Though there are a lot of mixed feelings about Jean Piaget's work, there are certain useful consistencies between it and my classroom teaching experience with children, so I publish this here.
Jean Piaget (1896-1980) continues to be one of the most important figures in the theory of intellectual development. Born in Switzerland, he did most of his important work at the Rousseau Institute in Geneva where he found that younger children before the age of seven think in a qualitatively different way. He conceptualized four general periods of development: sensori-motor (birth to two), preoperational thought (two to seven), concrete operations (seven to eleven) and formal operations (eleven to adult).
The question of how one would design a music curriculum that conceptualized teaching and learning through a Piagetian framework is an important one for a music educator. I want to explore it by connecting the theoretical work of Jean Piaget to my practical work in the classroom and the choir rehearsal. In addition to instructing my students through their music class in school, many of my students sing in one of the two children's choirs (grades pre-kindergarten through 6) in church which gives me the opportunity to see them more than once a week in two different contexts. A smaller number of them also take private piano class with me. This affords the chance for repeated reinforcement of the aims of my music education program which includes music appreciation, applied vocal performance (focusing of Kodaly rhythms), music history and applied instrumental performance (piano, recorder, handbells, Orff instruments and choir chimes).
Interpreting Piaget
My investigation involves students in Piaget's period two, "preoperational thought," ages two to seven in which the child's mind is rapidly advancing to a new plane leading to the understanding of symbols (including images and words) and requiring a reorganization of thought from the previous sensori-motor period. This cannot be done all at once, and for some time during this period the child's thinking is unsystematic and illogical.[1] The symbolic activity involving nonlinguistic symbols in children's play (representation)[2] and the increasing ability of language to widen the child's horizons are important here.
I want to start with some of Piaget's language. One of his key phrases "pedagogical mania" captures the essence of the need to students for have enriched sensory-motor experiences to "interiorize" them. He is referring to a method of teaching which involves teachers doing a lot of talking and showing rather than allowing students to explore and learn concepts for themselves; a fault of much teaching which cheats students out of engagement in the discovery process. For example, Mary Ann Spencer Pulaski writes:
"A child with many physical experiences with a concrete object such as a ball can then form a mental image of that object and act upon it in thought as he has in actual experiences in the past. He can picture the act of throwing the ball, and his thought is "interiorized action." But the child who has never handled of thrown a ball is handicapped in his intellectual development."[3]
As music educators, we each need to establish for ourselves the appropriate balance between letting the students learn for themselves and teaching concepts to them. Time is one element involved-- it simple takes longer to let students learn for themselves than it does to lecture or read to them. If we do decide to take that time, then I would suggest the role of the teacher becomes more of a guide providing a structure within which the student can learn. But how much are the students permitted to "go off course" to investigate questions they begin to formulate. Is it possible that by asking a question the student is demonstrating a readiness to pursue that question? Or must we reserve that determination for the teacher? In other words, does a question from a student more complex than the material at hand indicate he or she has mastered the lesson, is now bored with it, and wants more in depth material? Or perhaps the student is demonstrating boredom based on immaturity and lack of development.
Spontaneous Development
One of Jean Piaget's most controversial claims is that cognitive development is a spontaneous process; children develop cognitive structures on their own through many processes including adaption, a process engaging accommodation and assimilation. For example, an infant may bring a rattle to his mouth and assimilate[4] the object to his cognitive structure (take in the object), but when it does not fit his existing cognitive structure, he must make accommodations[5] or changes in the structure by changing the shape of his mouth thereby removing an obstacle for the new structure. The child has learned something valuable and lasting, by learning it for him or herself, rather than having a teacher talk about it or instruct by lecturing or reading. Many American psychologists in the learning theory tradition, however, believe that adult teaching is more important than Piaget thought. And further, many believe that adult teaching can increase the speed of the learning process which might otherwise be slow when waiting for students to achieve learning through spontaneous development. Within music education, the ways can we strike a balance between letting the student learn for him or herself on the one hand, and providing the student with essential information on the other which might speed up learning and allow more material to be covered in a set time frame are important for us each to discern as we enter the classroom or rehearsal. In an ideal world, time would be a nonessential element in learning and could we take as much of it as necessary to produce students who possess more than just knowledge, but the ability to think for themselves.
