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This is a pre-print version of Cain, T. (2013) ‘Passing it on’: beyond formal or informal

pedagogies, Music Education Research, 15:1, 74-91.

Abstract

Informal pedagogies are a subject of debate in music education and there is some evidence of

teachers abandoning formal pedagogies, in favour of informal ones. This article examines a

case of one teacher’s formal pedagogy and compares it with a version of informal pedagogy.

The comparison reveals strengths of formal pedagogies which informal pedagogies lack,

including conceptual learning, knowledge about music, unfamiliar repertoire, differentiation,

directing students and formative feedback. Because there is evidence that individual teachers

can use several distinct pedagogies, the article argues that it is not necessary for teachers to

abandon formal pedagogies when they adopt informal ones.

Interviewer: What is important to you about teaching music?

Jane: Passing it on, that’s the thing. I’m in a great, long line of people who have

imparted the joy of music. Just that, really.

A new classroom pedagogy

There is a growing, international interest in ‘a new classroom pedagogy’ in music education

(Green 2008), sometimes termed ‘informal’ pedagogy (Price and d’Amore 2007, 4). The new

classroom pedagogy is based on what popular musicians do, in out-of-school contexts: using

music that they choose themselves, learning with friends, by listening and copying

recordings; engaging in personal, often haphazard learning without structured guidance, and

integrating listening, performing, improvising and composing in the learning process (Green

2002; 2008). The pedagogy required to stimulate such learning practices, was investigated in

an action research project in Secondary schools in England1. It involved a re-working of the

teacher’s role:

The role of the teacher throughout the project was to establish ground rules for behaviour, set the task going at the start of each stage, then stand back and observe what pupils were doing. During this time teachers were asked to attempt to take on and empathize with pupils’ perspectives and the goals that pupils set for themselves, then to begin to diagnose pupils’ needs in relation to those goals. After, and only after, this period, they were to offer suggestions and act as ‘musical models’ so as to help pupils reach the goals that they had set for themselves. Teachers told their pupils that they would be available for help if required, but that they would not be instructing in the normal way. (Green 2008, 24-25).

1 Green’s action research project formed part of the Musical Futures project; see www.musicalfutures.org

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http://www.musicalfutures.org/

‘Formal’ and ‘Informal’ pedagogies

There were times when, ‘there was literally no pedagogic role for teachers to play’ (Green

2008, 31). At other times, ‘it involved teaching in a responsive, rather than directive way,

metaphorically taking the learner by the hand, getting inside their head and asking: “What do

they want to achieve now, this minute, and what is the main thing they need to achieve it?”’

(p. 32). Having diagnosed students’ needs, teachers were asked to suggest but not instruct:

…showing pupils how to play something but only in rough, simplified or partial form,

then retreating; showing them how to hold an instrument more comfortably, but

without insisting on correct hold or posture; showing them where to find notes on an

instrument, but without saying exactly what to do with those notes; playing a riff or a

rhythm, but without expecting accurate repetition (p. 35).

Thus, ‘teachers avoided standing over pupils to check that they were doing what they had

been shown correctly, but instead left them to take the advice in their own way, or not to take

it at all’ (p. 35).

Green (2008) found that every teacher in the action research project found the new

pedagogical approach ‘new, and in many cases radical and challenging’ (p. 27) but they

nevertheless embraced them:

we recommend that teachers should introduce more formal lessons in between the project stages, since the project does not claim to address all possible musical skills or to be a complete curriculum … However, in the seven schools considered in detail in this book, the project took place almost entirely without additional lessons (p. 24).

This finding is interesting because it belies contradictory evidence that teachers find it hard to

change their practice (e.g. Virta 2002; Boyle et al. 2004; Gore et al. 2004). It is surprising

because most school music teachers in England are trained in Western, Classical music

(Hargreaves and Marshall 2003). It suggests that teachers are convinced by the new

pedagogy, willing to change and to be flexible but it also suggests a lack of confidence in

‘more formal’ teaching which could be abandoned, despite recommendations to the contrary.

This worries me because, as a teacher-trainer, I encounter schools where student teachers

rarely observe or undertake formal music teaching because informal pedagogies have

supplanted formal ones. I wonder, what is lost when teachers abandon formal pedagogy?

Formal, informal and pedagogy: clarifying concepts

In the context of developing lifelong learning policies, the Organisation for Economic Co-

operation and Development defined formal learning as, ‘… always organised and structured,

and has learning objectives. From the learner’s standpoint, it is always intentional: i.e. the

learner’s explicit objective is to gain knowledge, skills and/or competences’. In contrast,

informal learning is ‘… never organised, has no set objective in terms of learning outcomes

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and is never intentional from the learner’s standpoint. Often it is referred to as learning by

experience’ (OECD 1995). This distinction can be recognised in much of the literature

around formal and informal learning. For Eraut (2000) formal learning is assessed and

learning outcomes are externally specified. Less formal learning can be implicit – without

any conscious effort to learn or even to register that learning has taken place – or it can be

reactive – conscious but unplanned, occurring in response to particular events. In

contradistinction to OECD (1995), Eraut argues that informal learning can be intentional –

for example, when someone decides, in an informal context, to commit information to

memory. For Schugurenksy (2000) informal learning also includes self-directed learning

which, as Wellington (2006) points out, has gained importance with the increase of web-

based learning. Cross (2007) suggests further dimensions that distinguish formal from

informal learning, including the degree of control (tighter or looser), delivery (through

structured courses or in conversation), duration (longer or shorter time-spans), and the

‘author’ of the learning (teacher or learner).

