Problem-solving in Music Education

1. Problem-solving inMusic Education Sarah Elliott

2. Research Question • How do senior primary students describe their experience of a problem-solving task in music education?

3. Enjoyment Melanie’s final journal entry: The task to use instruments to make sounds to go in the poem was a bit tricky but it was also a lot of fun. I don’t really know what made it fun maybe it was the composing that made it fun or maybe the instruments, I don’t really know. I really liked performing it even though I was nervous.

4. Enjoyment I have had a different experience from this because I don’t usually do stuff like this but making different sounds and experimenting with instruments to make sounds come to life is a great learning experience for me and I think for everyone else it is too. Another thing I have really enjoyed in this is working with someone I don’t usually work with and that was a great experience too. Today’s task was really fun and I wish this was on all the time.

5. Musical Learning Laura:[the task] was really fun and …we learnt a lot out of it, and yeah.. it was a really good thing to do. Well like, [I learnt] more about sound scapes and yeah music and, more about understanding music. Like if it’s sad or happy or exciting or scary, and yeah, like in the movies, like you’ve got, yeah the music makes it scary but, you kind of understand it more if you’re writing it yourself.

6. Problem-solving Michael: Well, problems can come in all shapes and forms, not just like your teacher says ‘oh ok, here’s a maths sheet, do this problem, this problem’. They’re all different types of forms, like they’re everyday life… as I said before you’re teacher gives you a maths sheet, she says ‘do this problem’, but, you could have a problem out in the playground with little kids or something, or you could trip over a stick, that’s a problem.

7. Problem-solving Oh, well, with the music one it was a bit different because we were told what to do, but we weren’t told how to do it. And so we were able to work out our own way of how to do it, but we had to go along a certain line, like a certain form of doing it, so yeah.

8. Working In A Group Jeremy: I just preferred to work by myself and stuff but it was really fun working with other people yeah you got to hear their ideas and yeah. I don’t know [why I preferred working on my own] just cause like I got to make my own decisions like if like the other like the other people in the team wanted to do one thing and I wanted to do another then like if I was by myself I’d be able to do that but I wouldn’t and yeah…

9. Working In A Group Well when you’re working by yourself it would like be like good for like just what like before when you have to do an answer and stuff, but when it’s open-ended you need like lots of ideas and suggestions and stuff and with the more people then the more ideas and suggestions you’ve got so I found that a bit yeah better, easier to do and yeah.

10. Open Task Laura: Well, it’s good not having heaps of rules that you have to stick by…cause we did a thing a bit like this with [the music teacher] the other day, and we had to have a metal thing, a skin thing and a wooden thing and ...it wasn’t as good, having all those in it. [Not having the rules was good] Because … you use whatever instrument you thought suited it without having to have that one instrument.

11. Open Task Cause then if we had to have like a metal one and a skin one and that and if we didn’t have like a metal one for instance we’d have to use one of them instead of another one, and it might not have been as good, like it wouldn’t have suited the words maybe for the song.

12. Experimenting Laura: It was challenging to find a bit of music I liked the sound of to fit in with the words but just like after a bit of experimenting you’ve kind of worked it out and you like in the end you have which instruments and maybe low notes and high notes and…well we had to experiment and then find, like if we had like three instruments for instance that we really liked we would like try them out and see which ones suited best. Well, we were like talking about it and yeah just experimenting and then talking about it and then putting it in with the piece.

13. Creation Laura: I think I kind of learned what it felt like to make, create music and stuff like that cause in band we just learn other people’s music but it was good to actually create my own.

14. Research process in classrooms • What do you feel you have learnt today so far? • What do you think you will take back to your classrooms and students? • What do you want to learn more about or investigate further? ASME XVII 2009 National Conference Launceston Musical Understanding