Introduction
In recent times, informal learning and pedagogy has become a significant theme in English music education, emanating from a concern that the ‘ownership’ of musical learning should be firmly located with pupils. The emerging pedagogical models have characterised music teaching as facilitation over instruction, co-construction of the curriculum over ‘delivery’. This shift demands new skills, knowledge and understandings (both pedagogical and musical) and as a consequence questions arise about the development of music teachers and the ways in which they learn how to teach. This paper will focus on Initial Teacher Education (ITE) and explore the possibility of developing a meta-pedagogy which embraces Informal Learning and Pedagogy (ILP) in music. Meta-pedagogy here refers to the pedagogy for learning pedagogy.
The paper is in two parts the first of which examines the background to (ILP) in English music education and some attendant issues surrounding initial teacher education. The second will report on some approaches to developing a meta-pedagogy for ILP in music, before speculating on future areas for research in music ITE.
Background
The recent emergence of ILP in music education can be traced to the mid 1970s. At this time various researchers began to examine educational issues from the perspective of the sociology of knowledge (see Young, Reference YOUNG1971). Politically motivated, this work was driven by a concern for the fairer access and distribution of educational knowledge and the related distribution of success in society. In short, it problematised the school curriculum and argued that ‘high status’ knowledge – that which is formally assessed, ‘literate’ and taught to the ‘ablest’ pupils – was created and perpetuated by and for certain social groups to maintain the social order.
In music education the sociology of knowledge was typically used to show how ‘pop’ music was subverted by values and knowledge surrounding ‘classical’ music i.e. an adherence to a notated tradition, a canon of works and a set of associated performance practices. Such values were, it was argued, unable to embrace diverse musical traditions and in particular contemporary practices, and yet success in classroom music was reliant upon compliance with them (see Vulliamy, Reference VULLIAMY, Shepherd, Virden, Vulliamy and Wishart1977). The sociology of knowledge was thus used to explore and explain themes of pupil disenchantment with, and alienation from, school music. Pupils, it was said, had an alienated relationship with school music, making music the most unpopular subject on the curriculum, and yet paradoxically the most important to them outside of the school (Schools Council, 1971; Harland et al., Reference HARLAND2000).
Over the ensuing years the English music curriculum has responded to this critique. The dominant curriculum interpretation in the 1970s and 1980s was that ‘pop’ should be regarded as an equally valid form of knowledge and set of practices to those of the western classical tradition. The intention was that the study of other musics would eradicate pupil alienation and encourage ownership of learning. Furthermore, it is clear from successive national curricula since 1992 (DES, 1992; DfEE, 1999) and modern examination syllabi, that the school music curriculum now offers opportunities for pupils to engage with a breadth of musical style, tradition and genre including pop, jazz and world musics. In short, this is what would appear to be a more inclusive and musically relevant curriculum.
In the early 21st century English music education is still engaged in a debate about the nature of the music curriculum, as pupil engagement, commitment and ownership of learning remains problematic. The key to an unalienated music curriculum, it would seem, is not so much curriculum content as a pedagogical orientation in which pupils are seen as curriculum makers. This is a major premise of the ‘Musical Futures’Footnote 1 initiative, part of which can be traced to Lucy Green's work on how popular musicians learn. Her concluding recommendations here include:
Playing music of one's own choice, with which one identifies personally, operating both as performer and composer with like minded friends, and having fun doing it must be high priorities in the quest for increasing numbers of young people who benefit from a music education which makes music not merely available, but meaningful, worthwhile and participatory. (2002, p. 216)
This work has spawned an approach to informal learning, where pupils have control of the musical knowledge they construct, and has offered a vision for a new pedagogy. The role of the teacher in this version of informal pedagogy is, in the first instance, one of observing the pupils making self-directed music. Teachers are then asked to ‘empathise with pupils’ perspectives and the goals that pupils set for themselves' (Green, Reference GREEN2008, p. 24). On the basis of this understanding teachers can then diagnose needs and support pupils in their self-directed goals. An important feature of the pedagogy is the location of musical knowledge with the pupils themselves. It aims to promote pupils as curriculum makers, as opposed to consumers, and thus to confront issues of alienation with ‘ownership’.
