A Reflective Lens: Music Pedagogical Research to Transform Practice | Page 119

A Reflective Lens:
Music Pedagogical Research to Transform Practice

Methodology
Participants
To carry out the research and implement this programme,
I selected one class of Secondary 1 students who could
be better engaged with the hands-on activities. This was
done with the goal of improving their engagement in
music learning.
For research purposes, I focused on two students, Serene
and Joy2 as they were most regular in their attendance,
and thus, tracking their progress would yield the most
information. They also appeared to be close friends,
compared to the rest of the friendship groups seen in
the class; which fit the main premise of informal learning
pedagogy.
The profiles of the class and the two selected students are
in Table 1 and Table 2 respectively:
No. of students

38

No. of Girls

13

No. of Boys

25

Class learning attitude

With the large number of boys in class, the class was generally
vocal during lessons. They could be rather disengaged during
lessons unless under a rather strict teacher.

Core Subjects

English, Mathematics, Science, Mother Tongue, Social
Studies, Art, Food and Consumer Education, Design and
Technology, Computer Application, Physical Education

Music teachers

Two co-teachers with a main teacher3 (July to August)
One co-teacher and a main teacher (August to Sept)

Duration of music lessons

1 hour 15 minutes per week

Table 1: Profile of Sec 1NT Class Under Study

116

2

The girls’ names have been changed.

3

The main teacher is the teacher-researcher.