Victoria Hughes Ed

I’m an arts teacher and I love cognitive science

I think the principles of cognitive science can help us understand and explain many of the difficulties we may encounter in the music classroom. This is my experience of integrating some of the ideas from cognitive science into my own practice and using it to help understand the process of teaching and learning.

CLT

“Novice learners have limited abilities to process new information.” (Boxer, 2019). Although it makes sense when you’ve been teaching for a while (you learn to adapt your explanations and break processes down into bite-size chunks), an understanding of CLT helps explain why some things are so tricky, especially in the music classroom. Cognitive overload may also be the reason why some students insist that they are not ‘musical’. Music can be incredibly joyful, but it is not always easy to understand, compose or play music.

Reading music, playing music, staying in time with an accompanist/ensemble, and playing musically all at the same time is extremely demanding, and one of the reasons why music is so good for the brain. It helps to have an awareness of just how complicated this is and why pitching things at the right level in the classroom or for an ensemble, where there are so many different ability levels, is just so difficult.

It’s also been really interesting to think about CLT when explaining some of the trickier concepts, such as intervals, on the grade 5 ABRSM music theory paper. There are a lot of steps that need to be learnt, and if a pupil is still having to process letter names on the stave, then you can see why this is just so tricky for them.

Spaced Practice

One of my key objectives for Year 9 music is to give pupils an understanding of the language of music so that they are able to engage in conversation about it, whether they decide to continue with the subject at GCSE level or not. For this reason returning to musical concepts and vocabulary to help pupils retain this knowledge happens frequently.

We’ve designed our GCSE, A-level and IB schemes of work with spaced practice in mind. Making sure we return to key concepts and vocabulary at regular intervals ensures students retain this knowledge. For example, at GCSE level we start the year looking at ‘melody’ and ‘what makes a good melody’. We incorporate this melody terminology into listening and retrieval exercises throughout the rest of the year. As we learn new concepts, we continue in the same way. We return to these through the process of composing; the concepts are made explicit through our teaching and pupils are able to demonstrate conceptual understanding by integrating these concepts into their own compositions.

Retrieval Practice

Play/Sing/Clap the musical feature
Blank score annotation
Vocab grids
Brain dumps
Brain Book Buddy
Mini whiteboards
Focus on Sound quizzes
Multiple choice quizzes
Listening tests
Listening at the start of Year 9 lessons to practice retrieving musical vocabulary, enhancing appraisal skills

Elaboration

Making connections between listening, performing and composing.
Making connections between different set works.
Making connections with a piece of music heard at a concert.
Making connections with a student’s favourite song.
A short composing task based on a specific musical concept
Using subject specific vocabulary in sentences to check understanding.
Using subject specific vocabulary in extended writing.

Concrete examples

Singing/playing musical ideas to illustrate concepts/terminology
Listening to examples in set works and other musical examples
Creating own relevant examples by incorporating a specific concepts into composition work

Dual coding

We use this all the time in music, not just through words/pictures/diagrams, but through musical scores and listening:

Annotating scores
Listening and following a score (although this may be too complex to carry out simultaneously for those who cannot read music fluently)
Using signs/symbols for specific concepts/terminology

Modelling/Scaffolding (I do – We do – You do)

We use this a lot when learning the process of composition.

Returning to the example of composing a good melody:

The teacher models the composition of a melody to the class. Uses clear explanations of the process as he/she is working.
The pupils contribute to the group composition of a melody. Misconceptions are addressed.
The pupils compose their own melodies.

Learning how to harmonise a melody using I, II, IV and V

The teacher models and explains how he/she is adding chords to the melody.
The pupils suggest chords to add the melody. Misconceptions are addressed.
The pupils harmonise their own melodies.

Motivation

We must pass on a love of music to our students so that they willingly engage with the vast array of musical culture that exists and is so accessible in the world today. We must also be aware of the evidence linking competence to motivation. I think it is vital that we learn the lessons that cognitive science can teach us to become highly effective teachers; this will help equip our pupils with a feelings of competence. We want them to identify as musicians. The hope then is that they will be motivated to study music past the age where it is no longer compulsory.

So there it is. Nothing ground-breaking here, but I’ve certainly found learning about cognitive science useful for informing some of the strategies in my own practice.

As music teachers I think we should be interested in the science of how we learn. This may or may not change our practice, but we should at least be aware.

