Six week schemes of work - do they work?

Last Friday saw the final conference of the Teach Through Music programme – marking the culmination of a year of superb CPD and teacher-led case studies taking place in London schools, with the aim of making Key Stage 3 music teaching more musical.

I felt privileged to be invited to speak at the conference on the subject of Key Stage 3 to 4 progression, and to discuss how the curriculum that I and my colleagues have designed at my current school enables students to make progress through years 7-9 and to be fully prepared for Key Stage 4 by the end of it. In previous blog posts, I’ve already spent a lot of words expounding how I think that Key Stage 3 curricula should prepare students for Key Stage 4 – and how it might be possible to overcome the idea of Key Stage 4 music being ‘elite’ rather than inclusive. So I won’t go on about this again here, suffice to say that I presented our ‘cook’s tour’ KS3 curriculum of largely six-week units of work and discussed how progression is possible in this sort of curriculum, and how I’ve spent time over the past year mapping the different ‘key skills’ that students are developing (such as creative composition, performing technique and improvisation) against the different topics studied, to ensure that each topic really does build upon the last.

Having said all of this, and made what I felt was a fairly well-reasoned argument, I was quite amused when the very next speaker – Robert Wells, talking about ‘Raising musical standards for all at KS3’ – suggested the exact opposite, that 6-week projects do not allow students to engage with music, or create meaningful music, being by default too teacher-led. An interesting point. Of course, in a carefully planned 6-week scheme of work, it is quite likely that many of the elements of the music-making involved will have been planned by the teacher, and of course resources will have been created and pieces of music to listen to chosen well in advance. However, I disagree that this necessarily means that all of the learning will be teacher-led. A six-week project on songwriting, where the teacher acts as a facilitator, enabling students with the skills that they need and giving individuals the support they require to write the song that they have created, is quite a different thing from a six-week project on Gamelan music, in which all students learn to play a pre-selected piece on xylophones and glockenspiels. Admittedly the Key Stage 3 curriculum that I currently teach includes both of these – but I’m very happy to admit that the first of these is more likely to enable students to act as musicians and creative artists in the classroom than the second.

Which, I suppose, brings me back to the age-old (but always interesting) debate as to the role of the teacher in the music classroom: as facilitator, or as teacher, or as musician – or a mixture of all of these and more. Quite what the ‘right’ mixture is, I’m not yet sure – but I think that this debate is far more central to the success of a Key Stage 3 curriculum than a debate over exactly how long a scheme of work should last.

In a further seminar at Friday’s conference, Jason Kubilius, talking about ‘Making the case for music in schools’, discussed the issue of ‘democracy’ in the classroom, citing the importance of students acting as democratic partners with their teachers. Teaching, he argued, is ‘not a matter of following recipes’, and might best happen when teachers are not ‘structurally limited’ by ‘fixed outcomes’. An admirable point and one that I very much agree with – but when it is used as an argument against organised schemes of work (which, to some extent, it was), I wonder whether it is an entirely realistic vision. Of course, music education is at its best when it can be shaped by the students. Indeed, the keynote speaker for Friday’s conference, Francois Matarasso, said himself that ‘nothing worth having about artistic experiences can be delivered – it can only be enabled’. But let’s not lose sight of the fact that, as teachers, we are required to work within a certain number of frameworks, limits and constraints, imposed by our schools and by the British education system as a whole – one of which being reporting and assessment timetables, which often tend to tie in with six-week schemes of work.

I’m not arguing that we should give up on the ideal of students having space and time to be creative musicians. Nor am I suggesting that music education should be constrained by the ideals of teachers and ignore the great potential of student-led work. But perhaps the best thing that teachers can do is to recognise the limits within which we work, and then consider the ideals of creative space and the democratic classroom within these.

