A Reflective Lens: Music Pedagogical Research to Transform Practice | Page 39

A Reflective Lens:
Music Pedagogical Research to Transform Practice

Introduction

The Singapore Ministry of Education (MOE) has been steadily
making the transition towards student-centric values-driven
education through the teaching and learning of thinking skills
and 21st Century Competencies (21CC) (MOE, 2014). The
21CC framework (MOE, 2010) focuses on the importance
of equipping our students with the values, competencies
and outcomes they must have to thrive in today’s rapidly
changing society. With the growing nation-wide emphasis
on development of skills for lifelong learning, we realise the
increasing need to develop students as reflective learners.
Using reflective practice to help students identify their own
strengths and weaknesses as well as make responsible
decisions, we sought to raise self-awareness in our students
and inculcate in them a greater ownership of their learning,
which are part of the social and emotional competencies
specified in the 21CC framework.
According to the MOE 2015 Primary / Secondary General
Music Programme Syllabus, music learning plays a role in
developing 21CC in our students. The processes of creating
and performing ensemble music provide a natural platform
and opportunity to engage our students in decision-making.
This is in line with the greater emphasis on Co-Curricular
Activities (CCAs) in schools as another important platform
to develop these competencies. In our school, structured
reflective practice, such as use of reflection journals and
reflective dialogue, had been used widely in our students’
leadership training camps. However, it had not been widely
extended to the CCA groups, in particular, the music CCA
groups in our school. In our study, we sought to experiment
and examine the use of reflective practice as a tool to capture
students’ musical learning experiences on an instrument.
The research questions that we addressed are:
1. To what extent is the
use of reflective practice
effective in examining
the musical learning
experiences in students?
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2. How can reflective
3. What are the students’
practice facilitate the
perceptions concerning
development of ensemble
the value of using reflective
performing skills in a new
practice in their musical
ensemble setting?
learning experiences?