Abstract
Research regarding music teaching in primary school reveals generalist teachers’ and student teachers’ low musical abilities and low confidence in teaching Music, and even more, in including creative activities in music teaching. This article reports on a study which sought to create a fruitful and supportive environment that would allow 64 primary school student teachers participating in a sound stories’ project, to unearth their creative skills and abilities, through active participation and direct experimentation with sound and music. The study focused on the exploration of the formation of student teachers’ beliefs regarding the concept of musical creativity, as well as possible educational implications stemming from the processes, experiences and emotions student teachers went through during the project.
Keywords
Introduction
The concept of creativity has traditionally proved an elusive one to pin down and a wide spectrum of definitions has been given in an attempt to capture its meaning (Craft, 2001). Jackson refers to a very interesting definition of ‘creativity’ proposed by Dellas and Gaier (1970), which suggests that ‘creativity is the ability to use imagination, insight and intellect, as well as feeling and emotion, in order to move an idea from its present state to an alternate, previously unexplored state’ (Jackson, 2006, p. 8). Another definition sees creativity as ‘a process that results in some sort of outcome that possesses at least two qualities: it must be unique and it must have value’ (Swede, 1993, p. 2). Creativity has elsewhere been defined as ‘the ability to repackage or combine knowledge in a new way which is of some practical use or adds value’ (Higgins & Morgan, 2000, . 118), as ‘the notion of making connections between previously unrelated ideas’ or simply just ‘seeing things in new ways’ (Higgins & Morgan, 2000, pp. 119, 126). Interestingly, numerous authors have put forth the proposition that creativity involves four different elements: parameters consisting of the creative person, the creative process, the creative environment (found elsewhere as ‘creative place’) and the creative product (Donelly, 2004; Fryer, 1996; Hickey & Webster, 2001; Sternberg, 1988; Taylor, 1988).
Nowadays, everybody is capable of being creative, given the right environment, and creativity is placed in the realm of everyday living (Craft, 2006; Torrance, 1988). This view democratizes creativity, allowing it to be something all people possess, to some degree, and therefore providing a role for education to intervene and develop the creative potential of each person (Reimer, 2003).
This article addresses the issue of musical creativity in a pre-service teacher education context. More specifically, the study aimed at setting up a fruitful environment for 64 Cypriot primary school student teachers to release their creative potential in music and discover for themselves, through creative, informal and collaborative processes, what creative music making is all about, why it is important to be part of music education in schools and, hopefully, that it is more feasible than it sounds.
Creativity and music education
Undoubtedly, ‘being creative means different things in different disciplinary contexts’ (Jackson & Shaw, 2006, p. 89); but it seems that even in the same field, the field of music education, creativity is a term that has been misused, confused and misunderstood and lost much of its meaning and power in terms of music and children (Balkin, 1990; Hickey & Webster, 2001; Webster, 1990; Wiggins, 1999b). Webster suggests that due to the numerous definitions and uses of the word ‘creativity’ in so many contexts, it might be more prudent to use the term ‘creative thinking’ instead (Webster, 1990). Creative thinking includes, according to Haroutounian (2002), the following characteristics: a fluency of ideas and solutions, a flexibility in looking at a topic from various perspectives, originality in the sense of being able to create your own ideas and, finally, the ability to elaborate and develop these ideas further.
Nowadays, it seems evident that facilitating creative thinking and encouraging students to apply their knowledge of music in creative ways should be at the core of philosophy and practice (Hickey & Webster, 2001). It is also proposed that creativity should not be limited to the activities of improvisation and composition but ‘should be expanded to encompass the entire array of creative activities practiced by musicians everywhere’ (Humphreys, 2006, p. 357).
However, despite the acceptance that creativity is of great importance in teaching and learning in the subject of Music, it is often observed that teachers lack confidence in engaging students in creative activities and hardly include them in the music lesson (Henry, 1996; Dogani, 2004), often focusing solely on highly structured listening and performing activities, as well as music theory and notation (Odam & Paterson, 1999; Saunders & Baker, 1991). Why does this happen? Because ‘creativeness is a messy business’ (Webster, 2003, p. 245) and music teachers often play it safe, putting the emphasis on knowledge acquisition and on the development of instrumental or vocal skills, rather than on experimenting with more imaginative, but perhaps riskier and more difficult to handle, ways of teaching.
Webster suggests that a common element between the definitions of creative thinking in psychology and music education literature is problem solving and its significant role in any kind of creative activity (Webster, 1992). The role of the music teacher should be to promote links between problem setting and problem solving whilst working with sound (Burnard & Younker, 2004), not only in improvisation and composition activities but in listening and performing activities as well. But do teachers promote these links?
