Thanks for this helpful blog Keith. I enjoyed reading it. I've noticed a lack of reflective criticality in the work of students generally (PGCE or not) so think you have raised an important issue here for us to consider.

Keith, you raise questions that are surely in the minds of all educators of music teachers at this time. Standards mean standardisation. Meeting standards means recognition of competence, nothing more than that and now all swans are white and when a black one appears it is mis-recognised. Alas, not even seen as a swan!

And the hand me down templates, strategies, curricula and do it like this to be 'very good' aren't going away.

So, how do we nurture critical thinking when critical thinking has never been the hallmark of the music education fratenity and probably not of the teaching profession in general?

But what is critical thinking?

First, it is thinking that is uncomfortable, not immediately attractive and through which I am challenged to put aside instrumental gain, status or the wish to please somebody else.

Second, it requires being a little disobedient, even cynical and certainly with the capcity to think with irony.

And this means that crtical thinking without feeling makes no sense.

I know a music teacher like this. She is continually being harrassed by her headteacher to conform. Of course, she has learnt how to do this on demand and to act inauthentically when needed. Integrity is preserved with the help of a little cynicism and ironic performance skill. Her really interesting music lessons don't conform to much in the national curriculum and she thinks the national curriculum aims are facile and just silly catch-alls. Instead she listens to her 'humanisitc conscience' and trusts in her trusting relationships with her students. This is what I think Erich Fromm meant by facing up to the freedom to be. Not at all easy! Fromm's 1941 'Fear of Freedom' has much to teach still.

If none of this helps what about David Steven's just published paper in the Journal of Education and Teaching: A Freirean critique ot the competence model of teacher education, focusing on the standards for qualified teacher status in England.

David, a PGCE lecturer in English, offers ways in which transformations can take place for trainee teachers despite the overwhelming tendency to play safe and please the curriculum that is in place in placement schools. Don't underestimate the power of the PGCE lecturer but this will depend on the questions asked of the trainee.

Critical thinking develops through being confronted by difficult and uncomfortable questions and these usually begin with 'why?'
followed by more 'whys?' and probably some 'but whys?

Critical thinking develops by having placed before us something that makes us think and feel. So we had better read the recent work of Lamont and Maton, Henry Giroux and those irritatingly suspicious minds of Marx and Nietsche.

But why is ITE so compliant?

And what could 'critical thinking mean within the National Curriculum for music?

If it is concerned with developing analytical musical thinking and feeling, this is encouraging. But might it go further and lead to questioning existential realities that impact on the way young people experience being in the world? This of course would require very skilled music teachers, a near impossible ideal perhaps. However, they are out there and we should seek them out and learn from them.

Thanks Keith, and John, this made me think about one phrase in particular, "a lack of clarity on a personal vision for music education". This has exercised me a lot. On our PGCE course, like many others, the trainees have to write a rationale for music teaching. The problem is that the collected wisdom of the music education field takes time to get acquainted with. In promoting critical reflection we need to get the trainees up to speed very quickly with some complex materials. Like Lave & Wenger's notion of communities of practice, they need inducting. But the PGCE is so short and full that this can be problematic.

For me this is compounded by the problem that I do not think it is clear what KS3 learning should entail. This means that a lot of night-fishing is going on. Teachers are reeling in juicy Haddock of the Blues, and Cod pieces (sorry!) of pop and rock. But this trawl is literally that, a trawl through music. The issue of what is to be learned, and (in italics...) why is not addressed. This for me is an interesting question.

Maybe its time for a Pilchard...