The question then becomes what does Piaget's theory concerning adaption (assimilation and accommodation) and representation mean for a classroom or a choir rehearsal full of 3, 4, or 5 year olds? How can their music teacher or choir director assemble a curriculum that conceptualizes teaching, learning, and assessment through a Piagetian framework?
Applied Piagetian Concepts
To explore the question, I have designed a classroom activity for a beginning piano class made up of first through fifth graders with little or no experience with the keyboard. The main objective was to spark and maintain their interest by getting their fingers moving without introducing the complexities of notation. I used a method book which detailed in a visual diagram of the piano keyboard on the page with the required fingers 2, 3 and 4 marked on the group of three black keys, f-sharp, g-sharp, and a-sharp. The rhythm was a simple quarter note pattern in common time.
My approach to this lesson was very Piagetian. I guided their eyes to the diagram, explaining simply that it told them where to place their hands, and then stepped back, allowing as much time as necessary for them to make the connection between the page and the piano keyboard. I was encouraging students to think for themselves rather than feel the I, the teacher, was the source of all knowledge and they would have to turn to me in each instance of confusion. The result was a class full of students who left that first session not only able to play a first piano piece, but now also able to go on alone at home without their teacher, to teach themselves subsequent pieces in their book by going through the same process they just did in piano class. If I had taken their hands and placed them on the piano, or even worse yet, pushed the correct notes under their fingers for them, it would have seemed to them when I was later absent, there was no longer a teacher and no longer any direction to follow; their work practicing at home would likely cease.
The process of spontaneous development is an exciting and challenging one to explore for both the music teacher and music student. We can probably all relate the feeling of gratification and fulfillment that accompanies breakthroughs in our own development as musicians; times when we have pushed ourselves to new plateaus as performers, teachers, writers, composers or thinkers. Our students achieve this same joy of self-discovery, if only we can let them discover for themselves. Jerome Bruner writes: "How do I know what I am until I feel what I do?"[6]
[1] Crain, William. Theories of Development: Concepts and Applications. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2000. p. 120
[2] Spencer Pulaski, Mary Ann. An Introduction to Children's Cognitive Development. New York: Harper and Row, 1980. "Representation is the process for which an image, a sign, or a symbol comes to represent an external reality. In symbolic play, a child may use acorns to represent nonexistent dishes. Memories are interiorized images, whereas words are verbal signs that represent complexes of socially shared meanings."
[3] Spencer Pulaski, Mary Ann. An Introduction to Children's Cognitive Development. New York: Harper and Row, 1980. p. 13
[4] Spencer Pulaski, p. 231. "Assimilation is the process of taking in from the environment all forms of stimulation and information which are then organized and integrated into the organism's existing forms of structures, thus creating new structures."
[5] Spencer Pulaski, p. 231. "Accommodation is the process of reaching out and adjusting to new and changing conditions in the environment, so that preexisting patterns of behavior are modified to cope with new information or feedback from external situations."
[6] Bruner, Jerome. On Knowing: Essays for the Left Hand. Cambridge: The Belknap Press, 1979. (p. 43).
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
The Use of Writing as a Tool to Teach Music: the Benefits of an Interdisciplinary Curriculum
This work is from 2001, but remains pertainent and so I re-publish it here now
Introduction
As music educators, how often have we come into contact with other members of our school faculties from disciplines other than our own, and felt like alien entities in the same institution? We share many similar philosophies of education with our colleagues, and certainly the same students, but the appreciation we develop for each other’s subject matter is often too limited. This separatist view, which has its roots in many areas of our modern educational system can be detrimental to students who might otherwise benefit from the interdisciplinary collaborations of their teachers. This article is designed to provide some practical classroom applications for the music educator in connection with other work students are doing in their elementary, junior high, senior high school, or even college freshman English or writing classes. Of equal importance I provide some of the learning theories guiding the planning of my interdisciplinary approach to teaching music (and writing) in order to show how I have created my curriculum. My hope is to spark the imagination of music educators and writing instructors to continue this process of creating imaginative work for students. This work could have just as easily been titled "Music as a Tool to Teach Writing" with very little theoretical re-conceptualization.
