Transformational Learning Strategies for the Secondary General Music Classroom

Abstract

This article discusses transformative learning in secondary general music (SGM), while considering students’ transitions from elementary to secondary music classes. SGM is uniquely situated for expanded pedagogies and musicianship, yet a gap in music activities persists between elementary and secondary classes and between home and school. The authors suggest that autonomous learning opportunities can foster ownership and meaning making for students toward lifelong musicianship as well as toward transformative learning. Three overlapping aspects of transformative SGM are discussed: skill-building, exploring contextual understandings, and making time and space for creativity and ownership. Emergent curricula that take students’ interests and experiences into account is encouraged. The authors advocate for projects that encourage collaboration beyond the school walls to foster purposeful connections to prior learning and personal music growth.

Keywords

secondary general music ownership adolescents lifelong musicianship transformative learning

Children love music. Their involvement with music begins at a young age through singing, moving, and playing. Most students enjoy music class, a place where everyone makes music together. However, as they enter middle and high school, the nature of their music classes changes with a shifting emphasis toward large ensembles in particular, which can be exclusive to those who possess specific skills. Secondary general music (SGM) classes, if offered, tend to diverge from the broad, inclusive nature of elementary general music programs, instead similarly favoring increased specialization. Some music experiences from elementary school may continue into middle and high school, but other skills and practices may go unacknowledged in secondary schools. For instance, in elementary general music a child may have learned to read rhythms using ta and ti-ti syllables, engaged in folk repertoire and dancing, and played a variety of barred and percussive instruments. While such skills can indeed transfer to later learning, this may not be obvious to the student and in fact, may cause SGM to feel far removed from prior music classes.

At the same time, adolescents experience a period of identity development (Erikson, 1980), during which time music can play a vital role (Bucura, 2019a). Conceptions and misconceptions of talent or ability can cause some students to hesitate, stifling potential participation, particularly if music teachers do not appear to value repertoire with which students identify. Music remains important for students throughout their adolescent years despite their involvement (or not) in school music (Campbell et al., 2007).

The activities common in elementary general music classrooms are often rich with moving, singing, playing, and listening as well as contextual considerations of history, society, and culture. These activities can buoy students as active participants who recognize themselves as musical. Such activities, however may be replaced at secondary levels with narrow specialization, for instance, large ensembles, music technology, or music theory. For many students, these offerings may not suggest obvious connections to their lives, past learning, and music identities.

Scholars have pointed out that there often exists a gap between school music and students’ own music lives (Bucura, 2019b; Brashier, 2019; Schuler, 2011). In fact, in 2014, the Task Force on the Undergraduate Music Major from the College Music Society recommended that music programs seek increased social relevance by creating a wide array of offerings that speak to diverse music interests across all segments of society, a point that is reiterated elsewhere (e.g., Whitmore, 2019). This gap may be more pronounced at the secondary level of music education as maturing adolescents begin to take ownership of their own music tastes and preferences, whether they take ownership of music learning in school classes. During this important stage of identity-building, adolescents tend to become increasingly influenced by peers rather than family or caregivers, highlighting the importance of safety among learners, peer mentoring, and collaboration.

Scholars call for inclusive music classes (Schuler, 2011; Task Force on the Undergraduate Music Major, 2014). Researchers indicate an interest in making music classes accessible and relevant to all learners (Campbell, 2000; Menard, 2013), for instance with repertoire and practices like popular music (Colquhoun, 2018) and music technology (Dammers, 2012). SGM practices, however, sometimes fail to significantly adapt to meet adolescent learners where they are. There remains a need for curriculum development that can foster inclusive music classes that allow for broad realizations of musicianship and applications of past skills, a point also made by VanWeelden et al. (2019) in their suggestions for engaging SGM activities.

Transformational learning can be one goal by which adolescents might build conceptions of their own musicianship. Students who take ownership of their own learning, helping to structure and organize it by following their own inquiry, have the potential to become what Mezirow (1981) referred to as self-determined learners, potentially capable of transformational learning. Transformational learning is an achievement of full ownership, as one becomes reflective about their learning and about themselves as a learner. One therefore considers what they learn in balance with how they learn. Transformational learning results in changed perspectives on both learning material and on one’s own learning processes. Ideally, transformational learning also results in a changed worldview (Argyris & Schön, 1996; Blaschke, 2012; Bucura, 2020).

A related idea among scholars involves so-called meaning making, wherein students should have opportunities for meaningful music experiences in schools (Campbell, 2000; Menard, 2013). This includes relevant applications for music learning and continued music endeavors and experiences that are personally interpreted. One example of such an approach is Tobias’ (2015) suggestions for engaging SGM students as music detectives. While students’ own meanings are important, they are also diverse, difficult to evaluate, and likely deeply personal. Students’ meanings are also situated within the contexts of their life experiences, including previous school and community music involvement, personalities and preferences, families, home lives, friendship circles, and so on. By taking students’ unique contexts into account, political structures of standardization, which tend to regulate curricula and assessment among educational institutions (Brashier, 2019), are also then challenged.

Students derive meanings when learning is connected to prior understandings, personal experiences, and cognitive growth. As Bucura (2020) stated, through an array of practices that include student-centered and project-based learning, learning in SGM can be differentiated, informal, and interdisciplinary, and music teachers can facilitate autonomy. In this way, music teachers regard students as music people who are able to take increasing ownership of their learning. It is therefore helpful to establish the space and time for students to ask questions and engage with resources, materials, and their peers. Music teachers can also help students set individual and collective learning goals, which encourages ownership and can lead to lifelong music participation (for more discussion of lifelong music engagement, see Lamont, 2011; Pitts, 2017).

Transformational Learning

The concept of andragogy, or the art and science of adult learning, can be applied to facilitate learning through empowerment, motivation, personal interpretation, and creativity (see Knowles, 1984). While music education scholars have discussed andragogy in relation to community music (Tsugawa, 2009), and SGM (Bucura, 2019b), application of andragogy typically centers on either community contexts or within school institutions. Yet neither seems sufficient given abrupt shifts to at-home and hybrid learning that have tended to blur school and home/community lines in recent years.

Bucura (2019b) considered andragogy in relation to adolescent learners as one way to recognize their growth toward self-directed learning (see also Mezirow, 1981). Bucura (2020) believed andragogical approaches invite learners to take responsibility and initiative, consider learning needs, and make plans for how to achieve their goals. Andragogy involves students’ self-direction, application of prior experiences and understandings, and considerations among students and teachers for intrinsic motivation, learner readiness, and a learning orientation toward identifying and solving problems (Knowles, 1980). Learners’ perspectives are prioritized when they are making decisions (Chinnasamy, 2013). Andragogy can be one way to consider motivation, as well as self-directed and lifelong learning (Bucura, 2019b). Andragogy can be described as self-determined and approached through learner-directed inquiry, sensitive teacher guidance, and learner autonomy.

Students who help structure, organize, and inquire about their experiences might achieve full ownership of learning, considering how they learn in balance with what they learn. Although learners must welcome the possibility of transformation for themselves, therefore seemingly diminishing the role of the teacher, the teacher nevertheless plays an important part in fostering students’ learning experiences. Teachers can set the tone for curiosity, context, vulnerability, and creativity that are paramount in fostering music possibilities for adolescents, particularly when constructing their own identities. This can be done by role-modeling curiosity and goal-setting, by providing students big and small tasks (to discuss, to investigate, to problematize, and to solve in their own ways), and importantly, by providing space in which students can experiment, collaborate, reflect, inquire, research, practice, and create, in pursuit of their own individual and collective music goals.

Perspective With and Through Music

Music classes are a valuable place for students to gain critical thinking skills, negotiate their perspectives, and engage in respectful dialogue with the goal of transformative learning. Increasingly, worldviews seem dominated by information bubbles that affirm what people already believe or think they know. If students’ experiences continually affirm existing stances, it can be difficult for them to encounter or allow challenges to their worldviews. Without diverse perspectives, students miss opportunities to experience a clash of perspectives or the strain of not knowing. Students benefit from considering nuance, which can enable growth as critical and empathetic thinkers. SGM presents opportunities to explore such spaces of ambiguity. Music can be one pathway to connect across disciplines. This may be relevant for adolescents in processes of forming identities as they seek to make sense of the world around them—and beyond them—and their experiences in it.

Growing Musicianship

Music teachers can consider three broad categories of music experiences that together are helpful to foster ownership among learners: skills, contextual understandings, and creative space. Each of these has the possibility for relevancy, meaning making, and growth in perspective, as well as one’s sense of identity, that might lead students toward transformational learning. While this article is focused on SGM settings, each of these can be equally experienced andragogically in any music class (for instance general music, concert band, music technology, orchestra, private lessons, music theory, show choir, and so on).

Skills

Students should actively make music and they require skills to do so. Sometimes they require skills they do not know they need. These can be fostered in playful ways through games; jam sessions; informal learning; songwriting and composition; or through different mediums, including instruments, and technologies. It may be tempting to view adolescents’ skills relative to learners of other ages. This might occur, for instance, by viewing sixth grade students as hesitant, uninterested, or intimidating preteens relative to elementary students, or conversely as immature and incapable youngsters relative to high school students. Yet all students should be regarded as able contributors with ideas and skills, as well questions and motivations of their own. When viewed in this way, sensitive facilitation can bring about an interest and drive among students that is helpful in patient and continuous skill-building practices.

