Creative Teaching for Creative Learning in Higher Music Education

Elizabeth Haddon, Pamela Burnard, Elizabeth Haddon, Pamela Burnard

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317158196
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music

This edited volume explores how selected researchers, students and academics name and frame creative teaching and learning as constructed through the rationalities, practices, relationships, events, objects and systems that are brought to educational sites and developed by learning communities. The concept of creative learning questions the starting-points and opens up the outcomes of curriculum, and this frames creative teaching not only as a process of learning but as an agent of change. Within the book, the various creativities that are valued by different stakeholders teaching and studying in the higher music sector are delineated, and processes and understandings of creative teaching are articulated, both generally in higher music education and specifically through their application within the design of individual modules. This focus makes the text relevant to scholars, researchers and practitioners across many fields of music, including those working in musicology, composition, performance, music education, and music psychology. The book contributes new perspectives on our understanding of the role of creative teaching and learning and processes in creative teaching across the domain of music learning in higher music education sectors.

Part I Articulating experience in secondary and higher music education

1 Pre-higher education creativity

Composition in the classroom

Steven Berryman

DOI: 10.4324/9781315574714-2

Introduction and rationale

Music education qualifications appear to predicate a progression from minimal musical competence to a pre-professional level of training. Graded practical music examinations perhaps extol this idea of progression most overtly. The various classroom-based qualifications (such as those awarded during secondary school education) have been designed to be progressive, building on the previous qualification, and each examine the three strands of performance, composing and listening. It is important to recognise, however, that these qualifications may never have been intended as a progressive training towards higher education. These secondary school examinations may be standardised on a national and international level; however, curricula and examinations at higher education can vary from institution to institution.

Secondary school music education could be perceived as transitive; students may be moving schools between different levels, and as such it will be the task of the classroom music teacher to manage the transition of students with a variety of abilities and differing musical experiences. Students may have an extensive musical life outside school (which may include a broader range of creative approaches not always accommodated in the music classroom, such as collaborative creativity, non-Western instruments and non-Western notation). The study of Western music may preference single authors and notated composing, and therefore students may struggle to reconcile out-of-school musical experiences with their classroom-based experiences.

The progression from earlier stages of secondary school education through to the final stages involves an increased use of Western notation; the length of creative work (performances and compositions, for example) extends, and perhaps compared with earlier stages a greater percentage of the qualification comes from a written-based examination. There is increasing scope (depending on the qualification) for students to engage with music technology, non-Western musics and non-notated performances. Composition-based creativity remains less open to the variety afforded performances. Composition is also a compulsory part for nearly all levels, yet the teaching of this can be driven by assessment rather than the genuine pursuit of a compositional voice. In addition, in an attempt to make the assessment of creative work manageable by a diverse and large workforce of music teachers, the creative tasks devised perhaps limit the potential creativity.

It would appear that secondary school sector music education does not naturally progress to higher education; its generic nature – to accommodate a vast number of students – might not appear to be congruent with the aspirations of higher education. A transition needs to occur that considers the teaching approaches adopted before higher education study; it should take into account the methods of assessment and limited creative tasks to ensure students’ confidence and expectations can be managed successfully in the early stages of higher education.

This chapter will look at the changing role of creativity from the earlier stages to the later stages of secondary school music education and reflect on the expectations of these various stages. It will be revealed that perhaps there is not a progression towards higher education, but a progression towards an imagined necessary level of music competency that prefers the length of creative tasks as a measure of increased music fluency while relegating the use of the written word as a lesser component. If the transition and progression from pre-higher education music studies is to be managed effectively, it is important for those involved in curriculum design at higher education level to embrace the more rapidly changing secondary school curriculum as their starting point.

Creativity in the secondary school sector curriculum

Music remains a compulsory part of school education in England and Wales until the end of Key Stage 3 (aged 13/14), and with the publication of a new National Curriculum (NC) Programme of Study (DfE, 2013), music continues to be considered as essentially the three strands of performing, creating (composing) and listening. The Key Stage 3 Programme of Study states that:

Music is a universal language that embodies one of the highest forms of creativity. A high-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. As pupils progress, they should develop a critical engagement with music, allowing them to compose, and to listen with discrimination to the best in the musical canon.

