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| 2. |
- Ferm-Almqvist, Cecilia, et al.
(författare)
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Assessment as learning in music education : The risk of "criteria compliance" replacing "learning" in the Scandinavian countries
- 2017
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Ingår i: Research Studies in Music Education. - : Sage Publications. - 1321-103X .- 1834-5530. ; 39:1, s. 3-18
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Recent reforms in England and the USA give evidence that teaching methods and content can change rapidly, given a strong external pressure, for example through economic incentives, inspections, school choice, and public display of schools' and pupils' performances. Educational activities in the Scandinavian countries have increasingly become dominated by obligations regarding assessment and grading. A common thread is the demand for equal and just assessment and grading through clear criteria and transparent processes. Torrance states that clarity in assessment procedures, processes, and criteria has underpinned widespread use of coaching, practice, and provision of formative feedback to boost achievement, but that such transparency encourages instrumentalism. He concludes that the practice of assessment has moved from assessment of learning, through assessment for learning, to assessment as learning, with "assessment procedures and practices coming completely to dominate the learning experience" and "criteria compliance" replacing "learning". Thus, formative assessment, in spite of its proven educational potential, threatens to be deformative. In this article we will explore to what extent and how this development is visible in two cases, presenting music education in one Norwegian and one Swedish compulsory school setting. Three thematic threads run through this exploration: quality, power, and instrumentalism.
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| 3. |
- Ferm Thorgersen, Cecilia, et al.
(författare)
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Teaching for learning or teaching for documentation? : about music teachers' relations to syllabuses in Swedish compulsory schools year 5 to 7
- 2013
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Over the last years several reforms have influenced the educational system in Sweden. A new curriculum for the compulsory school has offered teachers and pupils a totally new system for assessment. A new credit scale is constructed and all pupils will be graded already in the 6th grade, which means that new teacher groups will have to grade their pupils’ performances. The curriculum describes criteria in three qualitative levels for each subject by defining aspects of a holistic knowing and describing three levels of competence within each of these aspects. Clarity and transparency have been steering concepts in the formulation process in order to offer parents and pupils a better possibility to understand and influence education and assessment in schools. At the same time teachers are expected to make holistic assessments of the pupils’ acquired knowledge. In a subject as music, teachers’ subject knowledge and conceptions of quality can transcend what is currently possible for them to verbalize. In several other subjects written and spoken language constitute the primary media of communication. Musical knowledge though, can be expressed and experienced in sounding forms, a mode of expression which is not easily transduced into writing or speaking. Hence, high demands for verbal clarity in aims and assessment may result in essential parts of music being excluded from teaching and learning, based on a view that these aspects are too complicated to assess equally, or impossible to communicate verbally in a clear way. There is a risk that the new demands on clarity and transparency may reduce the subject to comprise only those aspects that can be easily measured and talked about.The current study aims to systematically and critically investigate in which ways the Swedish curriculum with its new assessment- and grading regime influences music teachers’ practice and their students’ musical learning in grade 5 to 7. Earlier research has generally stated that educational reforms take time to implement, but recent reforms in England and USA give evidence that teaching methods and content can change rapidly, given a strong external pressure, for example through economic incentives, inspections, school choice and public display of schools’ and pupils’ performances. Music education could become an easy prey for such pressures, given that music teachers lack a tradition to accompany music with words and that musical assessment criteria often are perceived as subjective, as compared to objective measurables. The demand for clear and explicit criteria offers challenges, since differences between credit levels are expressed as assessable qualities and not measurable quantities. A forced verbalisation of these quality aspects may get consequences for music teachers’ evolving understanding of knowledge aspects, as well as for their experience of and qualitative evaluation of students’ musical achievements and expressions. The first phase of the study includes interviews with music teachers teaching in year 5-7 about changes in their teaching practices as well as their perceptions of the new demands in Lgr11. The second phase will be a survey, aiming to map the implementation scenario among Swedish music teach in the same years. The third and final part gets its inspiration from Engeström’s activity theory where structural and intentional contradictions are expected to have a key function for learning and development. In this phase the teachers’ as well as the students’ perspectives are focused through participant observation, interviews, and collegial conversations. The teachers define the problems found in practice, which are discussed among colleagues who together create strategies for further development. A model for general development work will be constructed through the project. By limiting the investigation to teachers who teach music in year 5-7 the study can claim to generate new knowledge concerning a group of teachers that have been neglected earlier. In the presentation at the conference we will present the study as a whole and also communicate some preliminary results from the first phase interview study.
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| 4. |
- Leijonhufvud, Susanna, et al.
(författare)
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On the developing of a Swedish national assessment support in music : context, commission, design, and possible outcome
- 2013
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Sweden has adopted the principles of New Public Management by creating an educational market where private and public providers compete to attract school children and where the government is increasing its efforts to measure output and audit the providers. However, Sweden goes against the flow by emphasizing subject specific knowledge and skills instead of key competences. In an attempt to further natonal equivalence when it comes to education, assessment and marking, the Swedish National Agency for Education is issuing supporting kits in different subjects. We have been responsible for the design and production of the supporting kit in music for primary and lower secondary education. In this presentation, we will place this didactical material in a historical context, describe the process from commission to publication and discuss some of the considerations that have guided our work.