Music graduates come to their one year PGCE course having been variously taught how to critique through reading and writing, and many very minimally so. Very few have experienced a way of thinking and reflecting that is central to the social sciences, for it is the social science paradigm that they are expected to master if they are to engage with what is believed to be powerfully explanatory thinking within the philosophy, psychology, sociology and history of music education and more generally education and the social sciences. Communities of Practice; audiation theory; knower codes; multiple musical identities; music knowledge and understanding as embodied; group compositional processes etc., are immensely powerful theoretical constructs set out in writings that require reading and assimilation and that with understanding explain so much, pull us up by our bootstraps and come to stare us in the face when visiting a classroom. Our feedback and discussion with our students will be mediated by such understanding. There can be only weak critical reflection without seeing more clearly through thinking, talking and writing. Martin points out 'The problem is that the collected wisdom of the music education field takes time to get acquainted with.' ...and 'the PGCE is so short and full that this can be problematic.'

So what is to be done?

Leaving aside notions such as a five year course in the pegagogy of music education, it seems to me that trainees must answer Martin's questions through their reading, writing, talking, thinking, observing and teaching.

Why is music in the school? And this must be answered in a way that advocacy for music as a good thing is avoided. This is cheap and too easy. Instead a little tough focused reading is needed so that reasoned argument is made.

What sould Key Stage 3 learning entail? This requires thinking through what it might mean to know music and in my view, and here is a personal conviction underpinning the course I teach; music must first be known in the bones, the whole body must know it, intuit it, think and feel it. (Thinking music must never be separated from feeling it. ) This implies that Key Stage 3 will be a matter of musical immersion in whole class workshop teaching with the class making music more together than apart. Today, I have had the priveledge of visiting a music department where Year 9 love their music lessons. Quite simply they operate as a class musical ensemble developing strong musical identity as Samba Band, Steel Band, Funk Band or whatever. Inidividuality in community makes good sense to the adolescent. Listening to their Samba this moring I heard a mature, relaxed ensemble in the groove, feeling the spaces between the notes, each pupil in control and moving the music with fluency and expression. Thus here was sufficient evidence of progression through Key Stage 3 and achieved without any recourse to NC Levels. Wow! And I don't think APP will help this teacher. But what should Key Stage 3 learning entail? Anything that enables the qualities referred to above to be felt and known by all pupils. This is their simple uncomplicated entitlement. No matter how hard I try I can not find in the NC level descriptors what I, the teacher and her students valued this morning.

Of course, not necessarily Samba and Senegalise Drumming all the time, although the year 9 class had Sambaed in Year 8 and Year 9, and Steel Panned in Year 7, 8 and 9. In consequence they were good at it.

The Liberal-democrats promised a slimmed down curriculum and Michael Gove promised 'the best that had been thought and said'. So Year 7 composing a Wagnerian overture all together would be good for Michael, perhaps. Although we would need to explain to him that the way Wagner is mediated might be an important matter to consider.

What is to be learned and why?

Well: students and teachers at Key Stage 3 need to learn what it feels like to feel musical and what it is like to become less ignorant in the process. And ignorance will melt away only if students are made to think and this requires a thinking teacher. Alas, Youtube and NUMU are poorly qualified teachers.

We need to start fishing in the right ocean.

Don’t think I understand John’s next to last sentence. Surely no one thinks of Youtube or NUMU as substitute teachers? (although admittedly Youtube does have some online tutorials).

Are they not better described as resources or tools that thinking teachers may wish to use in teaching and learning?

Good.

Now, what is a 'thinking teacher?' So, back to:

One who critically reflects. This is where Keith started and the proposal that 'There can be only weak critical reflection without seeing more clearly through thinking, talking and writing' and of course, reading. But what shall we read? Well, something that is tough, difficult. Something that causes disequilibrium, disquiet, disorientation. Something that causes the reader to have to reoranise the furniture in their mind. For this to happen we have to find wiser and better teachers who can ask us questions that make us think a bit harder than yesterday. If we can find them in conversation over earlry morning coffee as I do then we are very fortunate. So, how to make more thinking music teachers? Key to this in my view is learning how to research your own practice. There is a lot that is called research that isn't. Research arises from discerning a problem, acknowledging the wisdom of others, posing questions and so on. (Have you noticed the strategy used by demagogues wanting their own way, who gain authorty by first stating, 'nothing is known about this'...'no research evidence exists on this'...)

