Findings and Reflective Commentary
Introduction
This project unfolds the events that happen in a music classroom when four Year 7 students are given the task to learn and perform a song. They are given very little direction other than this, meaning they are able to choose the song they will perform and they are given access to instruments including a piano, ukuleles, acoustic and electric guitars and a drum kit. They are also given a laptop with Internet access in order to help them choose and find appropriate resources. Students are given a limited time of one hour, which is without instruction or guidance from a teacher. We follow, in detail, the students during this informal project when they struggle to learn to ply a song and how they problem-solve this.
This practice ideology stems from an increase in the use of informal learning (e.g., Davis & Blair, 2011; Green, 2008), particularly in the music classroom. Informal learning strategies are based around Green’s five key ‘principles’ of informal music learning:
1) Learning music that pupils choose, like and identify with
2) Learning by listening and copying records
3) Learning with friends
4) Personal, often haphazard learning without structured guidance
5) Integration of listening, performing, improvising and composing
The accessible resources were carefully chosen to be able to replicate a study which fit these principles. Music learning practices are consistently changing, with an increase in accessible material via the Internet. Students were able to browse the Internet or use prior knowledge to discuss and agree upon a song that they liked and identified with. They would have no traditional notation, unless they desired to find it. They would be learning alongside peers that they get along with. Structured guidance was omitted as a teacher was not present and the only restriction here is time. The integration of listening, performing, improvising and composing (or more likely, arranging) is evident here too.
A difference in the study here compared to Green’s studies (2006, 2008) is the use of ICT. Green did not allow students to use computers during the study, whereas the change of digital media including websites like YouTube, educational programs that provide personal laptops for all school students, and the increased possession of smartphones with Internet access among young people. There is a great need for research on how these resources are and can be used in pedagogical settings today.
The focus of this study is not necessarily on how these types of media are used, but rather whether the pedagogy of informal learning impacts on students’ engagement and identity in their musical learning experiences.
This small-scale study was formed of one band of randomly selected students, resulting in four Year 7 girls, aged 11-12
The unit of analysis is tool-mediated activities (Säljö, 2009), where the collaborative sense made by the participants is discernible through analysing sequences of unfolding communication. Typically, a sequence contains a minimum of three utterances: an initiation, a response, and a follow up that could explicitly or implicitly accept the response or clarify what was meant (Wells, 1999). Utterances are not necessarily verbal and can consist of moves enacted through pointing or playing one’s instrument.
The study was conducted according to the ethical guidelines of Sheffield Hallam University. The participants had all given their consent to take part in the study and to being audio recorded, and were given pseudonyms for anonymity. It was important to ensure that there was an atmosphere of trust between the observer and participants and we tried to keep that feeling throughout the project. The lack of a present observer enabled a honest approach to the project.
One hour session was recorded. Verbal interactions have been transcribed, though it is acknowledged that further interactions of a non-verbal nature could have been used and these are not included in this analysis.
Findings
The band consists of 4 students. All of them are competent singers. MH and KA are the strongest singers of the band. KT and MB also play the piano, though as MB also plays ukulele she choses to allow KT to play the piano part whilst performing the ukulele part. Students will be referred to by these pseudonyms throughout.
Student profiles (G4S)
Pupil 1 (KT) – Pupil premium, no special needs, high reading competency, first language English, high attainment, good behaviour (353 positive, 0 negative behaviour), attendance as of 30th May 2017 97.74%
Pupil 2 (KA) – No pupil premium or special needs, significantly high reading competency, first language English, high attainment, good behaviour (317 positive, 0 negative behaviour), attendance as of 30th May 2017 100%
Pupil 3 (MB) – No pupil premium or special needs, significantly high reading competency, first language English, high attainment, good behaviour (444 positive, 0 negative behaviour), attendance as of 30th May 2017 98.39%
Pupil 4 (MH) – No pupil premium or special needs, expected reading competence, first language English, middle attainment, good behaviour (413 positive, 0 negative behaviour), attendance as of 30th May 2017 100%
Finding the song…
Initially, there is excitement amongst the group at the prospect of being able to use the instruments they are provided and being able to use the space to create music. The group try out each instrument for sound before settling into a seat.
Extract 1
“I feel famous!”
The group discuss different suggestions for songs to play. There is no criteria to meet here as they will not be performing for a specific audience, and it is purely whichever song interests them the most on a personal level as well as something they might find accessible. This is prompted by members of the group relatively quickly.