As another contributer on Friday – Leonora Davies – pointed out, there is a definite ‘tension’ between music in general, and music in schools – and there is undoubtedly also a tension between what we music teachers would ideally like to do, and what we can realistically achieve. So let’s recognise that tension, and find a middle way that allows us to keep our musical integrity as well as our sanity. Which for me, comes in six-week long packages…

What is Music education for?

This latest blog post has been something of a long time in coming - but it's involved rather a lot of thinking, reading, and thinking again! It takes the form of a talk which I presented at a symposium yesterday.

What is Music education for?

A talk given in symposium at Cambridge University, 21^st March 2015

 

What is Music education for?

When it was suggested that this be the title for what I am going to speak about today, I couldn’t help but notice that it’s a rather big question – and one that I certainly don’t expect to answer in what I am about to say. However, it is a rather important question, and one that we should probably all think about regularly.

Before I tell you why I am currently thinking about it, though, I’d like to reminisce about the first assignment that I completed on my PGCE course, which was titled ‘the place of Music in the secondary school.’ When I wrote my assignment, in 2009, one of the most recent documents that I looked at was the 2004 Music Manifesto, through which the then-Labour government committed to providing musical opportunities for all. I contrasted this with the low take-up of Music post-Key Stage 3, the reports from teachers and music education professionals of having to frequently justify the value of Music to sceptics and the argument that by promoting just one rather fixed view of Music, the government’s so-called support might actually be detrimental to the wider idea of Music education. I’m not sure much has changed!

A significant proportion of my assignment was to do with the ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ justifications for music in the curriculum - terms coined by Chris Philpott in 2008[1] which hopefully ring some bells. The ‘soft’ justifications are those which rely on the notion of music being ‘good for us’ in some way, while the ‘hard’ justifications rely on an understanding of the diverse meanings and cultural significances that are inherent in music itself. Philpott argues that these are the more valid reasons for teaching Music – although he also suggested that teachers often fail to teach music in a way that really embraces this. I went on to look at Constantijn Koopman’s idea of ‘extrinstic’ and ‘intrinsic’ justifications of music – which is fairly similar, but perhaps a little less value-laden in its terminology than ‘soft’ and ‘hard’. Koopman’s 1996 article ‘Why Teach Music at School?’[2] discusses the effect of music on other forms of cognition – i.e. the Mozart effect and all that sort of thing – as well as the idea that artistic, and musical, education is necessary for personal development – particularly in terms of aesthetic appreciation and understanding. Had I been writing the assignment more recently, I imagine that I would have cited Susan Hallam’s very recent (2015) report on ‘the power of music’[3], which cites neuroscientific research as proof that musical training has a significant effect on language skills, memory, special reasoning, IQ test scores and even personality. The problem with all of these ‘extrinsic’ justifications, though, is that they are not exclusive to music – and there are many other ways to develop the same skills. Going back to Koopman, he goes on to suggest that music’s ‘intrinsic’ value – the enjoyment and appreciation of music itself – is perhaps a more useful justification – although again, this could be said of any number of activities (Kivy – 1991 – suggests computer games, gastronomy and baseball – which doesn’t sound like too bad a curriculum to me!) Koopman finally turns to the idea of a ‘self-justifiying’ music curriculum – whereby music education itself can enable students to comprehend the value of music – but obviously argument cannot really be fully demonstrated given that it is rather personal to the individual. In my PGCE assignment, I ended up concluding that it was impossible to justify Music in the curriculum largely because it was impossible to discuss any sort of education in a discursive way. Perhaps that was a slightly defeatist conclusion – but I was proud to note that I had managed to talk about Plato in my assignment, in relation to music’s status as one of the classical Seven Liberal Arts. However, I’m not sure that was necessarily my most compelling or relevant piece of evidence for a modern justification of Music in schools!

