledge as required in the IP MEP Syllabus
• Chose to arrange a Western Classical piece in the genre of Synth-Pop
Data Collection
| Quantitative and qualitative data collection via pre-/post-research surveys
| Qualitative data collection via one-to-one consultations
| Data was collected over two terms of biweekly one-hour lessons (Terms 1 and 2)
| Each student also received a 30-minute one-on-one consultation each week
Pedagogical Frame
This project draws inspiration from literature in the following areas:
Creative Collaboration between Teachers and Students Margaret Barret’s (2006) 12 strategies that an eminent composition teacher used during individual composition consultations.
Feedback
that
Facilitates Creativity
Daniel Deutsch’s (2016) 12 strategies to provide written feedback to enhance student creativity in music composition.
1 Extended thinking, provided possibilities 2 Referenced work to and beyond tradition
3 Set parameters for identity as a composer 4 Provoked student to describe and explain 5 Questioned purpose, probed intention 6 Shifted back and forth between micro and macro levels
7 Provided multiple alternatives from analysis of student
1 Use a supportive and optimistic tone of voice in assessing student work
2 Remember how you felt when you were the age of the composer
3 Begin and end with positive comments
4 Focus on the future
5 Clearly differentiate between objective and subjective elements
6 Phrase comments in the form of questions sometimes
7 Explain the terms you use
8 Teach each student his or her own composition
9 Highlight emerging shoots of success when addressing problems
10 Include musical notation in written evaluations
11 Recognise your own spheres of expertise and limits of knowledge
12 Suggest musical repertoire for study
MARGARET BARRET’S (2006) 12 STRATEGIES
DANIEL DEUTSCH’S (2016) 12 STRATEGIES
Curriculum
T1 / Weeks 6–10
T2 / Weeks 1–4
| Introduction to music composition and arrangement
| Composition/arranging techniques with a focus on elements of music (i.e. Melody, Rhythm & Meter, Harmony & Tonality, Textures & Timbres)
| Usage of DAW (Logic Pro)
| Music arrangement: Music arranging techniques and usage of Logic Pro
| Music composition: Composition techniques
| Individual short explorations of composition/arranging techniques through inputs using Logic Pro
Pre-Survey Questions
T2 / Weeks 5–10
| Music arrangement: Music arranging techniques and one-to-one consultations
| Music composition: Composition techniques
| Individual short explorations of arranging (16 bars) the chorus of a pop song in another music genre of student’s choice using Logic Pro
| Individual music arrangement (1.5 minutes) of a source material of student’s choice using Logic Pro
am confident in creating (free composition and arrangement).
know how to begin working on a composition.
how you would usually start working on a composition.
know what my composition style is. | Forced choice | 5-point Likert
Describe your composition style. | Open-ended
I know what my compositional processes are.
Forced choice | 5-point Likert
Describe your compositional processes. | Open-ended
Data Collected
Pre-Survey
The survey was administered online via Google Forms during lesson time in Term 2 Week 2. The objective of the pre-survey was to understand students’ perceptions of their musical processes in composition. The students would respond to a 5-point Likert scale for forced-choice questions, and type in their responses for the openended questions.
Pre-Survey Findings
From the pre-survey findings, only three out of eight students agreed that they were confident about music creating. Although five students were able to articulate how they would begin a music composition, most students were on the fence about whether they know or do not know how to start a composition.
AM CONFIDENT IN CREATING (MUSIC COMPOSITION AND ARRANGEMENT).”
3: “I am confident in creating (music composition and arrangement).”
Figure 1: Curriculum Outline
Figure 2: Pre-survey questions
Figure
“I
KNOW HOW TO BEGIN WORKING A COMPOSITION.”
4: “I know how to begin working a composition.”
Figure 6: “I know what my composition style is.”
“DESCRIBE
HOW YOU WOULD USUALLY START WORKING ON A COMPOSITION.”
“I think of the style I want to do, then instrumentation.”
“I either start thinking of the title because that is my inspiration and I compose around that, or I have one motif, develop from it then I come up with a title. Very often I draw little pictures of the scenes where I want my music to be ‘background music‘ of and they kind of inspire me too.”
“I think about what instruments I want, then I think of a motif or what I want to achieve with the piece.”
“I start thinking of instrumentation and harmony.”
5: “Describe how you would usually start working on a composition.”