For more, I recommend Adam Boxer’s excellent article

https://edu.rsc.org/feature/5-invaluable-lessons-from-cognitive-science/4010434.article

More on Brain, Book Buddy @effortfuleduktr

Brain – Book – Buddy: A Strategy for Assessment

A Professional Learning Focus

After reading Unleashing Great Teaching (Clay and Weston, 2018) I was inspired to share my own professional learning focus. Admitting there is an area of your teaching that can be improved may lead to feelings of vulnerability and this is why it is particularly important that leaders model their own professional development. By doing this we are contributing to a professional environment where others feel it is safe to do the same.

So this is my professional learning focus:

What is the impact of ‘teaching concepts through examples’ on ‘describing specific musical features’ for ‘5th form GCSE musicians’?

The need

The 5th form trial exam brought to my attention some gaps in pupils’ knowledge. In order to cover all of the set works, as required by the Edexcel Pearson GCSE, I have been focusing on analysing set works and learning vocabulary as applicable to each set work. It is evident that pupils need greater understanding of the musical concepts themselves, outside the set-work frame of reference. There is unfamiliar listening in the exam; pupils need to have a general understanding of musical concepts to be successful in answering this type of question.

I have selected four concepts which the 5th form need to be able to recognise and describe in their GCSE music exam. These particular concepts were identified by examining student answers on the trial examination. Each of these concepts has a range of associated terminology and pupils need to be able to describe the concept using the correct terminology.

Melody

Rhythm

Texture

Harmony

The strategy

A ‘basic concept’ according to Engelmann is ‘one that cannot be fully described with other words’ (Engelmann and Carnine, 1982, p.4). To be taught properly it requires concrete examples. Basic concepts can be split into three different sub-groups and the one I am focusing on is ‘Nouns’ (multi-dimensional concepts, each one having many different features).

So why not just use words to describe or give a definition of the concept?

“The word is not the concept and does not imply the concept to a naive person.”
Engelmann and Carnine, 1982, p.16

My two-year-old son is probably the ultimate example of a naive person. He looks outside and can see the dew on the grass, or condensation on the car, and says “it’s raining, mummy”. You can see how he’s trying to marry the idea of water and rain together but he hasn’t quite got it yet.

We need to assume that our students are naive until we have thoroughly tested their understanding of a concept. I have certainly been guilty in the past of thinking a student ‘gets it’ until I see their test result. The breadth and limits of a concept need to be explored because students will have to recognise concepts in a wide range of musical genres and styles. Defining concepts is particularly relevant to music as students’ understanding is not complete unless they can ‘hear’ the concept; they must be able to identify it through listening. We have to make our meaning explicit and the best way to do this is through examples.

I have taken some questions from @Mr_Raichura ‘s blog post on this teaching method which will assist when planning these lessons:

How can I introduce a concept through concrete examples, before using the abstract generalisation?
Are there non-examples that I can use to help illustrate the boundary of the concept?
What misconceptions could my sequence of examples/non-examples throw up?
What questions can I ask to check for successful comprehension?

In addition Tom Needham’s chapter in the ResearchEd Guide to Explicit and Direct Instruction (2019) has informed my planning, in particular the ‘Juxtaposition Principles’.

The wording principle – agree on standardising definitions for concepts as a department, write down what you intend to say for consistency, make sure definitions are not contradicted by later examples
The set up principle – examples and non- examples should vary in only one way with all other features held constant – only one interpretation is possible.
The difference principle – to understand what something is, it is helpful to comprehend what it is not. Examples and non examples should be juxtaposed consecutively (non examples highlight the concept boundary – non examples should share the surface features)
The sameness principle – juxtapose maximally different examples to demonstrate the range and scope of a concept (examples should sample a wide domain. How to determine how many are sufficient? Test pupils)

“The closer that these principles are adhered to, the more likely the communication will be ‘faultless’ and the more likely a student will understand”
Needham, 2019, p.45

The impact

Firstly there is the impact on the learning of my pupils which I will evaluate through questioning, low-stakes testing and examination questions. I hope to see increased accuracy and frequency of use when applying this vocabulary to the set works and unfamiliar listening. A useful comparison can be made with the trial examination.

The second impact to consider is on the practice of the wider department and I hope to engage my whole department in this intervention as collaborative lesson research. We want to make sure pupils get the best results possible on their GCSE music exam; however, it is important that pupils understand these concepts as part of a good music education and important that we, as teachers, understand how pupils learn these concepts. The learning from this intervention is something that we can all utilise in our teaching throughout the year groups and we need to consider how we imbed this knowledge at an earlier stage in the course. Knowledge from this process will allow me to bring first-hand evidence to our departmental collaborative planning meetings about the effectiveness of explicit instruction. In this way the sharing of knowledge created from professional learning has a substantial impact on wider practice.

