Sammie Cohen

MUED 371

Green Response

Response 1

I believe one of the most compelling elements of Lucy Green’s ​Music, Informal

Learning, and the School: A New Classroom Pedagogy​ is her focus of drawing on informal

learning influences outside of the classroom. In her book, Green provides a transcript of students

listening to and playing along with a Jennifer Lopez CD with a teacher nearby to simply monitor

rather than give formal instruction. By allowing students to incorporate the music they listen to

into their learning, they’re able to really connect with the material and have an intrinsic

motivation to create music in perhaps a more nuanced way than they might for material which

they don’t connect with. This also opens the door for students with cultural backgrounds that are

not typically represented in traditional, Western wind band repertoire. As a teacher, I would love

to see students celebrating their culture and personal music influences freely while I can help

serve as a guide, by aiding them in their music-making and hopefully even expanding on my

own musical knowledge and appreciation. I also feel that this concept of students using outside

influences for their music learning is especially relevant today with modern technology. There

are countless online resources for self-teaching, including YouTube tutorials, forums, music

notation and production software, and other informal, digital means. I myself have been learning

to play the banjo through an online program which is totally asynchronous and on my own time.

My personal experience combined with Green’s writing convinces me that the utilization of

outside influences can be effective and very motivating.

Response 2

My experiences as a beginning instrumental vary quite greatly from those of the students

in Green’s study. I had a very formal, traditional experience in which I learned notes and

melodies on my trumpet by exercises largely out of the Standards of Excellence book and played

pieces that were made for music education along with a few popular music arrangements. While

my middle school band director was very engaging and made our learning very enjoyable and

productive, I believe as a student, the implementation of informal learning could have had a lot

of benefits which I did not attain in my traditional learning. To begin, my class did not do a lot of

music listening or appreciation. While this allowed more time for learning music vocabulary and

fundamental techniques, I missed out on the ability to listen to music in a more nuanced way.

Green (2008) describes how, as the course developed with more purposive listenings, students

showed improvement in their ability to identify instruments in a song, separate accompaniment

from melody, and identifying the form or structure of the song (Green, 2008, pp. 73-74). The

implementation of student autonomy seems to have multiple benefits with a few disadvantages.

Green’s (2008) study reported:

Out of the 40 groups, five seemed clear that they would have liked more help, although

there were no cases amongst them of pupils saying that the lack of help prevented them

from enjoying the project or from engaging in the learning practices. (p. 103)

It’s clear that students enjoyed their project and autonomy, however, my main concern with this

is addressing students with very individual needs and ensuring that students are able to work

together without allowing personal conflicts to inhibit learning and collaboration. Overall, I
believe informal learning is largely positive, and I certainly wish I experienced it early on in my

instrumental education.

Response 3

From a teaching perspective, I believe that diversion from the traditional path of music

education can be somewhat daunting, but very necessary in many cases. While my beginning

instrumental teacher often directed us from beginning to end through the process, Green’s (2008)

model of informal learning had seven stages which often involved teachers assigning a task and

monitoring students’ practices and behaviors followed by modelling these same tasks, allowing

them to build off existing skills. One advantage of this informal model is the overall release of

complete authority by the teacher. Some of the testimonials from the teachers involved in

Green’s (2008) project admitted to being “control freaks” (p.31), and I believe this informal

method of teaching forces those teachers to acknowledge how they may have issues of allowing

student autonomy. In fact, all of the teachers involved reported that informal learning practices

had improved their teaching for the better (Green, 2008, p.181). It also requires the teacher to

assess in a completely new way which certainly has its advantages and disadvantages. Green

(2008) describes how strict assessment and over-involvement can often slow down learning and

interrupts the “flow” of the class (p. 116). However, a lack of formal assessment can provide

practical and logistic problems involving standards of learning required by the state and

convincing administration to approve a curriculum which is largely assessed by student

testimony rather than a formal rubric. Overall, I believe that teachers can use informal learning

practices to gain trust in their students, remain adaptable, and shift their own perspectives of

which experiences and skills will truly enrich their students’ learning.
References

Green, L. (2008). ​Music, informal learning and the school: A new classroom pedagogy​.

London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.