Challenges
There are many reasons why pupils may not engage fully with their learning. You can see an extensive list of challenges and solutions here, but this section is designed to help teachers with just one key issue: how to develop pupils’ thinking skills so that they improve their musical problem-solving capability.
An explicit link can be made between creativity and thinking. This is because both are largely concerned with aspects of problem solving. The range of problems that pupils are asked to solve might include the following:
- How can we make this sound better?
- How can I use this keyboard or software to do what I want?
- How do I work out what style that music is in?
- Why does this piece sound different to that one?
The ‘How …?’ and ‘Why …?’ questions are crucial to pupils’ developing an understanding of how things work in music. The hierarchy of thinking most commonly alluded to is based upon Bloom’s taxonomy (Bloom and Krathwohl, 1956), which identifies six levels of thinking and questioning, shown below from lower order to higher order.
Knowledge > Comprehension > Application > Analysis > Synthesis > Evaluation
We can use this sequence of thinking to ask questions of pupils that require increasingly more demanding thought processes. This enables pupils to seek creative solutions when tackling, solving and evaluating complex musical challenges.
Use Activity Resource 4 to find out how you can use this sequence of thinking to help pupils develop more creative thinking in their music lessons
After exploring this section, you may want to
- develop your exploration of how to set challenges through the use of Bloom's taxonomy by going to Unit 4, Modelling in music ('Use of questions' tab within the Good practice section) and reading more;
- continue with this unit by evaluating your work on creative teaching and learning and identifying next steps.
