Certificate for Music Educators Guidebook

Teaching Children and Young People

Lilian Simones

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000395877
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music

Certificate for Music Educators Guidebook is focused on the learning outcomes of the Certificate for Music Educators in the UK, accredited by the Office of Qualifications and Examinations Regulation (Ofqual), and validated by Trinity College London (TCL) and the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music (ABRSM).Through reflective questions, readers become acquainted with research findings relevant to teaching children and explore ways for enacting best teaching practice in day-to-day teaching. It offers strong foundations in teaching music in contemporary diverse settings, in both instrumental and vocal teaching; early years, primary and secondary schools and community-based contexts.This book is directly aligned with the CME Level 4 course modules, units and areas of study and its desired learning outcomes. It is a key companion for students enrolled in a validated centre, as well as the teachers and mentors involved in the design and delivery of the CME.

Section II

Planning, Leading and Assessing Musical Learning

4 Preparing for the Development of Inclusive Learning Environments

To Guide Your Reading

• What is meant by inclusion, equality and diversity in the context of music education? • What barriers to musical learning and common assumptions can unintentionally create barriers? • What are learning styles and what implications do they have for music teaching? • How can you identify and support those with learning difficulties? • How can you identify and support prodigies and very gifted children? • How should you respond to diverse learning needs and aspirations? • How can you deal with cultural diversity in music teaching contexts and use music to address discrimination and promote equality, diversity and inclusion? • How can teachers promote the development of motivation towards musical engagement and learning? • How can teachers promote children and young people’s positive behaviour and be able to prevent, manage and respond to inappropriate behaviour?

Introduction

The main purpose of this chapter is to provide music teachers with up-to-date knowledge that they can use to develop inclusive learning environments. Therefore, definitions of inclusion, equality and diversity open the chapter, and this is followed by a brief overview of barriers to music learning. Given that children and young people are diverse learners, the subsequent sections focus upon differences in learning styles; difficulties with learning; working with very gifted children; and teaching in culturally diverse contexts. This is followed by a short review on the topic of motivation, where the important role that teachers have in promoting and developing learners’ motivation and development of musical identities in every lesson is considered. The chapter concludes with a section on promoting positive behaviour, where types and reasons for inappropriate behaviour are discussed and procedures are identified for promoting positive behaviour and dealing with challenging behaviour.

Inclusion, Equality and Diversity

If there is one idea that music teachers can agree upon, it would be the notion that our main mission is to enhance every learner’s growth as a musician and enabling each learner to achieve their potential. This main idea guides everything we do (Kaikkonen, 2016). Translating this from an ideal to an integral element fully embedded in our day-to-day teaching, however, necessarily requires an understanding of what inclusive learning environments truly are while also identifying barriers to learning and devising ways for widening participation and learning. Regardless of where you teach and the teaching setting you find yourself in, your learners will certainly be from different social, family and cultural milieus. They are unique individuals with their own learning preferences, motivations, and specific life situations, conditions and circumstances all of which combine to influence how they approach and engage with learning.

In addition to individual uniqueness, educational environments have become more and more diverse in recent decades as a result of migration, globalisation, technological advancements, media and inclusion of learners with varying levels of abilities in the same classroom (e.g., prodigies, average learners and learners with learning difficulties and disabilities). Developing inclusive learning environments starts with a recognition that different learners have different learning needs. This will be true when they embark on their learning journey but also as time, learning and development progresses. UNESCO’s guidelines on inclusion (2009) and arts education (2006) explicitly allude to the rights of diverse groups of children within mainstream, comprehensive education. This covers cultural experiences and arts education, and it defines inclusion as:

a process addressing and responding to the diversity of needs of all children, youth and adults through increasing participation in learning, cultures and communities, and reducing and eliminating exclusion within and from education. It involves changes and modifications in content, approaches, structures and strategies with a common vision that covers all children of the appropriate age range and a conviction that it is the responsibility of the regular system to educate all children.

(UNESCO, 2009, pp. 8–9)

From this perspective, inclusion is an approach to ensure inclusive learning environments for all learners. Inclusive learning environments in music and beyond are focused upon:

• Respect for equality and diversity;
• Enabling participation, while considering and removing barriers to learning and of access to learning experiences;
• The design and delivery of learning processes that meaningfully engage learners with the curriculum while also enabling them to achieve their potential.

