Category: Education

  • Opera in education

    I felt hugely lucky to be part of the development of Royal Opera House’s Create and Sing. I was a few years into my own singing lessons and but virtue of these lessons being with the tenor Ian Caley operatic arias were part of my vocal diet. A great deal of the developmental process, that…

  • Imagining a plan for cultural education

    With the announcement following the publication of the White paper in England that work would begin on a National Plan for Cultural Education many will have applauded the announcement, and many will see this as part of a long history of policy and approaches that sought to champion cultural education. Music education has received considerable…

  • Why arts education matters now

    ‘All schools should be art schools’ proclaimed Bob & Roberta Smith and now as schools are providing on offsite provision how that vision is realised will be one of many challenges schools face. There will undoubtedly be the need to make difficult choices about what to provide but I want to make the case that providing whatever we can…

  • Indicators of (musical) thinking together

    In a previous post I wondered if the six types of talk proposed by Robin Alexander could be six types of (creative) music-making: Collective: ‘address learning tasks together’ – ensemble music-making is the immediate equivalent of this. Supportive: free of risk expression of ‘hesitant or tentative, or that might be judged ‘wrong’ – I think…

  • A dialogic teaching companion to music

    I’m working my way through Robin Alexander’s A Dialogic Teaching Companion (2020). I’ve reached the centre of the book where Alexander introduces his revised framework.  I won’t reproduce the framework here as I think the book is worthy of reading (and purchase) but I am interested in how a dialogic framework could help structure a…

  • Walkthrus: Explanation and Modelling

    I had a great two terms of supervising coaches on the Accelerate Teaching Programme. Supporting new instructional coaches gave me insight into the experience of the participants and particularly the strength of the rubrics that underpinned the work on the various modules. The rubrics enabled participants to have purposeful conversations with their coaches about their…

  • Googling dialogic teaching

    Googling dialogic teaching

    Well before I read the EEF report on dialogic teaching I did a google search and found several news stories and opinion pieces that followed the release of the report. Fascinating! I thought I would blog on my readings of these, just to start with the end rather than the beginning. What is immediately striking…

  • How does it fit together?

    What role does music(al) learning play in the music industry? Is it to promote engagement with music so they will become lifelong consumers of various musics through buying equipment/instruments to allow them to engage with the music (as a maker, creator) or to buy music through live event tickets, recordings, sheet music etc. Should it…

  • Understanding Younger Audiences

    Understanding Younger Audiences

    It’s now over half-way through a project I devised with some students from Guildhall School to explore my pupils’ perceptions of attending classical music concerts. It felt the right time to reflect.  The project is something of a collaboration between me and Guildhall School’s Understanding Audiences research project. My aim is to understand how young…

  • Response to ‘How do we get music teachers the CPD that they want?’

    My response to John Kelleher’s http://www.teacherandmusician.com/2015/08/how-do-we-get-music-teachers-the-cpd-that-they-want.html/#more-692 I think Music teachers need to see a wider variety of activities as CPD – not just formally organised events (that often cost a lot of money… how much is the average INSET course per day?). Joining a choir and being rehearsed by excellent practitioners (such as Simon Halsey and…