It was my first ever teaching-assisting experience. As such, I decided to attend a lecture and tutorial by a module’s lecturer. I noticed that students engaged highly in debates activities. I decided to do the same as it allows quite engaged discussions that leads to develop critical thinking within students with students becoming active learners (Garrett, Schoener, and Hood 1996; Bean 2011).
I was faced, at times, with quite confrontational atmosphere in the classroom (see Tumposky (2004) for downsides of debate activities in the classroom) and lack of awareness of various sensitive issues. Two examples come to mind. One, was a student who apparently had dyslexia. I felt that he was upset by another student who was arguing strongly for the education of the discipline to remain the same although it was not very much dyslexia friendly. Another student during another debate boldly stated, ‘fear is good’, which in my mind could easily upset students struggling with this emotion. In both situation, I was quite shaken by such opinionated statement within a classroom. Naively, I thought that people in 2018, were more aware about physical and mental disabilities and illnesses.
When it happened, I waited to see if another student would react to the problematic statements and if not, would intervene and give a few pointers about mental health awareness and mention CEDAS. I also e-mailed the lecturers afterwards. I may consider next time to ask strategical questions rather than intervening directly during the debate. As suggested by Lichtenstein (2010), this avoid worsening the confrontational environment when dealing with sensitive issues and make students more receptive.
Having attended student-staff liaison meetings, I am also aware of other issues such as racism and intolerance between students. I am trying and will do my best in future teaching to try foster an environment that increase tolerance and awareness of diversity and health. Universities are places not only to learn a discipline but also to develop a sustainable future for the society as discussed by De Cortese (2003) and Zgaga (2009)
Bean, John C. 2011. Engaging Ideas The Professor’s Guide to Integrating Writing, Critical Thinking, and Active Learning in the Classroom. Chichester: Wiley.
De Cortese, Anthony. 2003. ‘The Critical Role of Higher Education in Creating a Sustainable Future’. Planning for Higher Education, 15–22.
Garrett, Michele, Lois Schoener, and Lucy Hood. 1996. ‘Debate: A Teaching Strategy to Improve Verbal Communication and Critical-Thinking Skills’. Nurse Educator 21 (4): 37. https://journals.lww.com/nurseeducatoronline/Abstract/1996/07000/Debate__A_Teaching_Strategy_to_Improve_Verbal.15.aspx.
Lichtenstein, Bronwen. 2010. ‘Sensitive Issues in the Classroom: Teaching about HIV in the American Deep South’. Enhancing Learning in the Social Sciences 2 (3): 1–23. https://doi.org/10.11120/elss.2010.02030002.
Tumposky, Nancy Rennau. 2004. ‘The Debate Debate’. The Clearing House: A Journal of Educational Strategies, Issues and Ideas 78 (2): 52–56. https://doi.org/10.3200/TCHS.78.2.52-56.
Zgaga, Pavel. 2009. ‘Higher Education and Citizenship: “The Full Range of Purposes”’. European Educational Research Journal 8 (2): 175–88. https://doi.org/10.2304/eerj.2009.8.2.175.
Kim Burton
I was working for one term as a teaching assistant, leading seminars on a first-year UG course which was called. rather loosely, Introduction to World Music. The purpose was to introduce students who are assumed to have come from a background of Western Art Music (WAM) – regardless of national or ethnic background) – to non-Westernmusics. Of course the implications of the term ‘non-Western’ and its contestability were addressed, which led to a very interesting ‘debate’ between me and the other TA, who is from a South African background, on whether it is a useful term. From his point of view, ‘Western’ was a useful shorthand for imperialism and colonialism and by extension the impact of alien cultural concepts on indigenous musical cultures. But from mine, since my fieldwork is an area primarily colonised by the Ottomans, among others, and in which the alien influences, in sound, in taste, in architecture and religion are expressly non-Western, this shorthand is simply deceptive.
This was not the only difficulty I had. I am of the generation which gave rise to the term ‘World Music’ within popular culture, a term created by a group of xenophiles and independent record producers, and was at least peripherally involved in its creation, as a term which very briefly meant the licensing and reproduction in unmediated form of the complex syncreticism that drives popular musics. I must also confess that I have made my living from playing a promiscuous mashup of ‘other’ musics, so I do have a very large and barky dog in this race. Nonetheless, the discourse of purity versus the West, however nuanced it might be, tends to remove agency from the musicians themselves, and from their public. Witness the use of one of the seminal ‘World Music’ compilations, Sounds d’Afrique (Island Records, 1981) by a YouTube account, Radio Cultural Nuestras Raices (Our Roots Cultural Radio), to promote ethnic solidarity among people of African descent in the New World. It is not a simple matter to teach a course when I find its ideological framework problematic.
