Vol. 20 April 2015 ISSN 1320-078X

CREATIVE MUSIC EDUCATION Promoting teaching And learning excellence Through the Orff approach

MUSICWORKS

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Contents Page Editorial 5 Contributors 7 The Legacy of Orff via Margaret Murray (1921-2015): Vale ANNE POWER

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Creative Thinking and Teaching JAN McMILLAN

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Instrumental Teachers Expertise Viewed Through an Orff Lens ELANOR McPHEE

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Moorambilla Voices 2015: Ten Terrific Years MICHELLE LEONARD and MARGIE MOORE

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Why Do We Have To Improvise ROY WAADE

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Experiences at Salzburg Special Course 2015 MARY WALTON

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Instrumental Teachers Expertise Viewed Through an Orff Lens

ELEANOR McPHEE Abstract Due to a lack of mandatory formal studio-teaching accreditation, instrumental teachers in Australia are generally highly skilled musicians who learn to teach from experience. This situation makes it important to investigate the kinds of experiences that go into the creation of experts in order to build a picture of expertise in instrumental teaching. As experts rely on a repertoire of innate skills and practices, reconstructing the reasoning behind pedagogical decisions can be challenging. This article, therefore, finds the four phases of musical development fundamental to the Orff-Schulwerk pedagogy - exploration, imitation, improvisation and creation – to provide a useful frame through which to examine the teaching of eight expert Australian instrumental teachers. Findings showed the experts to integrate distinct learning styles and methods to create a holistic approach that had developed over time into an overarching philosophy that informed every aspect of their teaching. The exploration, imitation, improvisation and creation stages came together to form a creative pedagogy which clearly scaffolded the development of a personal and artistic ‘voice’ in the students. Introduction This article investigates the teaching of eight expert music teachers teaching in a one-to-one, or studio, context. These expert teachers have a commonality of approach in that they teach with knowledge, imagination, discipline and empathy. However, due to the implicit processes that occur in the lessons of experts (Carter, Sabers, Gushing, Pinnegar & Berliner, 1987), the finer details of teacher expertise in this case can be difficult to categorise. This article, therefore, finds the Orff-Schulwerk philosophy of holistic and creative learning achieved through experience to be a useful frame through which to interpret the teaching of expert teachers. Thus, it uses the phases of musical development fundamental to Orff pedagogy: exploration, imitation, improvisation and creation (Shamrock, 1997), to examine the implicit and creative processes of experts and to provide transferable concepts that may be used to build pedagogical creativity (Abramo & Reynolds, 2014).

Background The Acquisition of Expertise Much research has been conducted in various teaching domains that consider teacher development across a career span and through this investigate the development of expertise (Bullough & Gitlin, 1995; Ericsson, Charness, Feltovich & Hoffman, 2006; Hattie, 2003; Hattie et al., 1996; Huberman, 1989; Nias, 1989). The most prominent was undertaken by Berliner and his associates (Berliner, 1986, Gage & Berliner, 1998; Carter et al., 1987) who developed a five-stage model that illustrates the development of expertise in teachers from novice to expert. Expert teachers, according to the Berliner model, have an implicit understanding of the teaching context and can respond to situations intuitively and fluently. They have an interconnected understanding of their own actions and those of their students and a well organized knowledge base allows them to draw readily on their past experiences (Carter et al., 1987). In making a deeper interpretation of events, the expert teacher is able to extrapolate theory and therefore transfer knowledge from different teaching contexts (Borko & Livingston, 1989; Calderhead, 1996; Schempp, Tan, Manross, & Fincher, 1998). This results in experts being able to:

rely on a large repertoire of strategies and skills that they can call on automatically, leaving them free to deal with unique or unexpected events ... The wealth of knowledge and routines that they employ, in fact, is so automatic that they often do not realise why they preferred a certain plan of action over another. However, when questioned, they are able to reconstruct the reasons for their decisions and behaviour. (Rollett, 2001, 27).

When looking at issues of teacher education this raises a question. How can teachers explicitly broaden their repertoire of strategies and skills when, according to Rollett (2001), many of these skills are acquired innately. Acquisition of expertise in the music studio The acquisition of expertise in the music studio is even less defined as there is very little research which considers the ways in which

