3 Exercises to bring Music and Imagination into Everyday Classrooms
Having worked across various education sectors, from secondary to tertiary education, I find the variants of what is creative learning, versus being creative a challenging concept. If your school has a music program, you may immediately believe that your child is receiving creative learning, and be filled with many lifelong transferable (aka soft skills), including creativity, and emotional Intelligence - but unfortunately, these programs are not really achieving this. It is also challenging to think that by having a music program, that we have ticked the ‘creativity box’, and all other subjects can continue as normal. Creative Learning, should and is not positioned into one discipline or field of study, such as Creative Arts (e.g. Music, Art), but rather and learning pathways within various disciplines as a vehicle to broaden and strengthen a students holistic, creative and imaginative skills, including high cognitive and emotional skills (as identified in World Economic Forum Skills 2030).
Firstly, lets briefly dissect what being creative is, from my own perspective with consideration to my time as a professional music composer, to leading tertiary education departments, to managing regulatory education compliance at the highest level - even my younger years working in construction. Being creative does not reduce to making music or painting a picture per se - this is now a widely accepted concept - but understanding exactly what makes a person become better at creating or being creative, is a concept I research and wrote my Masters on titled ‘Interactive Listening’. This is the act of Input-Processing-Output, or the lifecycle of creative music. The three stages and model are identified below:
Input - the initial creation and evaluation of a sound or note
Processing - the manipulation revisions and alteration (if needed) to the sound
Output - the final outcome, be that an alteration to the sound, or verification of the sound.
Fig. 1 Interactive Listening Model
An example of this, can be something as small as a guitarist striking or finding a good guitar note. The less experienced may take more attempts at finding a note that works, compared to the more experienced who can already imagine the best option and revert to a note that works immediately. I plan to go into much more detail on this research in upcoming blog, but it’s not without acknowledging the key concepts and the work supporting this theory by David Hirst (2013), who wrote on a composers ability as …”a capacity to demonstrate musical understanding through analysis, imitation and generation” (Hirst, 2013, pg 28). Richard Vella (2000) refers to practical music making as: “The manipulation, transformation, or subtle variation of sound is an essential part of any musician’s search for expression” (Vella, 2000, pg64). And Steve Dillon and Kathy Hirch (2012) research on music in education, identifying the strength of the Orff Shulwek method, and the importance of appreciation for self and music within a safe learning zone.
Imagination is key to creative Learning. Without the right safe and open learning environment, imagination will simply not develop. The importance of imagination in any context or discipline, is best stated by the late Sir Ken Robinson who said “Imagination is the source of all human achievement”. But to achieve, must come failure, or what I prefer to say, learning opportunities. Yes, here comes some cliches, but I do believe we never fail, we just learn better options or ways to do things. Robinson also noted that “If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.” And there lies the challenge facing schools - providing an environment where failures are not literally a fail grade, but rather an opportunity to learn and strengthen the imagination.
I have discovered that when developing the imagination in students, it is firstly and formostly about safety in disclosing an dissecting their thinking and processes. There are those who use it freely and conjure up original things seemingly natural, like an olympic high jumper where we see only the outcome but rarely the effort - and are those who have suppressed their imagination, rarely putting it into practice. But use of imagination can never be wrong, nor can be be graded like a school test; it’s a personal path of combining existing knowledge, ideas, failed attempts, insight, and experience - within the conscious or subconscious, to provide the world something new. Prof Emery Schubert (2012) wrote of Activation Theory as a non-linear development of ideas and outcomes based on existing learning, knowledge or solutions, that strengthen as we learn and fill our minds with new experiences and outcomes.
fig.2 a schematic representation of Activation Theory
So how do we introduce Creative Learning and the development of student imaginations into everyday classrooms?
Pamela Burnard (2010) in conjunction with the UK’s qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA), identified the five elements of creative learning as:
- Asking questions
- Making connections
- Imagining what might be
- Exploring options
- Reflecting critically
When researching teaching methodology of K-Y6 music education, Burnard (2010) concluded that: “Across all age groups, teachers emphasized the balance between structure and freedom. Early on, structure related to exploratory and discovery approaches, with structures and boundaries set in order to encourage exploration of possibilities, and intervention used cautiously so as not to interrupt this exploratory flow” (Burnard, 2010, pg.66). Considering this, Creative Learning does not become more complicated or increase in difficulty at any stage of the student’ education, but the boundaries they set upon themselves, with cognitive abilities increasing to allow the students to create more interesting outcomes, with innovation or innovative thinking taking over.
So, how do we do this? Firstly, we attempt to avoid obvious exercises, like clapping rhythms - especially those that are already created for students - or playing a recorded song and getting them to sing it. Definitely not wrong, but these are examples where the achievement is pre-set and they understand that by singing or clapping the right notes already provided for them they will be rewarded (albeit verbal reward). We aim to provide a safe supportive environment to essentially let students loose and for them to practice their imagination - with no expectations of outcome, and no sense of reward if they achieve a certain outcome. We aim to extend their cognitive abilities and emotional intelligence by allowing them to evaluate and make decisions based on what's going on around them.
Exercise 1 - As a group, asking children to make any sound with their hands
This will undoubtedly sound chaotic, but will challenge students to listen to their surroundings, align to other students around them, take the lead, or diverge from the group - any outcome is acceptable, even those who may ask to leave the room, or stop all together.
Exercise 2 - Ask students to pick a word, and express this word, any way they like.
Similarly, this effect will involve students evaluating their own work, but with a word comes meaning, and may alter once they hear their word in the context of others. This will challenge their emotional intelligence, including collaboration, as students may make connections with other words around them, and align with other students' ideas.
Exercise 3 - Critical Listening by playing a song and asking students to write what they hear.
This can be chosen by the teacher, or student volunteers, but this can be the most challenging, as many attempt to find the right answer, which doesn’t exist. Students will have varied answers, but ultimately should be fully supported on what they explore, whether its practical identification of instruments, what the song made them think of, or whether they can identify the lyrics.
Ultimately, all exercises should be completed with a reflection session allowing students to personally dissect their experience. These should be managed carefully, as self reflection is a very personal and subjective experience, and disruption to this will affect a student's future creative learning. I would advise avoiding an open discussion on their self-reflection until the group has done a number of exercises and practiced this, however, a general group discussion post exercises has proven to be very supportive in identifying the enjoyable components of the exercises.
References
Burnard, P. (2010). In Ballantyne, J., & Bartleet, B. L. (Eds). Navigating Music and Sound Education. Cambridge Scholars.
Hirst, D. (2013). In Brown, A. R. (Ed), Sound Musicianship: Understanding the Crafts of Music. Exploding Art Pty Limited.
Schubert, E. (2012) In Hargreaves, D., Miell, D., & MacDonald, R. (2012). Musical Imaginations: Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Creativity, Performance and Perception. OUP Oxford.
Vella, R., & Arthurs, A. (2000). Musical Environments: A Manual for Listening, Improvising and Composing. Currency Press.