The music education literature echoes much of the general literature. Finney and

Philpott (2010) argue that informal pedagogies arise from ‘a concern that the ‘ownership’ of

musical learning should be firmly located with pupils’ (p. 7). Drawing on Folkestad (2005)

they suggest that, in a school music classroom, a formal pedagogy might mean ‘a teacher

provides input on the nature and structure of Rondo form’ whereas an informal pedagogy

might mean ‘pupils choose to compose a Rondo in a group of peers’ (p. 9). Folkestad (2006)

distinguishes between formal and informal learning in terms of its venue (e.g. school or

garage), learning style (e.g. using notation or learning by ear), ‘ownership’ of the learning

and intentionality. In formal situations the student consciously intends to learn (e.g. new

techniques); in informal situations, learning occurs as a by-product of participating in music-

making. Folkestad (2006) argues that, ‘Formal – informal should not be regarded as a

dichotomy, but rather as the two poles of a continuum; in most learning situations, both these

aspects of learning are in various degrees present and interacting’ (p. 135). Espeland (2010)

agrees with Folkestad’s continuum notion but problematises the categories of venue, learning

style and ownership, as a means of distinguishing finormal from formal:

… when I go to my computer and Internet in my home to learn to play tunes on my Irish whistle from an educationally organised and sequenced series of videos provided by a staff member of a New York University, should this be regarded as an instance of formal or informal learning? The setting is informal, but the pedagogic principle is clearly sequenced according to educational and formal thinking. As a student I am in control in terms of when and where, but I am not in control of the sequencing of video lessons … My point here, is to underline that clear cut categorisations in terms of formal or informal will not be in keeping with what actually takes place. Espeland (2010 p. 134)

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Jenkins (2011) conceptualises formal learning as ‘the attempt to refine, regulate and

control certain aspects of informal learning’, in the interests of efficiency. For him, formal

learning is planned and systematic, focusing on ‘rule-governed behaviour’ and the

development of concepts. Informal learning is holistic, grounded in play, involving the

learner’s body; it is ‘sense-governed and experiential’ (p. 182) and can motivate students by

empowering them. He assesses the strengths and weaknesses of Green’s (2008) approach:

although students are motivated to play familiar music, they do not engage with unfamiliar

music and might be unable to transfer their learning; although teachers are encouraged to be

sensitive to their students, their own musical skills are under-utilized; although Green’s

approach is possible for simple music, it is impractical for more complex music; and

students’ compositions ‘will tend to be derivative of whatever popular music that person has

listened to’. Jenkins (2011) agrees with Folkestad’s ‘continuum’ notion and states, ‘Mixed

informal and formal learning, falling in the middle of this range … occurs in most school

contexts’ (p. 184). From the premise that, ‘a good music education should bring about a

fundamental change in the students’ self-identity’ (193), he argues,

… informal learning is not only a good way to learn, it is the ideal way to learn … While formal learning strategies supply much needed information and guidance, it is informal techniques that tend to compel students to make ongoing decisions in constructing simulations of real-life contexts. (Jenkins 2011, 194-5)

A similar view is expressed in Jaffurs (2004). Subtitled, ‘how I learned to teach from a garage

band’, the study reports the author’s conversion from a formal pedagogy (‘I was totally in

charge of everything they heard when they stepped … into ‘my’ music room’) to an informal

one (‘My garage band musicians taught me not to ask my students to compose an ABA

composition when they want to write a rap’) and explores how teachers can learn, from

observing students play music in out-of-school contexts.

Allsup (2003) contrasts musical learning in school (fostering individuals’ cognition of

abstracted and generalised knowledge) with learning out of school (involving shared

cognition, contextualized reasoning and the development of situation-specific skills).

Drawing on Freire (1970) he argues for democratic learning based on dialogue and mutual

collaboration, which is more often found out of school, but which can be brought into school

as ‘a new hybrid’ (p. 33). Responding to Green (2008), he cites Dewey who ‘viewed informal

learning as spirited and natural, but worried that its gains were too random, and its outcomes

too narrow’ (p. 6). He points out that Green’s (2008) account is only one of many versions of

informal learning, and he expresses concern that students might not become ‘media literate’

in informal settings, arguing,

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… a curriculum based on the copying of CD recordings apart from adult interaction is educationally naïve, especially when faced off against the sophistication of the predatory capitalism … it seems prudent to provide formal spaces in which dialogue and critique can occur. (Allsup 2003 p. 6)

Lebler (2008) discusses the assessment of informal learning: because informal learning is

‘rarely under the direction of an expert mentor/teacher’, assessment is by self and peers,

‘relative to their past performances and expectations, and through comparison with both their

peers and the performances of the artists who inspire them’ (p. 195). In the context of

learning to play musical instruments, Cope (2002) argues that formal learning concerns ‘the

development of a concert player’, often in the Western Classical tradition: ‘there is an

expectation that the teacher will be formally qualified and will take students through an

apprenticeship … including exercises and scales. Technique is regarded as critical’. The goal

of informal learning is the ‘competent amateur’ with ‘the tune as the medium of instruction

… there is more flexibility about some aspects of technique’ (p. 94). Cope (2002) presents

case studies of traditional folk musicians who learned to play through means including

conventional tuition and self-tuition and who were united in the belief that informal learning

in ‘sessions’ provided both motivation to learn and the means of learning. He concludes that

social contexts can encourage learning, whereas decontextualised learning can lead to

students abandoning their playing. He considers the case that students do not gain high levels

of competence by informal learning but argues that competence is a social construct, and that,

‘comparisons across different cultural norms are not straightforward’ (p. 102).