The third impact I am interested in is on pupils’ creativity. It is likely that enhanced conceptual understanding will feed into pupils’ composition work with greater knowledge and understanding paving the way for greater creative potential. This is harder to measure but would be fascinating to explore. The process of modelling these concepts for use in composition work (‘I do – We do – You do’) is another area that could be further developed.

The potential impact is huge and I’m looking forward to getting started!

References

Carnine, D. and Engelmann, S. (2016) Theory of Instruction: Principles and Applications

Clay, B. and Weston, D. (2018) Unleashing Great Teaching. Routledge

Needham, T. Teaching Through Examples, The ResearchEd Guide to Explicit and Direct Instruction (2019). Ed. Boxer, A. John Catt

https://bunsenblue.wordpress.com/2019/10/20/clear-teacher-explanations-i-examples-non-examples/

I teach knowledge, I foster creativity

A recent tweet from a composer at the RAM concerned about A-level music failing to prepare students to succeed as composers has prompted this blog post. I asked for greater clarification on this matter but it was not forthcoming. I believe we must open up a conversation here; we are all concerned with engendering a love of our subject and creating the future generation of musicians and music-lovers.

Directly related is the debate surrounding the return to a knowledge-rich curriculum versus 21st century skills (oh hey there, creativity).

Is a knowledge-based curriculum at odds with the creativity we should be fostering in our musicians?
Is this why the A-level music curriculum and assessment criteria are perhaps perceived as restrictive or stifling by some?
Are we stepping away from more creative pedagogies?

Lamont and Maton (2010) found that many students still believe that musical ability comes from natural, innate talent. Some teachers and students believe composing cannot be learnt and taught, therefore influencing their own confidence in their ability to compose and teach composing (Devaney, 2018). This stems from and feeds into the idea of the ‘creative genius’ – Mozart, Beethoven et al. Dangerously, this notion extrapolates the compositional output from the knowledge that is a prerequisite of this creativity.

Creativity must come from knowledge. David Didau has written extensively on this matter. Knowledge does not always result in creativity; creativity is not an automatic by-product of knowing more, but creativity is impossible without knowing lots.

“All great minds throughout history that we celebrate as creative were already experts before they saw a new way of thinking or doing”

and

“creativity depends on and is activated by knowledge”.
Didau, Making Kids Cleverer, pp 186-7

Practice at applying this knowledge is also required. Creativity is a function of knowledge and practice. Therefore:

C=f(K, P)

Also Dylan Wiliam: “As E.D Hirsch points out, skill is content, and content is skill. The so called 21st century skills like creativity aren’t really skills. They are collections of skills that are specific to a discipline, and require massive amounts of content knowledge.” And “skills can be improved by the acquisition of more knowledge”. Creativity is the disposition of people who are very much trained in a discipline (Ohlsson, 2011).

Tom Sherrington has also blogged about the idea of creativity. He says the road to creativity is to focus on “maximising knowledge and encouraging practice. The more knowledge you have the more options you have for combining knowledge in original ways. The more practice you do, the better you get at it.” In relation to music this would mean teaching musical concepts and giving students the opportunity to practice using these concepts when composing. Listening to music is another important way to build this knowledge.

Sherrington goes on to discuss how improvements in his own musical knowledge have improved his ability to compose:

“…improving my knowledge of chord shapes… has allowed me to write various pieces of music”.

Sherrington adds an extra element to Didau’s formula; the disposition of the creator:

“…that willingness to explore, to try untested ideas, to take risks, to break from conventions, to go down the less trodden path”.
Sherrington, 2019

Therefore there are three factors which determine creativity:

Knowledge
Practice
Disposition

As Sherrington says, creativity should be regarded as an “emergent outcome” rather than something that can be taught per se. But it can, and most definitely should, be fostered. This is echoed in Claxton and Lucas (2014) and Lucas and Spencer (2017).

Brad Mehldau (2010) writes about the importance of knowledge to the jazz musician, particularly the knowledge that is gained from a close familiarity with the repertoire: “The creative musician is a vessel of information… the input is all the music he or she listens to, and, more generally, everything he or she takes in – literature and other disciplines, emotional experiences and sensory stimuli. The output is what one will then produce after one takes all of that in.” Another argument for the importance of knowledge in the many forms it is presented to us.

In addition, Mehldau discusses the idea of authenticity: “Authenticity is cherished, and authenticity is directly determined by how well a player has absorbed the “lessons” of his or her predecessors”. This means that the idea of authenticity, which is strongly aligned with creativity, is directly proportional to our knowledge of our subject, or more specifically the genre in which we are composing.

