Category: Research

  • 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 […]

  • 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 […]