2006 Edition 2 (Issue 144) - Sasmt-savmo.org.za

e-evaluate almost all our current assessment practices and
helped us to design and implement new ways of discovering
how our students are achieving the desired learning
outcomes. In this article we present some of these principles,
and our experience of working with them, as advice
to teachers.
the role of the teacher
Teachers are the most important agents of change in the
classroom, 4 and they form an integral part of the social
construction of meaning by learners. 5 When we as educators
understand the important functions that assessment
and the results of assessment play in our learners’ lives,
we can find the initiative and enthusiasm to develop the
best possible ways to assess. Educators will do well to acknowledge
that things can be done better, to value our own
enquiries and uncertainties as life-long learners, and then
take the difficult and time-consuming steps necessary for
good intentions to become actualised in effective behaviour.
6 We must look critically and with an open mind at
the tests and exams that our learners write, and answer
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
Do my learners become infected with my personal
interest in music and my enthusiasm for
self-growth through the setting of increasingly
complex musical challenges?
Are my learners motivated to discover for themselves
and to find value in their engagement
with music?
Does the growing understanding of my learners
enable them to use music expressively?
Am I creating opportunities for meaningful interaction
with musical material and with other
learners, musicians and audiences, and encouraging
my learners when they create these opportunities
for themselves?
Are learners progressively mastering a wide
gamut of musical skills?
Can I describe my learners as musically literate?
Will my learners become — partly through my
efforts — independent judges of their own
thoughts and actions as musicians who are able
to improve themselves?
Do my activities as educator foster individuality,
exploration, spontaneity, originality, experimentation
and invention?
Do I allow concepts to mature in learners’ minds
until they become part of their (musical) awareness
and intuition?
Am I providing my learners with opportunities to
fully engage in and enjoy music making — opportunities
that will allow them to practise musical
skills and internalise relevant knowledge?
Do I effectively integrate the perceptual and the
conceptual in order to foster the interdependence
of thinking and listening?
Am I flexible and tolerant of — even interested
in! — the personalities and interests of my learners
(which may sharply differ from mine), and informed
about musical worlds unlike my own?
South African Music Teacher |144 | November 2006
very specifically the question: How do these activities
contribute to developing the musicianship of learners?
Educators need to be trained and allow themselves to be
trained! Strategies to ensure accountability should be implemented.
Sharing of ideas between colleagues can lead
to improvement and a sense of achievement, and should
be encouraged. We should, however not overemphasize
assessment to the detriment of our other important tasks
concerning the facilitation of learning.
the curriculum
A well-structured curriculum will provide answers about
what we should assess and indications of how to do this.
The curriculum entails all teaching and assessment activities
and is more than the syllabus, which is often prescribed
by schools, education departments or examining
bodies. Ensuring the development and implementation of
a good curriculum is the responsibility of every educator.
Assessment influences curriculum and vice versa. The influences
of traditional written assessment on the teaching
of music notation are not always salutary. Harry Torrence 7
writes in general about similar assessment techniques:
”Traditional paper-and-pencil tests can have a narrowing
effect on the curriculum, in terms of both curriculum content
and of teaching methods employed, such an approach
to learning can result in children coming to know certain
things without understanding them and without being
able to generalize from specific examples to similar problems
in different contexts.” This happens when learners are
coached in a “narrow range of test taking skills” instead of
learning a “broader range of higher-order competencies
and understandings.” We certainly have heard testimony
from our students to substantiate our impression that
Torrence’s observations are not imagined and applicable
to current music theory instruction in South Africa!
Changes in syllabuses and in assessment practices often
necessitate new forms of instruction. This means that
those who design syllabuses and methods of assessment
have very real and far-reaching responsibilities. The teaching
of music notation and music theory in South Africa
is often driven by the paradigms suggested by examining
bodies, and only seldom with positive results!
What should educators do? They should focus on the
process of assessment as well as on the products, 8 and
formulate to a sufficient level of detail outcomes related
to the development of musicianship. The achievement of
outcomes should be described clearly in terms of criteria.
These criteria should be negotiated with the learners and
form the basis for useful feedback.
assessment and instruction
It is clear that assessment should form an integral part of
good instruction, and that its results — indeed the whole
process — should help us to shape the learning process in
the best possible way to the real advantage of our learners
who are certainly hoping to become better musicians. This
means that assessment will become formative. Traditional
music theory exams are not examples of formative assessment
unless teachers make them so. Children do not receive
feedback on their exams, and the exam experience is