A Reflective Lens: Music Pedagogical Research to Transform Practice | Page 24

Co-operative Learning Structure in Group Music Composition

Group 1 started off by appointing the
members to play a certain instrument
and the respective part (e.g. Student
B will play melody and Student D will
play bordun), then working out the
composition together. From the very
beginning, the group leader, Student
A, asked for members’ preference,
assessed the members’ playing skills
and then assigned them their respective
roles. When Student D could not play
the bordun accompaniment, Student
C was asked to replace him. For the
next four lessons, the members struck
to their original roles and strived to
improve their own individual parts.
They completed the activities quite
quickly since they figured out the
parts together. Mostly Student A and
Student B dominated in decisionmaking. They had plenty of time to
practise their composition pieces over
and over again so they were ready to
perform. Moreover, Student A and
Student B were very supportive of
their group members, encouraging
them and teaching them if they
were unable to play the part. Group
1 worked really well and rarely had
any arguments in the process.

Group 2 approached their tasks
differently – mostly using ‘first-comefirst-serve’ basis in choosing their
individual part or instrument or using
‘scissors-paper-stone’ to resolve
conflicts. For the first three lessons,
they separated the parts.Each part
was done by a different person. For
example, Student A did the lyrics,
Student B the melody etc. However,
by the fourth lesson they realised that
their strategy was not working well,
especially when they kept changing
instruments at each lesson. Since they
argued a lot, they normally did not have
enough time to practise, resulting in
them always being unready to perform.
For the second composition activity,
they changed their strategy by working
out the parts together. They even had
one round of everyone trying out the
instrument (part) to determine the
most suitable person to anchor that
part. They managed to practise and
put up a decent performanceat the
end. They also went further by notating
their composition using staff notation.

Throughout the five lessons, I observed that students were
generally able to think critically, and assess options and
possibilities before making sound decisions in completing
their composition. During the post-performance
conferencing, when asked about their decisions, for example
in choosing a certain rhythm pattern or a certain tone set,
students were able to give sound reasoning that showed that
these decisions were satisfactorily thought through. Some of
them also made mistakes but overcame the challenges. They
displayed the Emerging 21st Century Competency ‘critical
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