In my experience, mark schemes for GCSE and A-level music allow students to demonstrate knowledge and be creative in the way they apply it. Assessments by definition must involve a measurement of knowledge, however there is so much choice within this; choice of style, structure and instrumentation, for example. Students are able to create their own brief. The open-endedness of the tasks ensures creativity as a disposition can be fostered. GCSE and A-level composing coursework tasks are sufficiently open-ended that they allow for creativity. The mark schemes are asking students to demonstrate they have the required level of conceptual understanding to compose a piece of music; in addition they give the freedom to apply this understanding in a creative and innovative way.

The innovations of creative geniuses such as Mozart and Beethoven were not god-given, but a product of knowledge (through lessons and exposure to a rich musical heritage) and hour-upon-hour of practice. From examining a wide range of GCSE , A-level and IB composing work it is evident that a lack of knowledge leads to a lack of creativity. It is always the students who demonstrate the ability to apply musical concepts who produce the most creative work. This comes from learning and applying musical concepts and/or from in-depth listening to the genre in which they are composing (ideally, both!).

Assessments seek to assess knowledge, without which we would not have any genuine innovation or creativity. Should part of this assessment include an evaluation of the process with less emphasis on the final product? Perhaps, but this is a separate argument and perhaps one that might form the content of another blog post.

Knowledge and creativity are not incompatible. This is why a knowledge-rich curriculum is the safest bet to foster ‘creative genius’ and the next generation of composers. The higher standards demanded by the newly reformed qualifications are there to support this idea. As teachers it is up to us to make sure we are equipping our students with this knowledge, giving them plenty of opportunity to practice applying it, and fostering an environment where creativity is valued. But most importantly we must teach the knowledge.

GCSE and A-level music teachers are key players in ensuring the next generation of students go on the study music at university. Let’s celebrate these teachers and students. And going back to my opening point, let’s open a dialogue about the required and desirable skills of our future composers.

Key references

Claxton, G. and Lucas B. (2014) Educating Ruby. Crown House Publishing
Devaney, K. (2018) How Composing Assessment in English Secondary Examinations Affect Teaching and Learning Practices
Didau, D. (2018) Making Kids Cleverer. Crown House Publishing
Lamont and Maton (2010) Unpopular Music: Beliefs and behaviours towards music in education
Lucas, B. and Spencer, E. (2017) Teaching Creative Thinking. Crown House Publishing
Mehldau, B (2010) Creativity in Beethoven and Coltrane https://www.bradmehldau.com/carnegie-06
Sherrington, T. (2019) Eureka! Teaching for creativity https://teacherhead.com/2019/02/02/eureka-teaching-for-creativity-c-f-k-p-d/

What we may have missed without collaboration

We invested an hour in a joint planning exercise for the next half term of our scheme of work today and it raised some fascinating questions. Without this discussion we may not have fully addressed the below:

Are the planned content and activities really ‘teaching to the top’?
Are we shying away from a difficult topic or is it actually inappropriate at this stage?
Why did we originally map out two areas of study for this term?
How much new vocabulary is appropriate? Are we overloading them?
What sort of analysis questions and which command words?
Are we using recent CPD input?
What opportunities are there for interleaving/spaced practice/retrieval of vocabulary from last term?
Learning the vocabulary definitions before applying it – is this right or should the listening and definitions be combined? (How do we learn musical concepts?)
Where are the opportunities for meta-cognition?

An hour well spent! Although this process involves an initial input of time, less individual time is spent planning lessons and the focus of future conversations is on the learning experience of the pupils.

Plan Do Check Adjust PDCA

The Shewhart Cycle is a method used in business to continually improve processes and products. It consists of four steps: Plan, Do, Check, Adjust. This is a concept at the heart of the collaborative teaching model in my department.

The collaborative planning model shared in my first blog post details the collaborative planning cycle in more detail from start to finish over the course of a half term, but I want to zoom in on the teaching (Do), the learning (Check) and the immediate changes (Adjust) that can be made to improve learning on a day-to-day basis.

A cognitive load problem / Do Check Adjust

I identified a weakness in one of my lessons this week. Pupils found it tricky to connect the dots between two related concepts. On paper (Plan) this looked fine. In practice (Do) it didn’t work so well.

Part of the problem was cognitive load; understanding the basics of Cognitive Load Theory has helped me to make sense of this.

