Omwana takulila jnu emoi
– Bunyoro proverb
Though you likely won’t be fluent in Nyoro, language of the Bunyoro people of Africa, you’d be familiar with the proverb above when translated… ‘it takes a village to raise a child’. This proverb proposes that an entire community of people – each offering something unique in terms of knowledge, skills, understanding, and perhaps wisdom – possess the ability to cultivate and nurture the young as they grow into adulthood. It was the experiences of the past term with the Year 12 Music Extension students that reminded me of this proverb.
In Music Extension, students work towards locating ‘best practice’ – the development of techniques and strategies specific to them that support an efficient and effective outcome.[i] They work towards this by moving through multiple, individualised cycles of action and reflection within a model of ‘cognitive apprenticeship’, whereby ‘more knowledgeable others’ show them ‘accepted’ or ‘learned’ ways through coaching, modelling and the careful scaffolding of experience. Through guided and ongoing reflection upon these experiences, students work metacognitively to articulate, further explore, refine, and individualise their own approaches and practices. This is quite the demand on the student, and quite the demand on one teacher alone!
So, we come to our ‘village’ – a wealth of tutors, guest artists, and external influences, or, what I like to call, our ‘significant others’ (I suspect I’ve assumed this from Vygotsky’s ‘more knowledgeable other’ through my examination of constructivist theories in my own doctoral journey…). We are fortunate to have many excellent tutors here in our ‘village’, with their own varied experiences with and in music, each a potentially valuable source. We are also fortunate, given the ‘reach’ technology provides, in that our village is also connected digitally and virtually to the world – the world of musicians, artists and teachers offer insight to and influence their journey in ways unimaginable in my schooling years. These potentially ‘significant’ people join with me in endeavouring to ensure the journey though Music Extension is rich, targeted to need, meaningful and connected to the musical world of the student. Collectively, it is our job to support and assist each student to locate ‘best practice’, which is all the better supported by a range of influences and many conversations that our environment here affords.
The notion of a ‘village’ become all the more important given the structure of the course. Students come from across several different ‘lines’ (timetable groupings of subjects) to study Music Extension, and they study vastly different specialisations – some compose, some perform, and all work within and between different genres, styles and contexts of music. Though there are common threads and shared ‘talking points’ that exist, largely the journey is an independent one. Students venture off into their own specialisation, yet remain guided by the members of the village – significant others who have ‘been there before’, lived an experience, and therefore have valuable insight to offer.
There is a great deal of independence demanded of the students in Music Extension. There are as many individualised journeys as there are students in the class, and a multitude of possibilities and potentialities concerning conversations, conversation partners and influences we might gain from the village. Working in this way takes a great deal of maturity and discipline; importantly, the students who study the course have skills and capabilities sufficient to do this, having refined them over many years. They have a fundamental body of discipline knowledge, understanding and skill that they can draw from independently to solve problems and create ways anew – and, if in doubt, they can return to members of their village to inform and influence a pathway forward.
Indeed, it takes a village to raise a child, and the many members of this community, with their many and varied contributions, are potentially rich in value. As a single (hopefully) ‘significant other’ of many in this context, I must also acknowledge that these interactions do often benefit both parties – we learn together in our village, and the trials and successes of the ‘child’ show us new things, new ways of thinking, responding, and structing learning experiences.
[i] Queensland Curriculum and Assessment Authority (2019). Music Extension (Performance) General Senior Syllabus. Retrieved 5 April, 2022, from: https://www.qcaa.qld.edu.au/senior/senior-subjects/the-arts/music-extension-performance.
Dr Cade Bonar 