So unless music teachers, teacher eduactors etc. can perceive aspects of their work as problematic and that need some systematic form of enquiry, not much progress will be made, just a bunch of enthusiasts imagining that they are innovative! The best question to ask another in the process of developing critical thinking is 'so what do you mean by....?' For example, 'thinking teachers'.

Like everyone else subscribing to this blog I have been thinking a lot about how my students can become creative, adaptable teachers with significant capacity for critical thinking and learning from reflection. Like John, I keep telling them that it involves some pain and discomfort. Many students, if only time was adequate, would rise to this challenge, I am sure.

What troubles me more in all this is the outlook of some of the experienced practitioners that our students encounter in schools. It seems to me that they often consider themselves to endure enough pain in the form of centralised expectations, demands for (often meaningless) assessment data etc and have little appetite left for reflection and research into their own practice.

Somehow we need to challenge our subject mentors alongside our students. I am not sure how many of them will welcome the debate at present!

Ok. How to involve subject mentors in critical thought about the teaching of music?

Assuming that trainees are expected to engage in some kind of in depth study that goes beyond creating teaching resources and assuming that they engage in an investigation where they must research their own practice, the mentor can be invited to carry this out jointly with the trainee or at least act as a co-researcher by observing the trainee's teaching not in respect to a pre-ordained check list based upin the standards, but based upon the focus of the trainee's study.

For example:

Katy is investigation 'Samba as a model of engagement in the cause of developing positive musical identity in the school.'

Apart from the mentor video recording some of her teaching sessions, and Katy making use of a standard 'flow' questionnaire and Katy's own participant observations, Katy invites her mentor to act as a non-participant observer to note changes in particular student's levels of engagement as a new groove is added to the class Samba Band. The mentor's observations form useful data to be drawn upon. The mentor is asked to read and comment on Katy's final draft of the assignment.

Likewise Ben gets focused observational feedback from his mentor on how a group of year 9 students respond to his whole class teaching. The move from the whole class to small group is the issue under investigation.

So, two examples of mentor involvement in trainees' excursions into thinking critically.

Mentor and trainee present how they supported each other in their action research to all mentors.

Thus, a little step made.

Thanks for that, John, it has prompted some ways forward.

Some of my students' mentors do, it should be said, engage with the research assignment. It amazes me that some do not, for how often will they have the opportunity to collaborate with someone who is investigating an aspect of their work from which they can gain further insight and ideas for future development?

On the agenda now with my mentors is their understanding of and interaction with the whole of the PGCE programme, in an effort to move forward with those who see themselves as little more than placement supervisors. At our subject conference later this month we will be working on a mentor "job description". Here is a timely opportunity to promote the kind of collaboration you describe, as a standard (not the best word!) part of their role.

All this begs a further question, about why so many school music teachers become disinterested or downright cynical towards research.

Yes - why ARE so many school music teachers uninterested or downright cynical towards research?

... because it is usually expressed in obtuse and difficult language?

... because it appears in expensive journals that they can't access?

... because research is usually self-referential so, to understand any one study, you have to understand lots of others?

... because it tends to deal with matters that don't appear to touch them?

or because they've had bad experiences with research on their ITE courses?

... or perhaps all of the above?

I've been at Southampton for 6 years now and, this year, a third of my mentors have graduated from the PGCE Southampton course. I'm not sure how many of them would describe themselves as cynical about research but I do know who to blame, if they are.

So the message is, hang on in there, Jon. (I'm assuming your'e not cynical about research, right?)

Your current trainees are the mentors of the future.

Ok.

So what we need to do is to promote practitioner research-teacher research, music teachers researching their own practice. This is likely to be action research/exploratory case study.

We need to encourage teachers who are researching through higher degrees and trainee teachers who are researching as part of their PGCE, to write up their 'stories'.

Is there an outlet for such at present. Well, in music education we don't appear to have anything like some other subjects e.g. History Today, the NATE magazine. NAME magazine is rather more eclectic tahn these, but it s an outlet of sorts. Then there is Teaching Music website, might this have a corner?

