A Reflective Lens: Music Pedagogical Research to Transform Practice | Page 57

A Reflective Lens:
Music Pedagogical Research to Transform Practice

Discussion

The experiences recounted in the students’ reflection
journals indicated that reflective practice created a platform
for students to be more aware and in control of their own
musical learning. However, even with evidence of students’
narrations of their learning and listening experiences, there
were concerns and observations that there was a lack in
the development of ideas. The students acknowledged
that they faced challenges in handling instrumental skills
and rhythms, but they gave generalised journal entries and
did not expand on explaining the basis or details of their
challenges. There was little analysis of their own actions
that should have progressed into thinking of how they
could have overcome those challenges.
The predominance of the ‘generalised explanation’ can
be explained by Elliot (1995) who argues that students
cannot articulate meaningful ideas about music. Though
the guidelines for the journals asked the students to reflect
on their experiences and challenges, students may have
interpreted literally that what was expected of them was
simply a report of ‘content covered’, and hence, they wrote
with less depth of reflection. As described by Knowlton
(2013), journals are neither objective assessments nor
applied performance, and students did not put in the time
and effort writing their journals. Learning how to use a
journal to be reflective and seeing the differences between
writing descriptions and writing a reflection may be the
stepping-stone for richer journal entries.
Another significant observation from the findings is
that instrumental techniques emerged more often
than musicianship in reflection journals and dialogues.
Musicianship could be too abstract for the students to
describe; so it is reasonable for students to feel it is more
important to focus on writing about techniques instead.
Knowlton (2013) commented ‘technique is concrete and
fundamentals of techniques are more easily communicated
than are the abstraction of musicianship’.

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