A Reflective Lens: Music Pedagogical Research to Transform Practice | Page 42

Use of Reflective Practice in Developing Students’ Listening and
Ensemble Performing Skills in Guitar Ensemble Co-Curricular Activity

saw the new instruments and were enthralled by the
different tonality and pitch range that each of these new
instruments produced. That spurred us to explore what
kind of new experiences these instruments with distinct
build and exclusive tones could bring to the ensemble.
Hence, we introduced a Soprano Guitar, a Guitarron and a
Bass Guitar in the ensemble setting of our study.
Selection of Participants
The study was carried out in a guitar ensemble CCA group
in an all boys’ secondary school in Singapore. Eleven 15year old Secondary Three students who had received at
most 2 years of guitar training were selected to participate
in this research project. However, for a qualitative approach
for an in-depth study, we focused only on four members.
They are presented in this report using fictitious names:
John, William, Matthew and Lucas. These four members
were the ones selected to play on the newly introduced
instruments (Soprano Guitar, Guitarron and Bass Guitar).
The selection of members to the new instruments was
done primarily with the matching of the physical size of the
instruments with the physical build of the member.
Design of Reflection Journals
Our reflection journal was designed with guiding questions
to prompt reflective writing and to encourage more
focused and in-depth reflection. We crafted questions that
were exploratory and scaffolded, so as to get members to
focus on their thinking and to participate in the reflection.
Adapted from the tools for ‘Making Thinking Visible’
(Ritchhart & Perkins, 2008), the use of thinking routines
as learning tools was explored to help direct students’
thinking and improve their learning.

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