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| 5. |
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| 6. |
- Lindgren, Monica, 1958, et al.
(författare)
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Care as technology for exclusion : Power operating in jurors’ talk about admission tests to Swedish music teacher education
- 2021
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Ingår i: Nordic Research in Music Education. - : Cappelen Damm Akademisk. - 2703-8041. ; 2:2, s. 58-73
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In this article, we explore and problematise admission tests to specialist music teacher education in Sweden from a governing perspective, where higher music education is considered a discursive practice. It illustrates how power operates in legitimating the tests. The study uses stimulated recall in jury members’ talk about assessing applicants for music teacher education programmes, and uses Foucault’s concept of governmentality to reveal entrance tests as something regarded as generally good for all. This operating discourse is built on governmental rationality and processes that make it possible to reach conclusions about the applicants’ personalities and prospects for learning and developing in the future. Through care as technology of power, failing applicants are excluded from becoming music teachers and at the same time they are rescued from struggling in the future. The results are discussed in relation to issues of democratic music education, ethics and requirements for widened access to higher music education.
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| 7. |
- Lindgren, Monica, 1958, et al.
(författare)
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Design and assessment of entrance auditions to music teacher education. : The 23rd conference of Nordic Network for Research in Music Education. NNMPF. Oslo, Hurdal: Nowegian Academy of Music, 12-15 February, 2018.
- 2018
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Ingår i: https://nnmpf.org/nb/konferanser.
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The overall aim of the study is to produce knowledge about the principles of assessment design and criteria for student selection to music teacher education. Although the qualification require-ments and principles of selection based on entrance auditions are often decisive for admission to music teacher education programmes, the field has been scantily researched. In particular, there is a lack of studies of the design and usefulness and value of the tests, as well as of Swedish studies and studies of other genres than classical music. The prognostic value of the tests, as well as its value to music and other education programmes are called in question. When assess-ment in music education is used, there are problems with subjective interpretations and implicit criteria. With the increasing focus in education on issues of assessment, equality and broadened recruitment, it is important to study how entrance auditions are legitimated and assessed. The aim of the study is to investigate entrance auditions to music teacher education with regard to the assessment criteria applied, legitimacy claim, and approach to knowledge. A multimodal social semiotic approach is adopted to study how individuals use linguistic, mate-rial and bodily sign systems in order to represent and perform their understanding of, attitude to and interpretation of various phenomena in the world, and how these representations constantly transform. On a micro level the concept discourse is to study how applicants, through using sign systems such as notes, music instruments, singing and gestures, represent their ability and musical knowledge, and to identify the representations of quality and knowledge that the jury members construct in their assessments of the applicants’ performances. The concept discourse is also used to find out which versions of available constructions are used, and how these are used when the jury members justify their standpoints and selections. On a macro level the con-cept discourse is used to elucidate how assessment, legitimization and selection in the local prac-tice are related to dominant approaches to musical conventions, shaped by musical education institutions. Data will consist of video documented entrance auditions, and focus group conversations, in-cluding stimulated recall interviews with jury members. Together, these methods offer opportu-nities to talk about how qualitative aspects of musical performance can be assessed and legiti-mated. Data will be collected from four music teacher education institutions and consist of a total of eight days of video documented instrumental entrance auditions in various genres, and one recorded focus group conversation with each jury. After the entrance auditions, the teachers on the jury panel and one of the researchers will discuss the applicants’ performances on the basis of selected sequences from the video documented auditions as stimulus material. A pilot study with focus on entrance auditions in the genre folk music, classical music and rhythmical improvised music was carried out last year, with the aim to test the chosen theory and method. Both the theory and the method were considered to be enrichening and fruitful. The preliminary result of these analysis shows that the representations for and understandings of quality and knowledge constructed in the conversations can be seen as assessments of the appli-cants’ singing and playing skills; musical and bodily expression ability; singing and playing in accordance with the style of the period; and ensemble interaction. All of these aspects were as-sessed in relation to the traditions and idioms of the genres. According to the teachers’ stand points on assessments and how these are justified, micro-level discourses were displayed, high-lighting the importance of genre fidelity, genre cutting edge, and genre experience. In contrast to these discourses, other discourses on genre violation, genre breadth and genre unfamiliarity, for instance, are indicated to be acceptable, at least in some of the jury groups. These tensions in attitudes reflect a polemic between various assessments of musical quality and knowledge.
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| 8. |
- Lindgren, Monica, 1958, et al.
(författare)
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Ideas of new directions for music teacher education. A discussion based on current Nordic Research in relation to challenges of the present and the future.
- 2022
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Ingår i: Nordic Network for Research in Music Education conference 2022.
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The purpose of this symposium is to stimulate discussion of new directions for generalist and specialist music teacher education in Finland, Norway and Sweden. The symposium incorporates research from the three Nordic countries and the discussion will be based on results from the research projects. This research has been going on for several years and has recently been completed or is in the final phase. Common to all projects are the critique of status quo in music teacher education and the call for changes and new directions in relation to the needs and challenges in our contemporary societies. By this, we join all those scholars who for decades have addressed democracy and social justice in relation to music education. However, because democracy is an open and socially constructed concept (Woodford, 2005), we make no claim to a specific common paradigm in this presentation. Rather, we will present three research initiatives by contextualizing the results within the respective Nordic countries as democratic societies. And from there, we will take the opportunity to raise and discuss some questions about how to set forth a music teacher education agenda for the future: How should music teacher education evolve to increase equity, inclusion and access in music education? Curriculum discourses indicate teacher education as a field of tension, marked by negotiations and struggles between competing policies, philosophies and views of music, culture and education. Can such tensions have potential for change? How can teacher education prepare student music teachers for a complex and diverse school life? How can we approach digital tools in educational spaces that can promote critical reflection about challenges of the present and the future? How can we rethink the selection principles for the music teacher programs?
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| 9. |
- Lindgren, Monica, 1958, et al.
(författare)
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Singing in Swedish Secondary Schools: A discursive practice. : The 23rd conference of Nordic Network for Research in Music Education, NNMPF. Oslo, Hurdal: Norwegian Academy of Music, 12-15 February 2018.
- 2018
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Ingår i: https://nnmpf.org/nb/konferanser.
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In Sweden, as in several European countries, singing and choral activities in school tend to become increasingly marginalized. The Swedish National Agency for Education recently stated, that playing on musical instruments has come to dominate at the expense of all other activities in the music classroom. Since Swedish music education research only cursorily addresses singing in the classroom, a lack of interest in the matter becomes apparent. Therefore, the aim of this ongoing project is to study singing during music lessons in a public secondary school and in a music profile secondary school, and to describe the interaction between the participants in the teaching situation. Drawing on a poststructuralist and critical perspective, classroom singing is considered as discursively governed. The discourse concept positions itself in between a micro-sociological perspective, where the rhetorical organization of language and action is studied and analysed in an action-related context, and a macro-perspective, considering subject positions as produced by overarching institutional and social discourses. Further, discourse is considered as multimodal. Thus, besides operating via the spoken and written word, discourse also has visual and auditory dimensions. As such, discourse is mediated by both spatial aspects in the classroom and by various artefacts. In the first phase of the analysis, a number of questions were asked to the empirical material. These questions assisted in identifying problematic situations for further analysis. The second phase of the analysis was influenced by discourse theory, which enables to discuss the different subject positions offered, taken and tried by the actors. The empirical material derives from The Swedish National Agency for Education´s most recent evaluation, and consists of video recorded music lessons from two out of ten schools involved in the qualitative part of the evaluation. For this paper, recordings with singing activities were selected for analysis. More specifically, sequences of events that distinctly illustrated each classroom practice were selected and transcribed for further analysis. Findings reveal one prominent tendency for each classroom practice respectively. Singing as a musical adventure-the micro managed musical discourse was constructed in the public school with a music profile. In this classroom discourse, following routines of discipline and order, practising breathing techniques, vocal intonation and articulating song lyrics are prominent. Singing as a pastime activity-the musically undemanding discourse was constructed in the ordinary public school. Prominent aspects of this discursive practice are that anything goes, reducing singing to physical behaviour exempt from meaning. In conclusion, the diversity in classroom singing and its consequences for quality in music education is addressed. Also, the music teacher´s competence and profile is discussed, related to the character of the interaction in the classroom, the discourses that are constructed and the musical knowledge possible for the students to achieve.
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| 10. |
- Sandberg Jurström, Ragnhild, 1954-, et al.
(författare)
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A Mozart concert or three simple chords? : Limits for approval in admission tests for Swedish specialist music teacher education
- 2021. - 1
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Ingår i: Higher Education as Context for Music Pedagogy Research. - Oslo : Cappelen Damm Akademisk. - 2703-7843. - 9788202696979 - 9788202706326 ; , s. 19-40
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Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Against the background of problems with unarticulated concepts of quality and assessment criteria when assessing music, this article concerns how the limit for approval is constructed and legitimised by jurors when assessing entrance auditions to Swedish specialist music teacher education. The data comprise video documented auditions, focus group conversations, and stimulated-recall based interviews, involving jury members at four music education departments. Social semiotic theory is used to study how jurors assess applicants’ knowledge representations in main instrument tests, what is considered decisive for an approval, and how this set limit is legitimised. Four approaches have been constructed:the demanding education and profession;the supposed capacity of the applicant; the flexible admission situation, and the care of the applicant.What is considered to be the minimum requirement for approval in these constructions differs markedly, which shows a striking difference between the views of jurors within and between institutions on how the applicants´ musical performances on a main instrument should be assessed. These findings are discussed in relation to two possible scenarios of revised admission tests.
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