Nurturing Vulnerability to Develop Pedagogical Change Through MOOC Participation and Public Blogging

Abstract

Despite several decades of ground-breaking achievements in music education research and practice, the discipline’s status continues to stagnate, especially among our children and our governments. To address this stagnation, in 2016 the University of Sydney launched an internationally available Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) titled “The Place of Music in 21st-Century Education.” The intent of offering this course was to provoke critical thinking among music educators in order to break the cultural cycle that centers curricular music education around teachers’ (most likely Western art music) experience, and ask them to grapple with social and technological changes in education more broadly. To address concerns with authenticity in learning and the MOOC model, the MOOC integrated social media use into every main assessment. Participants—over 1,600 educators, students, artists, and the general public—were asked to publicly blog their responses to provocations on these topics and then to read each other’s posts and respond. In this study, we analyze funneled (Clow, 2013) data from the blogs and MOOC interactions. We find evidence for critical thinking and worldview transformation from a number of participants, and conclude that the experience of engaging publicly via social media engendered a vulnerability that may have made those new to the field and experienced professionals alike more open to change. The blogging-feedback loop prompted the formation of a social structure reminiscent of a community of practice or affinity space.

Stimulating music educator worldview change through a pedagogy of provocation, critical thinking and peer-review

“…In line with Wang and Woo (2010), the nature of reflective public blogging was a great stimulus for CT, because their thoughts were being shared with a broader audience. While, as expected (Giarré & Jaccheri, 2008), some participants did find this challenging, the addition of peer-review of blog posts created a community of practice (Wenger, 1998; further contextualised for this study in Humberstone et al, 2020) within that public forum (Zandi et al, 2014) which was, as has been shown, extremely stimulating for many participants, whichever side of the ideological fences they 'sat'. There is initial evidence that because the provocations took place within this community, change was able to begin to take place (Kahan, 2012).…”

“…Boler, 1999;Bozalek et al, 2013;Mills, 1998;Postman, 2009;Trifonas, 2003). Each week we juxtaposed two examples of evidence-based literature that promoted differing solutions to a music education problem, but prevented simplistic, dichotomic thinking, such as learners facilely classifying one as 'right' and the other as 'wrong' (Humberstone et al, 2020).…”

“…This was particularly useful for identifying the relationship between CT exhibited and identified in participant work and feedback (RQ 2). As established above, detailed descriptors were included for each rubric criterion to make the peer marking process easier and more consistent: an example of one rubric can be seen in Humberstone, Zhao, & Liu (2020), page 603. The rubric removes irrelevant marking components (written style, grammar, spelling and so on), and simply asks peer reviewers to quantify as many CT elements as possible (e.g.…”

“…The value of musical pluralism and the importance of acknowledging the sophistication of the musical cultures in which children participate was discussed in reference to the literature cited above. Observations of and interviews at a Musical Futures programme in Melbourne (Humberstone, 2018c) was contrasted with both the Orff approach, as well as an interview with leading advocate of traditional (WAM) music education, Richard Gill (Humberstone, 2019a), of Australia (discussed further in Humberstone et al, 2020). A full overview of (1) the related MOOC video content, (2) provocations presented through the juxtaposition of the content and in the prompt for each week’s blog, and (3) the rubric for peer marking is available in the MOOC or online (Humberstone, 2021b).…”

“…The aim of the interactions is to provoke critical thinking in participants by engaging with the material and each other to reflect on how they can make sense of the provocative juxtaposition of seemingly contradictory research and practice the course presents, and to what extent and in what specific ways they might modify their own classroom practice. This paper looks at whether and how the MOOC succeeded in its aim of challenging participants’ worldview through such critical thinking: in parallel research, we examined how the use of public blogging in the MOOC engendered their vulnerability to change Humberstone et al, 2020.…”