There are constructs within a successful written text (essay, article, review, etc.) analogous in many ways to a well-crafted music composition. Stepping out of one’s principle discipline, as teacher, and examining some of the fundamental assumptions and practices we hold as we approach our daily teaching and academic activity, whether composing, writing, researching, editing, or practicing, can be an exciting way to grow and develop as scholars. Particularly when the sequence of study in one field may be useful to incorporate into another. For example, if I am teaching a college writing class to read in a way which will help them understand not just what the text means, but how it means; in other words, how it was conceptualized and formulated. Similarly, I can use a music composition to show how one can hear beyond simply what it is expressing, but more deeply understand how it was constructed to express it. The understanding of that "construction," whether of written text or music composition is essential for students to begin forming their own voices as composers or authors.
Theoretical Basis for my Work
Jerome Bruner’s constructivist theory of learning specifies a method of teaching taking into account the past and current knowledge of the student and developing it into new, more complex levels of knowledge through active encounters with the material. The teacher enters into a Socratic "question/answer" mode of engaging the students aimed at triggering their imaginations and curiosity; the student is then moving forward because he or she wants to satisfy answers to questions the teacher has raised. The process of moving forward is conceptualized in a theory of spiral learning. This is the act of visiting certain areas of knowledge, and then re-visiting them at more complex levels after the student has mastered simple tasks. For example, teaching the concept of the major scale and the names of the notes at one point on the spiral, and then later on teaching the major scale and the relationships of the scale degrees to one another; tonic, dominant, subdominant, etc. One of the key ideas here is "engagement." This is important because students don’t think as much when they are being lectured to; at least not most students. Especially when it comes to music and writing, active engagement is essential before learning can happen.
Patricia Campbell in her "Lessons from the World," discusses imitation and its use in music education in the various cultures throughout the world. It is implausible that a beginning piano student could learn to play a complicated piece of repertory simple by witnessing a teacher play, say, a Chopin Mazurka. There would need to be adequate preparation at a much more rudimentary level. A group of pre-school children, on the other hand, are easily able to listen to and imitate their teacher who sings them a simple, diatonic melody with predictable rhythmic and melodic patterns. Activities we, as teachers, expect out students to imitate must be observable. This is particularly important as we use writing in the music classroom. It is essential that we write for our students in ways they can observe and imitate.
Practical Applications for the Music Classroom
Specifically within my own class plan I visit the material at increasingly complex levels, as the student is ready. For example, I might start with mood. I would delineate some of the outward characteristics of a piece via a class examination and discussion using writing as a key element. Then, as the lesson progresses, I begin to discuss some of the features of the construction of the piece such as mode. Making sure that all the students are able to identify the character of a listening example is important. By asking them to write about the music, it is possible to generate a class consensus about whether the piece is joyful, melancholy, dark, or light-hearted. Once this is established, the class is then ready to begin exploring how the composer achieved what is being communicated in the music. Did he use the minor mode? Is there an ostinato bass? What effect do the tempo indications have on the mood we as a class have identified? As a starting point, writing is used as a tool to deepen our understanding of the music.
I have included here a lesson plan for a 3rd to 6th grade music class to exemplify work designed to lead the student to an understanding of the structural components of music, which communicate mood, emotions, and feeling. My objective is to get the students thinking about how the composition may have been planned by the composer to communicate "things" or "messages" to the listener in ways related solely to the language of the music itself, apart from sung vocal or choral texts. I engage the students in this process through writing. Collaboration with the school English teacher to plan a larger writing composition assignment will assist the students to deepen their understanding of the next step after this lesson which is to approach the material from a music theory perspective. Many of the activities typically used in a writing workshop are very helpful in the music classroom. Such workshopping activities include dividing the students into small groups to read their writing for each other, presenting their writing to the larger group for critique or exchanging papers with a partner for input and reactions. Here is how the class activity is designed:
I. Introduce the Work of the Day.
Be brief with the introduction, but be clear. Talk about the kinds of class work we will be doing- listening, writing, speaking, and sharing ideas. Be sure to tell the students when they will be expected to share their writing, and when it is private writing not to be shared. Remember that establishing a sense of community and trust is very important before students will feel free enough to write in ways which are expressive of feelings which can make them vulnerable before their peers.