Extract 2
“What song are we gonna’ do then?”
“I’m thinking of doing something new… not too… good, but… easy”
There are some technical issues where students are unable to access the Internet resource as planned via the laptop, and a brief disruption occurs whilst they decide who will leave the room to ask for assistance.
Some disengagement here is caused by facing up to asking for guidance right at the start of the project, showing that students are trying to work independently. When questioning the ability to save work on the laptop, a student suggests a workaround using some sort of notation (though this is never realised):
Extract 3:
“I don’t know if I’ll be able to save it on here”
“We’ve got the books to write it down anyway”
Some of the initial disruption is highlighted by the demo buttons on the piano, but this is followed up by comments to stop this from others in the band and changes to some improvisation and experimentation with the piano, though ultimately with lack of direction and confidence without resources.
The teacher re-enters the room very briefly to enable the Internet access and immediately the conversation diverts to which song should be learned.
Extract 4
“Let’s get a song”
“How about a Shawn Mendes song?”
“No!”
“Stitches”
All discussing
“7 years!”
“Oh yeah”
“I love that song!”
“I can play that on the guitar”
Someone plays the riff on the piano
This is almost a unanimous decision, but one of the students suggests an alternative
“Can we do a Years & Years song?”
“What?”
“I don’t know who they are”
“They are so good, they sang…erm… they sang… King’
Student starts singing
“let’s do something else”
“Ok, fine fine fine… 7 years”
All start singing
After deciding on a song to perform, the students realise that they need to work out how to perform the instrumental parts. It is clear at this stage that they are confident about the vocal melody line and there is lots of singing throughout. The piano and ukulele parts experiment and try to fit in over the singing part. However, despite the improvement in timing, the students fail to realise that the parts are in two different keys.
Extract 5
“What are the chords?”
—
“I need to write the chords for ****”
“Well, **** can already do the riff”
Students restart the song multiple times and each part gets stronger, particularly the vocal line and the ukulele part changes chords more fluently. Throughout this learning, students show they are making progress and are musically aware. They are fully engaged. They correct parts as they go along.
Extract 6
“(Singing) Once I was twenty years old…”
“It goes up there”
(Sings again)
“Something like that”
(Laughter)
The laughter whilst learning the part shows comfort with peers, that they are able to make mistakes and model improvements, showing clear enjoyment in what they are doing.
There is a shift in the discussion to focus more on the chords, which the group are still unsure about. The singing grows stronger still, with the volume increasing, triggering a musical thought about the dynamics in the performance:
Extract 7
“It goes quiet there”
Students fluently perform the ending part in time with the ukulele chords and give a quiet round of applause at the achievement. This prompts students to think about improvements they will immediately make. They also show awareness of how to care for each other.
Extract 8
“I just want to say, make sure in the first bit… don’t go too hard and don’t push your voice”
Some misunderstandings occur without teacher-intervention, and students discuss how to fix the piano part as although it is fluent, they recognise that it doesn’t fit yet. They discuss which chords to use:
Extract 9
“Can’t you just use the ukulele chords?”
“No because they’re diff-”
“They’re not the same”
At this point, teacher intervention would have steered them away from this belief and students would perhaps have had a different outcome. Instead, students independently consult the Internet for guidance. There is lots of discussion around solving the issue of piano chords, with some answers being too technically-difficult.
Extract 10
“Okay… 7 Years. I’m on it. Alright… oh God!”
“Wow”
Laughter
“Good luck ****…”
“G minor, B flat…”
“Good luck ****!”
“Can you not change it?”
“Does it show you how to play that chord if you click on the chord?”
Students are set back by this difficulty which leads to some disengagement after around 15 minutes.
Extract 11
“Wow the electric guitar makes such a nice sound!”
“You can try and plug it in if you want?”
“GFFDFCB…” (Students playing piano riff and working out notes)
“I’ve always wanted to learn the…” (Playing guitar)
“Ok, we’ve got, like… erm… not long, so let’s get this…”
“Ok”
“Ok”
“Put the electric guitar down woman!”
Students continue to sing whilst working out the song musically. The group are well organised and plan the structure of the song, listening to what each individual part is doing. They make adjustments as they are working. They are also well aware of the time restrictions in place and give regular reminders of how long is remaining.
Extract 12
“We’ll just try the first three lines”
“Just how the song goes really”
“So, remember, do the riff…”
“You need to start”
“Yeah, got it?”
Plays the piano riff to start.