Of course I am hugely oversimplifying – these questions are hardly unaddressed in the ethnomusicological literature devoted to pedagogy in the academy, notably in Solis’s //Performing Musicology//: Teaching and Representation in World Music Ensembles [Link requires RHUL login].
Nor would it be true to say that the course itself failed to consider these questions. But was I able to overcome my concerns and apply Francis Su’s The Lesson of Grace in Teaching in putting the students above my own worries. I hope so. But it is not always easy.
Earlier this year I read a blog post by Dr Mareli Stolp on the topic of decolonizing music studies in South African universities (https://musicsymposiumsa.wordpress.com/2015/05/15/decolonizing-music-studies-at-south-african-universities/). The post elicited a strong reaction at the time, but it also got me thinking about how I would approach my tutorials for the Introduction to World Music course that I teach to first-year undergraduate students in the Department of Music. Should I, at a university in the Global North, be thinking about similar issues in my teaching? I understand that issues around the decolonisation of the curriculum would be important in a former colony, but does it hold the same purchase in the UK? And, if so, how could I adapt my own classes to follow a similar critical impulse, while remaining relevant to my students?
The thrust for Stolp’s post comes from what she identifies as a hegemony of Western-focused content in music curricula at South African universities. In that context, the dominance of Western knowledge seems to reproduce the unequal hierarchies of power that came with colonial domination, and thus they should be confronted, deconstructed, and alternative content should be provided that acknowledges the position of the colonial subject as equal to that of the Westerner. In thinking about this approach in relation to my own teaching, I had to ask myself the question as to whether the same form of transformation was necessary in UK universities? After all, such a shift, it would seem, would also be a shift away from the content to which my British students best relate.
I soon realised, however, that within the context of my World Music module, where we predominantly teach the music of the colonial Other, I perhaps had a chance to experiment with some of the broader ideas that underpin Stolp’s argument. I was especially attracted to the idea of shifting the perspective from a view on the music of the Other from the perspective of the Western centre to a view of these musical practices from the perspective of the colonial subject themselves. Such a shift would, I hoped, constitute a shift from a top-down model of knowledge, in which the ‘knowledgeable’ person (the researcher) is situated hierarchally above the ‘knower’ (the practitioner), to a bottom-up model that Stolp proposes. But it would not be enough to only invert this circuit of knowledge production; I would have to demonstrate the difference between the two approaches to my students.
With all this on board, I prepared a class on the music of the San bushmen in Kalahari region in Southern Africa. As part of the class, we watched a video of the world-renowned cellist, Yo-Yo Ma, visiting a San community to learn more about their music. I then asked the students for their responses to the video, without giving them much more information on the history of the San music-making. Most of my students were struck by how strange the music sounded, but some of them commented on how incredible it was that a musician such as Ma would go to such lengths to provide an exposé on this small community’s music. In response, I spoke about the way that field work usually works, with the researcher (usually of Western providence) going out to gather information on a community’s (usually of non-Western providence) musical practices. I then asked them to consider what it might mean for the community to be researched in this way? After all, I explained, under colonial rule, the San were classified as vermin by administrators in the colonies. Suddenly, the perspective had shifted. My students grew quiet as they contemplated the video form the perspective of those who were being studied, and the project all of a sudden seemed less appealing. But their silence was not a form of paralysis. One student asked whether it would not be better if the community were empowered to tell their own stories, rather than relying on a Westerner to tell their stories on their behalf? The discussion was quickly energised by this proposition and suddenly the students were no longer reliant on the top-down model in which they sought the researcher’s perspective on this community’s musical practices, but they were interested in hearing what the practitioners had to say for themselves.
Perhaps this was not entirely what Stolp was suggesting in her post. Yet I do feel that her discussion on decolonizing music curricula was exceedingly important for me to search for a way in which to provide my students (by way of their own curiosity) with an alternative way of thinking about the issues at stake in their course work.
~William Fourie
This year I have been a teaching assistant on a first-year music history course, and although I enjoyed teaching the students, there were a number of very significant challenges. Some of these were specific to this year - my inexperience, the long strike at the end of the term - but others were inherent to the role the course is required to play in the overall curriculum.
The aim of the course is primarily to introduce students to the conventional historical narratives of music history, the canon of famous composers, and other 'pegs' that more critical musicology requires familiarity with (the idea of 'pegs' coming from Morss and Murray 2005). However, since many of these conventional narratives are factually questionable and/or historically misleading, we must also try to encourage students to remain critical of these historical narratives. That is a hard balancing act to master.
