Aural training – or ‘aural skills’ – formed a significant part of my own formal music education throughout secondary school. Aural skills exercises typically demanded that we identify short rhythmic, melodic and two-part melodic/harmonic phrases, and then realise them through staff notation. We would have limited hearings and no external points of reference (other than…
Category: Pedagogy
Thoughts to guide my practice in 2014…
Before the first week of the 2014 academic year, I spent some time reflecting on some thoughts and processes that I would endeavour to have underpin my classroom action and interaction. They are drawn from readings, discussions; my reflections on the words of others… and I seek to keep them central to my practice over…
The student voice prompting pedagogical change in music education
In Meditation XVII from Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, John Donne (1624) wrote: “No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main” (¶ 1). This passage brings forth a theme relevant to school music education today. Too often, music teachers see themselves and their…
Dr Cade Bonar 