RM presentation

Slide 1: Hello and welcome to my project, Contextual Studies and Music Education SLIDE 3 Why did I choose this project, well, it relates to my professional project and my career goal, and I think its interesting. SLIDE 4 My professional project is to be accepted into a history masters at a university abroad. Its free to study out there. But through my professional project I have to find out how to show an equivalency to a history degree. And perhaps I could get this project published as part of that SLIDE 5 So what is contextual studies? Well firstly I should make the term Music Education less general. Specifically for this project I looked at Popular Music Performance Degrees. Contextual studies within that would cover subject such as culture, society and history. Like our Cultural perspectives subject SLIDE 6 How did I do my research? Well I used different coloured pencils and drew a pretty mind map. Here I looked into the current state of music education, how it has been taught in the past. The methods I would use, and how I stuck to the SMART rules. SLIDE 7 I used Quantitative and Qualitative methods, which I then triangulated against each other to come to my conclusion. SLIDE 8 So what about methodology? We appear to be at a new paradigm within the teaching of music, with more educational facilities now teaching popular music and offering both classical and popular subjects. This is to do with High and low culture which is something I tackle in my project. It is a subjective piece, and I have a big bias towards it. I already think it is an important Subject, The stances I take are antipositivism and realism, meaning that in any situation there are mutiple truths and things have their own independent reality. Interpretivism - to gather opinions and ideas on a subject

. I think this is true, as I ask the opinions of many people, through questionnaires and interviews. I used secondary and primary research SLIDE 9 To understand Music Education, it is important to look at how Music is taught now. I looked at the different stages of the subject, from primary to degree. Here I could decipher any patterns and see how the subject develops or changes as the level gets higher. Music is on the National Curriculum for all levels, including being taught at primary level. Here we see that Music Education incorporates Contextual Studies from a very early age, becoming a larger and wider topic, as the level gets higher. The National Curriculum states that at KS1 level Pupils should be taught the knowledge, skills and understanding through: range of live and recorded music from different times and cultures SLIDE 10 In KS2 Culture becomes slightly more important. The enlargement of the word Culture means it was mentioned more in the KS2 specification than KS1 SLIDE 11 In KS3 Culture becomes a more open subject focusing on different aspects within it, Such as; Traditions, Contexts, Cultural and Social aspects. There is a noticeable difference between Popular, Traditional and Classical. SLIDE 12 Now that we know about the current state within the school system, it is time to delve deeper into THE higher levels. SO the interview. I interviewd 3 BIMM tutors who all teach a contextual subject, in a controlled environment. I asked them questions about their background in music education, and changes they have noticed since they started teaching their subjects. I asked them their views on history, society and culture within music. This enabled me to get some quotes. . By interviewing these lecturers I was able to get a better understanding of why the professionals think contextual studies is important. This could however have made the results biased, as they would be passionate about the subject they are teaching SLIDE 13 The forums: Where people go to argue with each other. Forums enabled me to get a wide range of data from people within different professions; I was able to post onto many different forums to achieve this.

Forums allowed me to create statistics and generate quotes to back up my hypothesis. The contradictions I got through forums helped me to triangulate results to come to a well-formed conclusion. SLIDE 14: I posted onto 11 varied Forums from arts, history, business, students and Teachers forums. This improved my data validity by avoiding bias, allowing me to get a wider overview and opinion of a bigger sample. SLIDE 15: To avoid Bias and make my data more reliable and valid I asked the same question on every forum I didnt post my opinions at any point I waited the same about of times before posting the Statements I told the participants it was for an assignment, so they were aware their comments would be used. An ethical issue could be that I didnt know the age of the participants, so they may have been underage. SLIDE 16: The Questionnaire: I USED SURVEY MONKEY I interviewed students from level 4 (Betec, Alevel and Cert HE) to 5 (BA2/3) to gain an understanding of a music student. An issue I had with this method was that I changed my method of gathering the data half way through from paper questionnaires in class, to online questionnaires. So this could have affected the results. I used Forced Likert FOR THE CULTURAL PERSPECTIVES RATINGS, to stop people from sitting on the fence. SLIDE 17 I asked the students to rate certain aspects of music, such as Theory, History, Performance etc, and those that take cultural perspectives were asked to rate that subject for importance, interest, among other things. SLIDE 18 I included statements within the interviews, forums and questionnaire, to find out if people agreed or disagreed, this allowed me to gather some quantative data. The statements were Music and society go hand in hand Music has nothing to do with culture Music history has no impact on music to day, Popular music is pointless and History should be taught in classical music only

Here are the results. SLIDE 19: SOME OTHER PROJECT FINDINGS, ALTHOUGH I WAS LOOKING FOR TRENDS WITHIN LEVEL 4-5, I HAVE TOO MANY GRAPHS FROM THAT TO PUT ON A 10 MINUTE PRESENTATION, SO AS WE ARE ALL BA2, I THOUGHT I WOULD SHARE SOME RESULTS FROM MY BA2 QUESTIONAIRE. HERE IS THE RESULTS FROM THE QUESTION, SHOULD MUSIC HAVE A HISTORY MODULE. HERE YOU CAN SEE IT IS QUITE A LARGE YES SLIDE 20: HERE WE SEE PEOPLES RATINGS FOR THEIR INTERESTS WITHIN MUSIC. PERFORMANCE IS THE HIGHEST RATED SUBJECT, WITH TECHNICAL MOSTLY BEING RATED AT 9, AND HISTORY AND SOCIETY BEING MOSTLY RATED AT 7. SLIDE 21: Here are the BA2 ratings of BIMMs contextual studies lesson. It is rated at an absolutely for interesting, influential and inspirational. If that doesnt show that we should continue to teach it, I dont know what will. SLIDE 22: Heres my literature review.