So, having reminded myself of all these ways of thinking about the purpose of music education, I’ve been back over a few of the more recent government documents about Music to see what sort of justifications they tend to be using these days. The National Plan for music sort of does a bit of ‘extrinsic’ and ‘intrinsic’. The very first paragraph praises teachers who ‘instil in our young people a passion for music, the skills to perform and compose, and an understanding of the dedication and hard work necessary to achieve meaningful success in this subject’ – suggesting in some way that there is an inherent value to Music education. However, much of the rest of the document focuses far more clearly on the extrinsic benefits of music – page 9, for example, includes the statement that ‘the value of music as an academic subject lies in its contribution to enjoyment and enrichment, for its social benefits, for those who engage in music seriously as well as for fun.’

The new, 2013, National Curriculum meanwhile states that ‘a highly quality music education should engage and inspire pupils to develop a love of music and their talent as musicians, and so increase their self-confidence, creativity and sense of achievement’ – before going on to talk about the importance of critical engagement with music. There’s no doubt that these are ‘hard’ – or ‘intrinsic’ – justifications for music education – gone are the references from the previous National Curriculum to ‘personal expression, reflection and emotional development’. Which, to be honest, makes me very happy. And this brings me, at last, to the reason that I’m actually thinking about all of this at the moment.

Last term, I attended a brilliant seminar on assessment in Key Stage 3 music, led by Martin Fautley and Ali Daubney. The content of the seminar was incredibly useful – but it was the ‘starter’ activity which got me riled. We were asked to discuss, in small groups, what the outcomes might be of an ideal music education at Key Stage 3. My group immediately started to talk about all sorts of social and emotional benefits of learning music. They wanted their students to develop a sense of identity, to improve their social skills, to enjoy themselves. I said that I wanted my students to become excellent performers and composers. Which is when it happened – I was accused of being ‘a bit elitist’. I’ll admit that I didn’t expect that at all – and looked around at the rest of the group expecting someone to jump to my defence, but instead found that everyone else was in agreement. Expecting musical excellence from all of my students made me one of the bad guys.

Now I’ll admit that this doesn’t really worry me. I’m pretty sure I’m right to want all of my students to develop musical skills – and of my course my definition of ‘excellence’ is not confined to classical musicians or any sort of notion of exam grades or virtuosity – I believe it’s possible for a student to become excellent at performing the bass line to ‘Smoke on the Water’, or at composing a glockenspiel leitmotif to accompany a scene from Harry Potter. And I would have said as much to my fellow teachers at the seminar had I been given the opportunity. But, this somewhat frightening accusation did get me thinking about the perceptions that students and perhaps teachers have of Music education and what it’s for – particularly as they transition from Key Stage 3 to 4.

Post-14 Music, as I have previously mentioned, is not the most popular subject. In fact, the Cultural Learning Alliance report of 2013 noted that the take-up of Music GCSE had dropped by 10% in the previous 10 years (a change they attributed to the introduction of the EBacc), while the recent (2015) Warwick Commission report noted an 11% drop in the number of arts teachers in schools, as well as an 18% drop in the participation of 5-10 year olds in music between 2008 and 2014. Worryingly, the effects of these low take-ups are now becoming quite severe - the 2014 ASCL report ‘Education Stripped to the Bare Bones’ noted that A Level Music is suffering – and often completely disappearing – in schools due to huge cuts in funding making it unsustainable. A Level funding in 2014 was just 58% of what it had been in 1997, meaning that classes generally need a teacher-student ratio of 1:19 just to break even. Not a likely scenario.

But why is take-up so low? A Teach Through Music event that I – and some of you – attended back in the Autumn about Key Stage 3 to 4 transition brought to light the current dichotomy between what is required at Key Stage 4 and 5 – particularly in terms of both instrumental or vocal performance and understanding of Western classical theory – and what is often seen as the purpose of Key Stage 3 music in terms of being wide-ranging and inclusive. With GCSE syllabuses focused largely on Western Classical music and rigidly defined types of performing and composing as they are – and this particular point doesn’t seem likely to change in 2016 – it is widely accepted that students who take individual instrumental lessons and who have a grounding in music theory that goes above and beyond what is generally taught at Key stage 3 will do better at GCSE Music. There are two possible reasons that this is the case – either GCSE Music is too rigid and not focused enough on creativity, or Key Stage 3 music is too broad and creative, and not focused enough on classical theory. In fact, I’ve heard both of these views expounded very recently. The first by Keith Evans, programme manager for Teach Through Music, and, interestingly, the second by A Level and first-year Conservatoire Music students at yet another Teach Through Music event, who complained that they had not been taught enough specific theory in school music lessons, which they found to be a disadvantage later on.