The forthcoming NAME book published as part of the September conference will have a numer of teacher-researcher contributions. These might serve as useful models.

Teacher research is a distinct genre of research and quite unlike the kind that Tim is refering to. In order to promote it we need to support trainee teachers and teachers in writing up what it is that is changing their perspectives on music teaching and that other music teachers can relate to.

But it does need to be research and meet the criteria that are expected of a systematic investigation. Stories alone are not enough.

Once a trainee music teacher or a music teacher has published and shared their world of wisdom, whether through a masters course or not, they will be ready as a mentor to encourage future trainee teachers in better understanding teacher research as a distinct genre and one that is an agent of change.

We are on the case Jon.

On Teaching Music, Pam Burnard and Liz Mellor are at present uploading a series of resource/discussion areas designed to support and signpost teachers wanting to access the research literature on ICT in music education.

Tim is absolutely right - much of the research literature is too expensive, not easily accessed and far too full of academic jargon for classroom teachers to want to bother.

That is why the content on this site is so useful. Writers like John F, Ian S and Martin F write with refreshing clarity and in depth about important issues (and they are not scared to make judicious and effective use of humour!) On Teachingmusic, we constantly look for ways to cross refer
to relevant material from this site to ours.

We are also exploring ways of making the connections even stronger between these communities. More news to follow later this summer.....

Impressively swift response, David!

I look forward to the developments you describe and to making a contribution. I hope my students will get to hear some of this first hand from you again in the coming academic year.

Apologies, colleagues, for going into online chat mode here. Let us now return to the debate...........

But much research is now easily accessible. Scholarly writing is available free on the web. Some scholarly wring is esoteric and perhaps sometimes the forging of new and powerful thought needs to go through this rather private and excluding process. Not necessarily. After all, Origin of Species is an accessible and beautiful book to read.

One person's jargon may be another's transforming concept. But a transformational concept may be difficult and require effort to master. I think that Lamont and Maton's theory of 'knower codes' is a good example. 'Knower codes', jargon or transformational concept? Well read the paper and see. I don't know of a better explanation for the low take up at GCSE in music. The power of theory is that it coalesces all those losely formed ideas, questions and assumptions that we walk around with into generalisable form. It gives us a grip on a problem. We can fly above the forest in which so many can get lost. But it is not necessarily easy and a task for any researcher is to translate it into common sense, give lots of examples, lots of cases: ah now I see, that makes good sense. The esoteric becomes exoteric.

Then there is pseudo theory. There is a lot about at the moment.

Sorry John, I don’t buy this one.

OK. So I’m a busy music teacher who happens to stumble on this discussion entry. Yes Lamont and Maton's theory of 'knower codes' does sound interesting!

I want to know more. A bit of googling does indeed lead me to the article in question. There it is in vol. 25 of BJME! So I go on to the BJME website – and manage to winkle out a reference to the article. And yes this article can be mine!

If I shell out £20.00.

This is just for the one article mind you – so how much does the frigging magazine cost! I could buy a few 12 packs of Carling for this amount and park myself in front of the football for the next fortnight….. and dream about the day when I too might have access to an Athens login.

Actually, I do accept that some good stuff is now starting to appear for free on the web. But it still needs you guys to show us where to find it.....

It is in the library not very far away. Or write to L and M and they will surely supply.

But, Lamont and Maton is an example of thought that will almost certainly need translating, discussing, arguing about for its significance to be teased out. There is a challenge for us! If we don't do this, if trainee teachers, teachers, masters teachers don't get involved in this then those who make policy and who seem to draw upon half digested theories will be handing down to teachers weakly conceived directives.

Lamont and Maton may not be the research to get excited about, although I did think that there was interest and concern about numbers continuing with music post 14. Understanding 'code shifts' could usefully inform examination boards as well as all transition problems.

For potentially powerful expanations of problems I think that very often fairly complex theory is required. The problem is then, and I acknowledge that it is a serious challenge that researchers have failed to address, these powerful explantions need mediating for a wider community and in doing this it is very easy for the ideas to be as Martin might say, 'lost in translation'.

