Marca Ciudad

Enid shows me into a small room, adjacent to the modern entrance foyer. She introduces me to the three Year One teachers, Ruth and Patricia who are seated together on a large, squashy looking beige sofa and Leanne, who is on a matching sofa at right angles to the other. Between the two settees is a brightly decorated Christmas tree, complete with multi-coloured lights that give the room a cosy feel as the outside winter light coming though the small window dissipates. The three women all smile warmly and we shake hands. The atmosphere is friendly but there are hints of nerves betrayed by tightly clasped hands on laps.

I feel nervous as I introduce myself and tell the three women about my work, the 2007 project and my current research. I want them to want to work with me, to really understand what it is I hope to do and I feel some pressure about conveying all of this without discouraging them in any way. I ask if they have a clear understanding of what it is I hope to do. They tell me that Enid has already told them all about it. From their responses it is clear that Enid has grasped my ideas perfectly and explained them well. I feel both surprise and relief at this.

There is a knock on the door and Enid enters bearing a tray of tea and chocolate biscuits. She is greeted with a chorus of our appreciative sounds and expressions of thanks. She says: ‘Well we can’t have you all running on empty at the end of the day when you’ve important things like music to discuss, can we?’ and leaves. I comment that it’s not common in every school for the head to bring her staff refreshments and Ruth tells me that Enid is always doing things like that for them.

The arrival of the refreshments creates a more informal atmosphere than existed in the first ten minutes of the meeting and we are all more relaxed as we drink our tea and help ourselves to biscuits.

Comment:

The fact that Enid had so clearly explained the purpose of the field study to the teachers told me that information is shared freely within this school and that there is good communication between the head teacher and staff. In my experience, this is unusual. Often staff are aware that someone is coming to provide musical activity for the children but that is the extent of the information that has been passed on or that teachers have managed to grasp given busy schedules.

The relaxing effect of the refreshments that I observed resonates with the similar experience at the inception of the Music Potential project. In that first meeting between the teachers and musicians described in Chapter One, Dr Rose also provided chocolate biscuits, cake and tea. As with Sally’s ‘story’ depicted in Chapter One,

feelings of collective vulnerability40_{, nervousness and possible musical and}

professional inadequacies being exposed were recorded throughout the early part of the Music Potential study, surfacing also in the interviews. Within this first meeting, Dr Rose discussed the research methodology and methods with relevant academic texts and theory explained, alongside initial explanations of classroom singing pedagogy. Such a meeting agenda might have served to further daunt the already musically unsure research participants (as indeed it did in Sally’s case), but the addition of the chocolate-laden afternoon tea arguably lessened those potentially alienating factors. Instead of a potentially intimidating environment, Dr Rose established the sense of a pleasurable social gathering, during which the teachers and musicians felt free to get to know each other. The seemingly trivial social convention of supplying refreshments was utilized to great effect here as a tactic to begin the project, with assumptions of professional hierarchy minimized, and with feelings of camaraderie linked to the experience of conversation and chocolate among the research participants. In the initial meeting for my research project, I was a guest in the school and therefore not at liberty to initiate the offer of refreshments on this first visit. However, by offering us refreshment, Enid unknowingly aided the project immeasurably by replicating the events and subsequent effects described above.

Field note reflections continued: I ask the teachers to tell me about themselves and how they feel about teaching music to their classes.

Ruth begins by telling me about the children who attend the school. She confirms that the majority of children who enter the nursery at 3 years old are below the expected national average in terms of their speech, language and communication, adding that this presents challenges in the teaching of Year One as the children have much to ‘catch up’ on. She tells me that having been the nursery teacher in a previous year she has first-hand knowledge of this delay and has found that regularly singing nursery rhymes with the children from nursery, Reception and into Year One41 has

40

The concept of collective vulnerability is discussed in Chapter Six.

