In my last post I identified a ‘refined’ approach to thinking about analysing and evaluating music after a Year 12 lesson where things weren’t really working as planned. In the following lesson I implemented the new plan, and things seemingly went well. At the end of the lesson, I asked the students if they felt…
Category: Music education
Musicology – starting where the music speaks to us…
I think about teaching the Musicology objective[i]a lot… and just when I think I’ve worked out the best way forward, I hit a stumbling block. You may have seen some evidence of this thinking (and the stumbling!) through previous posts (here, and here). I do not see them as failed attempts, but more so the…
Working musically between making and responding
The Music 2019 General Senior Syllabus[i] will be implemented in the new year in Queensland, Australia, though many teachers have long begun preparation for the transition into this new document (and indeed system). There are some big systemic changes to the organisation of curriculum and assessment in every Year 11 and 12 subject, though we…
Growing greener and good enough…
I am heading into my thirteenth year as a music teacher… though I feel ‘greener’ than ever. I don’t see this as a bad thing — I am just more aware of my values and motivations. I know that I am, to borrow Swanwick’s phrase, a ‘good enough music teacher’ – “not some idealised perfection…
“If you cannot teach me to fly…”
“If you cannot teach me to fly, teach me to sing.” ― J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan The 2017 school year is over… and we certainly ‘flew’ through it! As I’ve shared before, one of my last tasks to complete is a summary and reflection on the year in classroom music for the College magazine. I…
A ‘map’ for music education philosophy and practice
I am certainly not, in this forum, going to launch a proposition of a new philosophy of music education (I need more experience and time for that!) – though it is hard to escape our history in this area – but I will offer a ‘map’. Over the years, there has been some very robust…
Working with tentative composers… limiting the options.
In composing music, there are no rules. Though there are strong musical expectations in both the composer and audience, nothing, really, is off limits! Style will impose expectations and guide what we think of the ‘rightness’ or ‘wrongness’ of the notes we choose. As Thelonious Monk once said, “there are no wrong notes; some are…
Stepping back and seeing more…
As teachers, stepping back from the ‘action’ can feel counterintuitive. We invest ourselves in the detail and feel this is our place. However, in working in this way we can forgo our understanding of the ’bigger picture’ – as the well-known idiom goes, we ‘can’t see the woods for the trees’. When we work with…
“Methodology? I just try to teach music musically.”
Someone recently asked me what methodology I used to teach music. I’m pretty sure they awaited a definitive response to support and ‘validate’ their own methodological worldview… “The best bits of each”, I replied. There are a variety of methodologies out there, and I’ve met some hardcore advocates who maintain that their way is the…
Learning an instrument is hard… but that’s why it’s so good!
Learning an instrument is hard work. When we learn an instrument, we can also learn a lot about our character. My school has adopted the VIA Character Strengths[1] from the positive education movement as a frame for educative interactions on academic, co-curricular, social and pastoral levels. Learning an instrument speaks to and allows us to…
Dr Cade Bonar 