Reimagining Adaptive Thinking

How can the teacher design a ‘gumbo’ of flavourful and hearty experiences that engage students in musical learnings and to use their metacognitive skills to generate ideas to adapt to changing contexts with agility?

In this rapidly changing world, it is critical that students develop adaptive thinking to apply learnt knowledge and skills strategically and with flexibility in different or new contexts. This would also involve adjusting one’s perspective and strategies, so as to manage complexities and ambiguities in the evolving contexts. These cognitive competencies can be applied to the real world where issues are multi-faceted and require multiple perspective-taking. The music classroom, with its opportunities for music-making, improvisation, and creation, provides fertile ground to design such learning experiences for adaptive thinking.

Adaptivity Through Ethnic Music Learning Experiences

Holy Innocents’ Primary School music teachers Sarah Koh (HOD, Aesthetics) and Allison Foo began with engaging the students with the learning of Chinese and Malay ethnic drumming experiences. Essential content like the instrument names and prominent rhythmic patterns were highlighted in the students’ learning. Through these lessons, students consolidated their learning into short performances of the taught ethnic style.

This was followed by putting the students into a new context whereby they had to incorporate the Chinese rhythms (Drum and Large Gong) and Malay Inang rhythms as accompaniment to the community song ‘Singapura’. This led to musical challenges where students navigated complex relationships between various music elements, lyrics, and different task requirements. Students constructed new knowledge through the applications of their existing skills strategically and with flexibility in the new context.

As Hung (2014) and Lee (2014) noted, adaptive learning occurs in a social-constructivist context where learners serve as ecological resources for each other. Riding on each other’s strengths and knowledge, students form informal expert-novice relationships and learn from one another.

What else did the teachers do?

(I) Teacher As A Facilitator

Allison emphasised the importance of not providing ‘correct answers’ to students’ questions. Instead of approving students’ musical decisions, she redirected them to articulate their opinions about their musical product or explain how they arrived at a musical decision. She also guided them to assess if they met task requirements. This facilitation helps students critically evaluate their decisions, promoting reflection, metacognitive dialogue and self-assessment (Hung, et. al., 2014; Lee, et al., 2014). These being the learning dispositions of developing adaptive thinking skills.

(ii) Providing a Positive Classroom Culture

Developing adaptive thinking requires psychologically safe environments where students are able to “meddle” and “tinker” with their ideas, develop their own meanings in the learning process, and practice and refine contextual understanding and soft skills (Hung, et al., 2014). For Sarah, this approach manifested in classbased discussions at mid-point project showcases where students performed their work-in-progress arrangements. During these discussions, Sarah invited their peers to provide the respective performing group(s) with possible solutions to bring students’ complex musical ideas to fruition, or suggestions to simplify the arrangement to help the group focus on their coordination.

Students trying their hands on the tabla.

Final Thoughts

It is essential for teachers to be skilful in facilitating generative conversations among students as they seek to be resourceful in adapting to evolving demands and range of challenges. Being able to develop students’ adaptive thinking requires teachers to be able to think flexibly when considering new and alternative perspectives or solutions. Last, but not least, to engender adaptive thinking in students, teachers are encouraged to role-model this competency; being open to challenge oneself when circumstances change and demonstrating the resilience in the pursuit of goals.

Teachers performing in mixed-ethnic ensemble at the SZ Primary Music Workshop.

Check out the sample lesson idea written by Sarah and 3 other fellow STAR Champions here.

To see other lesson ideas with applications of other E21CCs, click here.

References :

• Hung, D., Lim, K. Y. T., & Jamaludin, A. (2014). An epistemic shift: a literacy of adaptivity as critical for twenty-first century learning. In S.-S. Lee (Ed.), Adaptivity as a transformative disposition: For learning in the 21st Century. essay, Springer.

• Lee, S.-S., Hung, D., Lim, K. Y. T., & Shaari , I. (2014). Learning Adaptivity Across Contexts . In Adaptivity as a Transformative Disposition for Learning in the 21st Century (pp. 43–60). essay, Springer.

• Supporting Our Teachers and Parents Through Refreshed Guidelines for School-Home Partnership and New Parenting Resources. (2024, September 18). Ministry of Education Singapore . Retrieved November 14, 2024, from https://www.moe.gov.sg/news/press-releases/20240918-supportingour-teachers-and-parents-through-refreshed-guidelines-for-school-homepartnership-and-new-parenting-resources.