Music syllabi

From 1974 to 1999, at least 14 music syllabi were produced for implementation in secondary music classrooms in NSW. Over the 1970s and 1980s, the senior music syllabus had six revisions, and the junior syllabus had three; in the 1990s, the senior syllabus was revised four times, and the junior syllabus once. Each revision changed terminology, assessment and examination requirements, broadened topic choices, and placed more demands on teachers for accountability with programming, reporting, and assessment procedures to be strictly adhered to. In addition, the classroom shifted from the traditional approach of the 1970s and 1980s, with an emphasis on class performance, listening, reading and writing to the inclusion of a wider variety of musical genres being studied employing an integration of the components of performance, composition and listening.

Diagram 1 illustrates the frequency of policy change and the number of syllabus changes between 1970 and 1998.

Diagram 1. Timeline of syllabus and curriculum reform in NSW during the decades 1970s–1990s.

Reid (Reference REID2004) argues that ‘as teachers, we should actively recall salient aspects of the historical development of our field of study’ (p. 102). He reminds us that ignorance of the professional past restricts an awareness of future development opportunities. This is true of classroom music history in secondary schools in NSW, where EMTs’ viewpoints and documented experiences from 1975 to 1999 have not previously been explored. This study explores the impact of the changes brought about by each syllabus iteration as reported through the EMT participants’ experiences. Their growth in confidence, building their teacher identity and pedagogical skills through the multiple changes that occurred, and their flourishing through facing these changes and willingness to adapt to the circumstances in which they found themselves are described below.

Literature review

Methodology

The research utilises qualitative methodology widely used in educational research (Divan et al., Reference DIVAN, LUDWIG, MATTHEWS, MOTLEY and TOMLJENOVIC-BERUBE2017) and has drawn on various methods to explore, historically contextualise, interpret, evaluate, and understand the perspectives, philosophies, beliefs, and practices that underpin the implementation of the syllabus and music curriculum in NSW.

This qualitative study aimed to explore the pedagogical practices and perspectives of this group of EMTs (n = 10) who had begun their teaching careers between the mid-1970s and the 1980s and who have taught through those decades to the 2000s.

Purposive sampling was used to select the participants, recruited from professional connections with the researcher formed over the past 40 years through HSC marking, teacher and professional associations, and music teaching positions. The participants were deliberately chosen based on their extensive knowledge of the subject and curriculum, their willingness to participate, and their ability to communicate experiences and opinions in an articulate, expressive and reflective manner (Etikan et al., Reference ETIKAN, MUSA and ALKASSIM2016). Twenty EMTs were interviewed throughout 2020 and 2021, of which 10 were selected for this paper. Each participant was interviewed using semi-structured interviews for 45–60 min during 2020, and due to the COVID-19 pandemic, all interviews were held via Zoom. Semi-structured interviews also stimulate open responses that ‘enable lines of conversation to be developed in situ in ways that could not have been anticipated when the interview schedule was being planned’ (Brown & Danaher, Reference BROWN and DANAHER2019, p. 77). The questions were designed as open-ended questions intended to catch the ‘authenticity, richness, depth of response, honesty and candour’ and ‘gems of information’, the features of qualitative data (Cowan, Reference COWAN2011, p. 266). The analysis of interview data utilised thematic analysis, a ‘process of identifying patterns or themes within qualitative data’ (Maguire & Delahunt, Reference MAGUIRE and DELAHUNT2017, p. 3352). This study sought to identify participants’ relevant educational music practices while also uncovering underlying attitudes and beliefs that informed and directed these practices.

Each participant received a participant information sheet and signed a participation consent form. In addition, each participant was assigned a pseudonym. The study followed the protocol set out by the University of Sydney Human Research Ethics Office, which approved the study (2019/971). Table 1 presents the demographics of the participants.

Table 1. The EMTs – 1970–1980 participants (n = 10)

From the interview questions, three themes that emerged through the data analysis have been chosen as the focus for this paper, using quotes enabling the participant voice to be heard. The focus questions were: 1. What were your early career experiences like in the classroom? 2. What professional support did you receive during these early years and do you remember the syllabus changes that occurred? and 3. How did you change your pedagogical practice as each new change came into effect? Findings are reported below.

Findings

Eight of this cohort were employed in regional, remote or rural schools in various parts of NSW, whereas two were in city schools. Often they were the only music teacher in the school with a teaching load across years 7–10 and possibly a senior music class. As the only music teacher in the school and often supervised by a head teacher from another subject discipline, they found themselves responsible for all decisions about their subject. The start of a new career while facing unknown challenges is an exciting time in one’s life; however, in the period covered by this study, little or no structures existed to support music teachers in the early stage of their careers.