The reasons why some teachers abandoned their more formal teaching in favour of

informal pedagogies are not explored in Green (2008). However, proponents of informal

learning draw on a discourse, influenced by Freire (1970) and others, that formal learning

involves a ‘banking’ model of education, in which students are passively inducted into

authoritarian and oppressive structures (Jaffurs 2004; 2006). In contrast, informal learning is

said to be ‘natural and spontaneous’ and ‘authentic’ (Jaffurs 2006). However Folkestad

(2006) states, ‘I strongly question the sometimes implicitly normative value judgements …

where informal is equal to good, true or authentic, while formal is equal to artificial, boring

and bad’ (p. 143).

The literature reviewed above suggests that it is difficult to draw a clear distinction

between formal and informal – to determine where one ends and the other begins. Attempts

to distinguish sometimes fail (e.g. no clear reasons are given, why aural learning, popular

music and the use of the body are necessarily ‘informal’.) Some musical learning is hard to

place on the formal-informal continuum (Espeland 2010). Nevertheless, there is broad

agreement that ‘formal’ and ‘informal’ differ, in important ways, most likely related to

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teachers’ aims. When the aim is to develop musical competence, formal instruction is used to

teach, for example, secure playing techniques or accurate understandings of concepts. When

the aim has more to do with developing (for example) self-reliance and collaboration,

informal learning is more likely to be chosen.

Turning to pedagogy, the view taken in this paper is that of Alexander (2004) who

suggests that pedagogy should not be interpreted in a narrow sense, to mean only the act of

teaching. His preferred view was that in which ‘pedagogy’,

… brings together within the one concept the act of teaching and the body of

knowledge, argument and evidence in which it is embedded and by which particular

classroom practices are justified. (Alexander 2004, 10)

‘Pedagogy’ therefore includes (but is not restricted to) particular approaches such as Orff and

Kodaly. In an important sense, there are as many pedagogies as there are teachers (perhaps

more, because teachers adopt different pedagogies for different situations). Although

‘pedagogy’ implies formal learning (Folkestad 2006), teachers can allow students to choose

what is learned and how; acting as mentors and models, they can encourage types of learning

which are encountered outside school, in informal contexts – this is legitimately termed

‘informal pedagogy’.

Methods

To move this discussion beyond ideal types, it is necessary to consider empirical evidence.

The question, ‘what is lost when teachers abandon formal pedagogy?’ suggests a comparison

between a case of formal pedagogy and the informal pedagogy in Green’s (2008)

study. Case study is understood as, ‘an intensive, holistic description and analysis of a single

instance’ (Merriam 1998, 27). The value of case study research lies in its ability to generate

‘thick description’ (Geertz, 1973); individual people, institutions and systems are studied in

greater detail than is possible in other research approaches and contextual influences can be

revealed. Case studies are particularly helpful when the aim is to illuminate generalised

understandings with specific instances. They represent the studied phenomena with sufficient

detail for informed readers to experience the phenomena vicariously, in particular by

presenting ‘low inference data’ such as the actual words spoken by participants, rather than

the researcher’s accounts of such words (Silverman, 2001). The particular type of case study

presented here is ‘picture drawing’ case study – a descriptive account which is used as a basis

for theorizing (Bassey 1999).

Conceptualising pedagogy, as both a teacher’s observable actions and the reasons for

those actions, implies a combination of observation and interview. I chose to study Jane (she

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prefers the use of her real name) because I knew her to be a good exemplar of effective,

formal teaching. I observed her on five days in 2010, teaching five 90-minute lessons and

conducted one choir rehearsal. I also interviewed her formally on two occasions of

approximately 90 minutes each, and interviewed two groups of her students for around 20

minutes each. Lessons and interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed; the transcripts

were split into meaningful segments (Tizard and Hughes 1991) and coded according to their

content and function (Wells 1999). The case was constructed by examining Jane’s practice

(what she actually did in her lessons) and comparing this with her reasons and previous

experience, as expressed in the interviews. The case was analysed using Handal and Lauvas’

(1987) model of reflection: actions were related to the reasons for these actions, which were

interrogated for their underlying philosophical orientations. I showed the completed case

study (i.e. the following two sections) to Jane for ‘member checking’ (Lincoln and Guba

1985). The interviews with students served mainly to triangulate the data.

Jane and her background

Jane is small and slight, greying, approaching retirement now and hugely energetic. Meeting

her (not for the first time; I have known her professionally for several years), I notice, along

with the energy, her smile. A huge grin lights up her face, conveying massive enthusiasm and

radiating a sense of fun. Her enthusiasm for music came from her father, who used to play the

piano when she was a child, and was fed by playing the flute in her local Youth Arts Society

and especially the annual course, which she described as ‘seventh heaven’. Her best music

education was at university, where it ‘all came alive’:

… I used to go to all the choir rehearsals and sing with the choir and then I’d play in the

orchestra, in the concerts … I just couldn’t get enough. I ransacked the library, I found

a harpsichord and learned how to play it and I used to stop people working and go,

‘come on, who wants to play trio sonatas?’ I loved it; I absolutely loved it, and the

world sort of opened up.

This experience was crucial; Jane reported that it is the sort of experience that she tries to

provide for her own, pre-university students. After university, Jane qualified as a teacher and

taught in various schools. She stopped school-teaching when her first child was born and

taught the flute, privately. She then went to ‘Central College’, initially on a one-year, part-

time contract, to cover another teacher’s sabbatical. At the time, there were six students at the

college who studied music. Now, twenty years later, over two hundred students study music

there.