If teachers are to embrace ILP there are important implications for initial and ongoing teacher education. However, before exploring these it will be useful to clarify what is meant by informal learning.
The nature of informal learning
The nature of informal learning can only be fully understood in relation to formal learning. Folkestad (Reference FOLKESTAD2005) has pointed out that the issue is not what the music is nor where learning takes place that makes the learning informal or formal but our orientation at any one time. He suggests that the moment of informal learning is an orientation to playing and making music. The formal moment is an orientation to learning how to play music. In this sense all musicians are constantly engaging in a dialectic between these two moments (if indeed they can be separated). Theoretically we can ‘flip’ or ‘slide’ between them in a matter of seconds. For example, imagine a group of youngsters jamming in a garage after school where the orientation is informal (see Jaffurs, Reference JAFFURS2004). One of the group asks a friend to teach her how to play a chord on a guitar to go with one of the songs, where the orientation becomes formal. Musicians constantly learn music in this way in all traditions i.e. in a dialectic between the formal and informal. However, music education has typically privileged the formal at the expense of the informal and hence ‘buried’ the informal moment.
Table 1 illustrates the formal–informal relationship.
Table 1 Formal and informal orientations to musical learning
Given what we know about the nature of ILP, what are the implications for initial and ongoing teacher education in music? In the next section we will explore what a meta-pedagogy for teacher education in music might look like in this respect.
Implications for teacher education and ongoing professional development
Initial Teacher Education (ITE) is only a small part of a music teacher's development. At the point of undertaking initial teacher education many of the values which determine attitudes to learning and pedagogy have become established through ‘planned’ and ‘encultured’ development.
In planned development – typically formal courses or sessions which aim to develop the skills, knowledge and understanding of musicians – it is likely that the formal will have been prioritised over the informal. On the other hand, in encultured development – where musical understandings are ‘caught’ as part of growing up as a musician in the culture – it is likely that the informal moment of learning has, by its very nature, remained implicit and intuitive.
Given the privileging of the formal over the informal in English music education an explicit awareness and understanding of the informal can become deeply ‘buried’ in the habitus of the prospective music teacher. By habitus, we mean here the process of socialisation, leading to unconscious habituated ways of thinking and acting socially. Music graduates arrive for initial teacher education having acquired habitus where an awareness of the informal moment in musical learning can lie ‘buried’, even for those who have learned as a stereotypical ‘informal’ pop musician! Our system of music education (and wider education and culture) has the potential to subvert the informal, a consequence of which is that what counts as musical knowledge, learning and pedagogy for the musicians who embark on teacher education programmes can often be defined in terms of the formal moment.
Habitus impacts upon the ways in which musicians engage with the process of learning how to teach music and is a consequence of complex cultural and social processes, of which higher education and teacher education are only a small part. However, habitus in the sense used here is not static and deterministic. It is always possible for habitus to morph as a result of new cultural, educational and social experiences.
How can initial teacher education impact on the habitus of music teachers? How can it contribute to developing a dynamic and explicit understanding of the power and role of the informal when learning how to teach? How can teacher education impact upon a musician's notion of what counts as musical knowledge, learning and pedagogy such that they can facilitate a more inclusive curriculum in the music classroom? We would suggest that there are two characteristics of such a meta-pedagogy for teacher education in music. Firstly, ITE programmes should explicitly ‘live’ informal learning and secondly they should aim to ‘excavate’ the informal learning latent within the habitus. In this model ITE music programmes need to recognise the relationship between formal and informal learning and ensure that it is being ‘lived’ and reflexively dwelt upon. What does this mean for ITE music programmes?