41_{Nursery, or Foundation Stage education is funded part-time by the state in the United Kingdom for}

children over three and up to five years of age. Foundation Stage education spans both compulsory and non-compulsory education and can be provided by registered playgroups, nursery schools, children’s centres, daycare settings and within primary schools as is the case at Morningside Infant School. Reception is the final, compulsory stage of the Foundation Stage and the first year of primary school in

been useful. She says she loves singing and does lots of it with the children, especially just before home time. However, she doesn’t think she’s very good at it but says; ‘They don’t care how good you are, they just like to sing, don’t they?’ She ends by telling me she was excited when Enid first asked her if she’d like to participate in the study as she is keen to learn ‘new songs and ideas’.42

Patricia speaks about her belief that is her duty as a teacher to afford children as many opportunities as possible as their home experiences can be quite limited. She tells me that she ‘loves music of all kinds’ and attends concerts regularly, most of them classical. Although she tries to incorporate music regularly into her classroom she struggles, feeling that she is ‘not a strong singer’ and isn’t ‘very musical’. She also tells me that she had very little initial training in music as a student teacher and since that time, has had few opportunities to access music training, tending to rely on colleagues to share ideas from resources they may have accessed. She is concerned that the children lose focus when she leads music and then chaotic behaviour may result. Nevertheless, she tries to do a ‘structured’ music activity of some form with the children once a week. She makes use of schemes such as ‘Music Express’43 to support her teaching and has used the ‘Sing Up’44 online song-bank occasionally. She hopes to gain new ideas for music activities using instruments and new repertoire as a result of taking part in the study.

Leanne tells me that as this is only her second year of teaching, she is still finding her way with regard to teaching the whole curriculum, not just music. She sings nursery rhymes together with the children at the end of the day. She admits that she feels very nervous about having her music teaching observed. I ask her why and she responds:

the United Kingdom for children aged between four and five years. Year One is the subsequent year for children aged five to six years and forms the first of two years in which children are within Key Stage One (5-7 years).

42_{In order to closely convey the tone of these conversations and my diary entries, the vernacular style}

of language used is intentionally replicated.

43

Music Express is a package of CD/CD ROM based resources and songbooks available for schools to

purchase on a license holder basis. It claims to require no prior music knowledge on the teacher’s part in order to be implemented in the classroom. Conversations I have had with multiple teachers along with my own study of the scheme strongly suggest that this is not the case for all of the content, some of which can be difficult to teach without a basic understanding of musical concepts.

44

Implemented in 2007 by a Labour government, Sing Up’s online song bank, magazine and training opportunities were made available without cost to primary schools across the UK in order to raise the profile of singing. Since 2012 and the withdrawal of funding, Sing Up’s resources are available to schools who pay an annual fee.

‘because I’m not a musician’. Although Leanne enjoys listening to music and attending music events and festivals in her spare time, she feels her lack of knowledge with regard to music theory and her belief that she is not a confident singer prevent her from being a ‘good music teacher’. However, she tells me that she is looking forward to taking part in the study as she thinks it will help her increase her musical knowledge and confidence. I ask what I can do to allay her nerves and she replies it would help if she could see me work with the children a few times before I observe her music teaching.

We agree that I will visit the school again the following week to meet the children and observe Ruth and Patricia leading short singing activities as they normally would within their classrooms. I assure Leanne that it’s fine for her to opt out of this given her concerns about being observed initially.

Comment:

What the teachers said in this conversation strongly supports the findings of Holden and Button (2006), discussed previously, that in the main, primary teachers do not feel adequately equipped to teach music. Their feelings towards teaching music to their classes evokes the themes earlier discussed of low musical confidence on the part of primary teachers, teachers’ assumptions about what it means to be ‘musical’, and the preference of teachers towards collegial music teaching strategies that are all evident both within Holden and Button’s study, and also in the work of Janet Mills (1994). Hennessey (2000) illuminates the subscription of primary teachers to the idea of talent, and Patricia and Leanne’s admissions in this first encounter that they do not see themselves as ‘musical’ reflects again the notion of being musical as something an individual is, or is not, and that this pervades attitudes towards the acquisition of musical skill and the effective teaching of music.

Similar preconceptions were noted on the part of the teachers participating in the earlier Music Potential study at this same stage, indicating that my field study was beginning with the teachers at a starting point, in terms of confidence and perceived level of technical music teaching skill that I understood. In addition, what I experienced myself during that first project, (as previously, described) of musical self- doubt in response to being observed by those whom I perceived as being more

‘expert’ and higher up in the musical, academic and project hierarchy than I, gave me an empathic understanding to some extent of what these three teachers might be inwardly experiencing at this point. This past experience motivated and, I hope, enabled me to plan sensitively for my own ensuing field study design, one that sought to minimize tacit and overt assumptions or structures that might reinforce professional hierarchies. It was imperative to me throughout, that the enquiry would not in any way serve to further diminish the musical self-perceptions of these teachers or promote their current ‘deficit’ assessments of their own musicality.