Martin Fautley | Birmingham City University (original) (raw)

Papers by Martin Fautley

Routledge eBooks, Jun 29, 2023

The Oxford Handbook of Assessment Policy and Practice in Music Education, Volume 1

This chapter describes the ways in which assessment policy in classroom music education in Englan... more This chapter describes the ways in which assessment policy in classroom music education in England has been both legislated for and operationalized in practice. It describes how changes to whole-school assessment legislation have found their outworking in schools and classrooms, which have become contested and problematic sites. It describes how assessment in classroom music has had to shift its focus from attainment onto progression in order to comply with policy. The chapter also points out the effects of a performativity culture in English school music classes, where the production of data has become a goal in its own right, superseding, in some cases, an attention to learning and musicianship. It concludes that refocusing on musical aspects of teaching and learning would be a good thing for the development of both the subject and the participating learners.

NB: Within this report, the terms "composing", "composition" and "composer" refer to creating all... more NB: Within this report, the terms "composing", "composition" and "composer" refer to creating all forms of music regardless of style or genre (including digital production and improvisation).

British Journal of Music Education, 2022

This article considers the impact that the Swanwick-Tillman spiral article (Swanwick & Tillman, 1... more This article considers the impact that the Swanwick-Tillman spiral article (Swanwick & Tillman, 1986) has had on contemporary thinking in music education in England. Building on a discussion concerning the antecedents of the notion of a spiral, the ways in which a generalist music curriculum can be planned and organised are discussed. Drawing on the contemporary example of the Model Music Curriculum (DfE, 2021), and then charting this thinking as arising from a graded music examination repertoire-based way of planning, this article goes on to explain why the Swanwick-Tillman spiral still has relevance, as well as much to teach us in today’s very different music education world where assessment, measurement and accountability are dominant. Although centred on the situation in England, there are nonetheless implications for curriculum planners in many other jurisdictions too.

Music Education Research, 2022

Creative and Critical Projects in Classroom Music, 2020

This research report presents the findings from the evaluation of a government funded Continuing ... more This research report presents the findings from the evaluation of a government funded Continuing Professional Development programme provided by Trinity Guildhall and The Open University in order to support the implementation of the government initiative to Widen Opportunities to whole class instrumental and vocal teaching (WCIVT).

The Routledge Handbook to Sociology of Music Education, 2021

The announcement that there is to be a working party looking into music teaching and learning in ... more The announcement that there is to be a working party looking into music teaching and learning in schools is very much to be welcomed. The announcement from the minister, Nick Gibb that he has asked “…a panel of musicians and educationalists to draw up a new model curriculum which will give a detailed year-by- year template for study” (Gibb, 2019) can only be for the good. However, that very few of the panel are school curriculum theorists, and so this paper draws attention to matters of curriculum theory for classroom music teaching and learning which it is hopde will prove helpful

Introduction. Research concerning music development would benefit from an analytical tool that ta... more Introduction. Research concerning music development would benefit from an analytical tool that takes into consideration the interconnected elements of culture, environmental structure, and relationship to formations of mind and action. The range of diverse musical learning processes and behaviors present in the classroom and their development involves a range of interconnected interactions. The classroom is a multifaceted environment, where individual identities, dispositions, social and historical perspectives and pedagogical processes exist. Because of these complexities, the researcher must select a methodology that accounts for individual realities but also attributes collective understanding. This methodology must also consider how musical learning takes place, and its relationship to wider socio-cultural elements that shape development. Within this chapter we propose that Activity Theory (AT) (Engeström et al., 1999) is an analytical methodology that provides a lens through wh...

The Oxford Handbook of Philosophical and Qualitative Assessment in Music Education, 2019

This chapter discusses how National Curriculum content and assessment in England have been subver... more This chapter discusses how National Curriculum content and assessment in England have been subverted by performativity and accountability requirements. This has had the effect of moving music teaching and learning in secondary school music classes away from a focus on musical content and music making toward meeting the demands and requirements of an accountability system. The twin effects of schools second-guessing what they think the inspection regime (Ofsted) will want to see, allied with a close scrutiny of pseudo-positivist attainment data, means that the musicality of the assessments undertaken by classroom teachers can be called into question. The important issue of knowledge types in music education is also discussed. England operates a music education somewhat different from that in many other jurisdictions, with a focus on what might be termed generalist classroom teaching and learning for all students. This has an impact on the ways in which assessment can be undertaken, a...