Having become more and more intrigued by these issues, and more concerned about whether my philosophy of music education really could be called ‘elitist’, I decided it was time to do a bit of reading, and see if I couldn’t find anyone else grappling with the same thoughts. I found an article by Chris Philpott (again) on ‘Equality of opportunity and instrumental tuition’ (2001)[4]. Philpott discusses the wide range of issues surrounding access to instrumental tuition, the impact of students’ economic situations, and the resulting effect on ‘achievement’ in Music, where the old National Curriculum required students to have ‘control of instrument specific techniques’, and GCSE and A Level performances were marked according to difficulty levels which correspond to exam grades. Interestingly, the new National Curriculum now requires students to have ‘the opportunity to study a musical instrument’ – but obviously the situation has not changed regarding GCSE and A Level music, despite Edexcel saying back in 2000 that ‘the highest grades’ would be ‘accessible by those candidates who may not receive additional instrumental tuition’. All of this, Philpott argues, has created a perpetuation of music as ‘an elitist and to some extent exclusive subject’ with the economic issue surrounding individual lessons as a key factor.

So, Philpott goes on to suggest three possible solutions. Perhaps music should be considered as a ‘special case’, whereby it is acknowledged that students should be able to achieve the highest grades at GCSE without extra instrumental tuition – so those who do have extra tuition would be going above and beyond the requirements of the course. Of course, this would mean that a far higher proportion of students taking GCSE music would achieve the highest grades. Alternatively, Philpott suggested that opportunities to study instruments should be extended – and indeed this has happened to a large extent through the introduction of Wider Opps teaching and the focus on opportunity in the new National Curriculum. A final suggestion of Philpott’s is that music’s main problem at the moment is the sense of ‘linear’ achievement that exists in always considering performing skills in relation to ‘difficulty’ – somewhat like my arguments about ‘excellence’ earlier, high-quality musical engagement does not necessarily mean engagement with a ‘difficult’ piece of music. If we were to ‘rethink’ musical achievement in terms of quality rather than complexity, this may go a long way to solving our problems. So, at least Philpott agrees with me.

Perhaps not so for Woodford. In ‘Democracy and Music Education’[5], Woodford argues for a ‘democratic’ and ‘liberal’ music education which embraces all types of musical knowing – and he criticises teachers who ‘passively’ accept trends in music education. So far, so good. However, Woodford goes on to suggest that, by being concerned with ‘excellence’ in performance, teaching can become undemocratic and insular. Perhaps my use of the word ‘excellence’ was more problematic than I realised.

So, by this point in my reading I felt that the elitism that I had been accused of was, at least, not the elitism of Philpott and Woodford, even if using the word ‘excellence’ was perhaps not the best choice. But what of the point of view of those other teachers, who seemed to value the ‘soft’, social justifications of music education above ideas of musical intelligence or satisfaction? Is this ok? Does it cause problems?

