scholarly journals Assessment in the Secondary Music Classroom

Author(s):  
Martin Fautley ◽  
Richard Colwell

The issue of assessment in music education in the secondary school is one of concern in a range of contexts, including teaching, learning, accountability, policy, and politics. In order to investigate assessment in the secondary school, there is a need to understand what assessment is; what the terminologies involved mean; what the implications of assessment are for learners, teachers, program organizers, administrators, legislators, and other interested stakeholders; and what constitutes secondary school music. This article considers the following issues in student assessment: the context of assessment, the uses and purposes of assessment, legitimizing assessment, and assessment and music pedagogy.

Author(s):  
Chris Philpott ◽  
Jason Kubilius

Taking as its context the development of music education within English secondary schools (students aged 11–18) over the last 50 years, and supported by “vignettes” from a practicing music teacher in a secondary school on the outskirts of London, this chapter seeks to address some key questions around social justice and music education, including: What is meant by social justice in the music classroom? What are the indicators for a socially just classroom? The chapter goes on to explore significant moments in the history of classroom music in England and how, in spite of best efforts, the promotion of social justice has been “confounded” by subtle cultural forces. The chapter concludes by speculating on the implications of this analysis for the music classroom in the twenty-first century and by reflecting on whether the classroom can ever provide the appropriate “space” for a socially just approach to music education.


Author(s):  
Megan Leigh Giacomelli

This paper uses critical pedagogy as a framework to critique existing music curricula in the Ontario public education system, proposing an alternative model of music pedagogy that incorporates improvisation and so-called ‘extended techniques’ in the classroom with a view of encouraging students to develop their own forms of creative expression through individual discovery of sound and environment. It investigates pedagogical tools utilized in the teaching of extended technique for instruments, the use of ‘found objects’ as musical instruments, and the creative implications of improvisatory techniques in the music classroom. Critical pedagogy is used to examine hegemonic processes within existing forms of music education, processes that work to naturalize particular systems of musical logic and models of social behaviour.


Author(s):  
Jillian Hogan ◽  
Ellen Winner

Music making requires many kinds of habits of mind—broad thinking dispositions potentially useful outside of the music room. Teaching for habits of mind is prevalent in both general and other areas of arts education. This chapter reports a preliminary analysis of the habits of mind that were systematically observed and thematically coded in twenty-four rehearsals of six public high school music ensembles: band, choir, and orchestra. Preliminary results reveal evidence of eight habits of mind being taught: engage and persist, evaluate, express, imagine, listen, notice, participate in community, and set goals and be prepared. However, two habits of mind that the researchers expected to find taught were not observed: appreciate ambiguity and use creativity. These two nonobserved habits are ones that arts advocates and theorists assume are central to arts education. The chapter discusses how authentic assessment of habits of mind in the music classroom may require novel methods, including the development of classroom environments that foster additional levels of student agency.


1986 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 341-352 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Owens

This article is a revised version of a talk given by the author before an international symposium on music education in Hortos, Greece, in 1985. It considers the current state of modern music, suggesting that there have been some important changes in direction since the avant-garde styles of the 1950s and 1960s; and it reflects on some of the implications of these changes for secondary-school music teaching.Some proposals are made for factors likely to facilitate the success of contemporary music which children hear or perform. In the original talk these points were illustrated with recorded examples, indicated here by numbers in the text. The role of children as contemporary composers themselves is also discussed in terms of the method and motivation by which creative work may be encouraged.The educational writers on whom the author bases much of his argument are clearly acknowledged throughout the text. Otherwise, opinions derive from experience of teaching and writing music for children in England and in France.


Author(s):  
Lucy Green ◽  
Flavia Narita

This chapter considers social justice in relation to the incorporation of a set of informal learning practices within the secondary school music classroom and teacher education. It interprets Nancy Fraser’s view of social justice as “parity of participation” in order to suggest that the dialogical approach of informal music learning practices can potentially promote such participatory parity. It then examines Paulo Freire’s concept of critical pedagogy, which emphasizes the need for teachers and students to participate together in the learning process so as to enhance critical consciousness. Through an application of Green’s theory of musical meaning, the authors suggest that critical consciousness in music can be aided through a deeper understanding of music’s sonic materials and their inter-relations. Informal learning in the music classroom may promote both parity of participation and critical consciousness, with the potential to lead to a liberating musical experience.


Author(s):  
Ethan Hein

Whether or not we make the best use of technology in the music classroom, young people will continue to find unexpected uses for it elsewhere. There is no historical precedent for the informal learning possibilities afforded by inexpensive and ubiquitous computers. Are young music learners best left to their own devices, literally and figuratively? Or can we structure a classroom around these devices, combining independent play with guided group activity? Will formal educational settings always compromise or even negate young people’s autonomy and independence? Perhaps if we think of the music room as a maker space rather than a classroom, we can admit some of the imaginative play and authentic expressiveness that students find outside school. Music education will happen wherever people gather together, using whatever materials are at hand. A school is necessarily an ad hoc society; ideally, it can be a genuine artistic community as well.


Author(s):  
Chris Philpott ◽  
Ruth Wright

This article, which addresses the interfaces between learning, teaching, and curriculum in classroom music teaching, presents a theoretical framework drawn from the work of the British sociologist Basil Bernstein that allows for the analysis of different curriculum and pedagogic models in music education. To elaborate on this, a number of different curriculum models are presented and analyzed. Finally, the article shares some thoughts concerning future music curricula, based on Bernstein's principles of democratic rights in education, which focus on the possibility of promoting social justice in the music classroom.


2005 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
Janet Mills

While most of the students who graduate each year from the Royal College of Music (RCM) in London build performance-based portfolio careers that include some teaching, very few of them enter secondary school class music teaching. This article describes how young musicians' concerns about the career of secondary class music teacher develop as they move from sixth former to first year RCM undergraduate to third year undergraduate, and proposes some ways in which these concerns may be addressed. RCM students often agree strongly with statements consistent with a positive attitude to teaching, such as feeling a sense of achievement when pupils learn, and considering that teaching is about helping pupils realise their musical potential. However, they also tend to think that secondary class music teaching is not ‘doing music’. Successful secondary music teachers may take a different view, and the effect on RCM students of working with such teachers is reported descriptively.


2013 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 76-90
Author(s):  
Wayne D. Bowman

This essay questions the efficacy of conventional disciplinary boundaries in post-secondary music studies, boundaries that reductively define music education as a training ground for public school music teachers. Our expectations of music education and its sphere of influence have been far too modest. To the extent we segregate music education from the goals and objectives of music studies more broadly, we neglect our collective responsibility for the musical life of our country. We have focused inwardly, engrossed in our specialties, leaving the design of school music curricula and the fragile environments in which they must compete for survival to the whims of non-musician bureaucrats and politicians. We have been less than successful in our collective obligation to enhance the musical well-being of the country. Changing these circumstances is among our greatest challenges in the decades ahead.


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