II. Establish a Prompt
Use a prompt to begin to formulate a class vocabulary for talking about music. This will require some careful guidance; hold the students accountable for their words, making clear that if they use "boring" they will have to explain why. A beginning prompt might be: "what words can you think of to use to talk about music?" You might ask them to call to mind a recent experience in which they heard a piece of music, which caused them to feel a certain way. Put all of these terms on the board or overhead projector.
III. Listening
Play Mozart’s Piano Sonata in A Minor or any Mozart piano sonata you wish. Listen without writing, but ask them to think of the vocabulary established by the class as the music plays.
IV. Writing
Now listen again while writing. Ask the students to write at least three sentences about the piece using both the vocabulary established on the board as well as their own personal language. Begin to encourage answers with supporting evidence. Writings making unsupported statements should be discouraged.
V. Sharing
Ask the student to share the thoughts they have written with the class. This is a time when you can divide the class into small groups of three or four and ask them to read their sentences for each other. Grouping the students according to creativity and ability can lead to a more fruitful discussion within each group. After ten minutes, ask them to return to the large group and share their work publicly. Here are some examples of the work my third grade class came up with:
"When I listened to the Mozart it made me feel happy. It made me want to dance. It was very beautiful. It was a song that made me want to listen to it again. It gave me many emotions. I think Mozart did a good job."
"The song went from happy in the beginning to sad, and then to happy again. When it was happy the music sounded like drops of rain. When it was sad, it was very graceful."
"The song was very soothing and I felt like I was waiting for the Italian ice man."
It is important to look carefully at the work the students produce to see what it may tell you about your teaching and their learning. If the student is not understanding the work of the class, back up and repeat the section of the activity .
This work is an introduction to a series of lessons beginning an in-depth look at the components of Mozart’s Sonata from the perspective of music theory. It is just a beginning. The next steps in the following classes can lead to activities both in music analysis and in expository writing, both lead individually by the music teacher and writing teacher, but planned collaboratively to draw connective elements from both disciplines.
WORKS CITED
Bruner, Jerome S. Toward a Theory of Instruction. London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1966.
Campbell, Patricia Shehan. Lessons from the World: A Cross-Cultural Guide to Music Teaching and Learning. New York: Schirmer Books, 1991.
Introduction
As music educators, how often have we come into contact with other members of our school faculties from disciplines other than our own, and felt like alien entities in the same institution? We share many similar philosophies of education with our colleagues, and certainly the same students, but the appreciation we develop for each other’s subject matter is often too limited. This separatist view, which has its roots in many areas of our modern educational system can be detrimental to students who might otherwise benefit from the interdisciplinary collaborations of their teachers. This article is designed to provide some practical classroom applications for the music educator in connection with other work students are doing in their elementary, junior high, senior high school, or even college freshman English or writing classes. Of equal importance I provide some of the learning theories guiding the planning of my interdisciplinary approach to teaching music (and writing) in order to show how I have created my curriculum. My hope is to spark the imagination of music educators and writing instructors to continue this process of creating imaginative work for students. This work could have just as easily been titled "Music as a Tool to Teach Writing" with very little theoretical re-conceptualization.
There are constructs within a successful written text (essay, article, review, etc.) analogous in many ways to a well-crafted music composition. Stepping out of one’s principle discipline, as teacher, and examining some of the fundamental assumptions and practices we hold as we approach our daily teaching and academic activity, whether composing, writing, researching, editing, or practicing, can be an exciting way to grow and develop as scholars. Particularly when the sequence of study in one field may be useful to incorporate into another. For example, if I am teaching a college writing class to read in a way which will help them understand not just what the text means, but how it means; in other words, how it was conceptualized and formulated. Similarly, I can use a music composition to show how one can hear beyond simply what it is expressing, but more deeply understand how it was constructed to express it. The understanding of that "construction," whether of written text or music composition is essential for students to begin forming their own voices as composers or authors.