Significant themes emerged from the interviews, which were: (i) the resilience needed in building teacher identity during the early years of teaching, highlighting feelings of isolation, lack of equipment and the absence of collegial support; (ii) the flexibility needed in building pedagogical skills to cope with the challenges in developing and strengthening pedagogical practice with the emergence of new and innovative changes as new music syllabi were introduced.

Resilience in building teacher identity

Overcoming feelings of isolation and needing professional and collegial support were common themes mentioned in the early teaching period for the EMTs in this study. Most participants reported having little musical equipment in their classrooms. Edie, for example, found herself in a newly established high school, the second high school in a large town in far western NSW, supervised by the science head teacher. The school had been deemed ready to accept pupils without having anything in the music room except the standard blackboard. Edie said:

Tessie also found herself as the only music teacher at a school in a southwestern region of NSW with ‘one double bass at the back of the storeroom, a reasonable number of records, and some untuned percussion instruments’. Tessie said:

At the time, in NSW schools, concert bands and brass bands were popular ensemble activities, and most schools aspired to have one or the other and a choir.

Valerie found that she only had junior classes in her first appointment at a country school, had large class sizes and had very few instruments. To engage the students, she focused on practical work. She encouraged her classes to form bush bands (a popular activity of the 1970s and 1980s with accessible instruments that also aligned with the syllabi’s encouragement of studying Australian folk songs). She took them to as many outside-school performances as possible. She also found ways to encourage her students to participate in musical activities by playing the recorder, which in the 1970s was freely accessible to all and a way to include everyone in class or practical group work.

Martha also needed more resources. She said:

Martha spent all her free time rehearsing with students – not exchanging ideas in the staffroom. This form of self-isolation has also been a research topic on teachers and labelled ‘egg-crate isolation’ by Lortie (Davidson & Dwyer, Reference DAVIDSON and DWYER2014). Martha reported:

Connecting with other music teachers is considered to be essential in alleviating professional isolation among music teachers (Davidson & Dwyer, Reference DAVIDSON and DWYER2014). Maxwell, also in a small country town in northern NSW, was fortunate enough to be appointed in an area with an established Music Teachers Association that comprised a collegiate of music staff who met to discuss music issues in schools and provide in-service courses for teachers as well as weekend workshops and music camps for students. Some staff readily travelled distances on country roads after work to attend meetings in other remote and regional centres. Maxwell said the staff were happy to travel because the meetings allowed professional discussions and built a sense of community and fun. Frankie also said he would travel 80 km (50 miles) or more after work to meet music staff from surrounding country towns for dinner and then have a Music Teachers Association meeting, which involved swapping lesson ideas and professional conversations.

Rikki, however, admitted he struggled as the only music teacher in a small town in western NSW. He had begun with a high sense of his musical skills, as he was an accomplished musician who had run a successful private teaching studio over the years but found classroom management challenging to manage independently. He was told his principal was concerned about the ‘noise’ coming from the classroom, but no one ever came to his room to offer support. He was offered some in-service teacher training courses, which he participated in, but he said:

Layla’s first appointment had been in a city school, where two other older music teachers were already established, yet she also experienced professional isolation. On her first day, one of the teachers handed her a timetable and said, ‘you’ve got Year 10 and Year 11. Your desk is over there’. That teacher then proceeded to sit with her friend, the other music teacher, at the other end of the staffroom, and both proceeded to ignore Layla for the next few months. Layla read through the programmes, knew that she could do the work and realised that the other two experienced teachers were challenging her. Her survival instincts and flexibility kicked in, and as she got to know the students, she began to win them over. They offered her help that was not forthcoming from her colleagues, prompting her on classroom and school procedures and thus becoming her guide and sanity. Her resilience paid off when in the following year, she managed to establish both a senior class and a junior elective class from the students she had taught. The other two teachers began including her in collegial discussions, for which she was grateful. However, as she said, ‘I would have liked some support and conversations around programming and planning earlier on as a new teacher who was unsure of herself’.

Holly was appointed to a city school, where she said, ‘all I had was blackboards and chalk’. She thought she was a boring teacher because she relied on textbooks, as that was what she remembered school to be. It took Holly a while to realise that she could inspire the students through practical work, and when she finally had access to a keyboard lab and guitars, her classroom approach changed. She began using more performance activities in class to interest students, and she felt she became a much better teacher. Holly was fortunate enough to have colleagues from other faculties who offered her support and encouragement in her early years. She began as an ‘extra-numerary’ teacher – one above establishment – and moved around to different classrooms and faculties as needed. However, Holly remained optimistic and said:

When she was finally appointed to a school as a full-time classroom music teacher after two years, Holly said that she was again fortunate to have an older music colleague who was very supportive and made the job fun by mentoring her and coaching her in a friendly way.

Cecilia’s own school music lessons, which she remembered as being ‘regulative and tedious’, made her want to be a different type of teacher. She found her niche by teaching more rock and jazz styles, which she felt the students related to more readily. Although Cecilia acknowledged that the 1980s syllabi did not have a performance focus, she also instinctively realised that more creativity was the pathway to student engagement in the classroom.