At the end of a long day’s reading in the British Library, I came across the work of Lamont and Mason – and in particular, their article ‘Unpopular Music: beliefs and behaviours towards music in education’ (2010)[6]. Lamont and Mason, like Philpott and Woodford, consider the various attitudes of teachers and students towards GCSE Music, but they do so through the lens of Legitimation Code Theory. For those of you unfamiliar with this theory, it is a framework for the study of knowledge which builds on the theories of Basil Bernstein and Pierre Bourdieu, as well as a variety of others, and looks at the practices and beliefs of ‘agents’ – in this case students and teachers - as embodying messages as to what should be the dominant basis of achievement in a certain area – in this case a school subject. Specialisation codes are used as a tool for considering the underlying principles of an area that form the basis for a claim to legitimacy – or achievement – in that area. Briefly the four codes are ‘knowledge’ – whereby the possession of specialised knowledge is key to achievement, ‘knower’, whereby the attributes of a person – such as having ‘talent’ or ‘taste’ – are key,  ‘elite’, where one must both have knowledge and be the right kind of knower in order to succeed, and ‘relativist’, where one needs neither specific knowledge nor to be a particular type of person.

Lamont and Mason apply Legitimation Code Theory to the various stages of music education, and find – as perhaps one might expect from everything that I’ve said so far – that the ‘official’ requirements of music education embody different specialisation codes at the different stages of the curriculum. In primary school, the focus is on musical expression rather than skills or knowledge – a ‘knower’ code. In Key Stage 3, skills and knowledge often become more important – a ‘knowledge’ code. However, at Key stage 4, students are required to both have skills and knowledge and to be creative and expressive – an ‘elite’ code. Perhaps, then, Lamont and Mason have got to the crux of this whole issue of GCSE uptake and music as an elite subject – is music GCSE elite because you have to be the right kind of knower? Perhaps it is, after all, instrumental learning and Western classical expertise are highly valued, and these are not often skills taught in a whole-class situation at Key Stage 3. Lamont and Mason asked students, who agreed, believing that ‘only people with “natural ability” can learn the special skills needed’ for GCSE and further study. So, we’re back to where we were before in terms of the GCSE syllabus causing the problem.

Except that now we have a new understanding of precisely what the problem is – this aspect of needing to be the ‘right kind of person’ to study GCSE music. If moving away from a classical and linear GCSE model is not likely to happen any time soon, perhaps the solution instead is in teaching students at Key Stage 3 in such a way that they come to see themselves as the ‘right kind of knower’. Students must learn that being ‘excellent’ at music (if I’m allowed to use that word) is not out of reach. Every student has the potential to be a ‘musician’. But wait. This can only be true if we as teachers truly believe it, and aspire for each of our students not just to gain social skills or to enjoy their music lessons but to develop high quality musical responses and understanding. If we don’t aspire for our students to be ‘excellent’, how will they know that it is even possible? If we teach in a way that suggests that excellence is out of reach for some of our students, are we not ourselves perpetuating the elitist code of musical achievement?

I could continue on my soap box, and believe me, I think I’m on to something. But, instead, I will end with a quote from Reimer’s ‘Philosophy of Music Education’ (2003)[7]. ‘Music education’ says Reimer ‘should help individuals achieve whatever potentials they have to be musically intelligent – able to more fully experience musical satisfactions – in whatever ways they choose’. I couldn’t agree more.

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[1] PHILPOTT, C., 2008. The justification for music in the curriculum: music can be bad for you [online]. Available from: http://www.music-ite.org.uk/guestblog/chris-philpott. [Accessed 29 September 2008].

 

[2] KOOPMAN, C., 1996. Why Teach Music at School?. Oxford Review of Education, 22 (4), 483-493.

 

[3] HALLAM, S., 2015. The Power Of Music – a research synthesis of the impact of actively  making music on the intellectual, social and personal development of children and young people.  London: Music Education Council.

[4] PHILPOTT, C., 2001. Equality of opportunity and instrumental tuition. In: C. PHILPOTT AND C. PLUMMERIDGE, eds. Issues in Music Teaching. London: Routledge.

[5] WOODFORD, P., 2004. Democracy and Music Education. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

[6] LAMONT, A. AND MASON, K., 2010. Unpopular Music: Beliefs and Behaviours towards Music in Education. In: WRIGHT, R., ed. Sociology and Music Education. Basingstoke: Ashgate.

[7] REIMER, B., 2003. A Philosophy of Music Education: Advancing the vision. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall.