Description
In contemporary policy discourses, creativity continues to be an under-researched area. Although creativities have long been established as intrinsic expressions of human nature (Sternberg & Williams, 1996; Cropley, 2001) opportunities for young people to engage with creative activity remains problematic. Headteachers are reducing their arts curriculum offer as a consequence of financial pressures (Martin, 2022), and co-curricular opportunities in the arts have also been reduced (NAHT, 2022). Research has a critical role to play in educational contexts in enabling hidden discourses of diminishing opportunities for young people to creatively participate in arts provision. The Birmingham Music Education Research Group (BMERG) researches potential inequalities in arts provision, seeking to challenge barriers that research findings reveal, and facilitating discussion of access to the arts in educational settings. Alongside international and national research projects exploring these themes, BMERG is actively engaged in research in and around Birmingham and as BERA’s Annual Conference takes place in Birmingham in 2023, this forms the focus of this Paper.Whilst music education may seem a logical site for researching creativity, nonetheless this is not always the case in the ways in which it is portrayed in policy, and subsequently realised in day-to-day practice in schools and colleges. Recent policy documents for music education, including the governmentally produced model music curriculum (Department for Education 2021), and the National Plan for Music Education (H M Government UK 2022), only mention creativity in passing, being more concerned with content delivery than pupil interests with the dynamic, living art form that is music.
This paper takes as its focus the key theme of music provision inequalities, and we focus on these as related case studies which show the ways in which we endeavour to address barriers to music learning. The two main foci for this paper are
a) Work with disabled children in learning to play a musical instrument and accessing musical experiences in educational settings
b) Work with primary school on developing composing music in schools
Whilst these two areas may seem disjunct from one another, they share the common element of barrier removal, and this is key to our understanding of democratising teaching and learning creativity in children and young people (Adams & Owens, 2015). The work with disabled children involves them being able to participate in whole-class instrumental learning. This is a relatively under-researched area in UK provision, although taking place in nearly every primary school in England (Fautley et al., 2019). The disabled children have been, in some instances, denied access to teaching and learning, simply on account of the difficulties of instrumental access. Our research reports on ways in which these barriers can be addressed, enabling fairness and equity for these pupils.
The other research presented here reports on ways in which children in primary schools often fail to encounter composing music as part of their everyday schooling. We know that primary school teachers can struggle with teaching music generally (Hennessy, 2017) and teaching composing specifically (Berkley, 2001). This research reports on how teachers can be empowered by pairing them with a visiting professional composer, and how this acts both as CPD for the teachers, but additionally enables them to be agentic in the ways in which they think about, and subsequently enact both their pedagogic choices, but also their curricular thinking (Bate, 2020; Anderson, 2022).
In drawing together these strands the paper concludes by discussing the policy and policy-into-practice aspects of this research, and how this has significant implications not only for creativity in the Birmingham region, but more widely internationally too. With the global march of neoliberalism and its impact on music education specifically (Goble, 2021) this paper has resonance for all those seeking to remove barriers to creative teaching and learning for all our pupils, whether these be physical, attitudinal, or systemic. The paper draws out lessons for the educational research community on why these things matter in daily practices in schools, how taken-for-granted assumptions can be addressed by careful research and practice positionality, and how these can help create fairer and more equitable access for all children in state education.
REFERENCES
Adams, J. & Owens, A. (2015) Creativity and democracy in education: Practices and politics of learning through the arts, London, Routledge.
Anderson, A. (2022) Curriculum power positioning in classroom music education: music curriculum design in the secondary music classroom in England. Arts Education Policy Review, (online).
Bate, E. (2020) Justifying music in the national curriculum: The habit concept and the question of social justice and academic rigour. British Journal of Music Education, 37, 1, 3-15.
Berkley, R. (2001) Why is teaching composing so challenging? A survey of classroom observation and teachers' opinions. British Journal of Music Education, 18, 2, 119-138.
Cropley, A. (2001) Creativity in education and learning, London, RoutledgeFalmer.
Department for Education (2021) Model Music Curriculum: Key Stages 1 to 3 - Non-statutory guidance for the national curriculum in England, London, National Archives UK. https://www.gov.uk/search/guidance-and-regulation
Fautley, M., Kinsella, V. & Whittaker, A. (2019) Models of teaching and learning identified in Whole Class Ensemble Tuition. British Journal of Music Education, 36, 3, 243-252.
Goble, J. S. (2021) Neoliberalism and Music Education: An Introduction. Action, Criticism & Theory for Music Education, 20, 3, 1-18.
H M Government UK (2022) The power of music to change lives - A National Plan for Music Education, London, Open Government Licence - National Archives UK.
Hennessy, S. (2017) Approaches to increasing the competence and confidence of student teachers to teach music in primary schools. Education 3-13, 45, 6, 689-700.
Sternberg, R. & Williams, W. M. (1996) How to Develop Student Creativity, Alexandria, Virginia, ASCD.
| Period | 13 Sept 2023 |
|---|---|
| Held at | British Educational Research Association, United Kingdom |
| Degree of Recognition | International |