Theoretical Basis for my Work
Jerome Bruner’s constructivist theory of learning specifies a method of teaching taking into account the past and current knowledge of the student and developing it into new, more complex levels of knowledge through active encounters with the material. The teacher enters into a Socratic "question/answer" mode of engaging the students aimed at triggering their imaginations and curiosity; the student is then moving forward because he or she wants to satisfy answers to questions the teacher has raised. The process of moving forward is conceptualized in a theory of spiral learning. This is the act of visiting certain areas of knowledge, and then re-visiting them at more complex levels after the student has mastered simple tasks. For example, teaching the concept of the major scale and the names of the notes at one point on the spiral, and then later on teaching the major scale and the relationships of the scale degrees to one another; tonic, dominant, subdominant, etc. One of the key ideas here is "engagement." This is important because students don’t think as much when they are being lectured to; at least not most students. Especially when it comes to music and writing, active engagement is essential before learning can happen.
Patricia Campbell in her "Lessons from the World," discusses imitation and its use in music education in the various cultures throughout the world. It is implausible that a beginning piano student could learn to play a complicated piece of repertory simple by witnessing a teacher play, say, a Chopin Mazurka. There would need to be adequate preparation at a much more rudimentary level. A group of pre-school children, on the other hand, are easily able to listen to and imitate their teacher who sings them a simple, diatonic melody with predictable rhythmic and melodic patterns. Activities we, as teachers, expect out students to imitate must be observable. This is particularly important as we use writing in the music classroom. It is essential that we write for our students in ways they can observe and imitate.
Practical Applications for the Music Classroom
Specifically within my own class plan I visit the material at increasingly complex levels, as the student is ready. For example, I might start with mood. I would delineate some of the outward characteristics of a piece via a class examination and discussion using writing as a key element. Then, as the lesson progresses, I begin to discuss some of the features of the construction of the piece such as mode. Making sure that all the students are able to identify the character of a listening example is important. By asking them to write about the music, it is possible to generate a class consensus about whether the piece is joyful, melancholy, dark, or light-hearted. Once this is established, the class is then ready to begin exploring how the composer achieved what is being communicated in the music. Did he use the minor mode? Is there an ostinato bass? What effect do the tempo indications have on the mood we as a class have identified? As a starting point, writing is used as a tool to deepen our understanding of the music.
I have included here a lesson plan for a 3rd to 6th grade music class to exemplify work designed to lead the student to an understanding of the structural components of music, which communicate mood, emotions, and feeling. My objective is to get the students thinking about how the composition may have been planned by the composer to communicate "things" or "messages" to the listener in ways related solely to the language of the music itself, apart from sung vocal or choral texts. I engage the students in this process through writing. Collaboration with the school English teacher to plan a larger writing composition assignment will assist the students to deepen their understanding of the next step after this lesson which is to approach the material from a music theory perspective. Many of the activities typically used in a writing workshop are very helpful in the music classroom. Such workshopping activities include dividing the students into small groups to read their writing for each other, presenting their writing to the larger group for critique or exchanging papers with a partner for input and reactions. Here is how the class activity is designed:
I. Introduce the Work of the Day.
Be brief with the introduction, but be clear. Talk about the kinds of class work we will be doing- listening, writing, speaking, and sharing ideas. Be sure to tell the students when they will be expected to share their writing, and when it is private writing not to be shared. Remember that establishing a sense of community and trust is very important before students will feel free enough to write in ways which are expressive of feelings which can make them vulnerable before their peers.
II. Establish a Prompt
Use a prompt to begin to formulate a class vocabulary for talking about music. This will require some careful guidance; hold the students accountable for their words, making clear that if they use "boring" they will have to explain why. A beginning prompt might be: "what words can you think of to use to talk about music?" You might ask them to call to mind a recent experience in which they heard a piece of music, which caused them to feel a certain way. Put all of these terms on the board or overhead projector.
