Participatory creativity in Spanish secondary education by means of music and images

Author(s):

Roberto Cremades(presenting / submitting)Carlos Lage(presenting)

Conference:

ECER 2017

Network:

20. Research in Innovative Intercultural Learning Environments

Format:

Paper

Session Information

20 SES 02, What Is a Globalized Society, What Concepts Are Being Used and How Does That Effect the Interplay between Emotion, Identity, Intercultural Competences and Education?

Paper/Poster Session

Time:

2017-08-22

15:15-16:45

Room:

W3.16

Chair:

Gyöngyvér Pataki

Contribution

This proposal informs about a Collaborative Action Research Study carried out in Spanish Secondary Schools in five cycles from 2008 to 2013. A series of didactic projects were designed, focused on the creation of music in conjunction with other visual art manifestations, such as cinema, photography, and painting (cross-modal perception). Students set posters, paintings or short films to music and composed soundtracks through the Free Improvisation or Cooperative Composition as didactic strategies. The purpose of the research was to analyse the teaching and learning processes in the creation of music and the pupils´ motivation within the projects aiming to better understand the learning for creativity processes and its implication for creative teaching in secondary education. The selection of the class year was due to the characteristics of Spanish secondary school education, curriculum, and the students’ psycho-evolutionary characteristics.

In this way, the use of visual aid had a didactic objective driven by various motives. First as a guide to composition, second as a source of motivation, and last, to encourage the consideration of the cross-cutting nature of the arts from the perspective of their ties as a reflexive element in which different languages merge into one unique artistic manifestation. The Projects were characterized by its transversally and constant evolution and adaptation to the contexts, considering it was the first time the pupils created music. The image represented a composition guide, a support in a complex process developed from the experimentation as strategy.

The beginning of the 21^st century revealed the reconceptualization of musical creativity not just as a complex phenomenon occurring in individual minds socially and culturally situated (Csikszentmihalyi, 1999), but as a kind of social practice (Frith, 2012) that emerges in different forms (Burnard, 2012). Considering the role of the musical creativities in education as a revolution and a social priority (Craft, 2005), it could also be considered a transforming agent for music education, linked with a participatory approach from research and pedagogic perspective. It has strong implications for schools from the notion of music education as a social based practice in the search for meaningful and cross-curricular experiences. This approach implies as a consequence the necessity of the students´ democratic participation from an inclusive perspective. Thus, a transformation process in our classroom (Burnard, Apelgren & Cabaroglu, 2015) was proposed through an axis comprised of the musical creativities and the active participation of the students, considering the important role of the pupils´ motivation in the learning processes. We were immersed in a process in which students, teachers, and artists were involved in a social shared space for an experiential art interdisciplinary creation.

Method

The Collaborative Action Research demonstrates a practical intention to transform as a “practice to be lived and experienced” (McNiff & Whitehead, 2002, p.107). This was the fundamental objective of our research, from a general perspective that, at the same time, developed from the Participatory Paradigm (Heron & Reason, 1997) along three different strands: (a) curriculum-based, to improve the learning processes (Cochran-Smith & Litle, 2009) (b) methodology, to look for new focal points in secondary school music as well as (Saunders and Somekh, 2009) (c) to improve our own teaching practices (Hargreaves & Fullam, 2014). The project took place in three Madrid Province (Spain) secondary schools; eleven classes comprised of 267 students in the third year of secondary school, fourteen to fifteen years old, participated throughout five cycles from 2008 to 2013, for which music is a compulsory subject taught twice per week in fifty minute lessons. It was performed within the schools´ music departments, and with the active collaboration of artists such as a professional painter and a composer. Additionally, researchers within the music and body expression department of the Complutense University of Madrid, and the University of Eastern Finland also contributed. The data collection strategies developed from the participatory inquiry paradigm, were: participant observation; non-participant observation; interviews; classroom diary; classroom assessments; questionnaires; video and audio recordings, along with triangulation of the data. The choice was made for pedagogic reasons to favour the development of the project, as well as for organizational reasons, in order to facilitate the participating teachers´ presence in the different lessons. The participants´ classes could be defined as extremely heterogeneous, from the point of view of the vital priorities and academic results, as well as from the socio cultural strata and origin (intercultural educational context with pupils from more than ten nationalities). In a generic way, “they like pretty much to play music in class” (students´ interview). The predisposition towards didactic offers centred on the procedural activities seemed to be evident, and it has turned out to be a positive influence in the development of the study.

Expected Outcomes

The data analysis concludes that: (1) Students have recognised the value of the musical creation in their individual and collective identities (2) Assumed the role of musicians in the construction of meaningful musical experiences. (3) Four interconnected pedagogic directions: Student experimentation, teacher guidance, group-based and student-based learning. (4) Positive emotions manifested themselves from both multidimensional and dual (teacher-student) perspective: the emotions evoked by listening to the performances, the emotions resulting from the performer´s level of satisfaction with their own work and the emotions produced by the atmosphere of the classroom (5) The identification of the students with the created music influenced the level of motivation in the classroom. As a conclusion we have elaborated a holistic participation model for creativity in secondary school as a paradigmatic approach for music education considering the link between the multidimensional emotions from many perspectives, the positive wellbeing and its relation with motivation and class environment, and creativity understood as a social practice. This can be also understood and supported from view of the current understanding of the 21st century learning environments.

References

Burnard, P. (2012). Musical Creativities in Practice. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Burnard, P., Apelgren, B, & Cabaroglu, N. (2015) (Eds). Transformative Teacher Research: Critical Issues in the Future of Learning and Teaching. Amsterdam: SensePublishers. Craft, A. 2005. Creativity in schools: tensions and dilemmas. Abingdon: Routledge. Cochran-Smith, M., & Litle, S. L. (2009): Inquiry as Stance: Practitioner Research for the Next Generation. New York: Teachers College Press. Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1999). Implications of a systems perspective for the study of creativity. In R. J. Sternberg (Ed.), The handbook of creativity (pp. 313-335). New York: Cambridge University Press. Frith, S. (2012). Creativity as a social Fact. In D. J. Hargreves, R. Macdonald & D. Miell (Eds.), Musical imaginations: multidisciplinary perspectives on creativity, performance and perception (pp. 62-72). New York: Oxford University Press. Hargreaves, A. & Fullam, M. (2014). Capital profesional. Madrid: Morata Heron, J. & Reason, P. (1997). A participatory inquiry paradigm. Qualitative Inquiry, 3, 274–294. McNiff, J. & Whitehead, J. (2002). Action Research: Principles and Practice (2ª ed.). London: Routledge. Saunders, L. & Somekh, B. (2009). Action Research and Educational Change: teacher as innovators. In S. Noffke & B. Somekh (Ed.), The Handbook of Educational Action Research (pp. 190-201). Thousand Oaks and London: Sage.

Author Information

Roberto Cremades (presenting / submitting)

Complutense University of Madrid

Musical and Body Expressions

Madrid

Carlos Lage (presenting)

Universidad Complutense de Madrid