‘Living’ informal learning
There is a danger that student teachers will be inducted into informal pedagogy as a ‘formula’ for working with pupils and this is problematic. For example, there is some evidence that the Musical Futures ‘approach’ is being characterised and interpreted in this way. Hallam et al.'s (Reference HALLAM2008) report on the effectiveness of the project constantly refers to the project as a curriculum and pedagogical package (i.e. ‘doing’ Musical Futures) and some of the teachers make this even clearer:
We are at the point of adapting the formula for next year's curriculum. The Year 8 curriculum approach with its more structured emphasis has worked better with our students . . . (Hallam et al., Reference HALLAM2008, p. 32)
However, the project does not derive from an ‘off the peg’ methodology but an approach to learning, a pedagogy which promotes, above all, the process of self-directed learning and ‘owned’ learning. In a desire to disseminate the project and make an impact there is the danger that the professional development offered for ILP subverts the very process it aims to promote. This has the potential to commodify Musical Futures as a curriculum and pedagogical formula where the informal becomes formalised. It is argued here that the meta-pedagogy of informal learning needs to be appropriated and owned by prospective music teachers just as the principles of informal pedagogy expect the appropriation and ownership of musical knowledge by pupils. In parallel to the informal learning of pupils, learning for music teachers is most effective when it is ‘lived’ as opposed to being ‘downloaded’.
If the implications of informal learning and pedagogy are to make a real impact, the music education of music teachers needs to embrace these principles, not as a commodity, but integrated into the heart of what it means to learn how to teach music. Some teacher education programmes now unselfconsciously embed opportunities for self- and peer-directed learning thereby modelling and ‘living’ the informal process. We would like to suggest that the most effective ITE in musical learning and pedagogy is that which employs the insights we are beginning to gain about the material nature of learning through a meta-pedagogical approach. Formal learning about informal learning is a contradiction that risks the moment of informal learning remaining ‘buried’ and can result in a short-lived as opposed to long-term impact on the habitus of developing music teachers. However, for the lived informal experience to be known and valued there will need to be a process of ‘excavation’ through reflexive practice.
‘Excavating’ informal learning
The meta-pedagogy of teacher education needs to both live and excavate the informal moment of musical learning. We take excavation to mean facilitating student teachers to use theoretical tools to interrogate their ‘lived’ experience; to theorise themselves as a result of experience and to encourage the mutual interrogation of theory and experience. Through living and excavating musical learning music teachers can be prepared to understand how their pupils learn. However, it would be naive to suggest that the meta-pedagogy of ITE in music can of itself change music education; the power of the planned and encultured development of musicians remains potent. There are, it would seem, at least two possible outcomes for student teachers exposed to the meta-pedagogy proposed here:
(i) those who find a ‘dissonance’ with the implications of this way of working and who do not break or morph their habitus;
(ii) those who work though a productive dissonance and adapt their habitus (on a continuum from epiphany to gradual change).
Productive dissonance is a result of tensions between the habitus and ‘living’ informal learning. However, without open reflection on lived learning (excavation), student teachers are, we suggest, more likely to subscribe to the cultural default of music as formal learning. It is argued here that ‘living’ and ‘excavating’ musical learning as part of a meta-pedagogy for teacher education is most likely to impact on the habitus of developing music teachers such that they can in turn impact upon an un-alienated learning for their pupils.
In the next section we consider evidence gathered through interventions in one post-graduate ITE programme redesigned to take account of the movement towards informal practices within secondary schools. In what follows, purpose, context and methodological considerations are set out along with procedure and methods of data collection and analysis.
Purpose and context
This one-year course, already committed to pedagogic reflexivity, aimed to achieve reflexive awareness of the subtle interplay of informal-formal learning orientations embedded in student teachers’ own developing musicianship, and to do this through informally lived musical experiences. With the problem clearly identified, the intention was to explore and manage the search for a meta-pedagogy, one that challenged and empowered, and that might serve as an agent of change in the light of questions raised by the introduction of ‘informal learning’ into the school.
The 36-week university–school-based course of initial teacher education recruits 20 music graduates, all of whom have received substantial amounts of formal instrumental training alongside a broader musical education establishing and accrediting formally recognised achievement. At the same time most student teachers come to the course with a hinterland of unaccredited musical practices: busking, musical doodling and private song writing, for example. Of the 36-week three-term course, spanning from September–June, 12 weeks are university-based and while some of this takes place during the second and third terms, the majority is set in the first half of the first term. This takes the form of three days weekly concurrent with two days in school. The course commences with four university-based days serving as an introduction to the year.