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music studio teachers acquire expertise and the research that exists shows outcomes that conflict broader educational research. Research has found that more experienced teachers have more traditional conceptions than novice teachers (Bautista, Pérez Echeverría, & Pozo, 2010; Bautista, Pérez Echeverría, Pozo, & Brizuela, 2012; Castejón & Martinez, 2001; Marín, Pérez Echeverría, & Hallam, 2012) which is in opposition to much of the research on the development of expertise as discussed above. Bautista et al. (2010) and López-Iñiguez, Pozo, & de Dios (2014) found that three distinct levels of teaching experience, novice, experienced and highly experienced, also show three distinct conceptions of teaching and the less experienced the teachers were, the more sophisticated, complex and student-centred their conceptions about learning and instruction were. Furthermore, López-Iñiguez et al. (2014) determined that “teachers with the least teaching experience most often adopt constructive profiles” (p.15). Creativity in the music studio Musical creativity is a principal tenent of music education and, as such, research has investigated ways in which creativity can be fostered in broad terms (Odena, 2012) as well as focusing on creative practices that can be shown to develop broader creative thinking such as improvisation (Hickey, 2009; Rowe, Triantafyllaki & Anagnostopoulou, 2015; Whitcomb, 2013) and composition (Burnard & Yonker, 2004; Hickey, 2003). These practices have a twofold advantage of giving teachers facility with creative skills in order for these to be taught to students effectively (Wright & Kanellopoulos, 2010). Also, knowledge and skills in creative areas might foster creativity in teaching itself as well as creativity in music making (Abramo & Reynolds, 2014). Abramo and Reynolds (2014) note that pedagogical creativity has a broad application across a variety of music education settings because it allows for the implementation of “creative strategies when instructing and designing curricula, even when creativity is not the explicit topic of the lesson” (p.2). Creative teaching practices have yet to become as commonplace in the music studio as they are in the classroom. This could well be due to the isolated nature of the profession in which teachers have few opportunities to engage with other teachers and to be exposed to new ideas through professional development opportunities (Haddon, 2009). Added to this is the idea that a lack of formal teacher training,

which is common to studio teaching, creates a pedagogical conservatism born from a belief in the effectiveness of teaching as one was taught (Gaunt, 2011). The Orff pedagogy guides students through the developmental phases of exploration, imitation, improvisation and creation and, through this, acts as a scaffold into music of any style and period (Shamrock, 1997). Similarly, this four-pronged approach can be used as a frame through which to view the holistic and innate approaches of experts and thus provide a procedure through which teachers can approach and reflect on their practice. This paper aims to map these four Orff developmental phases onto the teaching of eight Australian expert instrumental music teachers and, through this, respond to the questions: What are the characteristics of expert instrumental music teachers? In what ways can teaching for creativity help to scaffold a teacher’s development of expertise? Methodology The research that informs this paper was a collective case study involving semi-structured in-depth interviews with eight expert instrumental teachers. All eight teachers had taught instrumental music one-on-one for more than 30 years and had a long teaching record with their students themselves being employed in the profession either as performers or teachers. The eight experts also had a nation-wide reputation based on teaching, publications, recordings, or performing profile. The eight experts were five men and three women teaching piano (3), clarinet (2), violin (1), bassoon (1) and guitar (1). Interviews were audio recorded, transcribed and coded using thematic analysis to allow patterns, critical themes and meanings to emerge. Findings The term exploration in an Orff pedagogical context refers to the “discovery of the possibilities available in both sound and movement” (Shamrock, 1997). From an instrumental pedagogy perspective, the creative possibility available in sound was an important issue for these expert teachers. Exploration in this way became a process by which students could be encouraged to find their own unique interpretations of music, their own creative ‘voice’. Gavin describes this

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process as leading his students in curiosity: “ Well, it’s the curiosity about sound, curiosity about repertoire, generally being curious about everything”. This idea was supported through the use of metaphor and analogy to trigger an imaginative response from students and metaphorical language was also used as an way to discuss the teaching process itself.

The problem-solving happens on all the levels at the same time. But it only comes once you’ve actually pulled it apart like a flower, each petal, so that you understand how the flower is made. And then you put the flower back together again, and you can actually treat it and you can smell the flower, see the flower, and touch the flower. (Gavin – piano)

In this way story telling and metaphorical language was used to scaffold an imaginative and creative response from the student as well as an imaginative pedagogical approach by the teacher and the playfulness engendered here created a safe environment for both student and teacher to experiment within. The process of imitation allows children to develop basic skills in rhythmic speech and percussion instruments through listening and copying (Shamrock, 1997). Within the context of creative pedagogy, the process of imitation can be viewed more broadly as a process of modeling in which teachers learn to be effective through imitating the successful strategies and behaviors of expert teachers. Interestingly, these expert teachers saw this process of imitation as a two-way communication. They were aware of the model that they presented to their students, also accomplished musicians with developing teaching practices, and strived to make the often implicit processes of teaching explicit and therefore easier to imitate.

