For some time now I have been wrestling with some considerations that I feel need to underpin our educative interactions as music teachers. My thoughts have been continually prompted by classroom action and reflection, and I will now think these considerations ‘out loud’ and position them as pedagogical (educative) conditions that I feel need to have active in my classroom. These conditions are:

• Praxis
• Agency
• Authenticity
• Fluency
• Social construct

These conditions are not positioned as necessarily hierarchical, though there are strong relationships between them and some influence and enable others.

Perhaps the most important condition is praxis[1] – the ‘doing’ of music – which relates to pedagogies that promote action in music. Such pedagogies promote the investigation of music through practical experience with it.

Another condition is agency, which encourages us to employ pedagogies that foster students’ freedom to explore music, and in doing so, generate a sense of ownership over their learning and the music itself.

The conditions of praxis and agency need to meet with the condition of authenticity of experience. Pedagogies that promote authentic interactions with music are important in terms of connectivity to lived musical experiences. My use of the term authenticity is bound in authentic processes – less so the context within which music is made/found, after all we’re in a school!

A further condition is the importance of promoting musical fluency.[2] Pedagogies that support fluency view music as both an aural and symbolic form, and our work in strengthening the interactions between intuitive and analytical musical knowledge afford deeper levels of understanding and communicative ability.

Lastly, the condition of social construct refers to the manner in which our pedagogies are situated and value the ways in which musical knowledge and understanding is constructed and transmitted between people through social structures.

These conditions frame my pedagogy, and influence my curriculum and assessment structures that pedagogy serves. Each of the conditions are to be viewed on an independent but related continuum, each responsive to the complexities and changing demands of any one classroom. There is considerable interplay between the conditions, and they seldom work in isolation; they each shift along a continuum of strength of application and presence.

Perhaps a new checklist for an effective educational transaction? Quite a tall order when working within defined and sometimes limiting contexts. I’ll see how I go!

I will continue to add to these thoughts as I encounter their applicability in practice.

[1] I am sure you recognize the influence of David Elliott here – see Elliott, D. J. (1995). Music matters: A new philosophy of music education. New York: Oxford University Press.

[2] I am drawn to the work of Keith Swanwick, and particularly enjoy his wrestling with intuitive and analytical ‘knowings’ – see Swanwick, K. (1994). Musical knowledge: Intuition, analysis and music education. London: Routledge and Swanwick, K. (1999b). Teaching music musically. London: Routledge.