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‘Central’ is a Further Education (16-19) college, which also admits some part-time

adult students. It is situated in a city which is in the bottom third of local authorities on the

UK Government’s index of deprivation (www.communities.gov.uk): around a quarter of the

adult population have no qualifications, examination pass rates at 16 are significantly below

the national average and there are low levels of literacy and numeracy. The music department

is considered important to the college and music is one of its two specialisms (the other is

sport). Instrumental or vocal tuition is provided free of charge for the students and the

accommodation for music includes two classrooms, two music technology rooms, a recording

studio and several practice rooms.

Jane’s classroom is the largest, comfortably accommodating a choir of over forty

people. When she is teaching lessons (mostly to groups of around 15) tables are arranged in a

rectangle, with Jane at the head and the students around the outside, so everyone can see each

other fairly easily and there is no ‘back row’. Behind Jane’s desk are a whiteboard and

projector, a hi-fi and a grand piano. It’s a light room, with windows on two sides and there

are posters on the other sides, mostly advertising concerts and musical activities in the

college. Whenever I arrived in this room, whether Jane was there or not, there were students,

playing music or just hanging out. Jane explained it saying,

They live in the department. They have their lunch there, they come back there, they

‘home in’ there. It’s … a safe environment where they’re going to be. That’s where

they spend most of their time. Very few music students don’t do that.

Providing a ‘safe environment’ where students ‘home in’ is important for Jane because

studying music is not, for her, only about lessons. For example, each student she teaches is

expected to sing in the College Choir, which means attending rehearsals at lunchtime and

outside the College day, especially leading up to public performances. This is because choral

singing is,

… the best aural training there is … you’re getting them to listen, really listen. Listen to

their own part; listen to the other parts around them. They get an understanding of

harmony and you can teach them all sorts of things and they don’t even notice; they’re

actually intent on singing. At the same time, you’re introducing them to some

wonderful music. I’ve always been a firm believer that, if you put good music in front

of kids, they respond to it; they can’t help it.

So all Jane’s students sing in the choir and many also play in the orchestra, although when the

orchestra is accompanying the choir, they sing. The college choir sometimes sings with a

community choir which Jane formed initially from parents and teachers at the college

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although many of the parents stayed on after their own children had left. When the choirs join

together, Jane says,

The whole is greater than the sum of the parts. The kids can read but their voices, lots

of them, are very immature … whereas the parents have strong voices but don’t

necessarily know what they’re doing, although some of them do. You put it all together

and they listen to each other and it works; it’s magic.

In addition, Jane encourages her students to play chamber music together because,

… if they’re with each other all the time, they will make music together. They’ll go to

the piano or whatever. I set up a brass quintet early on in the year, as quick as possible,

and say, ‘here’s the music’ and go out and wait for the chemistry to happen. It does; it

happens every year. ‘You four could make a really good string quartet – have you

thought about that? In this drawer I’ve got some stuff – do you fancy looking at that?

I’d start there, if I were you’.

Having provided the group with sheet music, Jane tends to leave them to rehearse on their

own although she sometimes asks them if she can coach them:

I always ask, ‘Do you mind if I come and rehearse with you?’ Usually they’ll say yes

… I’ll say, ‘listen to the balance; you need more horn there’ or ‘you’re a little bit sharp,

darling’.

Jane says that the college gets around twenty invitations per year to play in public: ‘string

quartets for weddings, brass quintets for civic ceremonies … the kids go out all the time’. In

addition there is a schedule of concerts based around the College:

I always put on a concert before the first half term because again, they’ve got to

rehearse … The second half term is the big push for the choral concert and then

everybody’s working for the National Festival for Music for Youth … we might do an

end of year concert. We’ve done operas, in the last couple of years, so there’s been the

opera to work for.

This round of music-making is an important aspect of Jane’s pedagogy – students are

expected to engage in formal and informal music making. They don’t only learn about music;

they learn to be musicians – to rehearse and perform for others. In this way, their lessons

become one means of making sense of their experience of music. Although lessons do not

necessarily involve the pieces the students perform, they do involve similar pieces, so in-class

music supports the learning in out-of-class music and vice-versa. There are public

examinations to pass, and clearly these are very important, but they are not the only important

matters. Jane describes her students’ experience as,

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… all part of a continuum. The continuum is that they’re here for two years and they’re

going to learn an awful lot about music, they’re going to perform a lot of music and the

whole thing is quite holistic.

Jane’s Teaching

Jane teaches two groups of students, aged 16-17 and 17-18. Of the five lessons I observed,

four were about analysing the stylistic features of pieces of music, specified by the

examination board. In these lessons, Jane’s main mode of working was to ask questions of

the whole class, which individuals tended to answer (occasionally two or more students

would answer simultaneously; this rendered their answers difficult for me to hear and

transcribe). The question and answer mode was supplemented by periods when Jane and the

students listened to a recording of the relevant music – although the shortest of these was just

over a minute, the longest was around seventeen minutes. There were also times when Jane

gave substantial pieces of information (the longest occupied around 40 seconds) and there

was a period of around ten minutes at the end of one of the lessons when the students

gathered round the piano and sang, apparently as a reward for working hard. The other

observed lesson involved the students harmonising a melody. Although this also involved

some whole-class question and answer sessions, for the most part the students worked

individually and Jane spent time with each person, discussing their harmonic writing. A

similar mode of working occurred in a lesson when students constructed individual tone-

rows.

