I understood the chapter well enough. It seems like both metacognitive knowledge and critical thinking are self perpetuating, that is that those students with them will only develop them more, at a faster rate, while those who are not as inclined to use them will not necessarily make gains in those areas. As teachers, how can we close this gap?
One thing students in my choir classroom will have to do is be able to sing their own individual voice part, while also understanding how they balance and fit in with the other voice parts. As the conductor, it is my responsibility to listen for accuracy of parts, accuracy of pitch, and other musical elements of the ensemble. But students also need to be able to do part of this themselves, which will involve metacognitive regulation. If one voice part is dissonant with another, students are going to have to find a way to hit that pitch every time they sing through the piece of music, even if it sounds wrong. They have to come up with an aural strategy, based on the music around them, that leads them to the right note. This takes energy, and extensive strategy based on how their part relates to the rest of the group, and the students need to constantly listen to the other singers to make sure his or her pitch is correct. After trying out different strategies, the student can assess which strategy worked the best, and use that in future music with similar situations.
I think critical thinking will be more important in choir. The easy answer would be that music is an abstract art, and requires critical thinking just to be appreciated to the fullest. But there are more concrete reasons as well. The most important aspect of this is thinking from others’ perspectives. During a performance, one of the key elements is balance, which can be overlooked very easily by students who believe everyone else holds their opinions. But if they think critically and try to imagine how the ensemble sounds from the perspective of the conductor, the accompanist, other singers, and the audience, they will be able to understand why the conductor does what he or she does. If I tell the tenors to sing quieter, I would want them to know that it’s because at that particular moment they do not have the most important music, and from the audience, it doesn’t sound balanced. One way I could try to overcome this is to record the group one day, find a prime example of an unbalanced sound, and present it to the class. Or, by letting students conduct and (under close supervision) critique the ensemble, they may start to understand why I do what I do, and they may start to be more responsive to my conducting.
I think that our job as teachers deals with the inclination. We need to teach the students study skills, and essentially teach them this module...it is one of the more relevant "sciences", considering that their job is to do well in school, and this science teaches how to make that easier. Study skills classes have been popping up everywhere recently, and I think that is because schools are realizing that it isn't always the intelligence, or lack thereof, that causes problems; it is the lack of application.
ReplyDelete