“Don’t we, like, usually play that bit twice?”
However, the performance ends abruptly when the singing starts, as the piano and ukulele both enter, but playing in different keys. Their lack of musical understanding does not allow them to pick up the two different keys in which they are playing and make adjustments, which teacher intervention would solve. Students persist and experiment with changes to solve the issue of it not sounding ‘quite right’:
Extract 13
“I want you to just carry on playing the riff, yeah, even when I go into the ‘big, big world’ bit, yeah? I want to just see what it sounds like”
“I don’t think that would go”
“Just try it, we’re just gonna try it”
When this suggestion doesn’t work, one group member tells the others about a YouTube video that could help, so they decide to find a tutorial video. Some disengagement is evident here when some appropriate comments are made but there is some distraction caused by the microphones around the room. At this stage, around 22 minutes into the project, student work less as a group and allow themselves to be distracted whilst the piano part is being worked out. Again, with intervention, guidance could be given here to steer students quickly back on track.
Students’ progress slows, although they continue to rehearse the song in the same way, with some questioning about what sounds correct and how appropriate some of the song lyrics are. There are regular prompts of the time by one member of the group.
38 minutes into the project, students have arranged themselves into a new seating position and begin to run through the song. The structure of this is well-organised, with each player knowing when to come in. There is a clearer focus now, as when the piano demo button is pressed, the group decide to ignore it and carry on their performance. It is the longest uninterrupted performance yet, finishing at 40 minutes. With confidence rising, some better decisions are made. They decide to stretch themselves by performing extra chords on the ukulele. They also decide to try these chords on the earlier problematic section of the song. The piano also tries to fit in alongside the singing to ensure it is in the same key. Some impromptu rhythms are also added:
Extract 14
(Tapping along with performance as it comes to an end)
“That’d be such a good idea to have you tapping!”
The group add this into their performance as a result of their experimentations. There is a problem with the band layout at this point and conversations based around the seating. However, engagement is now improved. When one group member presses the piano demo, this is met with negative comments and the group refocuses. There are also comments about wishing to have a musical instrument as gifts, showing that their enjoyment in music could potentially stay with them beyond the classroom.
Extract 15
“We need to, like, cover that button or something”
Extract 16
“I want to get one of these” (playing ukulele)
“I need to find… (inaudible)”
“Christmas list!”
The group continue to practise, but with recognition that parts of the song are wrong. When starting a run through with all instruments, there are comments that it doesn’t sound right. The students do not overcome these issues, and although each student knows their own part and the timing of the performance is well-organised, they lack the musical knowledge to fit together the ukulele and piano parts which, in turn, makes it difficult for the singers to pitch. Group suggestions, such as changing the dynamics of the piano part, continue but they do not manage to complete a successful performance in the time given.
Reflective Commentary
This study is very much constituted of empirical evidence. The teaching practice is an extremely informal one, taking the 5 key principles from Green’s studies to their letter. Students are given the freedom to play any music they like and are not provided with notation or any guidance, only a room and instruments to use, with access to the Internet.
Without being given an instruction to do so, the pupils use their own knowledge and preferences to (a) choose a song one, (b) use the Internet to find lyrics and chords (c) perform the song over and perform again until they were satisfied.
Many of these steps make this process similar to what has been reported in previous studies from music classrooms (e.g., Green, 2008). In this highly aural activity, there is no form of musical notation to follow.
It could be argued that an intervention by the teacher here, perhaps introducing some kind of accessible notation and thus making it a more formal scenario, could have improved the outcomes of the students during this project. However, by Green’s own admittance, her pedagogy based on the five principles begins by ‘dropping pupils into the deep end’ (25). In this critical first stage pupils work in self- selected friendship groups with little or no support from teachers, choose the popular music recordings that they like, and set about to imitate the same music using their own vocal resources along with a range of ‘popular instruments’ (guitars, keyboards and drum kit) along with more conventional classroom instruments. In most cases the pupils have no prior experience of playing the available instruments. Predictably enough, a lack of supervision lends itself to initial chaos amongst most of the groups observed—for one thing, the pupils pay little attention to the relative difficulty of the pieces from which they are free to choose, at least at first. However, the study shows that after a number of similar sessions pupils become more focussed on the task, and that their teachers are led to make positive reappraisals in respect of individual contributions, group cooperation and musical outcomes. This study was limited by time, but given further sessions it is likely that the same outcome would occur.
However, the question raised in this study is/the area of inquiry is ‘In what ways does informal learning influence student identity and engagement in music?’. Delving into student progress as a result of improved engagement is a desirable prospect in any educational context, but beyond the stretch of this small-scale project without further research. Identity is an interesting prospect, though.
In Thomas Ziehe’s book from 1982, translated into Swedish in 1986, titled New Youth: on Uncommon Learning Processes, Ziehe defines two types of learning: (i) common and (ii) uncommon learning processes. Exemplifying the first category he mentions conscious word exercises and music scale training when they take place in school and at home. Uncommon learning is defined as learning that takes place without the person being aware of it. Notable is that the main distinction between these two categories is not where, but how the learning occurs.
All students involved in the project were also involved in decision making, and clearly had important roles within the group, despite a lack of formal scaffolding by the teacher. Uncommon learning, as Ziehe might refer to, took place in the suggestions and trials and errors made throughout in order to improve the performance.
Hargreaves, in developing identities in music education, concluded that:
What can this brief summary of the preliminary results of these two projects tell us about the problems of music education in the 21st century, and can our analysis in terms of identities suggest any ways forward? The QCA project clearly shows that involvement with music is very important to most children and teenagers—performing and compos- ing, as well as listening. We have suggested that their engagement, and level of motivation, depends on the level of ownership of their music making: on their autonomy within it, and the extent to which they can exert control.
The participants in this study recovered to a high level of engagement, despite obstacles such as technical difficulties as a result of the level of ownership which they exerted on the project. A post-project questionnaire revealed students thoughts about their music education. The selected cohort were strong musicians within their year group, who all by chance had an interest in the project, and the results of a year of trialling informal learning strategies such as those offering by Musical Futures, and concluding with this informal learning project have yielded some pleasant results. 100% of students questioned stated they strongly agreed that they enjoy learning music in school, that they are now able to play at least one musical instrument and have good musical skills. The findings also revealed that student engagement and social development has improved, with 100% of students also in strong agreement that music has helped them to learn how to work in a group and that they want to do well in music lessons. 100% of students also stated that they preferred working in groups of 3 or more participants and all agreed that music lessons have inspired them to continue with music outside of the educational context. All strongly agreed that they have achieved a lot in music lessons and 75% strongly agreed that they wanted to continue their studies further at GCSE, despite only being in their first year of secondary music lessons. The only disagreement across all students was with the comment ‘I need more help in music lessons’, showing that students are comfortable in problem-solving and working independently. It would be interesting to note the reasons behind this, and whether students would choose this with the reasoning that a teacher might limit their choice of music to perform. However, all students said they strongly agreed or agreed that their teacher valued the music they were interested in. Testing Green’s theory, that after a number of similar sessions students become more focussed, would require further research and intervention.
Since Green’s studies were published, perhaps musical learning practices have changed significantly. Students are well equipped with digital technology which allows them to access a significantly wider variety of resources with instant ease. Even if the pupils have access to the Internet when learning to play the song, they still clearly need help from the teacher. However, even with increasing possibilities to use Internet sources to learn to play new songs (by using smartphones, for example) conceptual musical knowledge will still be important. it contains relatively little and partially erroneous information
Student profiles (G4S)
Pupil 1 (KT) – Pupil premium, no special needs, high reading competency, first language English, high attainment, good behaviour (353 positive, 0 negative behaviour), attendance as of 30th May 2017 97.74% ATL: O
Pupil 2 (KA) – No pupil premium or special needs, significantly high reading competency, first language English, high attainment, good behaviour (317 positive, 0 negative behaviour), attendance as of 30th May 2017 100% ATL: O
Pupil 3 (MB) – No pupil premium or special needs, significantly high reading competency, first language English, high attainment, good behaviour (444 positive, 0 negative behaviour), attendance as of 30th May 2017 98.39% ATL: O
Pupil 4 (MH) – No pupil premium or special needs, expected reading competence, first language English, middle attainment, good behaviour (413 positive, 0 negative behaviour), attendance as of 30th May 2017 100% ATL: O
ATL Description: Each subject teacher will grade the student's Attitude to Learning during each term. This is a description of a student's approach to their learning. When awarding the grade, teachers will consider a number of factors including the student's contributions made in lessons, the quality and reliability of homework and their willingness to seek help and advice when required. We expect high standards and anticipate most students would strive to be an "Active Learner" in most subjects.
Outstanding Learner
You believe in yourself and take extra responsibility for your learning in order to make progress and achieve