We had just got to grips with and practised chord labelling using Roman numerals. Fine – pupils managed to complete the task. My questioning and the practice exercises suggested that they had got it. I am confident they understood this part.

The next part of the lesson was looking at how these chords could be represented in a different format (letter names instead of Roman numerals) and then how we write the inversions differently…

They did not get it

At least not until a lot more explanation and modelling had been provided.

This is because working out the chords using the chord grid was still using up a good deal of space in their working memories and adding an extra although related concept to this meant that working memories were overloaded; they were having to battle with the way their brains process and store new information in order to complete the task.

They all completed the work I had set by the end of the lesson but I was not confident of their understanding – they had to ask a lot of questions during the process.

Did they learn anything? Yes, but the instructional design was not optimal. It was not enough that they completed the task, this was not evidence they had all fully understood.

The problem here? Too many new concepts introduced over the course of a lesson. Although the two concepts are related, and in my brain there is a logic about going from one to the other, making this leap is taxing when the first two concepts are still so new and pupils hadn’t practised recalling and using this knowledge. I can make the leap, this information is firmly stored in my own schema, my pupils could not. This is a great illustration of the way cognitive load theory can help us make sense of pupil learning and inform our teaching (even if we don’t always get it right first time).

The great part about this experience?
I know how to make it better next time (Adjust)

What could be even better than that?
This is the type of information we record and share as part of our department collaborative planning and teaching; I know my colleagues will use it to improve the learning experience for all of our pupils. It also helps to illustrate and embed teaching and learning concepts across my team which will help to improve their own practice and have a much wider impact impact.

The best thing about this self-reflection is that I get to share this with the rest of my department thanks to our culture of collaborative planning and teaching which puts the pupils’ learning experience at the heart of the process, enabling us to create the best possible learning environment for all of our pupils.

PDCA is part of the immediate lesson improvement cycle. In addition, a longer term examination of summative assessment data is used to implement improvements to the teaching and learning process.

Collaborative planning and teaching

A way to save time and deliver the best teaching and learning?

The context

Collaborative planning actually started to happen in my department as a result of my need to up-skill in IT. I opened up my department meetings to contributions from our technology specialist, which led to contributions from other members of the team, and before we knew it, we had jointly planned a scheme of work for teaching music technology to Year 9. We embarked upon a process of mutual observation to make sure we were delivering the content in the most effective and engaging way. We made notes and adjusted our lesson plans, resources and assessment materials at the end of each half term. The results were brilliant: we worked as a team, an environment of trust and respect was built through mutual observation and feedback, time saved on individual planning has been substantial, and the results are excellent teaching and learning.

We have carried this process through to a new scheme of work for Year 10.

Joint planning

My team plans the scheme of work and general lesson content collaboratively, discussing specific teaching and learning aspects we wish to incorporate (retrieval, spaced practice etc.) and what we expect pupils to have learnt at the end of each half term.

Individual planning

We each plan a short sequence of lessons (maintains teacher autonomy – a key objection to collaborative teaching practice). Currently we divide up the weeks into odds and evens and plan alternating weeks (this could easily be adapted). The main concepts and terminology have already been mapped out as part of our joint planning, so we have creative freedom to plan these according to our professional judgment and teaching style. It is fascinating to teach a sequence of lessons planned by a colleague and to see how they do things differently – it’s given me loads of ideas for my own teaching.

Teach Observe

We observe where possible (sometimes we teach each others’ classes) and note the feedback/improvements to be made. We keep all of these notes in a folder ready to be adapted for the following year of teaching. Feedback improves the teaching and learning for every class in the year group, not just the single class of a single class teacher – maximum impact.

Assess and Evaluate

After a summative assessment at the end of the unit we compare pupils’ test results and our individual mark books. What have we taught well? What aspects have pupils struggled to get to grips with? What circumstances, that we can account for, may have affected the data? We look for misconceptions and lack of understanding and make a note to cover these concepts again later in the scheme of work. We look at how we can improve our teaching for the next year group when they embark upon this unit of work.

Why I think collaborative planning and teaching is great:

Consistency of content
Sense of team
New teachers learn from experienced colleagues
Experienced colleagues learn fresh ideas from new teachers
Sharing of individual strengths, weaknesses supported
T&L concepts – embeds understanding, common approach
Saves time
The results – outstanding teaching and learning

Considerations

Making time for planning meetings
Classes need to be covering the same content at roughly the same pace
A willingness to share ideas

Do you use collaborative planning in your department?

Are there any additional processes you would add?

What would prevent you implementing this in your school context?

I’d love to hear your thoughts.