Event Title
Radical Change in Music Education and the Professional Development of Music Teachers
Start Date
30-5-2011 1:30 PM
End Date
30-5-2011 2:00 PM
Description
A sociological analysis of curriculum development in music education in England shows a frustrating impact on the distribution of achievement and social justice. What chance then of the most recent developments in learning and pedagogy having a radical impact on music education? In light of this question this paper will explore a meta-pedagogy for the professional development of music teachers (initial and ongoing) which is fit to facilitate radical curriculum change. It would seem that the status quo in music education has been perpetuated by models of teacher education in which teachers (and pupils) have been consumers as opposed to makers of knowledge, curriculum and pedagogy. It can be argued that the most effective professional development for music teachers is that which employs the insights we now have about the material nature of learning. In short, if the implications of the relationship between informal and formal learning and pedagogy are to make a radical impact on music education, then the professional development of music teachers needs to embrace this wisdom into the heart of learning how to teach. This paper will explore a meta-pedagogy for the professional development of music teachers driven by the same processes that underpin what we seem to be discovering about musical learning. Such a meta-pedagogy might promote the following virtues:
- explicitly ‘living’ the learning where the relationship between formal and informal learning and pedagogy is embedded into the very process of professional development;
- facilitating the ‘excavation’ of the tacit and intuitive experience of musical learning in teachers (Bourdieu’s ‘habitus’) through reflexivity;
- by embracing 1 and 2 opening what Bernstein calls ‘discursive gaps’, where change is possible through the creation and interpretation of knowledge by teachers and pupils.
This meta-pedagogy will be illustrated through case studies from initial teacher education. While such a model cannot not guarantee the direction of curriculum change, it can promote sustainable developments in the pedagogical knowledge of teachers and thus, potentially, the distribution of achievement and social justice in music education.
Radical Change in Music Education and the Professional Development of Music Teachers
A sociological analysis of curriculum development in music education in England shows a frustrating impact on the distribution of achievement and social justice. What chance then of the most recent developments in learning and pedagogy having a radical impact on music education? In light of this question this paper will explore a meta-pedagogy for the professional development of music teachers (initial and ongoing) which is fit to facilitate radical curriculum change. It would seem that the status quo in music education has been perpetuated by models of teacher education in which teachers (and pupils) have been consumers as opposed to makers of knowledge, curriculum and pedagogy. It can be argued that the most effective professional development for music teachers is that which employs the insights we now have about the material nature of learning. In short, if the implications of the relationship between informal and formal learning and pedagogy are to make a radical impact on music education, then the professional development of music teachers needs to embrace this wisdom into the heart of learning how to teach. This paper will explore a meta-pedagogy for the professional development of music teachers driven by the same processes that underpin what we seem to be discovering about musical learning. Such a meta-pedagogy might promote the following virtues:
- explicitly ‘living’ the learning where the relationship between formal and informal learning and pedagogy is embedded into the very process of professional development;
- facilitating the ‘excavation’ of the tacit and intuitive experience of musical learning in teachers (Bourdieu’s ‘habitus’) through reflexivity;
- by embracing 1 and 2 opening what Bernstein calls ‘discursive gaps’, where change is possible through the creation and interpretation of knowledge by teachers and pupils.
This meta-pedagogy will be illustrated through case studies from initial teacher education. While such a model cannot not guarantee the direction of curriculum change, it can promote sustainable developments in the pedagogical knowledge of teachers and thus, potentially, the distribution of achievement and social justice in music education.