New DP Curriculum

Introduction and timeline

After its timeline was revised by the IB, the new DP music course is now scheduled for first teaching in September 2020, with first assessment in the May 2022 session.

The new subject website, which will contain the guide, teacher support materials and sample student work to support the teaching and learning will be published on the Programme resource centre (PRC), with the subject guide appearing in February 2020 and further resources from June 2020.

Overview

The curriculum development team have been working to bring to fruition a new course aligned with the new DP arts aims that clearly articulates the balance between the theoretical and practical disciplines of music.

The aims of the arts subjects (from 2014 onwards) are to enable students to:

1. Explore the diversity of the arts across time, cultures and contexts.
2. Develop as imaginative and skilled creators and collaborators.
3. Express ideas creatively and with competence.
4. Critically reflect on the process of creating and experiencing the arts.
5. Develop as informed, perceptive and analytical practitioners.
6. Enjoy lifelong engagement with the arts.
7. Explore a range of musical contexts and make links to, and between, different musical practices, conventions and forms of expression (inquiry).
8. Acquire, develop and experiment with musical competencies through a range of musical practices, conventions and forms of expression, both individually and in collaboration with others (action).
9. Evaluate and develop critical perspectives on their own music and the work of others (reflection).

Rationale for the developments

The 21st-century music learner must prepare for a world in which global musical cultures and industries are rapidly changing.

The new DP music course has been designed to address these transformations by clarifying and strengthening its approach to student creativity through practical, informed and purposeful explorations of diverse musical forms, practices and contexts. The development team believes that DP music students must be able to strategize, plan, execute and justify their creative choices to secure an advantaged position in a contemporary world. Through its integrated approach, the course will equip students with strongly developed creative thinking skills, holistic mindsets and flexible design- and project-based skills, all of which are highly sought after by universities and employers.

The new course takes a bold new look at preparing musicians for the future and intends to be:

• inclusive of students with wide-ranging personal and cultural music backgrounds
• holistic in its development of the musical mind, stretching the learning beyond conventions and cultures, and challenging students to expand their musical comfort zone and to think creatively
• integrated in its design, to demonstrate to students that all musical learning is connected and valuable to their practical work
• robust in its incorporation of practical music-making into all learning tasks, including the mastery of theoretical understanding and the exploration of contextual information
• relevant to the learner and to learning in the 21st century, taking the students’ personal musical identity as a starting point, and offering pathways that are meaningful for their musical future, reflecting the musical life and possibilities that our learners may encounter
• more fully aligned to IB’s philosophy of developing internationally-minded, holistic learners who, through personal and collaborative inquiry and action, make meaningful connections between classroom experiences and personal contexts.

Through this course, teachers and students will be empowered to recognize how technical training and creative competencies combine to inform practical work and contribute to the formation of well-rounded modern musicians. The new course achieves this by scaffolded and guided approaches to:

• deep listening skills
• performance proficiency
• compositional craft
• the ability to discuss music critically
• the ability to justify creative choices, and
• the capacity for entrepreneurship in the musical world

Curriculum details

The new DP music curriculum is no longer built around modules linked to assessment components, in which students present their achievements. Rather, the curriculum is now holistic and integrated.

Throughout the course, students embody three roles: the researcher, the creator and the performer. In these roles, they inquire, create, perform and reflect on the course’s three musical processes:

• Exploring music in context
• Experimenting with music
• Presenting music

In place of prescribed music, students and teachers in the new course have the agency to personalize unique approaches to musical forms, genres and pieces. A framework of Areas of Inquiry and Contexts (as detailed below) has been devised to ensure that musical engagement during the course has sufficient diversity and breadth.

The exploration of diverse musical material is focused through the lenses of four Areas of Inquiry (AoIs):

1. Music for sociocultural and political expression

• Examples may include protest songs, liturgical music, national anthems

2. Music for listening and performance

• Examples may include chamber music of the Western art tradition, cool jazz, experimental music

3. Music for dramatic impact, movement and entertainment

• Examples may include music for film, ballet or musical theatre

4. Music technology in the electronic and digital age

• Examples may include electronic dance music, technology in popular music production

Engagement with these AoIs takes place across three contexts:

• Personal context – music that has significance to the student, and that they are most familiar with. Students consider their immediate cultural context and interests that contribute to their emerging musical identity.
• Local context – music that has local significance, but that may be unfamiliar to the student. This can be music from within the student’s local, regional or cultural communities, and may include music that the student is not currently engaged with.
• Global context – unfamiliar music from a variety of places, societies and cultures. This will include music that the student has not yet connected or engaged with. The music may be from a distant global region or even music in closer geographical proximity but more culturally distant that has not been previously accessible to the student.

Assessment details

The development team have also re-imagined the assessment tasks for the new course to emphasize explicit links between the course curriculum, desired student outcomes and the final summative tasks themselves. Each assessment submission links directly to one of the course’s three musical processes and requires candidates to evidence engagement with that process through the three musical roles.