So, is the challenge worth taking up?

Well, is the teaching profession and the music teaching profession to be a research informed profession? I have just received in the post a document titled 'Professionalism and pedagogy' - a commentary by the Teaching and Research Porgramme (TLRP). We are told that one of the things that pedagogy is is:the science of teaching - research-informed decision making. Research-informed. So perhaps here is a place to start. How can we create a research-informed body of music teachers? So, how are we going to make this happen? The QCDA didn't do this. Ofsted doesn''t do this. This website doesn't do this! Or does it? Any ideas? Ah! NAME books seem to be a helpful gobetween researcher and teacher-teacher and researcher.

But before I tackle this, just a little more nitpicking.

As John says, the library is not far away. Five miles to be exact, but anything more intellectual than Bill Bryson – forget it. So I assume we are talking about university libraries. Well that’s an 80 mile round trip. When I get there, there is no visitor parking. I don’t have a swipe card which will let me into the building let alone getting near a book. Contact L & M? Well for academics that’s easy – probably two mouse clicks away. But a teacher in a school would not know where to begin in accessing their contact details – and I would suspect feel highly diffident about approaching them. The ivory towers still exist. Some of them may have windows, but not many have doors.

But I accept, I am nitpicking! Because I have nothing against ivory towers. In fact, I think they can be a good idea. Rarefied spaces are needed when we need to explore and share heavy duty thinking and ideas. John is right. We sometimes need to use big, long words when discussing big, long concepts. So that even if Joe Musicteacher from Bogstandard Comprehensive did manage to access these primary texts, s/he might understandably give up after the third ‘metacognitive’.

So let’s explore this idea of making the move from esoteric to exoteric. There are several possible solutions. One is to leave the building – armed with a few good jokes and some key concepts and hit the lecture trail. What will come to be known as ‘doing a Robinson’ – drastic but effective. Another option is to ‘translate’ these ideas into teacherspeak and make these writings accessible - publish though mainstream booksellers at realistic prices. John Paynters ‘Thinking & Making’ and, more recently, Martin Fautley’s ‘Assessment in Music Education’ spring to mind. Both draw extensively on some heavy duty research and present it for teachers in ways that are appealing, understandable and useable.

Because when this transition is made, good things happen in schools. Probably the most famous example is Green’s ‘How Popular musicians Learn’ – a book that looked set from the outset to stay firmly in the ivory towers. At £75 a throw - and having to get to grips with delineated meaning and inherent meaning - not what you want after a tough day with the year 9s.

As we all know, these writings became exoteric when music educators in Hertfordshire decided to build an action research project around these ideas and David Price et al make the materials accessible and workable for teachers. And so Musical Futures was born.

However, perhaps this is more accurately described as ‘A Possible Musical Future’ because it is based, to a large extent, on one set of ideas. There are lots of other ideas out there that could be usefully developed. As John says, there is a lot of research out there. Transition, student voice – the list is extensive.

John mentions one solution and hints at another. Some of the articles in the NAME books and magazine do indeed help make the esoteric exoteric. But I think we can do more than this.

Many of the articles and resources on this site are ripe for the picking in terms of developing and making accessible to teachers in schools. On www.teachingmusic.org.uk we have a Research Channel which, I have to admit, is not being used effectively at the moment. It functions in a sense as a broom cupboard where we put things that do not fit elsewhere. If we were to clear this out and use it properly, we could make strategic connections with contents on this site. The work we are doing with Pam Burnard and Liz Mellor is our attempt to start exploring this area. Should we do more?

And finally, a call to arms. Things like this can only happen if we manage to keep this SRN website going. As you may be aware, the funding runs out very soon and there seems to be no chance of any more top down funding to keep it going. Perhaps what is needed is a subscription. If the participating institutions were willing to fork out an annual subscription as they do for BJME etc then perhaps…..?