Learning processes to foster creativity must develop students’ self-confidence and self-esteem, encourage risk taking in safe environments and help them to be comfortable in messy/ complex and unpredictable situations, where there are no right and wrong questions and answers (Jackson, 2003). Teachers’ intervention in children’s creative music making should be in terms of ensuring a safe environment, encouraging risks and divergent thinking in musical problems and providing helpful feedback to the children (Elliot, 1995; Woodward, 2005). However, are the teachers educated to do this?
In order for student teachers and generalist teachers to be able to adopt creative approaches to their subject, they need to take part in creative learning experiences during their studies (Grainger, Barnes, & Scoffham, 2004). Given the fact that creative activities are an essential part of the Music Curriculum, it seems reasonable to expect pre-service training programmes for teachers to include activities to develop relevant skills (Gifford, 1993; Hewitt, 2002; Triantafyllaki & Burnard, 2010). But do they? At a time when our teachers and student teachers are not persuaded that creative thinking is a critical component in our world (Grainger et al., 2004), how can we talk about nurturing creative children in schools and creating safe environments for children’s creativity to grow? Taking it one step further, how can we ask of the generalist teachers to foster children’s creativity in their music teaching, when they are not persuaded of its importance and contribution to children’s musical learning, or even worse, when they have never experienced the processes and the social, educational and psychological dimensions of creative musical activities during her university years?
Creativity can be fostered and developed and, like any other ability, it requires encouragement and guidance. Pre-service teachers can be creative if offered opportunities to think and act in that way, if encouraged to approach their tasks with creativity in mind and if offered opportunities to develop orientations and techniques for approaching situations in new ways (Brinkman, 2010). However, despite the fact that the importance of creativity in higher education is highlighted in the literature (Anderson, 1990; Donelly, 2004; Grainger et al., 2004; Hewitt, 2002; Jackson, 2006; Torrance, 1993; Tosey, 2006; Triantafyllaki & Burnard, 2010), too little of the training is focused on nurturing college and university students’ ability to think and teach in a creative way (Donelly, 2004).
Teachers, educators and university lecturers should support student teachers to ‘take risks and to work outside the safe, the known and the predictable’ (Burnard & White, 2008), to try to find ways to exploit what is already there and to set up a learning environment which will further enhance creativity. They have to inspire their students and one of the best ways to do this is ‘through satisfying and intensifying students’ creative appetite’ (Catanella, 2004, p. 60). Teacher preparation programmes should feature experiences that foster study environments that ‘are infused with creative thought and action’ (Harding, 2010). Besides, ‘fostering a positive attitude to one’s own creativity is an essential starting point’ (Craft, 2001), and one of the main objectives of this study.
Context, purpose and rationale of the study
The subject of Music in Cypriot primary schools is usually taught, in class grades 1–4, by the generalist teacher. Following the philosophy adopted over the last 15 years by the Cypriot Ministry of Education and Culture and supported by the Cypriot Primary School Teachers’ Association, a generalist teacher should be ‘multi-powered’, thus being able and being given the education and training needed to teach all subjects, including Music. But is this really the case in Cypriot reality?
The music training offered to primary school student teachers within their undergraduate degree, at the time the study took place, was restricted to one compulsory Music Methods course (a total of 39 hours), offering the possibility of an additional elective course. Due to the fact that most generalist student teachers have no other formal music training beyond that gained at school, it seems impossible in 39 hours to develop their music abilities to a high level and to introduce, at the same time, methodological principles and approaches to music teaching and learning. Findings from Cyprus reveal that Music is one of the most difficult and demanding subjects Cypriot generalist teachers and student teachers are called on to teach, basically because it requires all these skills, which teachers can hardly acquire in one or two music courses. As a result of low musical abilities, low confidence and low self-efficacy beliefs, Cypriot teachers very often avoid teaching the subject of Music (Economidou, 2004; Economidou & Telemachou, 2006; Telemachou, 2007).
It is suggested in the literature that self-efficacy beliefs seem essential for advancing primary teaching practices (Hudson & Hudson, 2007) and that individuals who believe they have no hope of accomplishing what they set out to do, will make no attempt to do it (Bandura, 1997). In the music education context, the problem of the lack of confidence and low self-efficacy beliefs, in cases where teachers with little formal training in music teach the subject, is often worse than the problem of the lack of competence (Barrett, 1994; Holden & Button, 2006; Jeanneret, 1997; Mills, 1989, 2005). The main challenge, then, for those who wish to educate generalist student teachers in how to facilitate creative music-making activities in their teaching, should be to create the possibility within their modules for the acquisition of these same qualities (Hewitt, 2002, p. 36).