One problem I saw repeatedly was with students' understanding of musical style periods (e.g. Renaissance, Baroque, Classical). While lecturers had been careful to emphasise the imprecision of, and controversy over these constructed periods, students still internalised the style periods as concrete, unshakeable facts to be memorised and regurgitated. As well as the mechanical way in which music history is taught at GCSE and A-level, Kolb's experential learning cycle might shed some light on why this became such a widespread misunderstanding.
Kolb's cycle begins with an experience: the learner reflects on that experience, forms concepts and generalisations to explain and understand it, then tests those concepts and generalisations upon other experiences (Kolb 1984). As the cycle continues, revisions are made to the concepts and generalisations in response to new evidence, shifting flexibly as the learner's understanding improves. Musical style periods are, of course, classic examples of concepts and generalisations. Yet students were learning about them in the very same lectures, at the same time as, the musical examples they generalise from; for the students, the style periods became 'experience', not 'concept', every bit as real as the composers and works associated with them.
The course needs to teach students both the 'experiences' and 'concepts' of traditional music history, without muddling the two. Otherwise, the development of students' critical skills might be hampered. I would be very interested to hear any specific ways of teaching you might know of that would help differentiate 'experiences' and 'concepts', between what one might crudely call 'facts' and 'narratives'.
Other courses are tasked with the development of students' critical and historical skills, but clearly these skills are required to help students understand how to employ a useful historical fiction (such as a style period) and when to revise them. This opens up a broader problem with a music history course like this: we are teaching knowledge, but in essays and exams, we assess skills. There is an inherent lack of constructive alignment in the niche this course must occupy within the first-year curriculum, and this problem does not seem to me easily soluble (Biggs 2003).
Biggs, J. (2003) Teaching for Quality Learning at University, 2nd edn. Buckingham: SRHE and Open University Press.
Kolb, D. (1984) Experential Learning. New York: Prentice Hall.
Morss, K. and Murray, R. (2005) Teaching at University. London: Sage Publications.
Teaching a small class (five Masters in Music students) on Cosmology, Mantras and Well-Being as part of a course on Topics in World Music, I decided to combine practice with theory in order to ensure students understand what is a very broad and complex topic. Exploring sound as symbolic in cosmology and as a practical factor in creating personal well-being requires more than theoretical analysis of mantras and cosmology. Furthermore, assessing how a small group teaching would develop, especially if they were any uninterested or unprepared students, is challenging. To counteract such a scenario, I decided to take into account the manifesto of small group teaching: flexibility, interaction, reflexivity and engagement (Mills and Alexander 2013, 6).
In terms of flexibility I had prepared different approaches in teaching the session in response to the students learning of the theory as well as the practical chanting of mantras. It went according to the main outline and powerpoint of the session as students resounded with understanding and engagement, asking questions whenever they needed a clarification. Allowing students to interact with me as well as with each other, encouraged a deeper understanding of the topic. Furthermore, as suggested by Mills and Alexander (ibid), it allowed for negotiation of differences of ideas and perspectives amongst the students and in relation to the topic taught. Finally, engaging students through chanting mantras, and practicing basic yoga and mediation developed their further interest in the topic. It also offered actual (even if small-scale) experience of analytical concepts, which are heavy with symbolism and theory. As such, the practical ascots of the class also brought focus back on sound and music, which is the focus of the degree.
Reflecting on the session, I would have liked to employ the Pass the Problem Strategy for Students. I would have asked the students to practically discern between chants and mantras, and identify the differences between the two in preparation for the session. I would have uploaded one of each on Moodle and requested students to compare and contrast; which we could have then discussed at the onset of the session.
