Facilitating Creative and Collaborative Music Making

1. Facilitating Creative and Collaborative Music Making CHUA Siew Ling, CHAN Yen See, HO Hui Ping & SURIATI Suradi Teachers’ Conference 2014 | 4 June 14

2. Let’s Start with an Activity! In pairs, create a short 2-line song / rap / rhythm (3 mins)

3. Introduction • Value of Music Education • Imagination, perspectives, alternate modes of thinking • Positive impact on academic, social and emotional developments • Strengthen sense of identity How can music pedagogies (creative and collaborative music making) better nurture 21CC?

4. Contextualising Pedagogies withteacher-leaders Student –centric Principles STAR Champions • 21stCentury Competencies • PAM Research • Teacher-researchers for Arts Pedagogical Research Fund Kodaly / Orff / Dalroze Communities of Practice • World Music Pedagogies • STAR Associates developing and trialling: • Balinese teaching packages after learning journey to Bali (OPAL) • teaching of local music traditions • Informal and Non-formal Approaches • STAR Associates piloting pedagogies Experience – Concept – Application 7 Principles of Student-CentredArts Learning

5. 21st Century Competencies & Syllabus Learning Outcomes • Principles of Student-centred Arts Learning • Knowing students (psychology/development in art/music) • Making learning relevant through contextualising learning of arts • Providing choices and empowering students to make decisions • (in the arts processes, learning goals and criteria of success) • Facilitating reflection-in-action, reflection-on-action and critical thinking • Facilitating creativity in art and music making • Creating a ‘flow’ (fluency, pacing, aesthetic flow) • Creating a conducive arts learning environment (e.g., organisation for instruction, collaborative learning)

6. Why Creative Music-Making? Why Creative Music-making? • “The act of creating is itself of value”(Abeles, Hoffer and Klotman, 1984) • To encourage students to be fluid, flexible, convergent divergent and lateral thinkers, and risk-takers • To creatively express “ new musical ideas through composing, to find broad and specific musical ideas when listening, to interpret music when performing” (Blair, 2009)

7. Why Creative Music-Making? Why Creative Music-making? • Build upon each other’s ideas, and generate more ideas that will fit into each other’s • Push the limits of students’ knowledge and ability • Generate new ways of viewing situations that are outside the parameters of standard conventions (Marzano et al., 1992)

8. LET’S COLLABORATE Let’s Collaborate! • Now in pairs, turn to another pair and perform your composition • Each pair will give feedback and add a small idea to the song/rap/rhythm that was presented (2 mins each pair) • Comment on your experiences

9. Why Collaborative Music-Making? Why Collaborative Music-making? • Pedagogical approaches situated in social environment are supported by social perspectives of learning (Rallis, 1995; Ravenscroft, 2011; Wenger, 2009) • According to S. Vygotsky’s (1978) social constructivistview of learning, learning takes place in a social environment with people’s interactions • Students are “stakeholders in the learning process, regardless of the particular field, […] and learn in ways that are far more enduring in their application to life situations” (Vega & Tayler, 2005)

10. Why Collaborative Music-Making? • A form of learning that denotes “socially distributed knowledge or distributed cognition” (Mehan, 1984) • It shapes the classroom’s learning environment • The creative work now belongs to everyone and “students are very much turned on when they are involved in making the decision that affects everyone” (Johnson, 2000) Creative and collaborative music making approaches can be found in established and well-researched music pedagogies (e.g., Orff, Informal, Non-formal)

11. Creative + Collaborative Music-Making? Why Collaborative Music-Making? • Natural and authentic platform to facilitate critical thinking and reflection allow students to: • hear different views and refine their thinking • experience higher-order thinking and self-consciousness about one’s thought processes (Swartz & Perkins, 1990) • engage in reflection-in-action(Schön,1983; 1987) • construct their own understanding, improve on their creative approach, and achieve insightful learning Experience of Doing + Reflection = New knowledge, meaning and understanding

12. What does Creative and Collaborative Music Making Look like, and What can it Achieve? What does creative and collaborative music making look like, and what can it achieve?

13. Examples of Practice Creative, Collaborative composition (Primary level) Click to play video

14. Examples of Practice Creative, Collaborative composition (Secondary level) Click to play video

15. What does Research say about Creative and Collaborative Music Making?

16. Impact of Pedagogies on Students’ Enjoyment of Music Lessons • 98.1% (314 out of 320 students responses) were positive. • Students enjoyed especially: • collaborative learning with friends (23.8%) • instrumental playing (20.6%) • creating (14.7%) • performing (10.3%) • (congruent with teachers’ observations) “Music lessons were the reason I came to school!” • Teachers’ Observations: • Increased student motivation • Increased student confidence • Fostered appreciation, shown by parents through their feedback

17. Findings from Research on Informal Learning & Non-formal Music Teaching • Peer learning is a predicting factor for their enjoyment of music lessons • There are statistical differences in • students’ perception of their ability to create their own music • students knowing how to contribute to the group • students wanting to do well in music lessons

18. Findings from PAM Research FINDINGS FROM PAM RESEARCH • Music lessons nurture 21CC: • Strong student-centric orientation • Greater student empowerment in making musical decisions (i.e., opportunities for students to think critically and creatively) • Greater depth of engagement in artistic experiences (creative and collaborative music making)

19. THANK YOU!