Having the aforementioned as a starting point, the purpose of the project reported in this article was to provide opportunities for student teachers to explore their own creativity, on their own terms and in their own ways, collaboratively with their fellow students, in a safe, informal and inspiring environment. It was intended to give student teachers the chance to participate in genuine musical activities, to experience music and develop a relationship with it – what Swanwick (1988) aptly calls music education by ‘encounter’. More specifically, the research questions the study sought to answer were:
Can participation in a collaborative creative music project make a difference in generalist student teachers’ beliefs in regards to musical creativity and music teaching, and in what ways?
Are there any additional implications stemming from this project, in regards to music teacher education?
The design of the project was guided by the following principles and ideas, hoping to move away from the traditional educational view of learning as knowledge transmission, to learning through engagement and active involvement in creative and collaborative processes that lead to the construction of knowledge:
‘Creativity’ as a term is not something that you can easily talk about. On the contrary, one can only capture its multilayered meaning though personal involvement and active participation – following learning ‘through’ rather than learning ‘about’ processes (White, 2006).
Student teachers should be given the opportunity to ‘be agents of their own learning, empowered to develop their own musicianship in genuine musical contexts’ (Wiggins, 2007, p. 39).
Creativity is not an all-or-nothing phenomenon and the ‘you have it or you don’t’ belief about musical talents and musical creativity has, to a large extent, disappeared among music educators. It is widely supported in the literature that we all harbour within us creative seeds that are capable of flourishing (Boden, 2000; Donelly, 2004; Gardner 1984, 1997; Humphreys, 2002; Torrance, 1988).
Creativity occurs when individuals feel free from pressure, safe and positive (Claxton, 1998).
Creativity does not always take place in isolation but is quite often social and collaborative (Tosey, 2006). This view is also supported in the field of music education (Burnard, 2002; MacDonald, Miell, & Mitchell, 2002; Marsh, 2000; Wiggins, 1999a, 1999b). Burnard talks about sharing ‘a sense of purpose’ (Burnard, 2002) and Wiggins maintains that ‘learning occurs when there is shared understanding among the participants’ (Wiggins, 2007, p. 39), suggesting that shared musical understanding can benefit the individual in many ways (Wiggins, 1999a). Sawyer also advocates that the best learning outcomes succeed in collaborative creative classes (2006), characterizing, among other things, creative processes as fundamentally social and collective (Littleton, Rojas-Drummond, & Miell, 2008; Sawyer, 2006; Triantafyllaki & Burnard, 2010).
Creativity, as well as learning, is a situated activity which does not happen in a vacuum but through one’s environment and lived experiences (Fernandez-Cardenas, 2008; Triantafyllaki & Burnard, 2010).
Method
Participants and design of the project
The study took place at the University of Cyprus during the fall semester (or autumn term) of 2005. It involved 64 primary school student teachers (11 male and 53 female) who had enrolled on the compulsory Music Methods’ module, taught by the researcher in the Department of Education. Aside from four student teachers with a strong background in music, the other 60 had very little or no musical background, and even less confidence about teaching the subject of Music in the future. The duration of the project was six weeks. The first three weeks’ activities were scheduled within the Music Methods’ module classes (a total of 9 hours). The design of the project for the first three weeks included the following:
Individual and group improvisations on tuned and un-tuned percussion instruments, aiming at introducing the various instruments and timbres to student teachers, as well as the concept of improvisation.
Listening activities and discussions, with experiments on how connections can be made between images, words, feelings, stories and sounds, melodies or even a complete musical composition.
Conventional and non-conventional music-making activities (a generation of musical ideas related to images, words, feelings and stories).
The aforementioned activities involved small-scale and simplified versions of the project that would follow and were used to familiarize student teachers with musical elements, creative processes in music making, as well as the richness of sound materials. Reflective responses of the participants on their creative work and the work of their fellow students had been encouraged during the introductory activities.
Recognizing that ‘problem solving as a team game should be part of every student’s experience’ in Higher Education (Livingstone, 2010), at the end of the third week, the student teachers were given the final task: to form groups of eight, find or write a story, create music and sound effects in order to support it, and finally perform it with costumes and staging at the University Concert Hall. The duration of the performance was set at 7–10 minutes. The students were given a time period of three weeks to get themselves ready for the final event, where they would present their work to the audience. Each group scheduled its own working timetable and rehearsals on their own time. The student teachers were encouraged to work in the university’s music room so that they could have easy access to a variety of instruments and timbres, and be able to improvise, experiment and interact directly with sounds.