~Snezhina Gulubova
Snezhina, I found the fact that you incorporated yoga and meditation into your teaching fascinating! To my mind, it is an excellent way to provide the students with the practical (and embodied) shift in perspective necessary for understanding topics such as cosmology and mantras in music scholarship. After all, these topics require a shift in paradigm toward a way of thinking that does not conform to our usual dualistic approaches to body and mind. It might be worth checking out the work of Jennifer Hicks where she incorporates yoga into music therapy, which would link nicely to the well-being part of your class: https://musictherapyed.com/yoga-music-therapy/
-William Fourie
I recently taught two-hour seminars to solo-performers (approx. 10 students in each class), focussing on presence, presentation as well as foreign-language diction. During these sessions, individual students are to perform a piece of their choice, after which it is the teacher’s task to help them improve their skills. As it is unavoidable in this context to use more traditional associative and individual learning methods, seeing that the nature of performing for an audience involves being ‘put on the spot’, and clear guidance as well as repetitive practice is integral to any successful career, I found it particularly important to introduce ice-breaking activities at the very beginning, even before the first singer started. I often missed the more conversational and constructive elements in my own time as a student when confronted with an unknown teacher. My strategies for doing so involved the following:
As I proceeded to the more critical phase of the workshop where it was necessary for students to get up and perform, I found it very helpful to keep in mind Gibb’s ‘reflective cycle’ (Learning by Doing, 1988). Although no novelty, and initially intended for teachers to build self-reflective awareness, it is arguably the most important skill for anyone in the performing arts to acquire ways of judging one’s own practice in order to gradually improve. I made sure to explain that my interrupting their performance had to do with time-management, rather than ‘quality’ (i.e., encouragement). Every time I did so, I acknowledged the positive aspects of what I saw/heard to then ask as to how they think they might improve, sometimes including their peers in the discussion. It is important to guide group feedback with care in these situations, as students can be very vulnerable to criticism. I made sure to provide general as well as individual feedback, and ideas on successful strategies for their own practice.
– M. Frank
This short, but insightful article by David Cox on stage fright and performance stress appeared in the Guardian on 8 September 2015:
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/sep/08/how-classical-musicians-cope-with-performance-stress
- By PBWM002
This is a version of an exercise I conduct with students at the beginning of a composition course in order to prompt students to think about 1) what style of music they would like to write and 2) what their original voice might be. This should enable students to begin accessing the higher grades outlined in HE marking schemes for creative practice. It can also be adapted for use in other creative fields such as songwriting, poetry, and creative writing.
Ex. 1
Ex. 2
Ex. 3
Analyse and compare the lists for action points:
Sources:
- Barrett, E. & Bolt, B., Approaches to Creative Arts Enquiry, I B Tauris & Co. Ltd., 2010
- Burnard, Pamela, Developing Creativities in Higher Education: International Perspectives and Practices, Routledge, 2013
- Haddon, E., & Burnard, P. Creative Teaching for Creative Learning in Higher Music Education, Routledge, 2016
- McNiff, Shaun, Art As Research, Opportunities and Challenges, Intellect, 2013
- Russo, William, Composing Music, A New Approach, University of Chicago Press, 1988
Dear PBWM002,
This is a really great set of focused but unintimidating questions to encourage a student to think about their own musical personality. Question 2 from example 1 is particularly good as an icebreaker that is likely to dissapate anxiety about the seriousness of composition in HE. It also establishes that you as a teacher do not pass judgement on any aspect of the student's identity as a musician, thereby affirming that all of our musical interests hold value for us as composers.
Best, tullfan.
As a tutorial leader this year, I was asked to facilitate discussion on the weekly readings and lecture with students, through a list of questions provided by the lecturer. From the beginning of tutorial, students were reticent to engage in discussion, for fear of being ‘wrong’ in front of the group. Collaborative mind mapping is a useful activity to encourage open communication in group tutorials, and aids in making connections across course content.
After receiving the lecturer’s five discussion questions, I would write each question on a large piece of paper, and also write out the five questions (with two or three duplicates) on small sticky notes. In tutorial, I placed the large posters on the walls around the room. As the students entered the room, I gave each student a sticky note with a question on it and a marker. I asked them to spend two minutes considering the question on their own, and then asked them to find ‘their’ poster (with the same question from their sticky note). At each poster, a group of three students met who shared the same question, and in small groups began to discuss their shared question together, writing down any thoughts, ideas, further questions, and related examples from other lectures they could think of. They then rotate every five minutes to a new question as a small group, building on the ideas already written down by previous groups. After each group rotates through each poster, they return to their seats and the larger tutorial discussion begins.
This activity uses scaffolding to foster independence in larger group discussions: students engage with course material individually (considering the question on their sticky note), in a small group (at the posters), and eventually in a large group discussion. Because students read other students’ ideas on the posters and discuss ideas in small groups, the activity encourages self and peer assessment, and helps build rapport in the group (Frankland 2008, 164). Collaborative mind mapping encourages students to condense and organise material from readings and lecture (Edwards and Cooper 2010), and provides students with a clear visual representation of how topics in the course (both in lectures and readings) link, relate and connect (Mendelson 2006, 48). Mind map activities also help students who may have not done the readings – it offers a chance for unprepared students to process core concepts from the lecture, and to formulate links between the lectures and other readings/examples they are familiar with, so they can also contribute in tutorial rather than sitting in silence for an hour. Lastly, this activity works in disrupting spatial boundaries in the classroom. From the start of tutorial, students move throughout the classroom, engaging with each other, engendering student-to-student reflection rather than discussion led by the tutorial leader.