Jane’s preferred mode of teaching involves sequences of questions, usually by her,

and answers, usually by the students. These sequences are lively, fast-paced and often

substantial:

Jane: Let’s have a look at what’s going on here [i.e. in the score, which each student

has on the table, in front of them]. You’ve got the fugue subject. Does he play the

whole thing? Can you find a pattern? Just look for a pattern. This is the middle section

of the fugue so we’re not necessarily going to get complete entries. Can you find a bit

that goes (sings the subject)?

Student: (Locates the pattern in the score.) Thirty seven.

Jane: Yes, there’s one at bar thirty seven. Is it a subject or an answer?

Student: That is an answer.

Jane: It is. What about the bar before?

Student: That’s the subject.

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Jane: That’s the subject, yes. Very good. Ok, what about bar forty? (Several students

respond; their actual words are inaudible) Subject or answer?

Student: Subject.

Jane: Subject, yes, good. Now at that point we’re going through a little patch where

nobody is playing subjects or answers, so what do you call it?

Student: Episode.

Jane: Episode. Good, episode. The episode goes up to bar forty six. I’ll help you with

that one.

Student: Where does it start from?

Jane: Forty one. Forty one to forty six. Now in bar forty seven it’s quite difficult to

notice, it starts on an F, in the lower part, and transfers up to the top. (Sings) F, C, F, A,

C, F. What key are we in now?

Student: F major.

Jane: Yeah, we are in F major. Dead right. And when we get to bar fifty one, what key

are we in?

Student: B flat.

Jane: Yes, we’re in B flat. And which part is the subject in?

Student: The bass.

Jane: The bass, yes it is. Have we got the countersubject back now?

Student: Yeah.

Jane: Yeah, good. Where else have we got a subject or answer?

Student: Fifty-four.

Jane: Fifty-four.Yes, it’s there in the bass. And then there’s nobody doing subject or

answer between fifty five and fifty seven so what do we call that?

Student: Episode.

Jane: That’s an episode.

Student: There’s an answer in the bass.

Jane: There’s something in the bass, isn’t there, at bar fifty eight?

Student: It’s an answer.

Student: No, it’s not.

Jane: It’s just a start. All he does is start it; it goes (sings it). What happens in the

middle part, in the next bar?

Student: Does it again.

Jane: Yes. You call it incomplete. It’s an incomplete subject.

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Essentially, this is a sequence of ‘Initiation-Response-Feedback’ patterns (IRF, also called

‘IRE’, where E stands for evaluation). In such patterns, Jane initiates (questions), a student

responds and Jane provides feedback:

Jane: Can you find a bit that goes …? (Initiation)

Student: Thirty seven. (Response)

Jane: Yes, there’s one at bar thirty seven. (Feedback)

The IRF sequence is very common in teaching generally and has been called ‘the default

mode’ of teaching. Indeed,

This basic pattern is so predominant in educational practices and institutions, so

ingrained in the experiences of teachers (or the memories of students) that it constitutes

an unreflective habitual pattern that teachers fall into even when they imagine that their

teaching is dialogical in nature. (Barbules and Bruce 2001, 1107).

Reviewing the literature around the IRF sequence, Wells (1993) finds researchers divided on

its merits: proponents argue that it monitors students’ understanding, guides their learning

and corrects misunderstandings whereas critics (from similar theoretical standpoints) ague

that it does not enable teachers to understand what students are actually thinking, only what

they think the teacher wants, and it is too controlling:

Strong endorsements of triadic [IRF] dialogue seem to occur in texts that are primarily

concerned with the responsibility of educational institutions for cultural reproduction

and for ensuring that students appropriate the artifacts and practices that embody the

solutions to problems encountered in the past. Indictments … tend to occur in texts that

are more concerned with the responsibility of educational institutions for cultural

renewal and for the formation and empowerment of its individual members (Wells,

1993, 3).

Wells (1993) concludes, ‘in itself, triadic dialogue is neither good nor bad; rather, its merits

or demerits depend upon the purposes it is used to serve on particular occasions, and upon the

larger goals by which those purposes are informed’ (p. 3) Jane’s ‘larger goals’, informed by

the requirements of the public examinations, are to do with ‘cultural reproduction’ and

‘artifacts and practices’; specifically, those artifacts and practices of Western Classical

composers. Her purpose in using the IRF is to give the students the language to understand

and discuss music: to hear, locate, name and describe, particular musical features in Western

Classical music. Thus,

Jane: Can you find a bit that goes … (hear)?

Student: Thirty seven. (locate)

Jane: Yes, there’s one at bar thirty seven. Is it a subject or an answer? (name)

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Jane’s questions are typically of two types; ‘what?’ questions, in which she asks students to

name a particular feature (‘Is it a subject or an answer?’ and ‘What key are we in now?’) and

‘where’ questions, in which she asks them to locate particular musical features in their scores

(‘find a bit …’ and ‘Where does it start from?’) Throughout the observations, most of Jane’s

questions were closed, in the sense that they have a correct answer. Although she asked very

few questions that require only a ‘yes or no’ answer (‘Have we got the countersubject back

now?’), she occasionally asked either/or questions (‘Is it a subject or an answer?’) and

sometimes suggested that students complete her sentences (He [Schoenberg] was the teacher,

and his two students were …?’) Elsewhere, Jane’s questions were largely factual (‘how many

parts are there?’ and ‘how long is that dominant pedal?’) even when she was asking ‘why’

questions (‘The Well Tempered Clavier, why was it so called?’).

Jane asked some questions that can be categorised as ‘open’, but such questions were

often less open than they might appear. For example the question, ‘What is the first thing you

look at, in the [musical] score?’ can be answered adequately in many ways – the music’s title,

and the composer’s name, come to mind but Jane expects a different answer:

Jane: when you do an oral test, a listening test, and you've got the score in front of you,

what's the first thing you do? You look at the questions then you look at the score.