And I’m very keen to teach teachers as well. I have a lady that comes in from out west who found herself teaching a studio of clarinets; came to me to fix up her technique… So she’s rebuilt her playing and in the process we’ve talked about practice techniques and she’s rebuilt this whole studio. ow that’s affected not just one person, I’ve affected 30 kids – that excites me. (Daphne – clarinet)

The expert teachers also used imitation themselves to continue to develop their expertise from a belief that learning to be an effective teacher is never complete.

I love watching [expert Sydney concert band conductor] conduct ‘cause it’s wonderful. Just such a good musician but then he’s got that wonderful mix of rapport, musicality, technique, and stuff like that and it’s hard, and aural skills, all sorts of things. (Raphael – clarinet/sax)

Imitation was seen as a double-edged sword with the teachers making the distinction that mimicry without understanding inhibits the acquisition of transferable and correctly sequenced skills. Arthur (guitar) noted, that the communicative and personal paradigm of the one-to-one lesson makes the implicit explicit so that ideally students understand the reasons for strategies and can transfer them to other applications appropriately. Within an Orff context, improvisation builds on the previous two skills by allowing them to be extended and developed with student-initiated new patterns and combinations (Shamrock, 1997). The expert teachers all described processes of improvisation when teaching and were not afraid to experiment, describing the systems of ‘trial and error’ that they would undertake in a lesson. These teachers would use a bounded improvisational process in which a variety of solutions were applied having been chosen as likely from an embodied understanding of technique. When a successful solution to a problem was found, this solution could be applied to other students and contexts and this helped to build a systematic and transferable approach. James noted that different people learn in different ways and an experimental and flexible approach is key:

Some people never sort of cotton on and you’ve got to try… “this didn’t work for someone, it worked for somebody else but it doesn’t work for this one” you know that sort of thing. (James – bassoon)

Shamrock (1997) describes the Orff principle of creation as combining the material from any and all of the previous phases into original work. She makes an important distinction between original work, which can be mimicry without understanding, and original work that comes from an embodied understanding of musical elements on a limited scale using Orff materials and procedures. This original work “can be considered a basis for expansion into material from any style or period” (p. 44). The expert teachers of this study were distinct in that their focus was on the development of

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their students as unique and creative artists and teachers. The three developmental phases discussed above came together in the fourth, creation of an original work, which was the awakening of a creative and personal musical response in their students. This creative approach seems to either be the finishing point of a technique based approach as William favours:

I wouldn’t say to them, “Look, have you tried this? Half of that speed or double that speed?” [Rather,] it’s the way you can make it sound and then people are interested in it, that’s the right [interpretation] for you. (William – piano)

Or it seems to grow from a teacher’s overarching teaching philosophy as Gavin demonstrates.

The only thing we have as a point of contact between a composer and us, or between composer and performer—is the score. Not another recording, because another recording can completely deflect your integrity about the performance. I mean, no one wants to hear me playing a version of Pogorelich when I’m playing a Scarlatti sonata for instance. People want to hear the real me even if it is not as polished as Pogorelich... It’s good to hear someone else’s performance. But only after you’ve really sorted out what you want to get out and discover yourself. (Gavin – piano)

Conclusions These eight expert teachers have had a large variety of learning experiences and showed a great degree of diversity in teaching characteristics however a key commonality between the eight experts was that they have all found individually distinct methods through which to build a student-centred and creative approach. The experts were seen to integrate distinct learning styles and methods to create a holistic approach that had developed over time into an overarching philosophy that informed every aspect of their teaching. As Rollett (2001) noted, although experts draw on a broad repertoire of strategies, they do so innately which makes their actions difficult to interpret, however, when asked to reconstruct the reasons for their decisions and behavior, a distinctly structured approach to creative teaching can be seen. When viewed through the Orff pedagogical strategies of exploration, imitation, improvisation and creation we are able to dissect these approaches in order to

make implicit and holistic teaching more explicit and transferable. These expert teachers used a free and playful form of exploration in pursuit of developing a student’s creative voice. Strategies used included storytelling and metaphor, used to develop a student’s individuality within otherwise methodical and systematic processes. Teaching processes were made explicit to students in the knowledge that they themselves represented an imitable model of teaching best practice. These teachers also imitated best practice as modeled by others and were able to draw from a wide variety of exemplars from within and without music teaching contexts. A musician’s embodied understanding of instrumental technique provided a framework for pedagogical improvisation and this allowed new approaches to be tried and discarded until a solution was achieved. These successful strategies were then applied systematically across the student body, raising overall teaching quality. These three approaches came together in the forth which saw these teachers as partners with their students in the teaching and learning process and thus saw the creation of a creative pedagogy by the teachers which clearly scaffolded the development of a personal and artistic ‘voice’ in the students. References Abramo, J. M., & Reynolds, A. (2014).

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