- Katie Young
Sources:
Frankland, Steve. 2008. Enhancing Teaching and Learning through Assessment. Dordrecht: Springer.
Mendelson, Melissa. 2006. “Collaborative Mind Mapping.” English Teaching Forum. https://americanenglish.state.gov/files/ae/resource_files/etf_54_2_pg44-48.pdf).
Edwards, Sarah, and Nick Cooper. 2010. “Mind mapping as a teaching resource”. Clinical Teacher 7 (4): 236-239.
Dear Katie,
I thought this was an excellent way of drawing students into tutorials. The activity begins from the moment they step in the room, which sets the mood up nicely for the rest of the seminar. The emphasis on peer feedback and critique this method facilitates is also admirable. I myself find it hard to get students to respond to one another's ideas, and so having them congregate naturally in groups, before rotating through them, seems an ideal way to get them feeling comfortable, whilst still keeping them active.
Best wishes,
Olly
Dear Katie,
I find your method of a kind of ‘step-wise’ engagement of students in group-discussions extremely helpful. I have often found it difficult to engage all students in so-called 'compulsory seminars' where levels differ, and some may have reservations about the subject because their broader interests lie elsewhere. Giving them a chance to address questions and/or issues in micro-groups without involvement of the teacher to then proceed to larger group discussions seems to be a great ice-breaking activity and gives everyone a chance to participate.
Best,
Mirjam
by Oliver Chandler
This year I was a visiting tutor for ‘an introduction to historical musicology’. This course stands as an example of postmodern doxa bearing fruit in the philosophy of tertiary music education. So-called ‘old musicology’ constituted the study of canonic materials, taught in a top-down fashion, by experts. Postmodernism asserts that there is no real 'value' in any discipline: such paens to the transcendental are, by their very nature, metaphysical and ideological. The material basis of academia is rather what Foucault calls the ‘microphysics of power’. If the ground of all academic study is power, rather than truth, then the postmodern argument is that we must deconstruct all of the old assumptions about musical value and, indeed, the position of the expert. This, broadly speaking, is what this course aimed to do. However, this causes an epistemic, as well as a pedagogical, problem. ‘What is left is a series of power positions and contested viewpoints vying for a place in academe with no real set of standards by which to judge their relative merits and no rules to follow that allow anyone to say yes or no to questions of inclusion and exclusion in the curriculum.’ (Bloland, 1995: 535-6). To my mind, both the old kind of musicology, as well as this new, postmodern kind, are unsatisfactory when turned into pedagogical methods. An emphasis on canons and ‘things you should know’ cultivates a top-down kind of teaching, and students struggle to use information creatively, being viewed as mere ‘empty containers’ for the pooling of knowledge (Alison, 1993: 30). On the other hand, the postmodern teacher is too passive, fetishizing dialogue and the ability students have to educate themselves. Indeed, ‘the way in which dialogue has become almost synonymous with critical pedagogy has tended to submerge the voices and concerns of groups who feel themselves closed out of dialogue, or compelled to join it only at the cost of restricting their self-expression into acceptable channels of communication’ (Burbules, 2000). This is because postmodern approaches remain willfully oblivious to the dimensions of diversity in a class room. People from private schools are often literally trained to debate: an insistence on student-led learning will ensure that these groups continue to predominate (Thomas & May, 2010). In consequence, I wish to find a middle-way when it comes to my own teaching. I want students to be critical of canons and of my own status as a ‘sage on the stage’, but I want to be more involved than a ‘guide on the side’. In other words, I want to encourage students to be critical of authority, whilst still being able to steer conversations and impart knowledge, so as to maximize the efficiency of student learning. This, I believe, approximates the position that Erica McWilliam has dubbed ‘meddler in the middle’. Teachers are meant to enable students to self-express and to self-actualize, but they still retain a fundamental obligation to defend culture and Truth from a malignant relativism. This is to be achieved by synthesising both didactic and dialogic techniques in the classroom.
Sources:
Bloland, Harland G., ‘Postmodernism and Higher Education’, The Journal of Higher Education, Vol. 66, No. 5 (1995), pp. 521-559
King, Alison, ‘From Sage on the Stage to Guide on the Side’, College Teaching, Vol. 41, No. 1 (1993), pp. 30-35
McWilliam, Erica L., ‘Teaching for creativity: from sage to guide to meddler’, Asia Pacific Journal of Education, Vol. 29, No. 3 (2009), pp. 281-293.