Students should already have music skills when entering into secondary school. Teachers can seek to find out what they are. What have students done in their prior formal or informal music learning? In traditional elementary school programs, they may have learned standard notation, learned to sing children’s folk repertoire, gained ability to play the recorder and xylophone, or composed music. They may have participated in performances, sung in choir, learned to use a music software program to compose, record, and/or arrange music, and so on. These opportunities for connection to secondary school are valuable, even if they differ widely among classmates. Teachers can encourage students to draw upon these previously acquired skills in varied tasks and projects in SGM.

This may seem difficult for teachers, however, due to the wide variety of skills secondary students likely bring to SGM. In addition, their interests, motivations, and preferences will differ widely and are often considered strong markers of students’ growing senses of identity, which can be deeply personal, requiring sensitivity by teachers. It is therefore important that teachers not only seek to understand what students know but to also invite them to consider ways to revisit these skills and understandings in their own ways and to apply them anew. Peer mentoring through collaborative projects can be instructive, as students explain understandings to one another, negotiating meanings and making connections as they do. Teachers may structure tasks with possible prior learning in mind. “Have you ever . . . ” -type questions can be helpful, encouraging students to reflect. For instance, Have you ever learned a scale—experimented with changing tonalities?—sung in an asymmetric meter?—played a melody on the piano?—played a descant?—written an ostinato?, —analyzed a rhythm?—drawn a listening map? Students’ reflections to such open-ended invitations will provide insights to their knowledge and retention. Students may then recall understandings in personal ways as they are encouraged to make connections and applications to current learning.

While many methodologies exist that can enable music skill building, they should complement students’ own goals in ways that are relevant to the students themselves. Each methodology might offer something valuable, but each can also create a gap if used exclusively. Each student, therefore, must be involved in goal-setting to decipher for themselves not only what they wish to learn but how they might best go about learning it. Practice using a variety of methods and strategies will be helpful because students will become familiar with many possible tools. While engaging in project-based learning activities, they may then recall these systems and find ways they might decide to make use of them. Students can research music contexts, practice collaboration skills, structure individual practice time, or write a plan for completing an individual project.

Students may initially feel insecure about identifying goals or setting them into action. Yet, the action of setting goals and working toward them, can also be considered a skill that is strengthened over time. This occurs through continuous opportunities to reflect on prior learning, to gain insights into one’s own interests and preferences, and to look forward to deeper learning with confidence that one is able to achieve their goals. Goal-setting, or -refining should always be possible, not only in the beginning of a learning period. Such goal-setting may be helped by prompting questions like I never heard that song before, I want to learn to play it! How did the artist do that on the guitar? What steps can I take to build myself toward that skill? or This artist is so interesting to me—I want to analyze it so I can try writing a song in this style.

If adolescent music students are to take ownership of their music experiences in meaningful ways, teachers must also acknowledge rather than define a long-term vision of students’ music lives-to-come. Students can be encouraged to build andragogical skills beyond the classroom. They can establish continuous practice habits necessary for skill-building so that they may feel empowered to keep exploring well after they have finished with school.

Contextual Understandings

Students also benefit from experiences that broaden contextual understandings, particularly in the arts. Music experiences may be moving, but understandings about those experiences and questions of why and how they might be moving in different ways necessitates sensitive inquiry and dialogue. Music classes can provide valuable space to spark questions and challenge assumptions. Music encounters with people and music practices that differ from one’s own world of experiences can engage students, fostering a need to know and the motivation to seek new perspectives.

These new perspectives may involve historical, cultural, social, and political contexts, and foster interdisciplinary connections. Perspectives can shift as students grow into adulthood as the result of pedagogical and andragogical music experiences. Rather than presenting simple background information, students can wrestle with complex questions of music in society and culture, and the roles of music—maybe subconsciously experienced—in their own lives. Students live in an adult world and listen to music that may contain so-called adult themes. They may wonder about deep divides they see around them in politics, cultures, and values and beliefs. Students need opportunities to seek varied perspectives, identify challenging ideas, and recognize value in diverse perspectives, beliefs, and interpretations. This is particularly so in music, which can make room for ambiguity and diverse interpretations. Students may be provided, or create their own prompting questions to inspire dialogue that engenders a further quest for context, for example, What do these lyrics mean? When and where did the songwriter live and what was going on in the world at that time? How was this song completely repurposed at a later time for commercial gain and how did different people feel about that? or This song furthered a political movement! How?

Adolescents are soon-to-be adults, and music teachers can acknowledge their need for connection to existing understandings as well as their growing autonomy, developing sense of identity, and interest in peers and society (Bucura, in press). SGM classrooms can be instrumental in adolescents’ understandings of music contexts and perspectives, even when classrooms are virtual. Physically disconnected from peer groups, adolescents can still connect virtually, perhaps evaluating music works and engaging in collaborative projects. Their purposeful facilitation of music experiences and space for considerations may help adolescents cope with a chaotic and fast-changing world, develop leadership skills, and respond to societal and cultural challenges, affirming their abilities to participate in issues around them.