Adapting to change and strengthening pedagogy

During the EMT participants’ first years of teaching, the junior music syllabus was centred around group performance activities. This syllabus was not revised until the 1980s and was and therefore well remembered by all participants. Singing was the most popular choice in a classroom with few instruments, and rounds and Australian folk songs were popular, per the syllabus recommendations. Recorder and percussion playing were encouraged to facilitate the learning of notation. Listening activities for years 7 and 8 comprised reading single-line melodies while listening to records and playing untuned percussion to a variety of musical styles (mostly excerpts from suites or ballets) while following music charts; for the elective students, score reading activities were encouraged as recommended by the syllabus and titled ‘Observation and Analysis’. The suggested ‘Reading and Writing Activities’ included writing known songs and themes from memory, transposing themes to suit ranges of voices and instruments, writing rhythm and melodic dictations, and creating rhythms and melodies to fit short verses of poetry.

The most significant changes for music teachers of senior secondary music occurred in 1978 with the introduction of the ‘Music Syllabus- Years 11 and 12- 2 Unit A Course’, specially designed for students who had not done music in their junior years or indeed had not done any music outside of school. This course attracted the pop/rock musicians and non-music readers to enable access to music learning in the last two years of schooling – a pathway previously blocked to such students. As a result, there were now three separate music courses in play for senior students in NSW. The new syllabus augmented the two syllabi already in place – the ‘Music Syllabus and Notes on the Syllabus – Form V and Form VI – 3 Unit Course and 2 Unit A Course’ (1974) and the ‘Music Syllabus Year 11 and Year 12 – 2 Unit Course’ (1975). (In NSW prior to 1975, what we now call ‘Years’ were then labelled ‘Forms’ – therefore, Form V and VI equate to today’s Years 11 and 12).

With the introduction of this syllabus (eventually re-named Music 2 Unit 1), students could participate in music-making with groups of their peers who previously had not had formal music training (private instrumental lessons or theory lessons) and choose their own topics, which included a range of possibilities for studying and performing popular music. In addition, the new syllabus had opened the subject of music to talented drummers, rhythm/lead/bass guitarists, singers, etc., who could achieve success by working hard for their last two years at high school without necessarily having previously learned to read music and had not had the standard learning background in private music tuition.

The EMTs readily adapted their classroom pedagogy to suit each change in the syllabi as it occurred, and classroom instrumental work soon evolved from the 1970s group performances – and moved away from teacher-directed learning – to individual pursuits on electric keyboards and guitars. The EMTs had to learn how to ‘let go’ of being the leader at the front of the performance group. As one said:

With the changes brought to the teaching of composition by the new 1994 syllabus – ‘Stage 6 Syllabus Music 2 Unit (common)/3 Unit – Preliminary and HSC Courses’ – core composition became mandatory, and all students were expected to submit an original 2-min composition recording and score for external marking. The syllabus stated:

With composition being accorded equal footing with the other components of performance, listening and musicology (in the senior syllabus), music teachers in NSW realised their teaching of composition had to change. This shift to ‘original’ composition gave students even more avenues to gain musical understanding (Dunbar-Hall, Reference DUNBAR-HALL1993). Apart from teachers having to take this important pedagogical shift there was a sudden increase in sophisticated music software packages available for students to use, which had an immediate impact on students’ compositional choices and end products, not to mention teachers’ growth in understanding of the software capacities now available.

All EMTs agreed that they felt unprepared for the challenge of teaching students compositional skills, as they had come from a traditional theory background. The EMTs said that they remembered being taught orchestration and doing activities such as writing a composition in the style of a particular composer or adding a piano accompaniment or a string quartet arrangement, but they also needed to learn how to write an original composition. They acknowledged that they had no choice but to adapt and learn new processes, supporting the statement that teachers ‘through experimenting with different pedagogical techniques in the classroom, amass a catalogue of knowledge about what works and what does not work’ (Oleson & Hora, Reference OLESON and HORA2014, p. 31). Martha reflected that learning how to teach composition was a challenge:

The EMTs still endeavoured to explain the harmonic and chordal process to their students, believing they should demystify the compositional process by providing their students with knowledge and skills. Cecilia said:

Concluding thoughts and implications

Each of the EMTs’ responses to the challenges they faced varied, but all displayed resilience and flexibility, and a willingness to face the situations in which they found themselves. These findings align with the 2017 research by Ballantyne and Zhukov, whose description of the resilience of teachers in the face of substantial difficulties also fits the EMTs in this study of a different era: ‘they draw on personal fortitude, and a wide range of professional and personal skills to foster positive emotions, engagement, positive relationships, meaning and recognition of achievements’ (p. 249).