Case study
A case study approach is helpful in understanding complex situations where there are a significant number of variables that are bounded by time and context, and by the characteristics of individuals involved (Cohen et al., Reference COHEN, MANION and MORRISON2007). The research was designed so that the first and formative phase of the student teachers’ university-based training programme would yield responses from the participants and provide impetus and direction to the study. In this way a chronological narrative could be assembled allowing for rich descriptions of events. Thus it was hoped that the case, albeit modest in scope, would provide a collage of ideas, illustrative of the principles of an emerging meta-pedagogy. While the case is one instance of intial teacher education in practice there is every expectation that through vivid description and subsequent analysis it is relevant to others. The situation investigated will resonate with many working within initial teacher education. Bassey (Reference BASSEY1981) maintains that in case study relatedness is more important than generalisability. If others can relate to what is revealed here, and this is uppermost in the minds of the writers, there is every possibility that propositions will emerge for others to refine, explore and test from a variety of methodological standpoints. Of most importance will be the trustworthiness of the story told.
Procedure
Student teachers were asked to bring an instrument on the first day of the course. After a little getting-to-know-each-other Salsa dancing, four groups were freely formed, each provided with a CD, CD player, and asked to copy what they heard and to prepare a performance. The intention was immediately to challenge and to gather first responses about how student teachers perceived what was likely to be, on the surface at least, a novel approach to learning. It would further serve as a helpful reference point for subsequent reflection on the distinction between formal and informal orientations within the learning process. Following this taster session the 20 student teachers were divided into two equally sized groups. Each group was allocated five one-hour weekly self-regulated learning sessions where, using whatever resources were available, they were asked to learn something new and to help each other in the process. These sessions would provide a time to explore and learn about how they themselves learnt and were now learning with the potential to further excavate learning. In order to establish a safe environment for the first session student teachers were given guitars and asked to teach each other what they had taught themselves before the start of the course. [All were expected to come to the course with some guitar skill.] After this students were free to work in whatever way they felt helpful. As student teachers worked with classes and groups in their placement schools so there were opportunities to encounter the formal and informal interchange and in some cases they were able to observe and engage with the ‘Musical Futures’ programme as implemented by their school mentors.
In setting out both the intial task and the free learning sessions that followed, the researcher adopted the role of what can best be described as ‘participant as observer’. This was natural and understandable to all participants. This involved observing and on occasions videoing the events with participants’ permission. Patterns of response were recorded in written form and with video evidence used to develop understanding of ways in which student teachers orientated their learning. At the conclusion of the sequence of five sessions, five student teachers were invited to individually digitally record their thoughts about the sessions and to reflect on how they had been learning. Each was free to speak at any length and without the presence of the researcher. As the year unfolded there were frequent opportunistic occasions on which to hear of experiences in school and to note the shifting pattern of student teachers’ perceptions. In observing and analysing student teacher responses it became possible to evaluate patterns of:
(i) unresolvable dissonances;
(ii) adaption (including epiphanic moments).
The five were selected as representative of the group as a whole in terms of musical background and response to the tasks. In what follows description and analysis of the student-teachers’ first day encounter with informal practices introduces Victoria and prepares the way for focus on Anthony, Ivan, Stephanie and Jo.