Thomas, Liz & Helen May, ‘Inclusive learning and teaching in higher education’ (2010) <https://www.heacademy.ac.uk/system/files/inclusivelearningandteaching_finalreport.pdf> [accessed 23/05/2017].
Dear Olly,
This is a really refreshing exposition in an age when the media we consume are constantly pushing us towards polarity of opinion on various matters. I like your approach of being able to take on board aspects of different styles and amalgamate them intelligently to allow for greater diversity in teaching situations, particularly with regard to educational privilege. This reminds me of a paragraph in this wiki post from 2016 that cites a paper (Harmer and Stokes 2016), which provides evidence to suggest that in certain contexts, students themselves acknowledge the need for more explicit guidance within the context of student-led learning.
Best regards,
Elise.
***
Dear Olie,
Thank you for your very insightful post. Having led my tutorials with debate activities, I share the same concerns. I felt that I was, at times, too passive and the debate became more of a heated casual discussion than an academic debate. At other times, I was afraid to impose too strictly the approaches and theories I have been taught as a student. I really like that you tried to find a balance by being open but also being available to avoid top-down approach in teaching or passivity as you mentioned. You may be interested in Bourdieu’s debate on national curricula and their application in school as well as the notions of habitus and cultural capital that affect the teacher, students and a nation’s education (Héritiers (1964) La reproduction (1970)). Although, these books are a bit dated, they are still more than relevant. I think that one way to have more productive discussion/debates with students and help create a more equal context during tutorial is to spend time explaining to students what is ‘critical thinking’ and to teach it to them to give students more confidence during debates and discussions and help them to express their own voice in an academic manner. This post from 2016 is very helpful in that matter: https://instilwiki1516.wikispaces.com/Teaching+sensitive+topics#discussion
Having recently marked student assignments, and having agonised over the content and wording of my comments, I was inspired to look further into the topic of assessment feedback to students.
It turns out that feedback to students generally can be problematic. Looking at the figures from HEFCE, it appears to be the least successful category in student satisfaction surveys, as shown the graph below (Fig.1).
Further reading revealed that there seems to be frustration and despondency from participants on both sides of the process (Ferguson 2011; Bailey and Garner 2010; Duncan 2007).
The root of these issues sits with both the givers and the receivers of the feedback. For example, students and lecturers can suffer from the “action completed” feeling that once the assignment is submitted, or the marking done, where the process is mentally concluded, and no further action is required on either part. These, and other points of contention can be found in the article that inspired this post: ‘It'd be useful, but I wouldn't use it’: barriers to university students’ feedback seeking and recipience (Winstone et al. 2016).
There are already several articles addressing some of the issues raised in the Winstone paper, which can provide a useful resource for teachers looking to provide better feedback, and perhaps more importantly stimulate better implementation of that feedback in their students’ work (Bermingham and Hodgson 2006; Nicol 2010; Burke and Pieterick 2010).
These texts provide a perspective whereby rather than feedback on student assignments consisting of final remarks, it should be the start of a dialogue that enables students to process and employ the information in future work.
The marking I recently completed was the second of two assessments for the module, which included sessions for verbal feedback in the form of tutorials. In future instances of similar modules, I will aim to explicitly discuss feedback from the previous assignments, with a view to enabling the student to process and implement the points raised in the second submission. This process is not dissimilar to the established learning cycle as outlined by Kolb (1984).
- Elise Plans.
Sources:
Bailey, Richard, and Mark Garner, ‘Is the Feedback in Higher Education Assessment Worth the Paper It Is Written on? Teachers’ Reflections on Their Practices’, Teaching in Higher Education, 15/2 (2010), 187–98
Bermingham, Vera, and John Hodgson, ‘Feedback on Assessment: Can We Provide a Better Student Experience by Working Smarter than by Working Harder?’, The Law Teacher, 40/2 (2006), 151–72
Duncan, Neil, ‘“Feed-Forward”: Improving Students’ Use of Tutors' Comments’, Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 32/3 (2007), 271–83
Ferguson, Peter, ‘Student Perceptions of Quality Feedback in Teacher Education’, Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 36/1 (2011), 51–62
HEFCE, ‘The National Student Survey’, The Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), 2016 <http://www.hefce.ac.uk/lt/nss/> [accessed 23 May 2017]
Kolb, D. A., Experiential Learning: Experience as the Source of Learning and Development (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1984)
Winstone, Naomi, Robert Nash, James Rowntree, and Michael Parker, ‘“It’d Be Useful, but I Wouldn't Use It”: Barriers to University Students’ Feedback Seeking and Recipience’, Studies in Higher Education, 2016, 1–16
Dear Elise,
I've certainly struggled with knowing how much feedback to give students and where the balance should fall between giving encouragement, further suggestion, and corrections, so it's somewhat reassuring to see that I'm not alone. The research you highlight to show the levels of despondency on both sides is very interesting - it seems that with the introduction of a Teaching Excellence Framework, the increased weighting towards student satisfaction will make feedback an even more significant area of course design. I wonder if there will be a noticeable increase in research on which forms of feedback are most effective at both raising student satisfaction and helping them to improve in the long run in their studies.