III. Listening
Play Mozart’s Piano Sonata in A Minor or any Mozart piano sonata you wish. Listen without writing, but ask them to think of the vocabulary established by the class as the music plays.
IV. Writing
Now listen again while writing. Ask the students to write at least three sentences about the piece using both the vocabulary established on the board as well as their own personal language. Begin to encourage answers with supporting evidence. Writings making unsupported statements should be discouraged.
V. Sharing
Ask the student to share the thoughts they have written with the class. This is a time when you can divide the class into small groups of three or four and ask them to read their sentences for each other. Grouping the students according to creativity and ability can lead to a more fruitful discussion within each group. After ten minutes, ask them to return to the large group and share their work publicly. Here are some examples of the work my third grade class came up with:
"When I listened to the Mozart it made me feel happy. It made me want to dance. It was very beautiful. It was a song that made me want to listen to it again. It gave me many emotions. I think Mozart did a good job."
"The song went from happy in the beginning to sad, and then to happy again. When it was happy the music sounded like drops of rain. When it was sad, it was very graceful."
"The song was very soothing and I felt like I was waiting for the Italian ice man."
It is important to look carefully at the work the students produce to see what it may tell you about your teaching and their learning. If the student is not understanding the work of the class, back up and repeat the section of the activity .
This work is an introduction to a series of lessons beginning an in-depth look at the components of Mozart’s Sonata from the perspective of music theory. It is just a beginning. The next steps in the following classes can lead to activities both in music analysis and in expository writing, both lead individually by the music teacher and writing teacher, but planned collaboratively to draw connective elements from both disciplines.
WORKS CITED
Bruner, Jerome S. Toward a Theory of Instruction. London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1966.
Campbell, Patricia Shehan. Lessons from the World: A Cross-Cultural Guide to Music Teaching and Learning. New York: Schirmer Books, 1991.
Monday, September 10, 2007
Technology in Music Education: Games to Teach Music
This is another idea I have for a full-fledged article
Many current computer applications designed to teach music integrate games for students to learn various aspects of music. Many non-computer learning materials do the same. This article investigates the historical development of games in music teaching in order to gain insights into the objectives of current game usage within computer technology in music education. Moreover, this research seeks to explore the underlying principles and theories of learning development informing the conception and design of games used historically and currently.
Many current computer applications designed to teach music integrate games for students to learn various aspects of music. Many non-computer learning materials do the same. This article investigates the historical development of games in music teaching in order to gain insights into the objectives of current game usage within computer technology in music education. Moreover, this research seeks to explore the underlying principles and theories of learning development informing the conception and design of games used historically and currently.
Performance as a Teaching Paradigm in a Constructivist Learning Environment
This is the beginning of a new research project I am considering:
Introduction to Research Questions
Since the rise of the virtuoso performer in the time of Franz Liszt and Paganini, performance has been viewed as an integral part of music education. Even before, in ancient antiquity and later, the fiefdoms in the Carolingian age of medieval Europe, implicit in the making of music has been a central individual or group creating sound and, in many cases, movement, for the benefit of curious onlookers. When considering the ontological concept of music, is performance an inherent part of its make-up? Said another way, does music exist apart from its performance? From a constructivist music educator perspective, these questions can be examined in view of a praxial approach to music education when contrasted with and aesthetic perspective.
Introduction to Research Questions
Since the rise of the virtuoso performer in the time of Franz Liszt and Paganini, performance has been viewed as an integral part of music education. Even before, in ancient antiquity and later, the fiefdoms in the Carolingian age of medieval Europe, implicit in the making of music has been a central individual or group creating sound and, in many cases, movement, for the benefit of curious onlookers. When considering the ontological concept of music, is performance an inherent part of its make-up? Said another way, does music exist apart from its performance? From a constructivist music educator perspective, these questions can be examined in view of a praxial approach to music education when contrasted with and aesthetic perspective.
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