First encounter
At their first meeting, on the first day of the course, the group of 20 were soon at ease, getting to know each other and good humoured as the Salsa dancing progressed. Who would prove to be the ‘knowledgeable other’, for it was unlikely to be the University tutor? The role of the tutor was to find ways of moving the learning forward and to look for models, leaders and whatever ways forward suggested themselves. In the days that followed the group came to expect more Salsa as leaders emerged and enthusiasm grew. The initial Salsa dancing had created an environment conducive to further social activity and enquiry. From dancing the group moved to making music with their own instruments that in large part defined their musical identities. The four listening and copying groups were quickly into musical action. What was easily observable was a good deal of analytical listening and re-listening, times of coaching each other through demonstration of what had not been mastered accompanied by the occasional verbal prompt and confirming words and gestures. There was constant rehearsing of what was being learnt and there was refinement. There was also in one case moments of playful subversion of the task as Victoria reports below. After 45 minutes there was readiness to perform to other groups. Victoria had brought her viola to the session and tells what the experience was like for her:
I was learning about my capability to tackle such a task and finding ways of negotiating help from others in the group when I needed it. This involved somebody showing me explicitly what I wasn't getting or simply watching more carefully until I did get it. I knew that in these situations there is always a leader to emerge. In this case it was Anthony, on cello who took charge and gently organised replays and helped us along. Our music was by Mahler. I didn't know anything about Mahler. It was Richard in the group who explained that we were working with the round Frere Jacques in a minor key. Knowing this helped. Once a reasonable version had been made we had a free-play with the material. This was the most enjoyable part of the work. Come the time for performance to other groups we agreed that we would revert to our faithful version of Mahler. In the process I discovered Anthony's great musicianship. There was a string quartet in the making I thought. (Victoria, audio commentary: 31.10.07)
The student teachers had brought to the task their variously developed aural-kinaesthetic-visual perceptual capabilities. They also brought to the task ensemble performance skill requiring watching, looking and listening, giving and taking, yielding and empathising. There was much prior learning in evidence, both informal and formal. By the end of the exercise they had become acquainted with a musical work from the inside, a work that was in some cases already familiar. There was much now to talk about as a whole group and much for each to think on as they observed pupils making music and made music with them in their placement schools. The interplay between the formal and informal was now in evidence and learning was being ‘lived’.
Moving on
The first of the five one-hour sessions developed into an orderly event where student teachers worked individually, in pairs and in small groups, culminating in one case with a whole group vocal-guitar performance of the song Amazing Grace in a four verse arrangement. By week two, sub-groups were forming and different interests expressed through the activities undertaken. What emerged was a boom whackers band, a group deciding that they needed to improve their guitar playing with the aid of a published tutor, while others expressed interest in assisting each other in mastering bass guitar, kit drumming and jamming. They were now deciding what to learn, how to learn it and who to learn it from. And, of course, immediately a range of orientations to learning were in evidence. Both boom whackers and the group of guitar learners had moved towards the ‘formal’. Others wanted to move in the other direction. Over the five sessions, it was only the guitar group who remained formally orientated. By session three the boom whackers had moved towards listening and copying Klezmer music. In all this there was habitus challenge, a call for reflection upon self-directed and peer learning, and an excavation of musical learning histories. This of course needed to be a subtle process of nurturing reflections in conversation as the tutor–student teacher relationship developed.
Adaption and epiphanies
It was to be Victoria, Ivan and Anthony who represented the most adventurous group wanting to freely explore and learn from each other's musicianship. This appeared to be an attitude led by the wide-ranging experience of Ivan, the multi-faceted musical personality of Anthony and the inquisitiveness of Victoria. In the third session Victoria brought along a CD of an Electronic re-mix by artist Pedro. The group listened and copied. Ivan on keyboard suggested jamming using motives gleaned from Pedro. While this is Ivan's preferred way of working, others in his group expressed some doubt but decided to ‘go for it’. An hour later they were still playing. Orientation to the informal was compelling. For Victoria ‘this was about learning to take risks, learning from what doesn't work but that's OK.’ Victoria recalls a moment after a university session when she taught herself to drum ‘four in a bar’, and how through trial and error she made it:
‘really, really good. I feel I could now pick up any instrument and have a go. You can learn without learning by the book. (Victoria, audio commentary: 31.10.07)
And this is what Victoria was doing in school as she found time to extend her guitar skills alone in the music room. Experimenting with the Blues Scale she stumbled on the intro to Layla by Eric Clapton. A friendly voice called: ‘Miss, I didn't know you played the guitar’. Daniel in year 11 told Victoria how he was learning to play the same piece and showed Victoria what he knew of the music, an example of Victoria's increasingly flexible orientations.
