Creative Thinking in Music, Twenty-Five Years On

Abstract

Since the publication of the May 1990 Music Educators Journal Special Focus Issue on Creativity, the profession finds itself in a new and more challenging time. Our field is changing before our eyes as new ideas about the music we teach, the people who are taught, and the way music as art is delivered and consumed affect our pedagogy. In all of this, the dispositions behind the work written in 1990 remain fresh even today. This article revisits the content of the 1990 issue with an eye toward the writings from research and practice that have been done since then and that have extended and refined our understanding of this topic, particularly as it relates to composition in the schools. The conceptual frames of sociocultural approaches, constructivism, and model building are stressed, as are several new dimensions of curriculum that feature teaching practice and the study of product and process with new thinking about assessment and technology. The article asks us to consider changes in teacher education at the college level as well as in our pedagogies for K–12.

Music Cognition and Affect in the Design of Technology-Enhanced Music Lessons

“…Despite the fact that composition has been long established as a core curricular activity, understanding creativity in student compositions continues to be a complicated matter (Burnard and Younker, 2002;Webster, 2016). Teachers consider composition as the most problematic and admit difficulties or lack of knowledge in planning and implementing creative activities that can promote music learning and creative thinking in the classroom (Dogani, 2004;Saetre, 2011;Coulson and Burke, 2013;Bauer, 2014).…”

A Postdigital Future for Music Education: Definitions, Implications, and Questions

“…Bauer 2014, Haning 2016, Rudolph 2004, Watson 2011, Webster 2011, Williams and Webster 2006. Much of the technology-based research in music education focuses on digital tools and their application (Albert 2015, Bolden 2013, Nart 2016, Reyher 2014, Riley 2013, Williams 2014, teacher training (Haning 2016, Nart 2016, and potential impacts on learning (Portowitz, Peppler, and Downton 2014;Webster 2016). These papers have contributed positively to thoughtful implementation of digital technologies in the music classroom.…”

“…Digital technology in American music education has resulted in a multitude of curricular, if not pedagogical, changes in the areas of creativity through improvisation, arranging, and composition (Abrahams 2015, Bolden 2013, Hoffman and Carter 2013, Tobias 2013, Webster 2016, experiences with diverse instruments (Williams 2014), notational writing and reading (Hansen andMilligan 2012, Riley 2013), and an impact on issues of accessibility (Nelson 2013, Rush 2015. Digital technology use has propelled these areas into new territory in terms of ease of process.…”

Incorporating popular music and dance: A student-centred approach to middle school chorus

“…Within this paradigm, enculturation is considered a fundamental factor common to all aspects of music transmission (Green 2008;Rogoff 2003). Both sociocultural and constructionist approaches share a common thread in that they celebrate forms of collaborative, student-centred learning (Webster 2016). Collaborative learning has opened up new methodologies where learners engage actively in a group process (Dragonas et al 2017).…”