Figure 7: “I know what my compositional processes are.” “I KNOW WHAT MY COMPOSITIONAL PROCESSES ARE.”
Figure
Figure
“DESCRIBE YOUR COMPOSITIONAL PROCESSES.”
“Start with basic melody.”
“Come up with random fragments and piece them together; creation is inspired by music heard.”
One-to-one Consultations
Points of Struggle at the Start of the Creative Process
Chloe. During our first consultation, Chloe mentioned that she did not know how to start her arrangement. Last year, she had the opportunity to arrange a song from a musical using a different instrumentation. She mentioned that her starting point last year was easy to understand as the song had a clear structure with explicit instrumental roles. For example, the singer sang the melody, some other instruments provided the harmony, and the drums provided the rhythmic layer. However, for this arrangement task, as she was using only eight bars of the source material to create an entire arrangement, she was unsure of where to begin.
While brainstorming different possible start points with Chloe, we went through a variety
“No fixed process, play around until it sounds musically pleasing.”
“Jam at the piano (chords and melody) before transcribing.”
of examples of how she could commence her arrangement. One of these was to research more about the musical genre that she had decided to arrange in. I provided an example for Bossa Nova (which was one of the musical genres covered in the music arrangement class this year). There is a characteristic Bossa Nova rhythm that can be played either by the drums in the rhythmic layer or by a piano comping a chord progression in the Bossa Nova rhythm.
Upon doing more research on Psychedelic Rock, Chloe found out that musicians in this genre would often incorporate Indian instruments as well as the Mellotron in their songs. As Chloe is a violinist who is more comfortable with melodies, she decided to start her arrangement by inputting the melody first. In seeking to create the same sound world as the Psychedelic Rock songs she had listened to, Chloe decided to use the sitar as her main instrument for her
Extracts of conversations that transpired during consultation.
Chloe: “For last year’s arrangement, I knew where to start. I knew which instruments I wanted as the piece that I chose was from a musical, which has clear roles. I did the melody first. I am quite stuck for this arrangement. I don’t know how to start.”
Teacher: “There are multiple ways to start an arrangement, depending on what you are comfortable with. What is important is to think about the genre that you wish to arrange in. There are important musical characteristic traits in each specific genre and we can do research to find out what those are. For example, there is a specific Bossa Nova rhythm that defines that genre of music. The arranger might start with a rhythmic line playing the Bossa Nova pattern or perhaps the piano could comp the chord progressions to the Bossa Nova rhythm. Some people prefer starting with the melody while others start with harmonies.”
Chloe: “I will start with the melody first as I have done so last year. I would be more comfortable with that.”
arrangement. During the second consultation, it was clear that Chloe felt empowered after the first consultation as she managed to write about 30 seconds worth of music using the DAW.
Mary. Mary also struggled to start her arrangement. She was stuck on how to proceed using a short idée fixe from Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique (Fig. 9). She was unsure about how to create an entire arrangement from just eight bars of source material. Hence, before we delved into the generation of ideas, I asked Mary to walk me through the structure of her arrangement, her intentions, and possible areas for climaxes in the piece. I realised that I usually use the phrase “walk me through” when clarifying student intentions instead of asking “why”, because I feel that students, especially when they are struggling, need to know that the teacher will walk the journey together with
them. This also lets the student know that the teacher is there to guide them and help them when necessary.
After Mary shared about the structure as well as her inspirations, I asked her to suggest some ways in which we could manipulate smaller motifs from the idée fixe to fit the context of the synth-pop genre that she had chosen to work with. This helped Mary feel empowered to draw on her inspirations, and proceed on the structure of her arrangement. She also considered the possibility of creating a riff by shortening the note values of the source material through diminution.
Mary: “I am stuck in following a specific melody. I don’t know how to manipulate the source material in a way such that it will not sound weird. I feel that if I change it to the downbeat, it just sounds weird. I don’t know how to use just one melody to create the whole arrangement.”
Teacher: “Walk me through the structure of your arrangement: what you intend to do at the beginning, how it flows, and where the biggest climax is. After that, we can talk about how we can utilise the melody of your source material.”
Mary: “I took inspiration from another song. There is an introduction that introduces a riff, then the verse, and the chorus. The biggest climax is either at the second chorus or at the end.”
Teacher: “Okay, now look at the first few bars of the source material. What do you think you could take out to create different layers in your synth pop arrangement?”