On performance day, the student teachers presented their sound stories in the University Concert Hall, after a final morning rehearsal of each group in the Hall, in order to familiarize themselves with the place and equipment. The performances of the eight groups lasted 90 minutes, with the audience comprising mainly the student teachers, their fellow students and, in some cases, friends and family.
Data collection and analysis
Qualitative methods were used for data collection purposes, including:
reflective diary notes of each group during rehearsals, where the student teachers were asked to record anything and everything they considered important (Bailey, 1990), including comments on the processes they had followed in order to deal with the task and their emotions and experiences through the process of creation. Through reflective journal writing, the student teachers were engaged in the process of reflection regarding their work, their progress and their achievement (Kea & Bacon, 1999; Sinclair & Woodward, 1997). The reflective diary notes were collected and provided valuable data, which outlined the process through the participants’ eye
a questionnaire with five open-ended questions given right at the end of the performances. The first question explored student teachers’ emotions/thoughts as soon as they were given the sound story task. The second question asked them to describe their emotions/thoughts right before their group’s performance and during the performance. The third question asked student teachers to state whether they were satisfied with their performance and to describe their emotions/thoughts after the end of the event. The fourth question asked them to describe their beliefs and attitudes towards creative musical activities before participating in the project and how these were formed, through their participation. A final question investigated their overall impression towards the experience of participating in the sound stories project
video material of the final performances. This material was valuable for the researcher, in order to be able to visualize and connect the final product of each group with the experiences described and the processes illustrated through the reflective diaries, interviews and questionnaire responses
post-performance semi-structured interviews with the groups of student teachers, in order to discuss: (a) their experience in the sound stories project in general and more specifically in terms of the themes identified from the analysis of the data gathered from the aforementioned sources; and (b) possible educational implications stemming from the project in regards to musical creativity.
Collecting data through various methods, such as questionnaires and reflective diaries as well as video and semi-structured interviews, aimed at allowing for a more objective understanding of the beliefs and attitudes of the primary school student teachers towards creative music making and its significance for the subject of Music.
The researcher engaged in several layers of data analysis (LeCompte & Schensul, 1999). First, the reflective diary notes and the responses of the participants on the questionnaire’s open-ended questions were analysed and coded, through repeated readings, and allowed the researcher to identify corroborating and dissenting themes amongst the participants of the project and amongst the eight groups. The videotaped performances of the sound stories were the second level of the data analysis. The researcher watched the video footages of each group’s sound story and wrote notes regarding the following, which were hence compared with the analysis of the data gathered from questionnaires and reflective journals: sounds/melodies/musical compositions and their contribution to the story, costumes and staging, innovation, collaboration and social interaction during the performance, emotions and mood of the participants during the performance. Relationships and common themes between the three data sources were hence searched on, leading to the preliminary findings of the study. The third level of analysis included that of the post-performance interview transcripts in relation to the preliminary findings. Finally, a university colleague read the interview transcripts, the diary notes and the participants’ responses in the questionnaire and served as a peer reviewer for the findings and interpretations on behalf of the researcher.
The key themes identified by the researcher, once final coding of the whole set of data was complete, were categorized under the following headings:
Steps and creative processes towards the creative product
Student teachers’ emotions throughout the whole process of creating and performing their sound story
Social interaction and cooperative learning
Formation of student teachers’ beliefs regarding the concept of creativity
Contextualizing pedagogical principles
Student teachers as future teachers
Results and discussion
Steps and creative processes towards the accomplishment of the task
The final product in terms of stimuli and form of presentation
It was interesting, in reading the reflective diaries of each group and watching the video footage, to see the variety of ways in which different groups of student teachers worked towards the attainment of the same task. The student teachers could either choose a known story or create their own. Four of the sound stories presented were adaptations of very popular children’s fairytales, whereas the other four were written by the student teachers and included themes drawn from life inside and outside the university and TV shows. All eight groups had a narrator and five of them incorporated dialogue as well. Besides, five stories included comic elements and student teachers in various instances ‘exposed’ themselves to the audience, either in the way they were dressed and moved around or in the way they used their speaking or singing voice.
In addition, there was a great variety in the form of presentation and in the ways in which the student teachers approached the story in terms of sound effects, costumes, staging, musical compositions and movement. Each group identified the strengths of its members and adjusted their work to those. For example, one of the groups had a ballet dancer and created a story where movement and dance were an important element. Another group had a technology expert – accordingly, they decided, instead of staging to use technology and create backgrounds through a PowerPoint presentation. Amongst the members of another group, there were two competent musicians, a pianist and a saxophonist, as well as two actors, so their group created a sound story more like a drama performance with musical composition as a background to the performance.
