What the resource is:
Musical Futures was a three year project, funded by the Paul Hamlyn Foundation, which explored different ways in which informal learning practices and pedagogies could be applied within music education. The project built on the work on Professor Lucy Green in her recent publications (Green 2001, 2008). This survey establishes analyses the impact of the project across secondary schools from teachers' and pupils' perspectives. The survey provides an informative insight into the success and failures of the initiative and a useful set of data for anyone interested in developing more informal approaches to the teaching and learning of music.
The aims of the resource
The survey aimed to address a series of specific research questions. These included looking at how schools adapted and adopted the Musical Futures models and the impact this had on teachers and pupils.
The research here focuses on the four main strands of Musical Futures, which are:
- Informal Music Learning at Key Stage 3 (i.e. the general processes of informal learning drawn from the real-life learning practices and processes of popular musicians as reported with by Green (2001; 2008)
- The Whole Curriculum Approach: A scheme of work for Year 8 pupils aimed to provide musical pathways for those pupils who have not previously experienced sustained musical engagement;
- Numu: An interactive web space for creating, publishing, marketing and promoting music;
- Personalising Extra-Curricular Music: A guide for personalising extra-curricular music projects so they complement the curriculum-based work in schools.
One of the main informing principles of Musical Futures is that the pupil and their musical interests should be central in the curriculum experience. This has become a recurrent theme in other pieces of curriculum reform, especially the new National Curriculum for Music at Key Stage 3.
Key findings or focus
The key findings of the survey are presented through five main headings:
1. The take-up and implementation of Musical Futures;
2. Impact on teachers and teaching;
3. Impact on pupils' musical skills and attitudes;
4. Pupils' experiences of Musical Futures;
5. Support issues.
The findings of the survey are generally very positive. Although some teachers struggled with a lack of resources and unsuitable accommodation for the activities promoted by the Musical Futures approach, the majority of teachers reported that their pupils were more motivated, achieved a higher level of attainment and expressed a greater degree of enjoyment of music through this approach.
The overall conclusion of the survey was that:
"Musical Futures has the potential to enhance pupil motivation in relation to music and enhance the quality of teaching and learning. There are issues relating to accommodation and resources". (p.8)
The quality, authority and credibility of the resource from your subject perspective in relation to ITE:
The survey is a well-constructed and helpful insight into the national impact of Musical Futures across a substantial number of schools. It has been written by an experienced team from the Institute of Education in London. It contains a useful blend of quantitative and qualitative data. Although it is not specifically focussed or applied to the work of initial teacher education, there are a number of considerations that tutors, mentors and students working within initial teacher education will want to consider. These are outlined below.
The implications for ITE tutors/mentors - when and how it could have best impact:
The rise of informal learning practices within music education should be considered by all those working within initial teacher education. The survey shows how an important innovation has been implemented by teachers and received by pupils. There are a number of specific issues that arise from a consideration of the survey.
1. Subject Knowledge
A broad subject knowledge is vital for all music teachers. This was emphasised in the recent OfSTED (2009) triennial report (p.49). It will be important for ITE tutors and mentors to ensure that students undertaking ITE have this subject knowledge and can apply and use it appropriately, to ensure that all pupils are challenged within what is essentially a self-directed, self-regulated learning environment.
2. Curriculum Coherence
Secondly, the survey does not really address is the issue of curriculum coherence. Teachers are often prone to pick and choose bits of an initiative that they perceive meets either their own needs or, perhaps more helpfully, their pupils' needs. This was noted by OfSTED (2009, p.54).
The survey does not give a clear picture in this respect. What was traditionally called longer term planning is a vital part of successful music teaching at this level. Whilst the priority on many initial teacher education courses is to get students teaching individual lessons or sequences of lessons successfully, it is important to remember that the design of a whole year's work (or three year's work) is just as important.
3. Links to the new National Curriculum for Music
The survey identified that 43% of teachers felt that Musical Futures linked well to the National Curriculum for Music. With the introduction of a new National Curriculum for Music over the next two years, there is an increased focus on the pupil being placed at the heart of the curriculum and of using their perceived interests and needs to inform curriculum planning and teaching. There is an obvious relevance here to the approaches reported in the survey.
Perhaps more problematically, this approach assumes that teachers will have a set of diagnostic skills to obtain these insights early on in the Key Stage and build a set of strategies for individual pupils and classes. This suggests that there is a requirement for those entering music teaching to gain experience in diagnosing pupil abilities, focussing curriculum planning carefully and being skilful at differentiating opportunities within the classroom. The survey does not explore the planning approaches that teachers adopted towards these issues. It was disappointing to note in this survey that Musical Futures approaches benefited pupils who already could play musical instruments (and the assumption is that they learnt to do this outside of formal curriculum time) more than those who did not.
4. Developing a Flexible Pedagogy
Perhaps the biggest challenge to those working in initial teacher education is to provide opportunities for students to develop a flexible pedagogy that incorporates approaches for informal learning with other styles and approaches of music education. In some senses, there is nothing new here and a significant number of teachers reported this through the survey. Skilful music teachers throughout the ages have always taken account of their pupils' interests, provide time, space and resources for individual and group creative work (whether in performance or composition), and acted as facilitators of musical processes instead of key holders of knowledge.
The approach adopted by Musical Futures and reported in this survey challenges all music educators to think outside their boxes. The survey emphasises that the teacher is not redundant in a Musical Future programme. They have to make skilful decisions about their roles. This should be based on a rigorous pedagogical assessment and will result in various conscious, and perhaps even unconscious or artistic, attitudes and actions in the classroom. It is definitely not the easy option. Empowering the skilful music teacher with a range of pedagogical choices or perspectives is important. I would agree with Folkestad (2006) that it is unhelpful to view the formal - informal dimensions here as a dichotomy. Rather, they are a continuum within which teachers make choices related to the proposed processes of teaching and learning. In that sense, many music teachers throughout the United Kingdom have done ‘musical futures' for many years. But this survey is a helpful overview that should extend the activity of music educators across our schools.
The relevance to ITE students:
The survey is informative for ITE students and has important implications for their work. Perhaps these are best expressed through a number of questions:
- Is your subject knowledge broad enough to encompass the range of topics within a teaching approach such as Musical Futures?
- How will you apply this subject knowledge through your curriculum planning and classroom interactions with students?;
- What are the resource and accommodation implications for teaching music, and particularly a Musical Futures type approach?
- What will a longer term plan for teaching music at Key Stage 3 look like? Will it contain a blend of approaches? This survey reported that most teachers used Musical Futures with Year 9 pupils. Is this helpful? Can the approach be spread more widely?
- How can you ensure that your teaching reaches all pupils, not just those who already have instrumental skills obtained outside the classroom?
- Finally, and perhaps most importantly, what are the elements of a skill musical pedagogy that you need in order to teach music effectively through this type of approach?
Related Resources:
The following might be useful to read in conjunction with this resource:
Folkestad, G, (2006) Formal and informal learning situations or practices vs formal and informal ways of learning. British Journal of Music Education 23: 2, 135-145.
Green, L. (2001) How Popular Musicians Learn: A way ahead for music education. Aldershot, Ashgate.
Green, L. (2008) Music, Informal Learning and School: A new classroom pedagogy. Aldershot, Ashgate.
OfSTED (2009) Making More of Music: An evaluation of music in schools 2005/08. London, OfSTED.
Reviewed by:
Dr Jonathan Savage