Mary: “I could possibly do a riff if I make the melody into shorter rhythms and repeat it, perhaps like a walking bass. I can also use this interval for an ostinato pattern.”
Figure 8: “Describe your compositional processes.”
Extracts of conversations that transpired during consultation.
Leon. Other than the lessons that we went through this year, Leon did not have any background in the usage of DAW. He struggled at the beginning as he wanted to arrange a pop song in the Dream Trance genre. He had done a lot of research and had a specific sound concept in mind. However, he struggled to find the most suitable instrument for the instrumental layers on the DAW. Leon asked if there was a smarter way to look through Logic Pro to find suitable instruments for Dream Trance, or if the only way was to listen to every instrument.
I first affirmed Leon for thinking about efficiency while carrying out the task. This struggle and the question he asked showed that he knew the specific concept of sound in terms of timbral quality, what he wanted for his instruments, and that he was also thinking about the time constraints for this creative task. I further clarified with him on the type of sound world he wanted to create,
of conversations that transpired during consultation.
Leon: “Is there a smarter way to look through all the instruments on Logic Pro? Or do you really have to listen to all of them one by one?”
Teacher: “Good that you are thinking about efficiency over here. Yes there is a smarter way to find instruments on Logic Pro. Based on the genre of music that you want to arrange, you have the concept of the kind of sounds you would like, right? For example, do you want to use real acoustic instruments or more of a synthesised sound? For example, if you are thinking of a sound that is clear and in the foreground that you could possibly use for a main melodic instrument, you can type in the words “clear lead” and the DAW will filter the types of instruments that fit that sound quality.”
and guided him to use keywords to search for instruments and loops (Fig. 10). Eventually, Leon managed to find an instrument with a sound quality that fit the sound world that he had in mind.
I find that there is a need to affirm students as a form of encouragement when they are faced with difficulties. Even though teachers do give praise and offer affirmations to our students, these are not the same for every student. Furthermore, they need not be given only when the student is doing something right. Different students have different strengths and creative actions or dispositions that teachers can affirm them for. Affirmations can also be given when the student is showing the desired or positive processes or dispositions when working on a creative task. For Leon, affirmation increased his self-efficacy and motivated him to continue on his creative task.
Usage of search function for instruments and loops
Points of Struggle in the Middle of the Creative Process
Chloe's choice of solo instrument. In our next consultation, we listened to Chloe’s arrangement and I asked Chloe for the reasons behind her decision to choose a soprano saxophone as her solo instrument. Chloe expressed her struggles in finding a suitable solo instrument as she realised that in the Psychedelic Rock examples that she had listened to, the voice usually does the solo. Chloe tried using the choir patch on Logic Pro, but found that it sounded weird. She was not able to articulate why she chose the soprano saxophone specifically, but she shared her considerations that the solo instrument should stand out from the guitar and bass, so she should not choose another guitar as it would blend in too closely with the
other instruments. She also wanted something different from the sitar.
I started by affirming her for thinking creatively as she had been considering the timbre and sound qualities of her instruments. Over the years, I have found that students are more receptive to feedback and are more willing to try out the different possibilities that we have gone through in consultations when they are first affirmed for the work they have done. Linking to what we had learned about Psychedelic Rock in the previous year and tapping on her own research, I asked Chloe what the common instruments found in Psychedelic Rock are. Chloe then had a eureka moment and mentioned that since Psychedelic Rock musicians usually incorporate Indian music instruments to provide an otherworldly sound world, she could use the bansuri to replace the soprano saxophone.
Leon: “So since my arrangement is in the trance genre, I can type “trance” in the search panel?”
Teacher: “Give it a try. You can do the same when you search for loops as well!”
Leon: “Oh there are so many instruments under Trance. This instrument is quite similar to the sound quality that I am picturing.”
Extracts of conversations that transpired during consultation.
Teacher: “Why did you choose the soprano saxophone as your solo instrument?”
Chloe: “I’m struggling to find a solo instrument because usually in Psychedelic Rock, the voice does the solo. I can’t add in a choir as it would sound funny. I’m not sure why I chose the soprano saxophone, but I think it stands out from the guitar and the bass. If I choose another guitar, it would just blend in, so I wanted a wind instrument.”