It is evident, from the various approaches followed by the participants, that there was plenty of space for negotiation in the project, allowing students to be engaged with something their group was interested in, utilizing the group’s strengths, and striving for autonomy, responsibility and creativity in student teachers’ learning (Bentley, 2000).
Processes of construction of the sound stories
Through the analysis of the reflective diaries of each group, it was apparent that two main routes were followed by the student teachers regarding the processes of construction of the sound stories. There were three groups that started by experimenting in the music lab with the offered timbres of tuned and un-tuned percussion instruments, guitars, mandolins, piano and synthesizers. Through discussion, they selected the most impressive sounds that reminded them of something and used them as a starting point either to create their own story or to find a known one that matched the sounds they selected. The other approach, followed by the rest of the groups, had as a starting point a non-musical stimulus – the story itself. The student teachers first wrote or chose the story and then tried to find possible ways to ‘dress’ it with sounds and melodies.
Ways of ‘translating’ musical creativity into practice
The ways in which each group approached the creation of music to support their story varied. There were six groups with no musical background that found it hard to expand on musical ideas and restricted their music performance mainly to isolated sound effects made during the narration of the story. On the contrary, two groups with one or two student teachers with musical backgrounds managed successfully to capture moods and characters in their compositions as well. Student teachers coming from these two groups composed melodies and in some cases added lyrics and performed them with instruments. The majority of the groups used mainly isolated sound effects combined with adapted melodies of popular songs, and created a product similar to a soundtrack of a film.
Hewitt (2002), in his study reporting on an investigation of differences between specialist and generalist groups of teachers as they engaged in a small group composition, found three processes which two groups of participants used in order to make the link between stimuli, initial ideas and the actual sound creations presented. These processes, which were identified in the present study’s context as well, were labelled by Hewitt as the following: indicating, as the groups used musical elements to indicate the mood of the piece; mimicking, as they chose a musical fragment from another setting and placed it within their piece; and recreating, as the groups copied isolated sounds and used them as audio effects (Hewitt, 2002). In this project, as already pointed out, all three processes were evident, with the most ‘popular’ being recreating, as it was found the easiest process to follow by student teachers with no musical background.
Student teachers’ emotions/thoughts throughout the whole process of creating and performing their sound story
During the project, from the time of the announcement of the final task until the end of it on the day of the performance, all the students experienced a rich palette of emotions. The majority of the student teachers (N = 57), as evident from their questionnaire responses, were positive about the idea of the sound stories from the very beginning of the project, as many of them had seen fellow students of previous years performing their work. In a way, those students were looking forward to it, as can be seen from their responses in the questionnaire:
I watched sound stories two years ago at the university concert hall. Everyone was excited, like they were giving a big performance, a show. So I was really looking forward to it.
Only five students saw it as a very difficult task for them, due, mainly, to their limited content knowledge in music.
I got confused when I heard the task; I could not capture in my mind the ways this thing could be organized. I did not have a good relationship with music, except from being a good listener. At school my music teacher had told me that I was not good enough to be in the choir. So I do not even sing. I did not know if we could cope with what we were asked to do.
There were, however, two male students who stated in their questionnaire that, at the very beginning of the rehearsals, they thought sound stories was a silly thing to do and not worth wasting time for. It must be said that one of the two student teachers continued to be negative throughout the project and changed his mind only after the presentation of his group’s performance, as was evident from his responses, where he stated that he wished he had enjoyed it from the very beginning, as it turned to be fun after all. The other had changed his mind, as he stated in the group interview, after the second rehearsal, when he was really enthusiastic about taking over the responsibility of playing the drums in his group’s sound story.
From the student teachers’ reflective diaries, it can be seen that, along with their progress regarding their work, they began to feel more confident, enjoyed the process of creating more and looked forward to the performance event. This change of attitude could be attributed to interaction with others or to the fact that the task began to seem feasible, or just to the fact that it was a very different task from those usually assigned at the university.
Data from the questionnaire revealed that on performance day, students’ emotions were mixed. The majority of the students (N = 47) stated in the questionnaire that, right before their group’s presentation, they were stressed regarding (mainly) organizational issues such as preparing microphones, coordination between the group members, etc., whereas the rest were excited and felt very confident about their work and abilities. Nervousness and uncertainty, together with enthusiasm and excitement, were also emotions mentioned in the questionnaire responses describing what the student teachers felt prior to their presentation.
During the performance, around half of the student teachers (N = 31) described their emotions using, amongst others, the words ‘excitement’ and ‘ enthusiasm’, with a smaller number feeling stress and agony. More than one quarter of the students also mentioned the word ‘satisfaction’, either because everything was progressing smoothly or because of the audience’s enthusiasm.