Yes, researchers have a duty to communicate with teachers whether they are themsleves teachers in school or in the 'ivory tower'. And big powerful explanatory ideas need translation. I gave the example of 'knower codes'. David gives the example of 'delineated' and 'inherent' meanings. What an explaining idea this is. Wow! It can be played with endlessly to test out all sorts of hunches. Lucy Green explains it very lucidly in a number of her publications. However, it will still need lots of thinking and talking about for it to be grasped and I suppose a response from an interested teacher might be something like: so does this mean that if I start my lesson by....? But this kind of question needs provoking and a questing inquisitive asker.

I have found that big ideas that explain can perhaps help most at some general level.

When I first began to understand Piaget I realised that until then I had had no idea about children's development. Now, the fact that Piaget was wrong in many respects is neither here nor there in terms of helping me as a teacher and parent to appreciate a number of things that explain why my children when aged 16, 11 and 8 couldn't communicate their thinking to eachother at the meal table, or why the bottom year 10 set doing non-exam music had such mangled conceptions of everything having been given a schooling ignorant of a little Piagetian wisdom.

David's idea of research translations for the Teaching Music website is an excellent idea. It might be called 'how big ideas become common sense'. Of course, common sense is uncommon! That's the problem to overcome.

Why is there such a dearth of vivid descriptions of music lessons? There is a challenge for reserachers/teachers. Describe a music lesson, not in Ofsted style, but with depth and in such a way that a big idea is revealed in practice.

Final word: I think we should stop portraying music teachers as frazzled, no time to think doers. There are many thinking profoundly about what they do, test ing out hypotheses and researching their own practice. We should recognise them as increasingly the norm. Why shouldn't we expect a music teacher to be scholarly and join a university library?

It strikes me that we have reached a point where someone needs to conduct some research that gathers and explores music teachers' views on the issues around research. Well informed, interested parties though we all are, none of us are any longer in the position of the teachers we are presently discussing.

I might hypothesize that herein we would find many working solutions to the problems and barriers we have discussed.

It might also bring us back round to some of the original issues that Chris raised to start with, particularly the time spent (much of it wasted) on dreaming up assessment criteria and so forth that eat in to any potential time and energy for exploring research, finding research that relates to and illuminates areas that need developing in one's own teaching etc

David's idea is a good one. We would all need to support this and, crucially, encourage the right classroom practitioners to contribute. That would help promote the idea that these teachers are "the norm", as John suggests.

Ok, I am replying to myself now.

Simply wanted to share something that came up at our subject conference today. Two of our subject mentors were discussing the access to journals issue at lunchtime. This led to discussion with me about ways we could work on this, joint research ideas and the idea of the PGCE programme at the university as a research hub, involving students and mentors.

Lots to consider to make this happen, I realise, but what I like about this development is that the drive for this came from mentors, not me.

The discussions of this matter on this forum have undoubtedly played a part in this development.

Picking up on John's remark,

"So what we need to do is to promote practitioner research-teacher research, music teachers researching their own practice."

I have a website which contains some reports of action research in music education at:

www.practitionerresearchinmusiceducation.org

It's a bit underpopulated because I don't have time to maintain it but you might find it useful.

I'd be glad to receive feedback (not too negative, please!)

This looks interesting, Tim. We have something of this nature in mind. Are you looking for contributors and if so, what are the "quality control" arrangements? I can think of plenty of PGCE students who would like a wider audience and it would encourage pratitioners too. If other colleagues are thinking the same this could turn into a huge resource, or is that just me exhibiting my ITE naivety?

It might put trainee and future teachers in contact with each other too, in a different way to teachingmusic.org.uk. Then again, David is working on this too, as he has previously stated on this forum. Can all these things work together?

Thank you for bringing your website to our attention.

I'd be happy to consider posting research from student teachers on the site, and even more delighted to consider teachers' research. I am responsible for the quality control so ultimately I decide what gets posted.

I don't see the site getting huge because, as I said, I don't have the time to maintain it, and I don't have the knowledge or ability to do this quickly.

Nice site Tim.