Teacher: “It is great to hear that you have thought through the timbre and sound qualities of each instrument as you decide on which to use for the solo section. Is there an instrument or something about the sound quality of the soprano saxophone that could bring out the Psychedelic Rock genre? What are some of the characteristic traits or common instruments of Psychedelic Rock that you have researched on?”
Chloe: “Psychedelic Rock usually incorporates Indian instruments like the tambura, sitar and also Mellotron. Oh!
Maybe I can use the bansuri to replace the soprano saxophone!”
Figure 9: Mary's source material for her creative task, idée fixe from Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique
Figure 10: Usage of search function for instruments and loops on Logic Pro
Extracts
Chloe‘s recording of the drumbeat. In the same consultation, we listened to Chloe’s draft arrangement. There was a part in which the drumming pattern did not seem aligned to the other tracks of her arrangement. As the misalignment was apparent, I asked Chloe if this was done intentionally. Chloe then shared about her struggle to create a “nice drumbeat”, wondering if she should have one track for each drum part or if she should record the entire drum part in one track. Chloe also mentioned that she had tried quantising, but the beats were not how she wanted them to be.
I shared that it depended on the arranger as both ways of recording have their merits and drawbacks. If the arranger were to record different parts of the drums as separate tracks, it would be more time-consuming. However the rhythms could be easier to align as there would only be one line to focus on at a time. Moreover, the arranger would be able to edit tracks separately, meaning that the volume or the sound quality of each part of the drums could be altered individually, without interfering with the other parts. On the other hand, if one were to record all drum parts in one track, there would be a need to practise the drumming patterns. Since Chloe was using a MIDI keyboard to input the drumming pattern into Logic Pro, and as she was not a drummer, she preferred the former approach. I thus guided her to input the different parts of the drums as separate tracks using Logic Pro (Fig. 11). I started off by inputting the bass drum, followed by the snare drum, and lastly the hi-hat.
In the next consultation, Chloe showed that she was able to record a drumming pattern that was more rhythmically accurate. She mentioned that the systematic way of recording the bass drum first followed by the other parts allowed her to feel more grounded in the tempo, and that it was much easier to record the four-bar pattern accurately before looping the entire drumming pattern.
This led me to reflect on the importance of understanding the profile of the student well and
providing suggestions that bring out the strengths of the students. For Chloe, her strength was her ability to focus well on a single track in Logic Pro. Hence, the suggestion of inputting different parts of the drums as separate tracks empowered her to break free from her struggle of recording all the drum parts at the same time. In addition, given that Chloe is a violinist, she could be less comfortable with the keyboard or drums. Indeed, she experienced some coordination issues in recording the drumbeat initially, given that these had to be input via a MIDI keyboard. The empowerment here came when the student decided which solution was best suited for her.
Extracts of conversations that transpired during consultation.
Teacher: “The drum beats here do not seem to be aligned or quantised. Did you have any issues with inputting that or is it intentional?”
Chloe: “I am not sure how to do a nice drum beat. Like, do you do one drum by one drum and add on? Or do you do both drums at the same time?”
Teacher: “It depends on you, personally. Some students separate the different parts of the drums and record in separate tracks, then group them together. A good thing about this, even though it is more time consuming, is that you will be able to edit each individual track. For example, if you want only the hi-hat to have changes in dynamics. If you record all parts of the drums on one track, you will not be able to edit the volume of the specific parts. I think that in terms of coordination during recording, separating the parts of the drums would be easier ”
Chloe’s arrangement of the choruses. In the previous consultation, Chloe walked me through the structure of her arrangement and shared that she wanted something different in the second chorus, rather than an exact copy of the first chorus. However, in her draft, the second chorus sounded exactly like the first chorus. It was evident that Chloe was struggling to find ideas to develop, and alter her initial ideas for the second chorus. I first asked her what ideas she had in terms of making the second chorus different from the first.
Chloe mentioned that she could change the timbre, the tempo, or other elements of music, including her choice of instruments. I asked her to clarify and elaborate on what she meant by changing the other elements of the music. Chloe clarified that she could add a countermelody instead of changing the tempo, as tempo changes might sound too drastic and strange in the context of the entire musical arrangement. Knowing that Chloe had some background knowledge of Psychedelic Rock and that she had researched the genre, I asked her to suggest some ways to change the sound world of Psychedelic Rock music.
