Year 11 Music teachers in Queensland are now a few weeks into the new Music 2019 General Senior Syllabus. As those involved know, there is a significant shift in assessment practice in this syllabus, along with mandated subject matter, which together, will likely influence our considerations surrounding pedagogical approach. Though the syllabus brings with it change, as I’ve argued before, much of it is to do with ‘labels’ – how we talk about music and engage with the processes of ‘musicking’ (the knowledge in music) and making sense of it analytically. Perhaps we can use the notion of ‘change-as-refresher-course’ – forcing us to review or update the processes, languages and techniques that we have used previously. Though the nature of our subject won’t (and hasn’t) changed due to a new syllabus – music will always be music – we do need to reframe our language and consider how it will impact the ways in which we engage with our students in their (and our own) learning.

In my experience, most students generally ‘get’ composition and performance – two activities that often draw them to the subject. The processes (and skills) inherent in these activities – though near-mystical, oft-intangible, ‘caught’ rather than ‘taught’… – are somehow ‘understood’ without a great deal of intervention on our behalf. I am, of course, obviously over-simplifying incredibly complex and nuanced set of processes here, ones that we do in fact illuminate for students throughout own interventions, though a familiarity with general process still remains – we communicate some form of meaning through crafting sound and silence – and the new syllabus sees little change in these areas. It is a ‘natural space’ in working in music, it attends to us personally, and we (generally) want to share what we have to say musically.

If composition and performance are generally ‘natural spaces’ for students to work within musically, then music ‘analysis’ often exists in a different realm! For many students, it can feel removed from the realities of music making, an ‘inconvenient addition’ to the curriculum designed to ensure that there is some level of tangibility! We know it better as an ‘enabler’ – analysis influences and nourishes our understandings of what has been experienced; it informs our musical intuition, providing us with a way of ‘talking about’ the ‘mystical’, ‘intangible’ and ‘caught’ features of musical experience. Our work in this space is vitally important – we need ‘subject-matter literate’ students aware of the processes of musical application. In other words, sound needs to be attached to symbolic form; knowledge of language (use) is power – the more words we have to describe experience, the richer the story.

I’ve written on the topic of working in Musicology before, and when I review these through the lens of the new syllabus, even in this space, not a great deal has changed. In Disentangling the entangled: Thinking about and through Musicology in particular, I identified the processes of musicology intertwined and entangled. For me, this is particularly within the stages (or process) of evaluation. In both syllabuses – the new and outgoing – evaluation is positioned as a higher-order process – a ‘knowledge-utilisation’ process in the language of Marzano and Kendal[i]. Before I get ahead of myself, the range of cognitive processes underpinning the new syllabus are described in four levels: retrieval, comprehension, analytical processes and knowledge utilisation, and each process does essentially build on previous processes. That said, there is still a great deal of interplay, revisiting and spiralling through these processes at increasing levels of complexity/with increasing understandings.

If we look at the cognitive processes of Musicology in the new syllabus, we see explain, analyse, apply (literacy skills), evaluate and justify (I will leave ‘apply’ to the side for the moment). ‘Explain’ is at the retrieval/comprehension level, ‘analyse’ at the analytical process level, with ‘evaluate’ and ‘justify’ at the knowledge utilisation level. These processes are ‘shown’ in the following ways:

• explain the use of music elements and concepts – when students explain, they present descriptions and reveal relevant facts of music elements and concepts in repertoire or music sources.
• analyse music – when students analyse, they examine and consider the constituent parts and the relationship between music elements, concepts and stylistic characteristics.
• evaluate music to justify the use of music elements and concepts – when students evaluate, they make judgments about the ideas and concepts evident in music in relation to purpose and context, examining and determining the value or significance of music from various perspectives. When students justify, they give valid reasons or evidence to support a viewpoint, response or conclusion.

Interesting comparisons can be made with the outgoing syllabus, and though I do not intend to take them up here, both sets of processes possess a hierarchical yet entangled ‘flow’. It is this very fact that I have wrestled with for quite some time now (see here and here), and the same thread of thinking sits within the new cognitive processes for Musicology. Though these cognitive processes are roughly built upon each other, evaluation – just as it was in the previous syllabus – ‘straddles’ the others, acting almost like a ‘bookend’ of the entire ‘suite’ of processes. In the context of the new cognitive processes, we need an evaluative frame to guide what it is we decide to explain (this is where I liked ‘perceive and interpret’ of the outgoing syllabus – we needed to perceive what was important to take up into analysis). Without this, we could explain things that ultimately do not advance our viewpoint/argument – we need some parameters. Essentially, we start at the ‘analytical processes’ level with analysis and evaluation – determining a reason for analysis, and an initial proposal of purpose and criteria for evaluation.

So, with this in mind (again), I have been experimenting with some of the interrelationships between the cognitive processes in Musicology. Though the ‘upper ends’ of the cognitions will not be explored until Unit 2: Identities, it is necessary for me to feel comfortable enough with them to guide my own students. I have framed an overall process by three main areas of task response – pre-task considerations, response construction, task/response resolution. The resulting ‘flow chart’ (see below) aims to offer a way of negotiating the processes and also shows their interrelationship – I must acknowledge the work of the QCAA’s Cognitive Toolkit, it is a great resource and one that I have taken definitions from in the construction of this chart. Remember, we start in the realm of ‘analytical processes’ to frame our explanations… Now, in saying earlier the cognitive processes aren’t strictly linear – they are entangled, intertwined and ‘messy’ – I have essentially created a linear process! We might stray from the ‘route’, but at least there is an attempt to show direction and focus…

You can download this chart here (scroll to Musicology section) [updated 20.2.19]

As always, I welcome any comments for improvement – I’d love to hear from you. And, yes, I will be using this with my students, but it will be carefully scaffolded and offered in smaller ‘chunks’ to start…

[i] See 2019 General Music Syllabus – Queensland Curriculum and Assessment Authority,

p. 5.Picture credit: https://hipwallpaper.com/interchange-wallpapers/