International Journal of Music Education, 2004

In this article, case studies of teacher interventions in the composing processes of school stude... more In this article, case studies of teacher interventions in the composing processes of school students aged 11-14 in generalist music classes are described and discussed. The study finds that music teachers have developed their own strategies for formative assessment, unaware that these are valorized by external agencies.

Creativity in Secondary Education, 2007

British Journal of Music Education, Oct 31, 2023

Is it the job of Maths teachers to make their pupils love Newton's laws of motion? Is it the job ... more Is it the job of Maths teachers to make their pupils love Newton's laws of motion? Is it the job of the Geography teacher to make their pupils love ox-bow lakes? Is it the job of the Latin teacher to make their pupils love irregular verbs? It may be the case that this is what individual teachers of these subjects feel that they would like to instil in their learners, yet were this to become a school syllabus requirement with associated standardised testing, we would probably worry. After all, how can you test for how much a pupil loves Newtonian physics? What would the score be, 56%? A++? "Could love better"? And yet we often hear politicians and commentators in the presscertainly in the UKexpress opinions that seem to say that it is the job of the school music teacher to make the children love classical music. Classical music, in these instances, is often ill-defined, but seems to be taken as being self-evidently the music of "dead white guys." Now, it may be the case that for some readers of the BJME, this question is hardly worth troubling to look up from one's coffee over. Music as a high-quality high-status subject is what it is, and it is the task of the academy and the conservatoire to foster and promote it. But this is the British Journal of Music Education, and a good proportion of the readership is concerned with what is taking place in schools and educational establishments where the clientele is not selfselecting, they are there because they have to be, not because they want to be. It is for these pupils that we as a profession need to think carefully about what it is we want for them, and what it is we want them both to know and be able to do. It seems unlikely that telling such pupils that they are going to be forced to "love" Mozart is going to produce a positive learning outcome! Indeed, it is probably quite difficult to force anyone to "love" anything, if they do not like it, and do not want exposure to it week-in, week-out. So why do politicians and pundits persist with this attitude? There is often a notion of a selfevidencing valuing of certain sorts of music, the "classical," as opposed to other sorts, with the music of urban youth well down the axiological scale. This means that music teachers are at liberty to say they want their pupils to love Mozart, whereas to say that they want their pupils to love, say, the music of Stormzy is likely to give rise to what Lawlor (2021) called a "moral panic." And it is school music teachers who find themselves on the front lines of the culture wars that are being played out in many parts of Western society at the moment. In the last BJME editorial (Fautley & Daubney, 2023), we asked the question "what is music education for?," and in many ways, this current editorial is continuing with that theme. Confronted with what they see as societal fragmentation, it is all too easy for commentators to retreat into what they believe are the certainties of a bygone, simpler age. And yet we need to ask if there ever was such a golden age for music education. In England, at least, we know that more and more children from across the country are involved in many aspects of music learning and music making (Fautley & Whittaker, 2020; Daubney et al., 2019), whereas a few decades ago this would have been mainly children from selective schools and privileged backgrounds who were given the chance for this. Valuing music is something that it seems likely all readers of this journal do, it is what we spend our lives doing after all, but at the same time do we really want to discourage children and young people who love a different sort of music? Back in 1977, Shepherd et al. (1977) asked the question "whose music"? In 2023, we are still asking a similar question, in that we are querying "whose music matters"? And maybe we can add "to whom" as a rider to that question?

Oxford University Press, 2010

1. Introduction to assessment in music education 2. Clarifying terminologies: uses and purposes o... more 1. Introduction to assessment in music education 2. Clarifying terminologies: uses and purposes of assessment 3. Reliability and validity 4. Evidencing achievement 5. Learning and knowledge in classroom music 6. Why assess? 7. 7. Progression, development, and assessment 8. Quality, values, and the affective domain 9. Developing appropriate criteria for assessment 10. Developing classroom performing by the use of assessment 11. Developing classroom composing through assessment 12. Developing listening through assessment 13. Developing classroom improvising by the use of assessment 14. Assessment and ICT in music education 15. The role of baseline assessment 16. Putting it together: holistic approaches to learning and assessment in music 17. The way forwards: new developments in assessment