What's the first thing you look at, in the score?

Student: Time signature and key signature?

Jane: Well done. That's exactly what you do; you look at the time signature and the key

signature. Absolutely right! Especially the key signature … because that's how we think

about music.

Throughout the observations, Jane rarely asked open questions. Although she invited the

students’ responses to a Schoenberg piece they had heard, there remained a sense that some

responses might be more appropriate than others:

Student: It’s the strangest thing I ever heard.

Student: It’s like one of those old horror movies.

Jane: Any other reactions?

Student: I don’t see why he composed it in the first place.

Jane: Why he composed it in the first place? Anything else? Does it feel random?

Student: It’s too logical.

Jane: Too logical? Or illogical?

Student: It’s made through logic.

Jane: So you know it’s logical.

Student: But it’s too logical because it doesn’t sound like music.

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Jane: You’re absolutely right. It does sound random but there’s an enormous amount of

planning in place.

Here, the phrase ‘You’re absolutely right’ implies that the student’s understanding of the

music as ‘too logical’ is correct. (Observing, I think Jane expected students to find the music

random.) In her interview, Jane had talked about letting the students discuss the matters they

wanted to discuss:

If the kids get going on something then I let them. I love it. We were talking about

Shostakovitch the other day and we got into Stalinist Russia and authoritarian regimes

and China. Fine. I can go with that because they’re interested. If you can’t get Sixth

Formers to think, then that’s serious … I suppose I’ve been teaching long enough now,

to be able to bring it back to what I want to do, whenever I like.

I did not observe this happening, possibly because I was present as an observer, but I did

observe Jane directing the content of the dialogue fairly closely because, in order to analyse

music, the students are required to learn a lot of unfamiliar musical terms, and to use them

correctly.

In the feedback part of the IRF sequences, Jane frequently repeats the students’

(correct) responses, sometimes embellishing their responses with added pieces of

information. Her use of repetition affirms the correct answers and ensures that the musical

terms become familiar to the students. Occasionally, Jane explains new terms quite

specifically:

Jane: Now then, here’s a definition of the exposition in a fugue. The exposition in a

fugue is when all the parts come in with either the subject or the answer. When all the

parts are in, like they are now, that’s the end of the exposition. And the middle part of

the fugue starts at bar 15, when all the parts are in. That’s how you know where you

are, in a fugue. Do you remember the Bach piece, the jig?

Various students: yes.

Jane: You had to say it was fugal, because it wasn’t a proper fugue? Right, well this is a

proper fugue: it’s got an exposition, it’s got a middle section and it’s got a final section

(gesturing to the projected image of a score).

The definition of ‘exposition’ was signalled and subsequently presented in one, very concise

sentence and repeated, with slightly different wording, in a second sentence. The repetition of

‘exposition’ (4 times) and ‘fugue’ (5 times) was intended to familiarise the students with the

terms, and to increase the likelihood that they would remember them.

The IRF sequences, typical of Jane’s teaching, are fast-paced, partly because students

volunteer answers. This could have the effect of limiting the conversation to a few, well-

14


informed students and indeed, some students contribute more than others. Jane involves more

reticent students sometimes by directing her gaze to specific individuals and sometimes by

nominating them. In the following extract, she had asked a student to analyse a chord in the

score:

Jane: … [S] can you do that?

Student: No.

Jane: I bet you can. Go on. Yes please. Bar four.

Student: Is it a seventh?

Jane: It is a seventh! What’s a seventh?

Student: Is it the E?

Jane: The E is the bass note of the chord – what’s the seventh? Where is the seventh?

Student: Oh. Is it the D?

Jane: Well that would be a seventh above the E, wouldn’t it? Yes. Ok, so that’s the

seventh. So what are the notes of this chord?

Student: E,

Jane: Yes.

Student: G,

Jane: Yep.

Student: and B,

Jane: Good for you.

Student: and D.

Jane: And a D. Yes. So what chord’s that?

Student: E7

Jane: E minor 7. You’re right. Yes, it is.

This task is simpler than many others I observed so it is likely that [S] was less able, which

might have been why he was more reticent to contribute to the conversations. Also, Jane’s

breaking down of the task into its component parts – naming individual notes, then naming

the chord that contained those notes – simplified the task. This episode demonstrates two

strategies for dealing with incorrect answers: breaking down a task into smaller steps, and

reformulating close, but incorrect answers (Student: E7. Jane: E minor 7. You’re right.)

When neither strategy could be used, Jane’s most frequent ploy was to ignore incorrect

answers, directing her gaze at other students, indicating that she was still hoping for a correct

answer. Using such strategies meant that Jane rarely corrected inaccurate answers as such

and, when she did, corrections were brief and focused on the correct answer to the question.

For example:

15


Jane: what does the top part play?

Student: Counter melody?

Jane: Countersubject. We have the answer and the countersubject. Have a look at the

countersubject, which sounds like this. (Plays it) That’s the countersubject.

These strategies result in the construction of IRF sequences in which very many of the

‘responses’ are correct and the feedback is positive. Students hear correct answers far more

often than incorrect ones (and are more likely to remember correct answers).

The IRF sequences are varied by Jane’s use of music. Frequently she communicates

music by singing, playing a musical recording or playing the piano. For example,

Jane: Now, in bar 11 you’ve got the subject (plays it). Here’s the countersubject, in the

middle part (plays it). Ok? Recognise that from before?

Various students: yes.

