A Reflective Lens: Music Pedagogical Research to Transform Practice | Page 31

A Reflective Lens:
Music Pedagogical Research to Transform Practice

Development of Students’
Leadership Capacity
When each group was asked to decide on their individual
roles (group leader, assistant group leader, scribe,
time keeper and noise controller), both groups almost
unanimously chose those with the most dominant
personality. Both group leaders who were elected, Student
A and Student F, displayed qualities of assertiveness and
outspokenness, which helped them to lead their group.
The next most outspoken member in the group became
the assistant leader. The decision was somehow unanimous
and these students naturally assumed the leadership roles.
From the observations and field notes jotted down, there
were a lot of noteworthy leadership behaviours displayed by
the four of them: reminding peers to stay on task, mediating
disagreement among peers, making final decisions (in the
event of disagreements in the group; as seen in Group
2), reprimanding non-participative members, reiterating
teacher’s instructions to peers, checking if a member was
on task (especially when tasks were divided and done by
different individuals), confirming group decisions, and
maintaining discipline during discussions by maintaining
the noise level. As I coded the transcripts, I realised that
the five lessons had given the leaders good opportunities
to develop their leadership skills.
To me, it was interesting to observe Student A as I found
her to be a very responsible and caring leader. She was the
only one who asked for members’ preferences throughout
the activities such as asking which instrument they wanted
to play or what lyrics they wanted to write down. She
facilitated the group discussions well and managed to
evaluate members’ strengths before deciding who should
be playing a certain instrument. Initially, Student D wanted
to play the bordun but when she realised that he could
not keep the beat all the time, she asked Student C to try
playing the bordun instead. Although Student C was not

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