There was another lightbulb moment as Chloe quickly mentioned that she could also reverse the melody as she had heard that in The Beatles’ “Strawberry Fields Forever”, or add distortion or adjust the EQ. Tapping on the student’s repository of knowledge is another way of scaffolding students in brainstorming different possibilities.
Extracts of conversations that transpired during consultation.
Teacher: “You wanted something different in the second chorus right? What are some ideas that you have?”
Chloe: “I thought I could change the timbre or something so that it is not an exact copy of the previous chorus. Maybe I could change the tempo? Or perhaps I could change the other elements of music or instruments.”
Teacher: “Could you elaborate on the other elements of music you can change?”
Figure 11: Example of keying in the drum-set line into different tracks on Logic Pro
Extracts of conversations that transpired during consultation.
Chloe: “Perhaps I could add in a countermelody instead of changing the tempo so that it does not sound strange with the sudden change in tempo.”
Chloe: “Oh, perhaps I could reverse the melody. I did hear that in The Beatles’ “Strawberry Fields Forever“, or maybe I can change the EQ and add distortion!”
Teacher: “Are there any other ways that we can change the sound quality with reference to the Psychedelic Rock genre?”
Mary’s use of audio equipment. In the third consultation with Mary, I was surprised that in the second chorus, the main melody was heard in the background of her mix, whereas the harmony layers were in the foreground. I sought clarification as this was not one of the characteristic traits of the Synth-pop genre. It seemed that Mary had been using earphones that were only functioning on one side, resulting in her not being able to hear the entire mix clearly. This shows that some points of struggle can be easily resolved by using proper equipment. With proper equipment, students will be able to get accurate playbacks of their creation on the DAW and make more accurate creative decisions, thus empowering them.
Post-Survey
The survey was also administered online via Google Forms during lesson time in Term 2, Week 10. A post-research survey was conducted with questions that are similar to the pre-survey. The objective of the post-survey was to understand the changes in students’ perceptions of their musical processes in composition after one-on-one consultations. The students would respond to a 5-point Likert scale for forced-choice questions and type in their responses for the open-ended questions.
Post-Survey Questions
Extracts of conversations that transpired during consultation.
Teacher: “For this second chorus, was it intentional that your main melody is in the background and your harmonies are in the foreground?”
Mary: “Hmm... it sounded okay when I listened to it.”
Teacher: “Okay, listen to the part again using these headphones.”
Mary: “Oh yes, it sounds different. It is in the background. I want it in the foreground. Maybe it’s because my earphones are one-sided.”
Teacher: “Okay, I suggest that you borrow a pair of headphones to use when you are working on your arrangement.”
know what my compositional processes are.
The consultations guided me to reflect better on my work.
The consultations empowered me to improve/make edits to my composition/ arrangement.
The consultations made me feel more empowered to understand my music creative processes.
The consultations provided me with different perspectives in looking at my creative work.
further support do you need to better understand your creative processes?
What are some new perspectives that you have gained in terms of composition?
Forced choice | 5-point Likert
Forced choice | 5-point Likert
Post-Survey Findings
Comparing the pre- and post-survey results, we can see that the number of students who know their composition style has increased. The mean for the pre-survey was 2.75, while the mean for the post-survey increased to 3.75. In the qualitative findings of the compositional processes, students seemed to be clearer as to how they would start a composition, as compared to the pre-research survey.
12: Post-survey questions
14: “I know what my compositional processes are.”
“DESCRIBE YOUR COMPOSITIONAL PROCESSES.”
“I usually begin with big ideas, taking influences from everything I know of and then somehow inserting small ideas in the big ideas.”
“I would start by fleshing out the melody and moving on to developments. I normally compose section by section instead of element by element.”
“I will find chords and write a melody and just do trial and error.”
“I would start with choosing ways on how to develop a motif and sticking to those few methods.”
“I will find the instruments first before coming up with a motif.”
“I come up with a melody or a motif and develop them in different ways.”
15: “Describe your compositional processes.”
“THE CONSULTATIONS GUIDED ME TO REFLECT BETTER ON MY WORK.”
16: “The consultations guided me to reflect better on my work.”
Figure
Figure
Figure
Figure 13: “I know what my compositional style is.”
“THE CONSULTATIONS EMPOWERED ME TO IMPROVE/MAKE EDITS TO MY COMPOSITION/ARRANGEMENT.”
“THE CONSULTATIONS PROVIDED ME WITH DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVES IN LOOKING AT MY CREATIVE WORK.”
