What do children need from education now, and in the future? How is technology best used in teaching and learning? How can innovative approaches to education be reconciled with established, traditional ones? What does student-centred learning really mean? This five module course is not just for classroom or ensemble music educators. It’s suitable for anyone interested in creativity-infused education, in contemporary education issues, and in the integration and use of digital technology. It’s designed to challenge old paradigms, to inspire innovative and creative pedagogical philosophies, and to develop your ability to critically respond to the latest research. We’ll visit schools with vastly different approaches to learning and teaching, and meet inspiring teachers and principals. We’ll venture inside the classroom to closely observe how technology is integrated with music education – or how it’s decidedly not! We’ll talk to international leaders and experts about innovative and traditional approaches to music education, and I’ll provide insights from my own practice as well as from some of my students. I’ll be provoking you to think critically and creatively, to develop your own ideas and theories around students’ educational needs and the impact of digital technologies, now and into the future. Copy and paste this link into your browser to watch the trailer: http://tinyurl.com/music-education-21st-century
Rethinking the Elements and the Experiences
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From the course by The University of Sydney
The Place of Music in 21st Century Education
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From the lesson
To infinity and beyond
What would a pluralist music education look like?
Meet the Instructors
Dr. James HumberstoneLecturer in Music Education
Sydney Conservatorium of Music
[MUSIC]
While promoting a truly pluralist music education is a change that
individual music teachers can make in their own classroom.
Restrictions are placed on them by expectations from syllabuses which
are under pinned by traditional western art, music based music education.
In an effort to academicise music,
such syllabuses have imposed a vocabulary on it that simplifies and
generalizes analytical, musicological approaches.
The vocabulary to be used is broken down into a number of categories which,
in turn, are given labels and called something similar to the elements,
or concepts of music.
Here in New South Wales, Australia, for example, the observation of music
is broken down into six concepts, which students are asked to consider.
Pitch, including melody and harmony, duration,
which in this context, means not how long a piece is, but
is a broad term used to include rhythm, meter, and tempo.
Dynamics and expressive techniques, texture using traditional textural
terminology, but also, using any words to describe layers of sound.
Structure, which includes form and
tone color, a broad description of timbre.
In their 2013 paper, Leslie Rose and
June Countryman compare the use of similar terminology for elements of
music in Canadian schools they have taught in, and the dislocation of this
vocabulary from words young people use to describe music in their own cultures.
They suggest that the language young people use to discuss the music in
their lives is sophisticated and varied.
Rose and Countryman find that the existing language in syllabuses is western
art music centric.
And therefore, unsuitable for discussing contemporary music.
Quote, “the elements framework causes teachers to try to over
simplify a complex temporal phenomena, and thus,
interfere with the richness of the listening experiences”.
Like Matthew Hindson in the last video, Rose and
Countryman write about the play of anticipation and
expectation as a common thread in the enjoyment of all music.
In this module, we've established common threads in the creative
processes of composers of completely different musics.
But we also learned that, especially around the use of technology in
composition, song writing, and production, that new creative practices have emerged.
[MUSIC]
Again, music education syllabuses fail to recognize this, segregating musical
experiences, so that listening to music is separate from performing it.
And composing is separate to learning music theory.
And by assessing creativity through the medium it has been recorded in for
a millennium, the score, it limits the availability of new musical creativities
to talented young music students within the classroom context.
As we saw in Frank Xavier's studio, the electronic creative process
mixes listening, improvising, performing, and composing, and
adds production and cross media output, not just sound to the mix.
[MUSIC]
Embedding creativity with and without technology into the way we teach
music is something we can do without anyone's permission.
But the syllabus writers will need to catch up and
expert music educators can let them know.
Here at the Sydney Conservatorium my students are playing around with ideas
about creativity, cross genre fertilization,
and the adaptation of established pedagogies.
We look at arrangements and
original compositions I've made that fuse the Orff pedagogy for rote oral teaching.
And any lengths that there maybe through technology to the oral learning models
that Lucy Green and musical futures have established.
We consider how creativity may become the focus of musical output.
Taking time to learn about the creative music movement.
As I established in the last video,
Ostinato or loop-based composition isn't exclusive to Orff pedagogy.
We draw on minimalist and post-minimalist music,
especially film music that students may know, as well as popular
music repertoire that lends itself to rearranging for this purpose.
In an assignment in the subject composition in music education,
students can arrange a piece from these genres, or compose their own, and
then explain how it can be taught using these established pedagogies.
In the footage you see here,
we're work-shopping some of the students original compositions.
Which is part of the process towards submitting the final assignment.
The pieces also includes sections and instructions for improvisation,
which in turn, become opportunities for their students to compose their own music.
[MUSIC]
We do this with acoustic instruments.
We do it with technology, with and without.
The focus on creativity isn't just about making music learning more fun,
although, that's a great outcome.
As Richard Gill stated,
we can see how much students have understood about the music they performed,
if they can take an element of it, and then use it to compose their own piece.
Following these approaches, students are attempting to create
contemporary motivating musical experiences that lead to compositional
outcomes that can be the work assessed itself.
No need for worksheets, tests, or exams.
We can assess everything from whether the student understands the 4/4 meter,
and the rhythmic features of a rock beat, through to cadences, or
inter balance relations, by asking them to compose with these techniques.
And these are not genre specific tasks.
The student can find their own musical voice along the way too.
It's a step towards
the pluralist music
education that we're seeking.
[MUSIC]
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