Sounding the Teaching III: Facilitating Music Learning with Music Tec Sounding The Teaching III | Page 8

SOUNDING THE TEACHING III /
PRELUDE
6
Foreword
Clifford Chua
Academy Principal
Singapore Teachers’
Academy for the
aRts
Technology has become ubiquitous in
modern society and permeates every aspect
of our lives. As a platform for learning and
innovation, technology has been so integral
to the music industry that its significance
to education is impossible to ignore. The
learning of music can perhaps be seen as
an apprenticeship. Music teachers do more
than just teach students about music – they
mentor and guide their students, encourage
and challenge them through their gestures,
expressions, dialogues and performances.
Technology challenges this apprenticeship
model of music learning through its
affordance of an asynchronous learning
environment, allowing student learning to
take place anytime, anywhere.
Students today are already consuming and
creating music through online platforms such
as Spotify and GarageBand. Those wishing to
learn how to play an instrument can leverage
countless videos posted on YouTube to pick
up the skills. When technology disrupts
or augments the conventional model of
music learning, teachers will need to rethink
their pedagogical approaches and consider
the affordances that technology offers to
strengthen and enhance music learning in
our schools. One of these advantages lies
in the ease with which technology supports
learner-centredness. Learning through
technology allows students to control the
pace of learning that is most suitable to
their learning needs. The interactivity that
technology offers also allows for a certain
customisation of learning which targets
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FACILITATING MUSIC LEARNING WITH DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY
PRELUDE
Introduction
students’ specific areas of need. In essence,
technology holds the potential to help
teachers become better educators.
In this issue of Sounding the Teaching III,
the third one in this series, music teachers
involved in STAR’s Critical Inquiry Networked
Learning Community (CI NLC) chronicled
their journeys of discovery as they
re-examined assumptions and gained new
perspectives on their practices. In their
exploration of the possibilities emerging
from the intersections between technology
and music education, they constantly
find themselves having to reshape their
pedagogies in order to exploit technology to
better engage and enhance student learning
in music. In following them on their journeys,
we hope this volume will also spark new
kinds of conversations and alternative ways
of using technology that will help teachers
grow as educational connoisseurs as they
translate these ideas into their own music
lessons.
Technology, as valuable as it is, can never
fully replace the role of the teacher. The
value of the in-person interaction/experience
between a music teacher and his or her
student cannot be easily duplicated. The
teacher’s skill in choreographing the different
demands of music education through
technology is critical in ensuring that our
students’ experience and engagement with
music in school remain positive. I trust that
this publication will go some way in inspiring
you as it has for me.
Chua Siew Ling
Master Teacher
(Music)
Singapore Teachers’
Academy for the
aRts
This third issue of Sounding the Teaching features a collection
of inquiry studies from music teacher-leaders who participated
in a Critical Inquiry Networked Learning Community (CI NLC) in
2018. The focus of the inquiry is on music learning and teaching in
an environment enabled by digital technologies. The inquiry also
discusses how music learning can be better supported,
reimagined and re-balanced.
RE-EXAMINING OUR ATTITUDES
Firstly, so that we can develop an
openness to re-examine music and music
teaching, we can re-examine our attitudes.
Himonides (2017) believed that it is “not
our attitudes towards technology but our
attitudes towards diversity, originality, and
the celebration of creative expression and
learning needs that do not necessarily align
with our own” (p. 4). The teachers who
embarked on this critical inquiry journey
have modelled for us this openness as
they interrogated their own practices and
reflected on their own identities as music
teachers. Therefore, these articles do not just
describe their pedagogical journeys; they also
articulate their deep reflections, thoughts
and beliefs. One example is Ho Si Liang’s
discussion of the tensions she faced as a
music teacher and her negotiation of her
teacher identity.
RE-EXAMINING MUSIC LITERACY
Literacy has been defined by UNESCO (2005)
as “the ability to identify, understand,
interpret, create, communicate and
compute, using printed and written
materials associated with varying contexts”
and “involves a continuum of learning in
enabling individuals to achieve their goals,
to develop their knowledge and potential,
and to participate fully in their community
and wider society”.
Given that digital technology has influenced
communications in various forms and
how we receive and experience the world
around us, music literacy might also need
a re-examination. Music learners now
have much greater and broader access to
multiple modes of musical stimulus beyond
the sound as can be seen in YouTube, video
tutorials, and other resources afforded by
digital technology. One example is seen in
Ho Tze Liang, Shaun’s use of video tutorials
in facilitating music arrangement. Another
is Si Liang’s use of a YouTube video to
facilitate the creation of soundscapes as
an avenue to engage students’ thinking in
music. Therefore, we shall be continually
challenged by new technologies to redefine
what music is or define when music is,