Jane: And here, above that, is a new countersubject which goes (plays it). OK?

During my observations, it was rare for Jane to speak for more than half a minute without

inviting student responses to questions. In this, from the longest such passage, Jane was

describing part of Berg’s Violin Concerto, before the students heard a recording of it:

Jane: … in the second quarter of it, you can hear this small child, playing. There are

some skippy rhythms. You need to use your imagination a bit but you can see her in the

garden, popping up and down the path. That's half of it, and there's a break. The third

quarter is the bit where she gets ill and dies and once you know, you can hear it in the

music. It is dreadful; it's absolutely heartbreaking …

The use of descriptive words (‘skippy’, ‘popping’, ‘dreadful’, ‘heartbreaking’) is intended to

engage the students emotionally so that, even when they are not talking, Jane’s teaching is

intended to involve them.

Relationships with students

As stated, Jane’s questioning ensures that students often answer correctly. Jane appears

relentlessly positive, an impression assisted by her smiling; whenever she asks a question, she

grins, in anticipation of an answer. Correct answers receive positive feedback such as ‘good’,

‘very good’, ‘you’re absolutely right’, ‘good man’ and ‘good for you’. One student who had

correctly answered a sequence of questions was told that he was ‘on fire’ and, when another

correctly used the term ‘stretto’ in an answer, Jane simply said her name, with a beaming

smile, and held the smile for a moment. This positive approach is underpinned by an explicit

ethic of care for her students, as she reported in an interview:

16


They know that I care about them. They understand that really early on and, if they’re

struggling, I will make a huge amount of effort for them because I don’t want them to

struggle. They know that and they appreciate it.

In the student interview, a student corroborated this, telling me that, when she had returned

from an absence, Jane gave her a set of notes and spent time explaining everything so that she

was ‘completely up to speed with what I’d missed’. Jane says that the students keep in touch,

after they leave: ‘I get invited to their weddings, ten years on’.

In lessons, this care is communicated in small but direct ways. Jane notices how her

students are thinking and feeling and, if someone looks lost or puzzled, she moves quickly to

help them. A student who had just returned after an absence was asked, ‘Are you ok?’ and

told, ‘We missed you in orchestra’. When another student arrived late, Jane asked why,

reassured him and asked another student to help him to find his place in the lesson. In another

lesson she suddenly asked, ‘[P] love, are you alright? You look tired – are you ok?’ In return,

she demands effort: if students’ attention starts to wander, or if they start drifting into idle

chatter when Jane is talking to them, they are told to ‘hang in there’ or ‘focus’ and she

occasionally says someone’s name and looks at them, to capture their attention. This

encouragement is not without an edge. She told me,

They say I can be quite scary, which I think is hilarious, but apparently I’m quite scary.

And I do think that having expectations about how a lesson is going to be, or how a

rehearsal is going to be, is terribly important. There’s no nonsense … I’ve got really

basic classroom expectations. I expect them to be there, to pay attention.

This ‘no nonsense’ approach is necessary, she says, because some students are not interested

in achieving:

Sometimes … they’re not doing very well and they’re not interested in doing very well

and they’re all teenager-ish … I’ve got one lad in the first year who actually did a year

at [another college] last year, and didn’t do very well and … I have to motivate him,

every lesson – remind him that he wants to be here.

But it isn’t simply a matter of ‘reminding’ students that they want to be there. She says, ‘I

will pick them up, if they talk over me. I will give them an act; I can perform’. Seeking

clarity, I asked her if she ever ‘throws a wobbly’ – a euphemism for a temper tantrum. She

agreed:

Yeah, I’m perfectly capable of doing that, quite spectacularly. Or quietly, as the case

demands. I don’t have any nonsense. I’ve always been good at showing them a

markbook, saying, ‘I haven’t had that bit of homework from you – there’s a gap. Why?’

17


As she says ‘why’, she looks at me, very directly, and I think I understand why the students

might think her scary. However, Jane also demonstrates empathy with her students. For

example, when one girl told her, ‘I can’t work out the tune’, Jane responded, ‘I thought that,

too. It’s really difficult to tell’. On another occasion, she mentioned that viol strings were

made of ‘catgut’ (in reality, the intestines of sheep or goats):

Jane: The catgut’s for the strings; the strings are made of catgut.

Student: Real catgut?

Jane: Yes. (Students respond variously – some ‘urrgh’ noises.) They didn’t have nylon,

did they? (Jane laughs and students murmur.)

Student: How did they find out that catgut would work?

Jane: I have no idea.

For several seconds the students continued to murmur as Jane gave them time to absorb this

information and watched them, to see how this would affect them emotionally. Such empathy

is connected with the way she shares some information about herself, her music and her

responses to music. On one occasion she told a student who was having difficulties, ‘I’ve got

lots of sympathy. I feel a lot like that, about a lot of technology. If I’m made to do it, I

actually can but I don’t particularly want to.’ On the other hand, she is extremely enthusiastic

about music. For example, describing a Shostakovitch piece, she says, ‘what does he do, after

those chords? He goes straight back into A major. It’s wicked – he just jumps right back.’

And:

When I was at university I had to do composition and I had a tutor who really loved

serial music, and I was writing a lot of stuff that was modal because that’s the sound

world that I enjoyed, and I wasn’t getting very good marks for it. So I thought “oh blow

you, mate” and I wrote a row and wrote a serial Wind Quintet. I did it completely by

Maths. I had absolutely no idea what it sounded like. You didn't have Sibelius

[software] in those days so I did it on paper and it was a mathematical exercise. He

thought it was brilliant! And I thought “that's not music, that's maths.”