Best wishes,
Christopher (Kit)
Discussions over the role of music literacy in the classroom have recently burst into the public sphere from their originally quite specialist surroundings. The recent decision by the Department of Music at Harvard University to drop the requirement that students undertake introductory music theory courses (Leifer, 2017), and comment pieces in mainstream publications on the perceived ‘elitism’ of requiring students to read staff notation (Gill, 2017) have sparked fierce debate on social media, in open letters, and on blog pages (Pace, 2017). This explosion in the debate on musical curricula across all levels of education provides a topical lens through which to discuss some of the challenges I encountered when teaching on a first year undergraduate course in music history. Unfortunately, the design of the undergraduate course is such that analysis is now only taught to first year students as an optional, half-unit course during the second term, after they have already finished their first (again optional) history course. For this reason, the expectation that students make reference to specific musical examples in their final essays and during the course’s written exam can present a considerable challenge to students who have lacked extensive tuition at school level. The structure thereby risks extenuating the same ‘elitist’ condition that a modular degree is intended to combat.
By failing to give students the necessary tools to interpret and analyse musical structures on their own (an understanding of sonata theory might be one such ‘tool’), they are fundamentally limited in the extent to which they can engage with one of the primary areas of their historical research (musical texts). Perhaps most significantly from a teaching perspective, this compartmentalization of knowledge suggests a certain irrelevance to those analytic observations they might find in the secondary literature which they are expected to digest and understand before seminars. There is a risk, then, that this trivialization of analytic understanding would promote an ‘atomistic’ rather than a ‘holistic’ cognitive approach to descriptions of musical texts—factors which have been demonstrated to impact significantly on the ability of students to read and recall information (Svensson, 1977). Crucially, the different approaches to learning that students adopt are not fixed, but are instead influenced by the ways lecturers structure and present knowledge, as well as the assessment procedures adopted (Sheppard and Gilbert, 1991; Thomas and Bain, 1984).
To try and grasp how students were engaging with their set readings, I began many of the tutorials by asking students to discuss the articles in small groups and suggest three or four conclusions they could draw from the texts. From personal experience, the texts which students found most challenging to draw into coherent arguments were those that employed the most analytic detail (a discussion of Beethoven’s sonata forms for instance). To encourage a ‘deep’ learning approach to these topics, then, I attempted to develop an ad hoc approach to music analysis during these seminars, drawing analytic topics into their seminar discussions on the week’s set works. In one class, for instance, we performed a rudimentary analysis of motivic recollection in Wotan’s Act II monologue from Die Walküre. Although this discussion of musical detail is, in itself, still broadly conventional for history courses, it is important that the seminar group activity is presented to students as a form of dialogic analysis in itself, in order to help them overcome the increasing stratification of the course units and develop more holistic approaches to the readings they are presented with.
- Christopher Kimbell
Gill, Charlotte C., (2017) ‘Music education is now only for the white and the wealthy’, The Guardian, 27 March 2017, last accessed 23 May 2017 <https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/mar/27/music-lessons-children-white-wealthy>
Leifer, Valia P., (2017), ‘Music Department to Adopt New Curriculum Beginning Fall 2017’, The Harvard Crimson, 22 March 2017, last accessed 23 May 2017 <http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2017/3/22/music-concentration-changes/>
Pace, Ian, (2017), ‘The insidious class divide in music teaching’, The Conversation, 17 May, 2017, last accessed 23 May 2017 <https://theconversation.com/the-insidious-class-divide-in-music-teaching-77574>
Sheppard, Christine and J. Gilbert, (1991) ‘Course Design, Teaching Method and Student Epistemology’, Higher Education, 22: 3, 229-49.
Svensson, L., (1977), ‘On Qualitative Differences in Learning: III—Study Skill and Learning’, British Journal of Educational Psychology, 47, 233-43.
Thomas, P. R., and J. D. Bain, (1984), ‘Contextual Dependence of Learning Approaches: The Effects of Assessments’, Human Learning, 3, 227-40.
Dear Kit,
I absolutely agree about the importance of skills teaching in first-year music history. Not only are music analysis skills very important - and indeed, what students are partially assessed on - but so are basic historical skills and research skills which no A-level music class equips students to handle well.