Creative Space

Students can grow toward transformative learning when provided space to make use of what they have learned. Such space includes time and places to practice, a sense of inquiry, and an openness to creative ventures of their own choices and interests. In addition to emerging skills and contextual understandings, students can grow toward transformative learning when provided space to apply what they have learned. With space to be creative and to put skills and understandings to music and personal use, students can achieve deep understandings and make personal meanings as well as gain a sense of purpose as a music person.

Practice and exploration are necessary components of creativity, and tends to be determined in students’ own spaces or spaces in which they can take the lead. Students must find a place to practice (e.g., hallway, practice room, and outdoor), people to practice with (e.g., collaborative group, with a partner, and alone), and be guided in how to do so (e.g., role modeling, analysis of their own and others’ practicing, strategies for practice, and opportunities to be guided in implementation of them). Students’ motivations and strategies will affect their creative efforts and continued music interests.

Out-of-school music pursuits can be prioritized, where time and space may be considerably more flexible, for instance practicing one’s instrument in the comfort of home, researching the context of a song as it has been reimagined by different artists, or producing a multimedia music work over the weekend. Students can also acquaint themselves with the world, encountering real-world problems and solutions by physically or virtually getting out there to variably see, hear, try, fail, succeed, and contribute.

Community music contexts can be instructive as ways to participate among diverse groups (e.g., community jam band, church choir, woodwind duo with a friend, and songwriting group), and also as a listener/observer (e.g., audience at a local or live-streamed performance or production). Adolescents’ music interactions should involve a diversity of people to build broad understandings about creativity and musicianship that are not limited to classrooms or teacher-guided prompts. Students should share their efforts with peers and embrace opportunities to engage with them and others in their communities about their growing understandings, questions, and growing skills.

Teachers who promote student autonomy in the learning process provide content that is ultimately foundational and transferable to future learning. Students should experience a balance of skill-building, exercises that promote understanding, and activities coupled with time and space for practice and open-ended creative tasks that are guided by inspirations rather than predetermined outcomes. Some of this time and space can be out-of-school, but it can also be nurtured in a supportive and safe school environment, wherein collaboration is encouraged among peers and teachers.

Creative projects might be initiated by a prompting dialogue, like What makes an artist impactful? What purposes could a song serve? or How could a song inspire actions? Role-modeling a spirit of inquiry may inspire both skill-building and a need for contextual information among students. Students can also get creative, re-purposing prompting questions to align with their current worldviews as well as issues they seek to further understand. For example, asking, How could I create a piece of music to express my feelings about a persistent political issue? In what ways might I arrange and combine songs that communicate opposing messages to artistically mediate divergent perspectives? or In what ways might I use music, movement, and media to express my feelings of community?

While out-of-school learning may be ideal to build student ownership, teachers have the ability to carefully shape in-school learning (Bucura, 2020). In music class, students have the teacher and other students to aid in their creative processes by mirroring back, reflecting on meanings and context, and providing sensitive and specific feedback. Without these crucial supports, adolescents can hit a learning plateau that can derail their motivation and progress. With sensitive feedback, safety, and support found in well-designed music classes, students can overcome these challenges. Profound experiences may occur when students provide feedback for peers, demonstrating their own depth of learning and applying it in ways that encourage and enable others. When they teach or mentor others, they solidify their own learning, applying it anew and retaining it in deeper ways. These moments can also be highly satisfying, building additional feelings of ownership.

Conclusion

Adolescent students can be guided in transition from elementary to secondary school, toward meaning making in the music classroom. Teachers can seek to reduce gaps between school music and music in students’ whole lives by inquiring about existing knowledge and skills, providing tasks that invite application of them, and providing space for growth in them. Music educators must seek to make interactions in the classroom relevant to adolescent students by providing them opportunities to ask their own questions, identify their own motivations, set their own goals, and make their own meanings. With such ownership students should be motivated to continue music pursuits in their own homes and communities. Transformative learning in SGM classes might foster perspective, empathy, and context, while adolescents build music skills and construct a sense of who they are in the world, both as musicians and as people.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Elizabeth Bucura

Author Biographies

Elizabeth Bucura is Assistant Professor of Music Pedagogy at The University of Music and Performing Arts in Graz, Austria. Her research focuses on secondary general music, early childhood, and community music.

Rachel Brashier is the Director of Music Education at the University of Wisconsin Stevens Point. Brashier is currently doing research in the areas of music teacher identity development, informal music learning, and embodied musiking in communities of praxis.

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