Discussion

Jane’s lessons differ from Green’s (2008) account of informal pedagogy in every particular.

Her students do not use music that they choose themselves; they learn as a whole class, not

only with friends; they do not copy recordings; their learning is structured and, although they

are encouraged to relate what they learn in their lessons to their music making, such

integration does not generally occur during lessons. Her classroom pedagogy is formal, as

conceptualised in the literature: it is teacher-led, planned and systematic and the focus is on

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conceptual learning, with a repertoire drawn from (notated) Western Classical music. Her

choir rehearsals (not reported here) differ from the lessons, with fewer IRF sequences and

more musical modelling, but they are also formal, in the above sense. Only the chamber

groups are informal because having started them, Jane leaves the students to direct their own

learning. Jane’s classroom pedagogy is embedded within an overall pedagogy about

developing students as musicians within a university-like environment, and is effective: her

students work hard, answer questions (mostly) correctly, achieve good examination results

and go on to university and sometimes, to careers as musicians. This is achieved in a context

of warm relationships which the students acknowledge by keeping in touch, after they have

left her.

This study of Jane suggests some possible answers to the question, ‘what is lost when

teachers abandon formal pedagogy?’ Applying Handal and Lauvas (1987), at the level of

action, Jane’s teaching is centred on herself, as a musician and teacher. She conveys her own

passion for music, describing her own experiences as a student and musician, and punctuating

her questions and explanations with singing and playing the piano. Her energy and

enthusiasm create a strong sense of purpose and direction, in contrast to the ‘chaos’ of some

informal lessons, reported in Green (2008, 38-40). Jane imparts a sense that time is precious,

and what is learned, is important. She uses formative assessment constantly, adapting her

questions to the students’ abilities. Each student is noticed and valued: she commits to them

and expects a high level of commitment in return. In terms of activities, Jane’s students

engage mostly in audience-listening and the literature around music, while Green’s students

engage primarily in performing and audience-listening (Swanwick 1979).

At the level of reasons for actions, Jane wants to develop her students’ conceptual

knowledge for analysing and occasionally critiquing music. She has a clear idea of what

constitutes ‘good’ music and, allowing for the constraints of the examination syllabus,

chooses ‘good’ music for the students to sing, play and listen to. She believes that, although

students might find such music initially difficult, they respond to it. At the level of

philosophical orientation, Jane’s pedagogy aims at cultural reproduction – she ‘passes on’

what she has learnt. In this respect, her pedagogy has something in common with Green’s

informal pedagogy because both concern understandings of existing music. (Green’s

approach includes some composing and Jane asked her students to construct a tone row, but

neither improvisation nor ‘free’ composition is a major part of either pedagogy.) Both

approaches differ from, for example, Paynter’s pedagogical approach, which was concerned

with cultural renewal through ‘creative’ composition (e.g. Paynter and Aston 1970). Jane’s

wider pedagogy ensures that students sing, play and increase their knowledge of music,

19


performing regularly within the community beyond the college, occasionally becoming

professional musicians and more often, competent amateurs. If Jane were to supplant her

formal pedagogy with an informal one, much – actions, aims and philosophical orientation –

would be lost.

Implications for practice and research

Although I wholeheartedly support Green’s (2008) approach to informal pedagogy (reference

removed for anonymity) I worry when it totally supplants formal pedagogy. Green’s informal

pedagogy has significant strengths but as she pointed out, it does not provide a complete

music curriculum. Jane’s formal pedagogy appears to deal better with:

Conceptual learning: understandings of musical ideas, enabling informed discussions

and analysis

Knowledge about music: including the role of music within societies and cultures

Unfamiliar repertoire: including music of different times and places

Differentiation: the teacher’s skill, to match activities to individual students’ abilities

(e.g. to challenge the most able)

Additionally, Green’s informal pedagogy re-casts the teacher’s role as an adviser so the

teacher cannot direct students (e.g. when their attention wanders) and formative feedback is

problematic. When these aspects are important, Jane’s formal pedagogy is probably more

effective than Green’s (2008) informal pedagogy.

Jane’s classroom pedagogy also lacks important dimensions. For instance, there are

comparatively few opportunities for students to understand the music they hear by playing or

singing it, and their opportunities for self-expression are much more limited. However,

teachers can use several, quite distinct, pedagogies (e.g. the varying approaches Jane uses for

lessons, choir rehearsals and chamber groups) so it seems unhelpful and unnecessary for

teachers to abandon particular pedagogies when they adopt others. Indeed, it might be

preferable for music teachers to employ a wide range of pedagogies, drawing on musical

practices from different times and places.

Viewed as research, this case study helps to encapsulate what a pedagogy is: actions

and interactions, shaped by a teacher’s background, personal characteristics, passions and

intentions, in relationship with students, within institutional and societal contexts. A

pedagogy is a teacher’s efforts to realise aims – what s/he wants for the students – in

interactions. This study shows that the theoretical notions of ‘formal’ and ‘informal’ can be

used to distinguish between musical pedagogies, although the literature suggests that music

lessons contain elements of both (Folkestad 2006) and mostly fall in the middle of a formal-

20


informal continuum (Jenkins 2011). Further case study research, involving teachers in a

variety of informal contexts, might develop a greater understanding of music pedagogical

practice, moving beyond ‘formal’ or ‘informal’ categories. Music education has a strong

tradition of pedagogical thinking and practice, but contemporary pedagogies are less well

understood. A stronger understanding might guide the choices of teachers and other

practitioners so that, when a pedagogy is abandoned, it is clear what is lost.

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