From singular to over-crowded region: Curriculum change in senior secondary school music in New Zealand

This article examines curriculum and practice in Australian secondary classroom music education, in order to trace the inclusion of, and provision for, students with learning orientations based on popular music forms. A 60-year period of curriculum reform, matriculation statistics and literature is surveyed with a focus on the state of New South Wales (NSW), where the ‘non-literate’ student musician was first acknowledged in curriculum documents dating from the late 1970s at the senior secondary level (Music Syllabus Year 11 and 12: New 2 Unit A Course. Draft Document). Three overlapping eras frame discussion. The first discusses the original post–World War II school curriculum established for Western art music (WAM); the second discusses the period of curriculum reform beginning in the 1960s and 1970s, which leads to the inclusion of popular music at junior secondary levels; and the third is the present era from roughly 1980 onwards, where separate pathways of instruction are maintained for WAM and students with interests in popular and contemporary musics. Legitimation Code Theory (LCT) from the sociology of education is employed, with analysis unveiling a series of historic code shifts and clashes with implications for present practice. An unveiling of these codes explains the cause of ongoing tensions surrounding the inclusion of popular music and musicians in Australian music classrooms and provides foundation for much-needed curriculum development in the NSW context, and potentially elsewhere, where similar dynamics underpin practice in secondary classrooms.

Section: Theoretical Framework: Legitimation Code Theory (Lct)mentioning

confidence: 99%

‘Illiterate’ musicians: an historic review of curriculum and practice for student popular musicians in Australian senior secondary classrooms

Carroll

2019

“…This model depends on the validity of its axes for its reliability and formulating progression as acquisition of knowledge is problematic for music, where knowledge can be understood in multiple dimensions. A sample of some of the discussions around musical dimensions of knowledge reveals: knowledge as an active process (Payner, 1992), knowledge as personal encounter (Swanwick, 1994), conceptual knowledge in which different discourses are enabled to speak to each other (McPhail, 2012) or as knowledge for musical meaning (Philpott, 2017). Further multiple formulations also exist, which are beyond the scope of this paper to explore.…”

Section: Progression In Music Educationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Musical culture and the primary school: an investigation into parental attitudes to Whole Class Ensemble Teaching in the English primary school and potential impacts on children’s musical progress

Anderson

Barton-Wales

2019

Musical cultures in primary schools are influenced by motivators which include intrinsic and extrinsic factors. Whole Class Ensemble Teaching (WCET) as realised through provision from Music Education Hubs in England is an extrinsic factor which has been widely influential. This article explores the dynamics in play in parental engagement in music provision, as realised through domains of musical value and progression in the context of WCET provision. It presents research, based on data from one primary school in the English Midlands, drawing on responses from children, parents, the WCET teacher and the head teacher of the school. The research used semi-structured interviews and graphical elicitation as research methodologies to create a conceptual map of theoretical perspectives for parental responses to WCET and suggests that triangulating motivating influences from parents, WCET and learners remain an emergent domain.

“…This may be a valid observation in relation to music education within the UK at that time, however, the discourses of the NSOE have had far-reaching consequences in terms of the acceptance of constructivism, culturalism, and relativism within the social sciences and in education in particular (Young, 2008a; Moore, 2009; Rata, 2012), and in music education in New Zealand (McPhail, 2013c). If, as Philpott suggests, the debate until recently in the UK emphasised content at the expense of pedagogy, the situation in New Zealand since the early 1990s has seen far-reaching changes to both these dimensions (McPhail, 2012, 2013b). In contrast to Philpott's assessment of the UK experience, the secondary school music curriculum now in place in New Zealand is so localised (a recontextualising principle) it now runs the risk of short-changing many of those students that the changes aimed to advantage in the first place.…”

Section: The Changing Classification Of Knowledge In the Music Curricmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For example Karlsen and Väkevä (2012) in the introduction to their edited volume suggest four theoretical frameworks for exploring the informal-formal nexus, none of which deals explicitly with the epistemological concerns raised here. For exceptions in the literature see Lamont and Maton (2008) and McPhail (2012, 2013a). It is a key purpose of this paper to bring the idea of knowledge as structurally differentiated into the discussion.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A ‘fourth moment’ for music education? A response to Chris Philpott's sociological critique of music curriculum change

McPhail¹

2015

Self Cite

The catalyst for this paper is the ongoing debate concerning formal and informal approaches to pedagogy within the music education literature. I utilise a chapter by Philpott (2010) as a means to continue discussion about the apparent dialectic between formal and informal approaches to music learning and the case Philpott raises for radical change in ‘three moments’ of music education history. In engaging with the concerns in Philpott's chapter I also seek to bring to a wider audience the ideas developed by a group of sociologists of education who draw on the work of Basil Bernstein (2000) and critical realism (Moore, 2013) to argue for a realist theory of knowledge. I utilise these social realist ideas as a means to engage with the theme of access to what Michael F.D. Young has recently termed ‘powerful knowledge’ (Young, 2012). As Bernstein (2000) suggests we must have an understanding of the recontextualising principles that come into play whenever the classification of knowledge undergoes change, as ideologies shift and change. I argue for a balance between powerful forms of pedagogy and powerful forms of knowledge based on an awareness of the essentially differentiated nature of knowledge.