The Creative Use of Music Technologies by Trainee Teachers in England

Since 1999 I have led a one-year music teacher education course for secondary teachers in England. One key aspect of my work is to support trainee music teachers in developing their use of music technology to promote musical learning. The government’s latest report on music in English secondary schools indicated that music technology was one of their two greatest concerns in secondary schools across the country*especially for children aged 11-14 (Ofsted, 2012). This, and my own awareness of the difficulties facing student teachers working with Information and Communication (ICT) Technologies with this age group (Gall, 2013), compelled me to initiate changes to formal assignments on the course that I lead. The novice teachers are now required to design, teach and reflect upon two units of work for children in a class within the 11-14 age range. Both must aim to support pupils' creative development: in one, pupils must compose using a sequencing programme; in the other, there is a focus on developing recording techniques including manipulating sounds.

I was interested to investigate the feelings of the trainee teachers following what, for all of them, would be their first piece of extended work involving children aged 11-14 with music technologies. I also wanted to explore the attitudes of the novice teachers’ school mentors toward this work. Data for both were drawn from questionnaires and focus group discussions.

In this presentation I will report on the work of two cohorts of student teachers, from the years 2014/15 and 2015/16 (n=19). I will display examples of work created by the trainees and by pupils themselves, and will also present findings about the student teachers’ perceptions of the issues surrounding their projects, and their mentors thoughts on this work.