The emotions of the participants after the end of their group’s performance included enthusiasm (N = 39), satisfaction (N = 31), relief (N = 17), enjoyment (N = 12), and regret for not working harder as a group (N = 9), etc. In their words:
It was a very nice, fun and edifying experience. We learned very useful things. We did very well. Emotions now that is over? Shall we do it again?!! A very pleasant experience! So valuable for us as future teachers. It was an amazing and unforgettable experience. A demanding but, at the same time, very pleasant activity. I felt creative and productive.
In accordance with the findings of this study, pre-service teachers were found to have positive attitudes and enjoy creative experiences within projects which promoted learning through active participation in studies conducted by Hewitt (2002) and White (2006), as well as by Triantafyllaki and Burnard (2010).
Social interaction and collaborative learning
The sound stories’ project gave the student teachers the opportunity to collaborate, communicate, take risks together, enable each other’s ideas to be heard, negotiate, interact, disagree, compromise, accept or reject ideas and suggestions. Social interaction, belonging to a group, and sharing a task with others were issues that repeatedly arose from student teachers.
More specifically, social interaction was raised in all the group interviews and very surprisingly, in 16 out of the 64 questionnaire responses, given there was not a specific question focusing on this issue. Nothing could describe better their experience of the shared journey than their own statements:
Thanks to the project, we became close friends with other students that until then we just waved at. And I am sure that we will continue to meet and have fun outside the university settings. Through this experience I met people I did not know and came closer with people I had already known. Whenever I see them again in the university campus, I am sure we will be thinking of all we shared these three weeks.
Interestingly, an issue also raised in all the group interviews, as well as in the questionnaire responses by 18 student teachers, again without a specific question referring to it, was collaborative learning. Through discussions in the interviews, it became evident that collaborative learning was, according to a group of students, a bit abstract in their minds until their involvement in the project. Although student teachers who participated in this study were taught about the importance of collaborative learning in various university modules, they stated that they only realized how they could apply it in the classroom and what the benefits would be for their future students, through the sound stories’ project. They stated:
In terms of collaborative learning, I was actively involved through the project with the concepts of socialization, respect of the views and ideas of others, things that we had learned in theory in Methodology of Teaching courses.
They reiterated:
The sound story project gave me the chance to feel free from limitations and be a part of a wonderful collaboration with others, a chance that we are not often given in the university environment. I realized the value of creativity as well as the value of collaboration with others, the power of belonging in a team. Both the procedure and the result of a collaborative attempt is common property for all members.
The findings of this study totally agree with Torrance, who proposes that ‘creative activities facilitate socialization and healthy socialization facilitates creative functioning’ (Torrance, 1975, p. 292), and also resonate with other studies reporting pre-service teachers’ views on the significance of collaborative learning and social interaction in creative projects that took place in Australia and the UK (Triantafyllaki and Burnard, 2010; White, 2006).
Formation of student teachers’ beliefs regarding the concept of creativity
The sound stories’ project was, according to the student teachers, a valuable experience which made them see Music as a subject through a new lens. To start with, it seemed that the student teachers’ attitude towards the use of creative activities in the music lesson was significantly improved.
How can I include creative activities in my teaching when I myself cannot be creative? How can I be creative in music? I am not a musician; I am just a generalist teacher. We have to be realistic!
This was the response of one of the student teachers in the second lecture, when I mentioned the term ‘creativity’ for the first time. However, during the six weeks of the project, their beliefs regarding musical creativity began to change. From the very first lessons, where they were given some graphic scores and were asked to create and perform a composition, based on the visual stimuli given, without having been shown a graphic score before or having been given instruments to work with prior to this experience, they created short but beautiful compositions and seemed to enjoy the experimentation with instruments and the fact that they could give musical meaning to a visual stimulus. Their continuous involvement with sound through listening, performing and creating music, helped them to acquire a positive attitude towards music as they participated actively and with great enjoyment. In some cases, they even developed confidence regarding the use of instruments and their ability to make music.
The same student teacher, who expressed strong concerns regarding the project, writes in his questionnaire at the end of the sound stories’ performance event:
Everyone can be creative, definitely. I know first-hand. It is so exciting to experiment with music, there are thousands of possibilities. And there is so much fun when you do it with friends.