A little later Anthony, classical cellist and jazz drummer, invited Victoria along to a World Drum Festival in London. The day was set up so that those enrolling for the day would be expected to opt for two of the classes offered. What was learnt would be performed at an evening concert later in the day. In addition to the formal classes, there were rooms set aside for the informal sharing of what had been learnt. In the evening, learning carried on as performers encouraged their audience to learn from and take part in what was being performed. The setting encouraged informal learning. However, working like this in the classroom didn't feel easy for Victoria. Replicating the kind of experiences she had on the day in London felt less authentic in the classroom. Students were not used to having the tables and chairs moved back and dancing in music lessons was not normal. Nevertheless, for Victoria her journey was well underway. Productive dissonance supported by minor epiphanies was in evidence for her.
Ivan learns inside the music
Ivan came to the course with well-developed understanding of how informal and formal approaches to learning worked. Ivan felt comfortable with both the taster session and with the five sessions that followed. ‘This was how I learnt.’ While it was good to share skills, Ivan wanted, as we saw above, to work with ‘free playing’, experimenting through jamming and trusting a trial-and-error approach. This, Ivan believed, would make for truly informal learning. Musical skills, so Ivan argued, are developed inside the making of music, ‘that's where it really happens’. This is the insight of a musician working across the informal–formal spectrum and in this respect Ivan came to the course with a music educational history very different from Victoria. From age 7 in his native Norway, Ivan learnt the Hardanger Fiddle, by looking, listening and copying. Ivan was being taught with due attention to tradition and convention. At age 13, Ivan began learning the piano and this took him into notation and the conventions of Western European music. Later Ivan moved into Jazz and through his career as a professional musician learnt to work easily across musical styles and genres.
From informal course sessions Ivan decided to develop his drumming. He kept working at this with break-throughs from time to time. In school he led a Jazz Band and showed what was wanted through his drumming as well as his keyboard. Ivan enjoyed being musical alongside pupils and constantly looked for opportunities to capitalise on informal interactions with pupils and groups of pupils. He discovered, for example, a Year 11 boy drumming on congas, ‘a catchy rhythm’. Ivan joined in on keyboard and they got in the ‘groove’. Ivan noted, ‘sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't’ (Ivan, audio commentary: 1.11.08).
Dissonances and resolutions
For Stephanie the taster task was daunting:
I was not excited about the prospect of this activity, but with support it became manageable and enjoyable. (Stephanie, audio commentary: 3.11.07)
Stephanie admits that this was not a way of learning that she had experienced before. In the five informal one-hour sessions Stephanie and her group concentrated their efforts on mastering guitar. Again, this felt outside her ‘comfort zone’ and she knew that the success of these sessions would rely on very close cooperation within the group. They became methodical, systematic and made much use of ‘the book’. There was much deferring to the manual, a case of default to the formal. However, Stephanie developed an inclination to sometimes jam on her own, experimenting with chord sequences and enjoyed the experience of not quite knowing where the next chord is coming from (Stephanie, audio commentary: 3.11.07).
Jo has much in common with Stephanie: a very formal music education learning piano and clarinet. However, Jo recalls at sixth form being invited to join a rock band on keyboard. This proved to be a considerable challenge and not very successful. The university taster task was something of a novelty for Jo and in the first two of the five sessions that followed she felt a sense of adventure. By week three, Jo was less sure about it. ‘Just why were we doing this? Couldn't time be spent more productively?’ In hindsight Jo views this reaction as naïve as she came to appreciate the feeling you get when something you didn't think you would get, you get. Finding the ‘groove’ was good (Jo, audio commentary: 3.11.08). In school, Jo's term 2 story of teaching sixth formers how they could learn music by listening and copying a fugal structure is of interest and in term 3 Jo is impressed by how quickly Year 11 students prepared a performance for a school concert in this way.