This directly links to the concepts of equality and diversity. Equality recognises the right that each a person has to being afforded an equal opportunity to develop their talents. More specifically, equality in this context is about ensuring individuals are treated fairly and equally, regardless of their race, gender, age, disability, religion, sexual orientation and/or other protected characteristics. In the context of education, this does not necessarily mean being treated identically in all instances. Rather, the idea is to offer learner-centred approaches which are tailored to individual learning needs and with consideration of learning styles, motivations and aims. Diversity is about accepting differences between people and recognising and respecting these differences to create an all-inclusive atmosphere. Such differences may include race; gender; age; disability; religion; and/or sexual orientation.

Children are also diverse learners, and from a teaching and learning perspective the following differences should be considered: differences in learning needs; learning styles; and motivation and preferences. In the context of education, acknowledgment and appreciation that each individual is unique, embracing acceptance and valuing difference are the stepping stones towards the creation of an environment where learners can thrive together. Hence, we must understand and appreciate that individual characteristics make people unique and not ‘different’ in a negative way. This requires understanding learner’s particular circumstances, life contexts and particular situations and conditions which may affect their learning (either temporarily or on a permanent basis). Armed with such insights, we can optimise their learning.

While diversity brings richness to the teaching and learning environment, it also brings a level of unpredictability with regard to challenges that may surface in real-time classroom teaching and learning. As teachers, we need to be ready to accept that there will be times where we will be placed outside of our comfort zone and we need to be ready to find solutions. Solutions can be found by adopting a humble and flexible approach, one where we are open to learning on an everyday basis from our learners and proactively engaging in continuous professional development and consulting and working collaboratively with others. This could be achieved with special needs assistants, other professionals in the fields of education and health, parents, as well as seeking advice from more experienced teachers and other professionals. As a process, a constant cyclical approach to identifying barriers to access and participation in music learning and music making is needed. It must be considered side-by-side with identifying strategies to help learners overcome barriers while always assessing the effectiveness of actions taken.

Identifying Barriers to Music Learning

Barriers to accessing music education are both context and culture specific. Therefore, it is impossible to provide an exhaustive list of all possible barriers. However, and generally speaking, barriers to accessing music education can be grouped into the following categories (Kaikkonen, 2016):

• School system and society;
• Intrapersonal;
• Informational;
• Physical learning environment;
• Informational and physical combined.

School System and Society

Financial constraints can cause barriers to learning in school systems and societies at many different levels. For instance, there may be low or simply not enough funding available for allowing access to music education for all both in and outside school environments. Family related financial constraints can mean families are unable to pay for lessons, purchase music instruments, or obtain further extra learning support, particularly whenever educational music provision is not freely offered at school. Competition for funding between music and other school subjects, in association with conceptions where music is wrongly deemed as ‘less important’, leaves music being put forward as an optional subject, or as a paid optional subject in many educational contexts.

Lack of qualified or experienced and knowledgeable teachers who can provide the high-quality music learning that learners are entitled to can result in the absence of, or more regularly, low-quality music education provision which doesn’t engage learners in meaningful learning. Another problematic and common issue are time pressures in the school curriculum, where music is either not offered or offered in proportionally less time in comparison to other school subjects.

Inflexible curricula are another huge issue impacting upon how teachers and learners work together and where it can remain difficult or impossible to develop a learner-centred approach. Obviously, this directly impacts upon learners’ motivation, and particularly whenever a curriculum doesn’t allow room for manoeuvre vis-a-vis considerations of learners’ learning styles and specific circumstances which may affect information accessibility. These can include learning difficulties; disabilities; giftedness; and cultural diversity (including integration of children from ethnic minority groups, immigrants and refugees).

Socio-cultural conceptions operate across many fronts. This includes misleading conceptions that musicians need to be talented and gifted, which thereby leads to many learners disengaging as they may not be aware of the sustained development work that is required to reach a higher skill level. In short, they assume they don’t have what it takes. The value that parents, teachers and school administration ascribe to music and music education (both implicitly and explicitly) also has strong repercussions on whether children and young people will engage in music learning, under what circumstances and for how long.

Intrapersonal Barriers

Learner’s lack of confidence and self-belief in their music potential affects engagement and motivation, resulting in many learners giving up musical learning and music making. This lack of confidence is in many cases caused by lack of parental and teachers’ encouragement. Other intrapersonal barriers relate to cases where learners have specific conditions where their communication skills may be affected, and where teachers are not aware of what may work best for that particular learner nor of best practice on how to promote learning for learners with those conditions. Furthermore, teac...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Tables
• List of Figures
• List of Abbreviations
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• Introduction
• Section I The Importance of Music in Children and Young People’s Lives
• Section II Planning, Leading and Assessing Musical Learning
• Section III The Music Educator and Their Wider Professional Role
• Index