It is worth mentioning that, out of the 64 participants, 51 stated in the questionnaire that, to some extent (which differed from student to student), they became more positive about creative music activities after their participation in the sound stories’ project. They realized that creative music activities are not only not impossible and scary, but they can be fun, exciting and educative at the same time. Nine students stated that they were very positive about creative music activities from the very beginning of the project. However, there were four student teachers who, even at the end of the project, were still a bit reluctant to incorporate creative activities into music lessons, stating that ‘you need to have special musical skills to be able to organize and monitor creative music activities in your class’.
Understanding theory through practice: pedagogical terms, methods and approaches set in context
Sometimes we tend to mention or discuss various terms in our university courses and expect student teachers to get a clear idea of how these can be applied in practice, just by giving them some examples. However, this is not always the case, as some of these terms may be abstract in their heads. Through the project, some of these terms, such as divergent ways of thinking, differentiation, ownership, active learning, experimentation, risk taking, cooperative learning and informal learning, became clearer and more feasible, through a musical context.
The student teachers grasped the multilayered meaning of the term ‘creativity’ first-hand and the countless possibilities offered to children when facilitating activities that cultivate a divergent way of thinking, a term they often heard in Methodology of Teaching modules. There were eight very different sound stories in terms of the form of presentation and the development of musical ideas, but all of them were very creative and totally acceptable. The variety of the approaches to presentation, as well as the creation and development of musical ideas, were identified and commented on by student teachers themselves in the interviews that followed the event. For example:
What my group did had nothing to do with what other groups did. We approached our story in a completely different way. We did not have actual music, except for two cases where we had to show moods. We had, however, wonderful sound effects. It was our choice, the way we imagined that fitted better with our story.
Student teachers also identified the multiple possibilities that creative activities offer to participants. They saw in themselves, as well as in others, talents and abilities that they never thought they had, identifying at the same time the different levels of intelligence, talents, needs, characteristics and abilities that may co-exist in a group of 64 people, and taking it one step further, in a mixed-ability school class of 25 children. This experience allowed them to relate their theoretical pedagogical knowledge on differentiation (Tomlinson, 2001) and multiple intelligences (Gardner, 1993) to practice, by recognizing ways of differentiating roles and tasks amongst their future students through creative group activities, where every student can contribute according to his ability and talent:
The amazing thing with sound stories and I guess that could go for creative activities in general, is that each member of the team can contribute according to his/her own abilities and talents. And that each group can adjust its work to its members’ strengths. Everything is acceptable and it is not necessarily better or worse than the other. It is just different.
The fact that every single student teacher contributed to the final product was noted by them in the post-performance interviews, stressing the issue of ownership, which was something that they experienced during the three weeks of rehearsals. They emphasized:
It was our project, our story and we all had to give our best in order to have a good result. It was our shared musical journey that we had to present to others, and we wanted it to be perfect.
Green emphasizes that when learners are operating informally, learning takes place alone and in groups of friends, mostly without adult guidance or supervision (Green, 2002, 2008). Experimentation, active learning, autonomy, informal learning, cooperative learning and this shift from teaching to learning were recurrent themes in the data.
The fact that we had no supervision or guidance during the three weeks we had to work on our sound stories sounded scary at the very beginning. However, we did it, we learned by ourselves.
How did you do it?
We supported each other and everything progressed so naturally, as if we knew what we were doing.
But we didn’t. This is the amazing thing. We definitely didn’t. We experimented; we discovered beautiful sounds and peculiar ways to play instruments, I even composed a small melody on the piano on my own, and I do not play the piano.
Reflection, another term taught in the Methodology of Teaching modules, and self-reflection, were recurrent themes in the data. According to the literature, meaningful learning from one’s experiences takes place when a beginner teacher reflects on those experiences by analysing what does and what does not work in particular contexts (Kowalchuk, 1999; Posner, 2005). Besides, teaching children to reflect on their work and that of others is now among the priorities of teaching and learning in all subjects. Comments of student teachers regarding reflection include:
I think we could do better; I watched some other sound stories that where a bit better than ours. Anyway, I am satisfied, we worked hard. I did well on that piano. It was as if I played the piano for years. OK, for some months. It was getting better and better after every rehearsal; I was improving myself.
Taking it one step further: Student teachers as future teachers
Generalist student teachers, according to a study conducted by Hewitt, expressed their enthusiasm for use in the classroom of creative music-making activities that they themselves had recent experience of (Hewitt, 2002). The student teachers in the sound stories’ project also compared themselves and their involvement in creative music making with their future teaching. They stated that they felt confident to motivate their future students to participate in Music Teaching and Learning through the use of creative activities. The fact that they participated themselves in a creative project gave them what they needed to know in regards to what creative music making is. This issue was raised and widely discussed by all groups during the post-performance group interviews. According to the student teachers, the project gave them the opportunity to go through all the steps, procedures and emotions that a child is called to face when creating music, an experience that will support them in their future teaching. It is stated in the literature that if students lack confidence in approaching creative tasks themselves, then most probably they will feel uncomfortable when leading a group of students in a creative activity in the classroom (Hewitt, 2002). Using their own words, it seems that the experience of sound stories had a positive effect on the participant future teachers:
Sound stories will be the first topic I teach when I do my internship in two years’ time. It can be taught in any class grade and there are so many musical elements that I could teach through it.