Figure 17: “The consultations empowered me to improve/make edits to my composition/arrangement.”
Figure 19: “The consultations provided me with different perspectives in looking at my creative work.”
18: “The consultations made me feel more empowered to understand my music creative processes.” “THE
“WHAT FURTHER SUPPORT DO YOU NEED TO BETTER UNDERSTAND YOUR CREATIVE PROCESSES?”
“Having more tasks that are shorter, smaller in scale and focus on a composition technique rather than a two-minute free composition.” “Having a live demonstration of composing by the teacher.”
Figure 20: “What further support do you need to better understand your creative processes?”
Figure
“WHAT ARE SOME NEW PERSPECTIVES THAT YOU HAVE GAINED IN TERMS OF COMPOSITION?”
Pedagogical Implications
“There are many ways to develop a motif or a sound.” - Mary
“Now I see composition as a step by step process of layering instead of just writing music as it is and considering all the different micro elements that need to go into it before zooming out to see the big picture.” - Leon
Discussion
Effectiveness of Consultations
In all three case studies, the examples chosen were points of struggle that students faced during the creating process. These struggles were chosen as they are common occurrences throughout my years of teaching. They happen either at the start or in the middle of the creating process, which are common junctures of struggle that students might face when working on a creating task.
From the post-survey results, we can see a decrease in the number of students who do not know their composition style. Based on the open responses, students seemed to be clearer on how they would start a composition as compared to the pre-survey. In the pre-research survey, the students mentioned “jamming at the piano”, “no fixed processes” or “coming up with random fragments”. In the post-research survey, they were able to articulate more concretely the steps that they would take during the
“Like knowing what to focus on and not overlook.” - Chloe
composition process: “begin with big ideas, taking influences from everything I know of before inserting small ideas in big ideas” and “fleshing out the melody and moving on to developments”. It is evident that the one-to-one consultations guided the students in reflecting on their work, and created possibilities for them to move forward and edit their compositions. These findings support the vignettes presented in the case studies.
Relating back to the research questions on how learners are empowered to understand their music creative processes and what educators need to infuse into our creating curriculum to facilitate this, it is evident that effective facilitation by the teacher during one-to-one consultations enabled the students to feel more empowered when embarking on the next step in their creative process. Through the consultations with effective questioning from the teacher, the students could move forward in refining and editing their compositions.
In response to the survey question “What further support do you need to better understand your creative processes?”, two students mentioned having more tasks that are shorter, smaller in scale and focus on a composition technique, rather than a 1.5-minute free composition task. One student mentioned having the teacher do a live composing demonstration. These findings provide pedagogical implications that we educators can infuse into our curriculum. Even though there are smaller composition tasks already in the curriculum, it seems that they offer insufficient practise for the students to feel confident when it comes to creating a work of their own.
It is interesting that one of the students suggested having the teacher do a live demonstration of composing. In my curriculum, we have been analysing works of composers, and understanding compositional techniques and creative decisions from a retrograde perspective, where the entire composition is already completed. It could be worthwhile to infuse a live demonstration of composing in the following year’s curriculum to see whether this would have any impact on the empowerment of the students’ creative processes.
Broadening Perspectives
As part of students’ empowerment, students also gained new perspectives in terms of composition. Leon mentioned that there was a need to have a step-by-step process in terms of working with smaller elements before zooming out to view the entire composition. Moving from a micro to a macro perspective (i.e., starting and working with motifs to form melodies, then to form sections and finally to form an entire piece) allowed him to understand his music creation process better.
Mary realised that there were countless ways to develop a motif or a sound. Looking back
at the vignettes, it is evident that generating possibilities, but keeping them open for the students to choose the ones which they are more comfortable working with, helps free them from the struggles of developing a motif.
Through the one-to-one consultations, Chloe came to realise what she needed to focus and work on during the composition process. She was also able to see different ways of developing the composition. This ties in again to the vignettes, where the brainstorming of ideas through questioning and clarifying creative decisions empowered Chloe to better understand her personal music creative process.
Addressing Students’ Struggles
At the start of this research journey, what sparked the genesis of the research questions – empowering learners to understand their musical creative processes, and what educators can infuse into the creating curriculum to empower our students – was that students did not seem to know the various processes when approaching a music creating task.