Micah Anne Neale
Teaching university students music composition in small group workshops, I found helping them see their work from a different perspective to be necessary in many instances. Students and professionals alike need to be able to judge their work both subjectively, as in create according to their style and taste, and also objectively (as much as that is possible), as in purely on artistic quality and/or technical merit. Through teacher and peer feedback and assessment, students can reach a more objective idea of their progress as they compose and then be able to make necessary and often difficult revisions. However, David Carr asserts that just giving feedback isn’t enough; trust between the recipients and providers of criticism is key for a constructive and effective exchange (Carless, 2013).
I plan on putting an emphasis on establishing trust, when I lead small group workshops in the future. Trust, not just between my students and myself, but also amongst them as well. This is important, as peer feedback is highly beneficial for students’ artistic development. Even just learning to construct feedback improves critical thinking (Nicol, 2011), which is of course highly beneficial in most activities.
Students are usually reluctant to give their peers feedback at first, but my experience has taught me that after I give my opinion on a student’s work, I can motivate their peers to comment as well. If they see my feedback as helpful or meaningful, they are encouraged to join in and help. Many times, when I persist and ask them provoking questions about a peer’s composition, they gradually find more aspects of it to comment constructively on. Knowing their opinion is helpful makes them more open to hearing feedback on their own work from anyone in the room. They become more trusting, having been on the other side of the discussion just prior to that. It is also somewhat of a give and take.
Small group teaching is highly regarded as a tool to improve key skills and provide students with perspective on their own work (Griffiths, 2009). It is particularly good for trust building, as it is an intimate setting in which students might feel safer to receive feedback and give it to others in the course of casual discussion.
Sources
Carless, D. (2013) ‘Sustainable feedback and the development of student self evaluative capacities’ in Reconceptualising feedback in higher education: developing dialogue with students. Oxon: Routledge
Nicol, D. (2011) ‘Developing the students’ ability to construct feedback.’
Griffiths, S. (2009) ‘Teaching and Learning in Small Groups in A Handbook for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education: Enhancing Academic Practice’, in A Handbook for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education: Enhancing Academic Practice. 3rd ed. London: Routledge.
Dear fellow music composition tutor,
It's great to see that building trust among a group of composition students is something that other tutors also find necessary when teaching the subject. I find that without this, students are often reluctant to share their work, as they can see it as too 'self-revelatory' and intimate. Trust, and the supportive atmosphere which it creates, seems to enable even the shyest students to be able to give and receive feedback. I find that discussing the results of the exercise posted above (see 'Practical Exercises for Defining Compositional Style') is a good trust-builder.
Best wishes,
PBWM002
During a week of submission deadlines I was required to deliver a seminar based on a piece of set reading – A Musicology of the Image by Andrew Goodwin. Being aware that approaching deadlines reduced the likelihood that students would have read the text in advance, I contrived an activity to quickly familiarise them with the chapter’s key themes. Goodwin’s fundamental argument is that a visual engagement with recorded sound is inherent in the experience of listening; listening is not solely an aural activity. In making this argument, Goodwin splits sound-image relationships into three distinct groups (symbolic, iconic and indexical). Elsewhere, at the beginning of the chapter, he anecdotally establishes the relationship between sound and image by asking his own university students to listen to pieces of music and write down any visual images that come to mind. I chose to combine these two sections of the text by playing two pieces of music in the seminar and requiring that students make notes of any visual images that the music evoked for them. These notes were then placed in a bag and I drew the responses out one at a time, asking the group where they would be placed according to Goodwin’s categories.
This activity offered a number of benefits beyond the practical issue of quickly familiarising my students with the set reading. Firstly, the students were actively involved in making sense of Goodwin’s work as a group and based upon material with which they had a personal connection. Moreover, the activity segued into a broader discussion of the nature of the responses, such as whether the images came from broad cultural associations or personal experience, with the added interest of a personal investment in the material. The success of this activity has encouraged me to enact sections of set reading, rather than reflect upon them in more abstracted ways in seminars. I have found that the inherently participatory nature of this approach encourages higher order thinking skills such as active analysis and evaluation through organisation and critique.
---- tullfan
Sources:
Andrew Goodwin, Dancing in the Distraction Factory: Music, Television and Popular Culture (London: Routledge, 1993), Chapter 3 ‘A Musicology of the Image’, 49– 71. Moodle.
Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy, n.d. Iowa State University: Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching. [online] Available at: <http://www.celt.iastate.edu/teaching/effective-teaching-practices/revised-blooms-taxonomy> [Accessed 30 May 2017].