Another student commented:
I am sure that my students in teaching practice next semester will participate with enthusiasm in these types of activities. You can learn by yourself and with others so many things about music: timbre and use of instruments, find ways through music to express emotions and situations, have a nice time. And the great thing is that you can work with them at all grade levels.
Conclusions
There is no doubt that during a semester or two, it is very hard to teach someone that has no or very little musical knowledge how to perform, how to listen actively and how to create music and, even harder, how to teach music to children. Over the last three decades, research has repeatedly revealed that generalist teachers tend to have little confidence, both in their musical abilities and in their abilities to teach music to children (Bartel, Cameron, Wiggins, & Wiggins, 2004; Economidou & Telemachou, 2006; Goodman, 1986; Henessey, 2000; Holden & Button, 2006; Jeanneret, 1997; Mills, 1989; Russel-Bowie, 1993, 2004; Sanders & Browne, 1998). Nevertheless, research by Sanders and Browne (1998) indicates that positive and satisfying musical experiences are likely to enhance music self-confidence, and White supports their point, suggesting that teachers can be encouraged to enhance creativity in their own teaching, if they themselves are involved in creative musical experiences during their university years (2006).
The purpose of this study was to investigate whether participation in a collaborative creative music project could make a difference in generalist student teachers’ beliefs in regards to musical creativity and music teaching, and to look for possible educational implications in regards to music teacher education. The present project, as the findings indicate, was a positive and satisfying musical experience which succeeded in making student teachers realize that everyone can perform and create music, even without any special skills in music. The participants had the opportunity to take their learning in their own hands, to be engaged in problem-solving situations, to work collaboratively in unfamiliar (for higher education) environments, to take risks, share ideas and interact with their fellow students, and to reflect on their work.
There are a number of implications for music teacher education, stemming from this project, most of them having been suggested by the student teachers themselves. First, the creative processes and steps of the creation, together with the variety of emotions student teachers went through in order to reach the final creative product, were found to be extremely important experiences to them, that would help them in the future with their students, as it provided them with a first-hand experience in music making and all the processes that go along with it. Second, the participants in this project were challenged to unearth their creative selves and to experience, in their own pace within a safe environment offering a variety of stimuli and sound sources, the discovery of processes and strategies that would lead to their own creative product. Coming back to ‘creativity does not take place in a vacuum’ mentioned earlier in this article, the teacher needs to organize the context in which creative activities will take place and provide his/her students with stimuli and sources in order to enhance their creativity. In order to be able to do this, one needs to be put into the same situation and discuss and exchange ideas on how the teaching environment may facilitate or limit creativity.
Student teachers reported in their interviews that they enjoyed the autonomy of working without being supervised by the course instructor, they enjoyed sound exploration, experimentation with sound sources, freedom of choice and learning by interacting with others. The aforementioned are pedagogical approaches that should be facilitated within university Music Education courses, both through theory and practice. Through experimentation, imagination, flexibility, collaboration and reflection, student teachers realized that they could be creative in music, each one of them in a very different and personal, but totally acceptable way. But more importantly, many of them stated that they wanted to offer all the aforementioned to their future students. In other words, they realized that perhaps they could teach music, or, at least, they were willing to attempt to do so. Research findings from Cyprus highlight the inadequacies and the low self-efficacy beliefs that teachers and student teachers admit they have in regards to teaching Music (Economidou, 2004; Economidou & Telemachou, 2006; Telemachou, 2007). Creating positive attitudes towards Music as a school subject is one of the most important things a lecturer in Music Education may do, and turns out to be one of the most significant implications of this study for music teacher education.
Admittedly, generalist teachers taking one or two music courses in the undergraduate programme cannot learn whatever is needed in order to be able to teach music. However, they can gain a positive attitude towards music and towards Music as a school subject, and they can gain some basic musical knowledge and skills, but, more importantly, they can learn how to construct knowledge themselves and with others, how to take risks and how to work outside the norm within the music lesson. The findings of this study support the urgent need to enrich university courses in Music Education with creative projects that will ‘open the doors’ and encourage student teachers to learn by themselves (Webster, 2006).