(DfE, 2013)

Creativity is professed to be an essential part of music education in this Programme of Study, and it states a further aim that students should ‘understand and explore how music is created, produced and communicated, including through the inter-related dimensions: pitch, duration, dynamics, tempo, timbre, texture, structure and appropriate musical notations’ (ibid.). Creativity is defined only as the creation of ‘original’ music, be it improvised or notated composition. Performance is seen as re-creating, and students should expect to be taught how to ‘play and perform confidently in a range of solo and ensemble contexts using their voice, playing instruments musically, fluently and with accuracy and expression’. There is the expectation that these three strands of music (performing, creating and listening) are not to be separated, but taught holistically:

Good music lessons engage pupils musically straight away – that is, by getting them to listen to and think about musical sound, or by involving them in a music-making task. Learning intentions are shared musically – for example, by the teacher modelling a song performance in tune with good diction, articulation and phrasing to show the pupils the intended musical outcome.

(Ofsted, 2012a)

The expectation is that music is taught well when it is taught holistically rather than an attempt to artificially separate into the three strands identified by the NC.

Before the publication of a new NC Programme of Study, classroom-based music education was receiving less favourable press: the Ofsted press release ‘Not Enough Music in Music Lessons’ (Ofsted, 2012b) highlighted the results of a three-year survey that showed the quality and quantity of music teaching varied considerably; one in five schools inspected were deemed poor in their music teaching:

In too many music lessons there was insufficient emphasis placed on active music making, and too much focus on talking or written exercises. The scarcity of good vocal work in secondary schools, where nearly half of those inspected were judged inadequate for singing, and the underuse of music technology across all levels were found to be significant barriers to pupils’ musical progress.

(Ofsted, 2012b)

It would be naïve to assume such a press release was a true reflection of music teaching nationally, but it is nonetheless an interesting issue to consider. If the NC is professing creativity to be an essential component of a good musical education, how can this be achieved with so little actual music going on within the classroom?

The vagueness of the National Curriculum is to be celebrated, as teachers can curate a curriculum that not only acknowledges their own musical interests and expertise, but also the diverse interests of their pupils. Conversely, this presents a real challenge for teachers. The most recent NC highlights teaching pupils to ‘listen with increasing discrimination to a wide range of music from great composers and musicians’ (a far from subtle reference to Western art music as the most important repertoire choice) and mentions that ‘as pupils progress, they should develop a critical engagement with music, allowing them to compose, and to listen with discrimination to the best in the musical canon’ (DfE, 2013). Such a canon invariably refers to the Western art music canon, but again, the vagueness of this statement permits teachers to plan a curriculum that is bespoke to the needs of their pupils rather than planning for imagined pupils.

Richard McNicol’s keynote address at the 2011 National Association of Music Educators Conference gave a succinct and balanced account of the major developments in British music education since the 1970s. McNicol highlighted the value of John Paynter and Peter Aston and their book Sound and Silence (1970), which emphasises a music curriculum that prioritises a practical approach that ironically seems to have faded according to the aforementioned Ofsted press release; McNicol acknowledged those teachers who crafted a ‘curriculum that engages and excites innumerable youngsters’. He drew attention to attempts by Kenneth Clarke to formalise the music curriculum which included the study of set works from the Western classical tradition – a practice that continues to inform the curricula at GCSE examination level and above.¹ These developments were not met with unanimous acquiescence – eminent classical musicians led the way in preventing these revisions from denying pupils a practice-based music curriculum. McNicol mentioned his pride in announcing the practice-based music curriculum in the UK to teachers abroad, and he rightly shows that music education in the UK was something to be envied internationally.

Music education at Key Stage 3 favours a holistic approach to music teaching, and the UK National Curriculum encourages a practical approach with collaborative creativity at its core. What can be seen is that there is not much progression towards Key Stage 4, but that a transition is required to meet the needs of the broad range of students who can opt for this next level.

