Music

Position paper on promoting Music Education in face-to-face learning through use of ICTs

Keith Pender, Memorial University of Newfoundland

This position paper argues in favour of using information and communication technologies (ICTs) to enhance the limited access to quality music by delivering, supporting, and extending access to music education in face-to-face teaching and learning. The paper also identifies the obstacles to integrating ICTs in music education and how these can be overcome.

Problem

In thinly populated areas, accessing quality music education is sometimes a problem due to the absence of instrumentalists for face-to-face teaching and learning (Brändström, Wiklund, & Lundström, 2012). In geographically distant locations, rural schools may not have a musician available for the instruction of instrumental performance, such as the case was with a school located in Northern Canada that had no music teacher living in the community (Murphy, 2005). This limited access to professional instrumentalists disadvantages children from having equal opportunities for quality music education, as found by Riley (2009), where most students in the study had no formal music instruction at their school. The accessibility to music education maybe addressed through generalist teachers, however as Gall and Breeze (2007) found, generalist teachers felt they were not sufficiently prepared to teach music classes.

The obstacles of balancing instructional time with teaching and learning of prescribed content and curriculum outcomes in instrumental performance settings are sometimes hindered due to learning music notation (Chan, Jones, Scanlon, & Joiner, 2006). Learning music notation may be due to students missing practical musical knowledge in compulsory music classes or difficulties with transferring music to symbols (Crawford, 2009). After completing a survey of an introductory to music course at a public university, post-secondary students noted variances of success in reading music notation (Horspool & Yang, 2010). This problem may be because, as Vratulis and Morton (2011) stated, “notation offers few opportunities for increasing musical understanding through the examination of the sociocultural contexts of music” (p. 401).

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