It is evident that there are two obvious points of struggle that students face during their creating journey. One of these is at the start of the creating process, where students grapple to find inspiration or navigate the different ways to start a piece. The other occurs in the middle of the creating process where they struggle to develop a motif or to transit from one section to another. Based on my research findings, I suggest that teachers should infuse these four strategies (i.e., Brainstorm Ideas; Clarify Creative Decisions and Intentions; Affirm Students; and Cultivate Awareness of Technological Affordances) during one-to-one consultations at the points of students’ struggles so as to empower them to understand their music creating processes better, and enable them to make their own creative decisions in developing their composition or arrangement.
Figure 21: “What are some new perspectives that you have gained in terms of composition?”
Brainstorm Ideas
Firstly, through questions and links to repertoire that has been explored in class, the teacher can facilitate a brainstorming session with the student and explore possible ideas to develop a creative work.
With open-ended questions and inquisitive questioning, students are able to harness their prior knowledge on the different ways to develop a musical idea. By linking to repertoire that has been explored in class, students will be able to see connections and utilise composition techniques in their works. Most importantly, these ideas are kept open for students to choose what they are comfortable with.
One student shared that the brainstorming sessions enabled her to generate sufficient material for her entire piece in terms of how to develop her musical ideas, as well as how to transit between sections in the piece. She also mentioned that she felt encouraged to continue creating after overcoming the struggle of motivic development as she felt more confident to choose, among the sea of ideas, the one which she was most comfortable to work with.
Clarify Creative Decisions and Intentions
Secondly, by clarifying creative decisions and intentions, students are empowered to think critically and reflect on their creative decisions. Composing is a creative process that involves consistent editing and reflecting. At the points of struggle, teachers will be able to offer clarification and guide the students to accurately present their musical ideas and intentions in their works.
Affirm Students
Thirdly, I find that providing affirmations during points of struggle can empower the students to try harder, and pick themselves up from setbacks. In the one-on-one consultations, when I affirmed Leon and Chloe for thinking creatively, I could see the spark in their eyes. After some reflection,
they were able to articulate their musical thoughts more soundly and suggest follow-up steps to take in their creative processes. In the following consultations, the students were also able to present works that were more refined as compared to the previous consultation.
Cultivate Awareness of Technological Affordances
Lastly, teachers can cultivate students’ awareness of technological affordances and proper use of equipment in our lessons. Even though this may seem straightforward, it was evident in my research that students struggle to find an instrument that is suitable for the sound world that they have envisioned their arrangement to be in, or were unable to listen to the entire mix of the music due to faulty earphones. Cultivating this awareness has empowered my students to move beyond their struggles, enabling a smoother creating process and the eventual completion of their creative work.
Limitations and Implications for Future Research
One of the limitations of this research was the number of participants. As there are only eight students in the JC1 MEP cohort, the findings might not be reflective of all MEP students. There is a need to conduct the survey with a wider target audience in order to analyse the trends.
Another limitation was the duration of the research period, which lasted for only two terms. It would be useful to continue the research in students’ JC2 year to see whether there is an increase in the level of empowerment and whether the students understand their compositional processes better.
Two areas of further study also came to mind after doing this research project. In one of the consultations, Leon mentioned that he would usually do his musical creating at around 10pm at night in the living room at home, where there was no one around him. He found this time and space conducive for him to work. This suggests
possible further study on how backgrounds, cultures, and extra-musical aspects can help learners better understand their creative processes.
The second possible area of further study is whether group composition can empower learners to better understand their creative processes. This came to mind as I have group composition tasks for the JC1 students every year. It would be useful to study whether learners can gain further understanding of their creative processes through informal learning (Green, 2008) in group work.
Conclusion
This CI NLC journey has enabled me to reflect better on my pedagogical strategies as well as my music creation curriculum. From the findings and conversations with my students, I am more informed about the different ways I can empower my students to understand their creative processes and overcome their struggles when doing a creative task. It is always heartwarming to see the many lightbulb-eureka moments that my students have after consultations, and then come back with work that is better than before.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank my MEP students and their parents for their support.
References
• Barrett, M. (2006). ‘Creative collaboration’: An ‘eminence’ stu dy of teaching and learning in music composition. Psychology of Music 34(2), 195–218. https://doi.org/10.1177/0305735606061852
• Deutsch, D. (2016). Authentic assessment in music composition. Music Educators Journal 102(3), 53–59. https://doi.org/10.1177/0027432115621608