The EMTs acknowledged the impact of the syllabus changes on their classroom pedagogy. However, they did not remember the specific names or dates of changes, apart from the 1978 2 Unit A music syllabus, which changed classroom practices and boosted student numbers in the senior classroom. The advantage for teachers was the growing number of students in elective music. This syllabus increased the popularity of music within high schools and meant that the music teacher numbers in schools also increased to accommodate the subsequent rise in elective numbers. They readily adapted to new technology by pivoting from class performance activities with tuned and untuned percussion instruments, as it had been in the 1970s, to individual and group performance with keyboards, guitars and ukuleles. They exhibited a readiness to embrace new ideas brought about by syllabus and pedagogical change through, for example, a willingness to learn how to teach composition using notation software to students effectively.

With the students having more control of their learning and creating, this also subtly shifted into the teaching of all other components in the classroom situation. The participants embraced the new informal learning approach and employed it in the junior elective music classrooms – in teaching popular music, Australian music, music of a culture, etc. All participants readily adapted to the changes in the component structure of each new syllabus as they occurred – from performance, listening and vocabulary throughout the 1970s and 1980s to performance, composition, aural and musicology (for Stage 6) being taught in an integrated way as it is today.

The importance of mentors and professional, collegial support for early career teachers also emerged after reflection from the EMTs as being necessary for early career teachers. All participants mentioned that the instigation of a mentor programme within each school where EMTs could be partnered with the new teachers to assist with strategies for successful classroom management and discipline approaches would benefit not only the new teachers but the entire school. Rikki, who struggled with classroom management because of lack of support as an early career teacher and had left teaching because of the stress, proudly said that he ‘lasted 16 years the second time around’. He attributed this to colleagues – a team of four music teachers with a head teacher who was very supportive of and encouraging with his staff. Rikki acknowledged that he learned a great deal from watching the experienced staff at the school and following their role modelling, which in turn gave him the confidence necessary to persevere when things did not go according to plan. Had Rikki received the support of professional colleagues as teacher models in his early years of teaching, his classroom future and self-efficacy may have had a very different outcome.

All spoke about the feelings of fulfilment and satisfaction experienced from the extracurricular activities they led within their schools, feeling sure that those activities positively affected elective class numbers. All could see the benefits of encouraging as many students as possible to participate and welcoming those who may not have had any previous music experiences through private lessons or elective music. The EMTs maintained their love of their subject by working with cocurricular groups and establishing choirs, folk groups and bands, as well as staging musical productions, thus encouraging students into their elective classes through establishing traditions. Involving parents and the wider school community was deemed important and accepted as part of the job and was seen as offering staff and students a chance to be part of a larger school social group and get to know others outside the confines of a classroom, which in turn enhanced student–staff relations in the classroom.

They insisted that the new pedagogical skills acquired through syllabus change improved and strengthened their teaching in the junior school, where the syllabus closely mirrored the senior syllabus by the end of the 1990s when this research concludes. Through all the above changes, the EMTs had proof of the efficacy of their practice in the form of increased elective numbers in their schools over the 25 years. All music students, both readers and non-readers of music notation, have equal access to music as an HSC subject in NSW schools, and the elective numbers in music secondary classrooms in NSW have continued to grow. Statistics provided by the NSW Education Standards Authority (NESA), the current education authority in NSW, the number of HSC candidates studying music grew from 915 in 1979, to 3,120 by 1988 (https://www.boardofstudies.nsw.edu.au). In the junior elective years of 9 and 10, the number of students studying music grew from 3,333 in 1979 to 8, 312 by 1988 (https://www.boardofstudies.nsw.edu.au).

Diagram 2. Growth in elective numbers in music in NSW secondary classrooms from the 1960s to the 1990s.

Key:

Series 1 – junior music numbers (blue line)

Series 2 – senior music (orange line)

Series 3 – AMEB for HSC (grey line). This course was accessed through private tuition but ceased being an HSC option in 1998 when the candidate numbers were 134.

Music education historian Gillian Weiss (1995) writes that ‘the role of the historian is to reclaim the past for those living in the present and to offer explanations as to how and why things happened and to point out the significance of changes that have occurred’ (p. 55). Weiss goes on to argue that ‘even when desires or intentions are translated into official curricula, what actually occurs in classrooms may be slow to change’ (p. 64). The depth of experience and shared knowledge of participants in this research of NSW syllabus history and implementation, along with their opinions and philosophies over the decades under investigation, can provide valuable information for future curriculum renewal in NSW. The interviewed EMTs provided a unique perspective through their reflections about their experiences over 30 years and the first-hand evidence of the historical impact of multiple syllabus changes on their classroom pedagogical practices. All insisted that their work as music teachers during the 1970s through to the 1990s contributed to the growth in elective numbers in music in NSW schools. As Valerie said: