This blog was adapted for my latest Music Teachers Association’s magazine article, Ensemble.
I was asked to contribute an article for the Music Teachers Association this month on innovation in music teaching, specifically how my MA helped me create new teaching and research approaches. I couldn’t help but think, ‘I hope I don’t stray into self-indulgence, that somehow my Master’s study enabled me to pull bunnies out of hats every week and sit on the Solomon Burke throne of my innovative excellence’, it wouldn’t hurt to get this reaction from the teaching community.
And I certainly would not want this reaction…
Innovation is something us music teachers should never stray away from, we should celebrate and be proud of the creativity we produce on a daily basis, no matter the influence. This blog explores how my Master’s study helped me examine my motives for personal innovation and how we should strive to create and re-create for the benefit of our teaching practice, the community and our students.
innovation is our model
Musicians and teachers are well and truly blessed when it comes to studying and admiring innovators, those who shaped our industry and provided templates for creating, producing and performing music for us to follow. Whether it was Bach’s use of tempered tuning to expand the sonic range of Western harmony, Edison’s Phonograph, the first commercial device to play recorded analogue sounds, George Martin’s production of the Sgt. Peppers album, pushing the limits of four-track recording, Jaco Pastorius taking the frets out of his 1962 Fender Jazz Bass to redefine what a bass virtuoso is and J Dilla’s use of the Akai MPC3000 to humanise sampling, to name a select few.
Whilst we admire the innovations of our favourite artists and composers, how many of us consider the innovators in music education? Émile Jaques-Dalcroze and Sarah Ann Glover for their research on how kinaesthetic skills and gestures helped us sight sing and internalise music without the need for notation. How about Christopher Smalls, who uncovered that ‘musicking’ is a byproduct of the performer/composer or Ed Sarath’s work on creating improvisational pedagogy to learn music theory, and Kenny Werner teaching us how to be effortlessly masterful by using mindfulness, making us aware of the inner struggles and unrest when making music.
Whilst we never stop to think about the musical innovators we preach to our students, we must also remember that music teachers possess the power to innovate uniquely.
why innovate?
When I started my PGCE at Middlesex University, Sir Ken Robinson’s ‘Changing Education Paradigms’ speech was one of the first videos played to my cohort. What struck me was how this speech seems at odds with the educational climate. Robinson’s address might be provocative to some, but its tenet of education needing to modernise for a world ready for constant change is as necessary now as it was when I first saw it in 2014. Does education value innovation? Nick Gibb, Minister of State at the Department for Education, has a pragmatic view of innovation from his secondary school experience. Changes to education in the mid 1960s to late 1970s hampered his education and left an impression that change was only as good as proof of the intended outcome. Gibb’s view should not be confused with sticking to tradition, but as he puts it, “If someone comes along and says phonics is great but there is this other thing, X, and it works better than phonics, then I will go on that course and see the evidence.” (Tes.com, 2022)
Though I know nothing of the educational landscape at Gibb’s time, I can relate to his necessity for innovation in education, backed up by research. Before my Master’s study, I long held onto an idea about developing my teaching of improvisation. Still, I was too afraid to do anything about it, thinking that improvisation skills should be left to further and higher education programmes. Only when that idea became a full-blown voice in my head shouting, ‘Do something about it!’ did I investigate this and found that the teaching of music improvisation was largely absent from secondary schools, thus beginning my research into developing improvisation in schools.
When I started playing music, I was motivated by finding new ways to compose and perform, and perhaps like many young musicians, I took the less obvious path in pursuit of a new one. The same was true when I started my PGCE, trialling new lesson planning and delivery methods. The problem with these approaches is that one can easily lose sight of the task; how many reinventions of the wheel would it take to stop spinning? How to find the balance between functionality and creativity in music teaching? Studying and researching is one way of forcing yourself to innovate your practice whilst improving your skillset. In Trinity Laban Conservatoire’s MA Teaching Musician programme, I learned the significance of innovating through rigorous scrutiny of my research and ideas, invigorating my motivation to innovate my teaching practice.
the culture to innovate
Without making this article sound like a promotional piece for the MA Teaching Musician (Dr Rebecca Berkley runs a brilliant MA Education programme at the University of Reading as well!), committing my time, patience and energy to see how I can innovate my practice was the number one reason to study.
Finding innovative approaches to improvisational pedagogy split into two camps, do I want to fill a knowledge gap, or do I want to prove a theory? Provocations like these are imperative to innovation, especially if one desires transformation. This is where the Teaching Musician programme excelled, designing assignments to work in situations that compelled you to find or make your conclusions of innovative practice. Without my experience working with Phil Meadows at the National Youth Jazz Orchestra, I may not have been inspired to research what strategies, activities and methods the music teaching community uses for improvisation, or at the very least, suggest getting Michael League of Snarky Puppy to do a workshop over a few beers! Or the ‘Technology in Music Education’ assignment, which pushed my rationale for technology’s use in music teaching and remote learning, also seeing my Year 4’s use technology as an instrument to make music in ways they probably would never have used if using ‘traditional’ instruments. I also researched other academics, seeing how music academics have found their innovations.
Pamela Bernard’s research on the salience of silence in performance revealed that a performer’s use of silence (rests, phrases, space etc.) could be equally defining to their sound as the pitch/rhythm they play. There was also Dave Camlin’s research that music operates in three dimensions; the ‘performance’ (performer, music), the ‘participator’ (audience, culture) and between these two, the ‘paramusical’ (binding the latter two together).
a rationale to innovate
Then there is my dissertation on what strategies, activities and methods are most effective when teaching music improvisation in secondary schools. The innovations came from the survey questionnaire and interviewees, who were kind enough to share their approaches and thoughts when teaching improvisation. Some surprising results came from improvisation used for devising performance, the neuroscience behind obtaining improvisational language and reasons why music education has yet to embrace improvisation. One aspect from the unpacking of my results suggests that improvisation could be viewed as a renegade to music education, going against how music teaching is structured and dominant towards notated music. If we choose to be innovative, there must be a cost in introducing new approaches, and if we need proof that some innovations could benefit us, we need to account for the risks in equal measure. This is something I consider as I embark on my motives for promoting music improvisation.
Having the privilege to be up close and learn from current innovators in music research is something I never thought possible. I have experienced what innovation can do to music education, and it has set me on a course of discovery and a lifelong purpose to find my innovations. Although improvisation in music is not innovative, developing its pedagogy as part of my new department could kickstart unique and stimulating ways to make music. It may inspire other departments to do the same and find their innovations. Whilst I ride the wave of creative euphoria, balancing my ambitions to innovate and not alienate others will be imperative. Innovation can come at a cost, particularly if one creates too much change in a short space of time. Innovators had to sacrifice time and energy and experience many failures and rejections before their idea(s) became excepted.
The best innovations we music teachers can make is to enhance our experiences as musicians by shining a brighter spotlight on them. Much like my concept of conveying my improvisation skillset to my students, I would not have known my innovation was part of a burgeoning community of like-minded music educators who care profoundly about developing improvisation in education. Innovation, therefore, is a choice we make dependent on our values and ethics. Not all innovations you make during your career must be paradigm-shifting, but they will be beneficial to the people who matter the most, your students.
Final thoughts
In a high-pressured and political profession such as teaching, the risks of change and creativity must be met with trepidation and proof that new ideas can make a significant impact. It is also worth noting that you do not need further study to develop your creativity. A search on Twitter, Facebook groups or attending various conferences can provide the spark to innovate as it did for me when my mentor Marion Friend suggested looking into the Teaching Musician programme to solve my existential quandary of spinning wheels, creatively speaking.
Further study helped me understand the untapped potential of the latter two in music education and gave me the headspace to incubate my ideas and platform to share my findings with my peers. You might be fortunate enough to create new approaches to music teaching that have a similar influence to Jaques-Dalcroze and Glover et al. or create something that benefits your school for many years.
The question is, how innovative do you want to be? And if you want to transform, how willing are you to defend your ideas? And what will be the impact on you and your students?
Mike Wright Music Education 