Music at Key Stage 4 and beyond

The situation of music education before Key Stage 4 is seemingly very diverse; pupils can come from schools that have a strong tradition of music-making, or perhaps have engaged with little music during their school years and have found considerable opportunity outside their educational establishment. Thus, opportunities to be creative, beyond performing, can vary considerably. A collaborative method of teaching creative work at Key Stage 3, perhaps led prominently by the teacher, may entail students with little experience of individual creativity – that found in the Western art music convention of the solitary composer – before Key Stage 4. How teachers approach the further development of such creative work can also vary considerably; students may not have much opportunity to refine their work beyond initial attempts, and (due to time and logistics of the lessons) may only get one attempt at producing a creative response. Musical Futures gives greater time and responsibility to student-led activity,² but the adoption of such a strategy predicates group rather than individual work too. Creativity therefore becomes a group activity, much akin to the creative strategies detailed by Green (2002) in her study of learning approaches adopted by popular musicians, and also something that is done quickly rather than developed over a considerable length of time. There is a big shift in modality at Key Stage 4; students are now expected to work individually as composers, and there is the expectation that they will work over longer periods to develop their work. Before Key Stage 4, teachers can create their own assessment criteria for the outcomes of creative tasks (perhaps additionally assessing the creative process), yet at Key Stage 4, only the product is assessed and the assessment criteria are set nationally, indeed internationally.

Creativity at Key Stage 4 and beyond

Performance is assessed primarily as a re-creating activity, and students are judged on the complexity of the piece they perform and the extent to which it is accurate in accordance to a notated score. Rockschool has permitted teachers to find notated versions of non-art music repertoire that allow students to be assessed more comfortably by teachers.³ Regardless of a music’s providence, accuracy and technical competence remain assessment priorities. Judgements on the expressive nature of the performance figure less highly, but their prominence increases as students progress to Key Stage 5. The merits of examination via recorded performances are worthy of discussion elsewhere, but the use of recording further enhances the description of performance as a re-creating act that is more about accuracy than about the body of a performer expressing something artistically. In fact, the recorded performance anaesthetises the performer’s body.

Composition tasks vary across the examination boards on offer at Key Stage 4. Some require students to compose to a brief (perhaps programmatic, or encourage students to connect their compositions to music they have studied in another area of their course), or there is free choice of content. There are numerous books that attempt to formalise the composing process for those teachers and students with less confidence.⁴ Teachers were able to decide the levels of compositional success at Key Stage 3 and could place considerable value in the process of creative work; at Key Stage 4, the finished creative product is prioritised over what could be a carefully graded and enriching development of compositional technique.

At Key Stage 4, teachers are often faced with a diverse range of abilities. Some of their students may be immersed in Western art music (often prioritised at Key Stage 4), while others may have relatively little experience of it; some will be fluent in Western notation, while others might be from a musical tradition where aural transmission of musical learning is paramount. Teachers face a challenge in navigating these diverse needs, and therefore creative work can easily become formulaic. Teachers may be keen to cultivate pedagogical strategies that make a process of creativity in music something that results in finished compositions that score highly on their chosen examination board criteria. Examination boards place considerable emphasis on coursework at Key Stage 4 (often ranging from 60 to 70 per cent of the examination, of which performance can be half). The advent of controlled conditions for creative tasks has meant that students are now producing compositions under supervised conditions and within in a time limit which can range from 10 to 20 hours.⁵ Composition is reduced to something measurable and assessable in perhaps a more rigorous way than the performance coursework. It is not surprising that teachers may find the assessment of composition difficult when examination boards place differing constraints on the compositions produced.

AQA⁶ (2012) specifies that:

Candidates are required to compose one piece of music and must choose two or more of the five Areas of Study. There must be a link to one of the three strands, which will be announced annually by AQA. Candidates have up to 20 hours of Supervised Time in which to complete the composition, under informal supervision. Candidates’ work must be moni...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half-Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table Of Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• List of music examples
• Notes on contributors
• Series editors' preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• PART I Articulating experience in secondary and higher music education
• PART II Developing the creative lecturer and teacher
• PART III Philosophies, practices and pedagogies: Teaching for creative learning
• Index