Morphing the habitus
Victoria, Stephanie and Jo are student teachers revising their ideas about the way music is learnt and the implications for their future as secondary school music teachers. Jo reports that her experiences in university and school have led her to think about musical learning in new ways and notes that: ‘I think I will be for quite a while’ (Jo, audio commentary: 3.11.08). For Ivan and Anthony ideas about learning are being confirmed and enriched. All have become more aware of the spectrum of formal–informal practices and the subtle shifts in orientation that can now be understood and further investigated as part of a move towards pedagogically aware music teachers. This awareness is evident in the seeking out of personal challenges and in ongoing critical reflections upon both their own practices and those of the music teachers and students they work with. It furthermore establishes a critical orientation towards initiatives such as Musical Futures and its implementation. Perhaps more importantly, they know, albeit to differing extents, what it means to ‘live the learning’ and to confront what it is that prevents changes in disposition towards considering learning in new ways. Habitus, understood as the process of socialisation, leading to unconscious habituated ways of acting socially can be changed. Excavating what is thought to have been suppressed yet having latent potential involves the creation of challenge leading to dissonance and the possibility of working through this in a productive way. The evidence is encouraging.
Conclusion and suggestions for future research in ITE
Music teachers who emerge from school music, a university music degree and teacher education are most likely to have been socialised into understandings which prioritise the formal moment of learning. In short, ‘formal’ music education has the potential to subvert and ‘bury’ the informal moment of learning and this is unhelpful for the aspiring music teacher. The task of the music teacher is to facilitate learning and for this reason they will need a reflexive awareness and understanding of learning. By way of illustration Ivan reflects on his development at the end of his first year in a full-time teaching post.
With Year 12 I got the task of introducing some pieces from the dreaded Edexcel AnthologyFootnote 2 of music. I gave students a choice of pieces, said they had two weeks to prepare a performance and let them ‘get on with it’. Students were initially confused, but as they realised the only objective was to become familiar with the music they started choosing unfamiliar instruments, taking the music to pieces, rearranging and being creative.
The result were some great performances (some used fragments of the pieces, while others played them straight through from the score). A notable performance of a Baroque piece included two guitars, piano and a kazoo. Hugely entertaining, engaging and, in my humble opinion, highly educational. The students were thinking creatively, becoming familiar with new music, breaking down mental barriers regarding how music ‘should’ sound, working collaboratively, developing new instrumental skills, playing in an ensemble, and ‘getting inside’ the harmonic and melodic movement of the music.
. . . my training year has made me very focused and enthusiastic towards informal learning . . . it is a natural part of music making.
Even though Ivan began his ITE with a wide-ranging background in musical learning, his case exemplifies the purpose of the proposed meta-pedagogy. Living and excavating the learning has clearly contributed to his ever-developing awareness of his pupils’ musical development and ways in which learning can be meaningful. He is critical, reflexive and understands the relationship between formal and informal learning. He has consciously challenged his habitus and become a creative agent for an inclusive school music. Given his history, Ivan was well placed to achieve these things.
In order for student teachers to develop understandings which inform an inclusive approach to music teaching there is the need for these to be embraced in a meta-pedagogy for music ITE. Thus we seek:
1. a meta-pedagogy which ‘lives’ musical learning and in particular informal learning; the most effective professional development in informal learning and pedagogy is that which employs informal learning itself;
2. a meta-pedagogy which promotes a reflexive awareness and understanding of the material nature of musical learning; a means to ‘excavating’ the habitus of musicians and music teachers;
3. a meta-pedagogy which in making explicit the material nature of musical learning provides a productive dissonance to the habitus of musicians and music teachers;
4. a meta-pedagogy which develops music teachers who emerge from teacher education programmes as a force for change in schools; a force for a more inclusive school music.
The meta-pedagogy proposed is in need of further investigation. For example, there is scope for longitudinal case studies of how the habitus of musicians is formed including close observation and analysis of their shifting orientations to formal and informal learning. How does the experience of learning how to teach in the university and school interact with the habitus of student teachers in music? In what ways can ITE programmes live the learning? What are the most effective strategies for reflexive excavation? What is the relationship between the meta-pedagogy outlined here and the statutory requirements of national ‘standards’? The study of musicians learning how to teach is important to refining a meta-pedagogy for teacher education; a meta-pedagogy which embraces informal learning and pedagogy in music; a meta-pedagogy which aims to facilitate success in school music for our pupils, through a deeper understanding of the ways in which we learn.
